They say grief never really leaves. It stays, like the scar on your knee after falling off a bike, like the stain on your favorite white T-shirt. They say you grow around grief, but after three hundred thirteen days, grief evolves. Grief used to knock at midnight. Now it barges through my door at seven in the morning. It waits for me— in the bathroom mirror, slips into the ten quiet minutes I spare before getting ready for work. It swallows me whole as I brush my teeth, wash my face, scrub a body that still carries your scent I cannot rub off. Grief has rusted the edges of my hair straightener, leaves me with a screeching sound that burns into my ears with the question: does it matter being pretty on days you don’t see me? Grief strikes at seven, primes my face with tears, and holds me hostage until eight. Three hundred thirteen days, I’ve learned how to dodge the grief that crawls under my blanket before I sleep. But I still don’t know how to escape the kind that comes at s...
Behind every wedding dress I wonder how many tears have been spilled? I wonder if her cream white dress bleached with mine. I wonder if the laces around her shoulders spun from the webs my fingers knotted in prayer, waiting for him to come back. Was her veil stitched from the sighs I breathed heavily into the dark? Were her pink lips tinted from the roses I watered faithfully in his garden? I wonder if the dreams I spent so much time dreaming, were nothing but bricks to build her altar. Behind every wedding dress, I wonder how much of her joy was made from my ruin.
First Tide The first time I thought about dying, I was fifteen. I was watching New Moon when I saw Bella standing at the edge of a cliff, ready to jump. Ever since then, every time I visit the sea, I watch as the waves break against the rocks and imagine what if instead of the water it was my body. Will the water still be blue Will the wind still sing Or will it be dark and silent? Second Tide I went to Phuket this year. I ran to the white sand beach, let the salty water wash the blisters still raw on my feet after walking away from you. I could feel the waves pulled me closer, held me tight— a familiar embrace the way yours once felt. I let the water replace the grief that lived in my lungs and realized the only way to remove pain was to replace it with another. Then it hit me. Clarity flooded down my brain, memories pounded in my chest for all the names I no longer say, faces I tried to buried rose to the surface. I gasped. But all I inhaled was the air you used to r...
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