Article & Article by Michelle Solomon
How do you feel?
Overwhelmed maybe,
Lonely sometimes,
Like a loser always.
Only concerned with the losses.
Wondering, why?
Your disappearing image haunts me.
The face still. The heartbeat slow. The brain sporadic.
Your spirit was long gone, but staying in the presence of the body gave me comfort.
My thoughts manifest as waves in my head and whenever you come up, I experience the rising adrenaline and the devastating aftermath of a typhoon. You hurt me even as a declining memory.
When my family mentions you, I get nervous. I get sick. I feel cold, dry, my head aches, my chest tightens, my arms tense up. Then limp, exhausted. The body feels like nothing without you.
How can I feel you so much, so much, so much more now than ever?
It’s not fair when all I wanted was to feel you. It has been in your absence that I find you disrupting the waters of my mind the most.
Why is that? Does it make you feel better that others can see it in me, too?
They sense my urgency in coming back to you and my hesitance all the same.
They smell it. They smell the rotting of my teeth because the depression is taking over. The cavities in my mouth reflecting my insides.
They hear it. They hear my withdrawal. The rhythms that guide the body to and from the thought of you.
They see me. They see it in my eyes. They see me.
I save myself every day by resisting you. Your persistence scares me, though.
Join you in the empty nothingness of your world. Existing in the lackluster.
Where would I be with you? Where would I be without you? Erase it from your mind while the memories live strong in the body.
You have claimed my ocean as yours with the way you inhabit my mind. I put down my journal but keep the pen in my hand, prepared to continue scribbling you in and out of my thoughts again.
At night is when the tides are at their highest. At night is when the Moon sings me her pretty songs to try and distract me from your hauntings. At night is when you still manage to reel me in.
You’re reborn. I feel you. You’re more than the body and that scares the shit out of me. I ride the waves of emotion until your passing. Living another lifetime. Witnessing another death. Each and every time.
I continue to ask myself: How do you feel?
Overwhelmed maybe,
Lonely sometimes,
Like a loser always.
Only concerned with the losses.
Wondering, why?