toxic stirrup
I hold on too tightly, you see,
I press my hands into their skin like I’m afraid they’ll disappear if I don’t—
because they will, they do.
They are water, slipping between my fingers, andI am trying to drink the ocean.
I am sand, letting them sift through me,
the harder I grip, the more I lose.
I hold on to those who cannot be held.
Not because they are unworthy, no, but because they are everything—
every breath, every star I tried to capture in my chest and hold, just for me.
But they don’t stay. They can’t.
I get close enough to feel the heat of them,
to taste the salt on their skin,
and then they pull away, back into the sea.
I want to swallow them whole,
devour them,
feel them curl up inside me like a secret,
but they don’t let me.
They recoil,
like light recedes from shadow,
and I am left with the ghost of what they could have been.
It’s the wanting that breaks me,
the need to hold them so tight, to keep them,
but they are not mine to keep.
I know this.
I tell myself not to bite, not to take more than they offer,
but when they are near, all I can think of is the taste of them,
the way they would fill me up, make me whole, make me something.
And so I bite—
I chew—
and they leave.
I am left with an empty mouth,
hands grasping at air,
and the bitter taste of them on my tongue,
still, always, there.
I hold on to people like they are lifeboats,
but they are waves,
and I am drowning in the need to make them stay.
I take too much. I know this.
I want too much. I know this.
I want to take all of them in,
to bite down and never let go,
but they are not mine to swallow.
They drift, they recede,
and I am left standing at the shore,
salt on my lips,
empty-handed,
watching them disappear into the horizon.
And still, I reach out.
And still, I try.
This is always how it goes, isn’t it?
I am built for grasping, for holding tight until my knuckles turn white,
until my hands ache from the effort of trying to keep what slips away,
but I never hold what stays. I’ve never known anything like me,
nothing that clings like I do,
nothing that needs like I do,
and when I finally find something that does,
something that mirrors my wanting, my hunger—
I am undone. I am lost in it, consumed by it,
and then lost after it, perhaps even more,
because what else can I be?
I’m made to fall apart, to unravel when something pulls away.
To go from being whole to a husk in the same breath,
the same heartbeat that carried the weight of wanting.
It’s the cycle of it,
the way time moves forward and takes everything with it—
as all time does is pass,
as all things will do is end,
and all I will ever do is remember.
I remember the touch, the sound, the taste of what I could never keep.
I remember the moment they slip away,
and I am left in the quiet aftermath,
solitude pressing in like a weight I’ve known all my life,
and yet it still surprises me,
still breaks me,
because I thought, for a moment,
that I could hold on.
But I am always reaching for ghosts,
always trying to keep what cannot be kept.
So I stand here,
in the space between memory and forgetting,
between what I had and what I’ll never have again.
And all I do is remember.
faint carbon
fleet isle