Sad Prose - Tumblr Posts

My existence is throwing up their emotions in the bathroom sink at night. Their emotions which follow me like a dog, attatched to me like a shadow which gets heavier and weightier. It's feet tied to bricks at the bottom of the ocean so I will never reach the second star on the right, I will never see morning. I will only see the bathroom sink when my friends thought I was weak for dry heaving up his fear after only one scene of the horror movie. I will only ever see the bathroom sink, hot water running, between paused scenes of Titanic trying to shake the hypothermia from my fingertips. I will only ever see my hand cupped under the faucet, my face dunking through the cool water to ease the burn of my tears, their emotions, because its never mine, and I am forever tied at the bottom of the ocean entrenched and drowning in those around me. Trapped, forever, in the dark, screaming.

-Other, July 2023

(s.m.)

I have a hard time praying. I think its because my heart is too big for my chest, my emotions more than my body, I start to pray and everything rushes out, and im left there, a raw nerve, feeling more than what can fit in my skin. My prayer is feeling, splaying myself open, prying open my chest rib by rib until I am finally free. A cavernous expanse to be filled and understood. No words express the feeling of taking my still beating heart in my hands, blood dripping off my finger, and laying it at His Feet. That is all I can envision, surrender. How am I to pray in words when my feelings surpass that? What else am I to do other than lay my heart upon the ground and let Him fill me for how can I articulate my emotions better than He can understand them?

-Meditations at the foot of the Eucharist, July 2023

(s.m.)

What changed in the air this morning? When I woke, blurry, barely human, you were the first thing on my mind, as if I had awoken in your apartment to the sound of the highway outside or bathed in sunlight where we dosed in front of your living room window. What was it about my morning haze? What smell was in the air? What made it so my subconscious ran giggling like a small child smelling a bouquet of roses? Why would the air betray me so? Why must I awake in pain?

-After, July 2023

(s.m.)

Sometimes, I wonder if I made a deeply terrible mistake in forsaking you, because I know if I asked you would take me back, because you told my mother there will never be another girl for you, because you still believe in us, in me, and I sit here, mourning something I ended, heart bloody though I hold the knife, and I wonder what the fuck I am doing. I am scared, in my bones, that I set fire to something good. I feel like the broken one, too much, too volatile, the one searching for something that will never come, the one that makes the poor decisions, the monster that was able to turn away your love. I burned down our home, I pushed you away, I was the one that imploded and I am scared that it was not because you trapped me like a hurricane in a jar, I am scared that it was not because it was a matter of time before the glass shattered, I am scared that it was because I am merely broken glass, unable to be molded into something which can fit together with another human being. For now, the fear is only momentarily assuaged by reminders, by mantras, by how easy it was to let you go, how free I feel now, and how much the idea of you scares me now that we are apart. I hope for the day, when my fear is no longer placated but let go of, and I no longer feel like broken glass, but a balloon floating in the wind, loved for my ability to fly.

-After, July 2023

(s.m.)

There's a song

about all those abandoned playlists,

painful memories linked to lyrics,

about losing the songs you once loved

now spoils of heartbreak.

Every time we would sing the chorus,

I would say how ironic it would be

that if we ever broke up,

I wouldn't be able to listen to that song.

Here we are,

I just deleted it from my playlist,

it hurt too much.

-After, July 2023

(s.m.)

I don't know if it's delusion or selfishness or reality when I look back at our five years and feel like I was never truly loved. Feel like I didn't have any of those important firsts. Yes, we danced in the kitchen but did we really dance like we were in love, was it you who swept me or me coaxing you on. I remember dancing in the gravel in front of the barn but when I think of stargazing I remember feeling like I was the only one interested. I remember you chasing me through the house but when you caught me did you wrap me in your arms and kiss me like I was a missing body part? Even though there are moments I can remember, where they truly those epic moments that I wanted. Why are all my memories tinged with dissapointment, I don't think that's retroactive. How long was I dissapointed? Was it in you or the fact I was not in love as I thought? That I was not loved how I wish?

-After, July 2023

(s.m.)

I'm rather content with myself, without you.

-After, July 2023

(s.m.)

The world is much too vast and much too beautiful to remember to be sad about you while watching the sun set on the ocean.

-After, July 2023

(s.m.)

Today, I stood at the edge of the world. I leaned against the chipped and discolored paint, bathed in the light of the setting sun and I dug my toes into the soft grass before the cliff. The waves lapped at the shore below me and I inhaled as the wind whipped my hair about my face.

There, beside a lighthouse before the sea, I decided I could stay for all eternity. I could be alone on that cliffs edge in the twilight of the setting sun forever, frozen in my quiet solitude, and I would be happy.

I-was-happy, because for one moment I did stand on that cliff for eternity, hidden from the world but saturated by it. It was all I knew for those couple minutes as my present stretched to infinity.

I was a lone goddess on my solitary and ever setting shore, and I was happy.

-Other, July 2023

(s.m.)

I met a boy I think I loved in a past life. The first time we met, he sat a couple seats away from me in class and as the time ticked on he eventually looked my way and as our eyes crossed for just a second something in my heart exploded.

I never knew why but the second he walked into the room I was only aware of him and how he moved and the soft curls of his hair. I would glance out of the corner of my eye ever couple minutes to see the shape of his mouth as he talked or catch his eye, just once, like I couldn't stand to stop looking at him.

One time, he told me he liked my coat and I think I said that to him years ago, sliding the wool between my fingers, looking up at him through my lashes. I thought about his words for days after, like they were written on my bones.

My friend swears he looks at me like he is coming home from war.

I think he did, or maybe he didnt.

Maybe he never came home from the war and our love died in a foreign land and now, finally, we can lay eyes on one another again.

I swear we loved each other, but now we are strangers and I am stuck watching him, lingering in the room waiting to be acknowledged because my soul remembers and I am hoping his does as well.

We walk past each other on the sidewalk and I think of running my fingers through his curls as he gives me that small smile, but he keeps walking.

-After the After, July 2023

(s.m.)

I saw you took her to an art museum, or maybe she took you. Maybe she was happy to open herself up and you were happy to be let in.

You took pictures of the exhibits and you probably stood next to her, admiring the work before you like you know so fucking much about art.

We never went to an art museum. You never asked and I never shared because I think deep down I didn't feel like you cared because anytime I told you about my writing you reaction was lacluster so why would I share more?

My life is art, my soul is art, my breath is art, and my brain has only ever thought in colors and prose and brush strokes but you took Her to an art museum. You admired the art with Her. Not me, even though the last time I went to a museum I saw a Van Gogh and cried my eyes out, even though I could spend hours roaming the halls.

You didnt see me, I don't think. Because anytime you talked about art or beauty it was never my name you conjured up for the task. Five years by my side and you still never fucking saw me in the end.

And now you go to an art museum, with her, as if my blood isn't splattered on ever piece hanging on the wall. But you don't see it, you don't see me, you never have.

-After, August 2023

(s.m.)

I long for an explosive, violent, love. The kind that leaves us both bloody and broken but utterly alive.

I want to take a chunk out of my lover with my teeth and for them to grin at my bloody lips because they never wanted me docile, I never have been docile, and I am so tired of being nice.

Maybe that's because my last love bled me dry slowly over time. Now, I want my violence up front, if I am going to break I refuse to softly fade away, I want to go down swinging.

-After, July 2023

(s.m.)

Sometimes, late at night, I hold your sweatshirt in my hands. It doesn't smell like you anymore and I don't put it on, but for the last week I have left it laying in the corner on the floor. Every time I pass by it I think of you. I don't cry, or try to see if your smell lingers, I just, hold it, staring. I don't know what it means .

I don't know.

-After, August 2023

(s.m.)

I looked at the stars tonight. I lay splayed open on the porch table, bathed in starlight and sticky with dew. I had to towel off the surface before I layed down but there was still a layer of dampness that stuck to me even through the thin blanket I wrapped around myself.

As I looked up, I constantly tugged on the edges of the blanket to cling to my curves but it kept rolling down and soon enough I stopped trying as the stars watched me and the cold air swept across my flesh.

I watched one shooting star go by, and then two, and then three, and more. One blazed across the heavens like a great ball of fire and sparks streaked in its wake, hanging there, in the sky, for a few seconds before fizzling out.

You crossed my mind multiple times. The imprint of you is still there and looking into that vast and bejeweled abyss I saw my own reflection and those things that haunt my eyes, like when your friends came over to my house and we lay in a pile on my porch stargazing even though the full moon made it hard to see. Or that time we lay under the stars in my ball dress and you told me you were sorry this wasn't going to last forever.

A slow sadness crept in when I felt antsy to go back inside. Before, nothing could take me from looking up at our speckled universe but I have been out of the habit so long. All I can feel is every time I got out of the car and I looked up and gasped. I would stare with my neck craned backwards and want to sit there forever, and I would have, until every time you grabbed my hand and hauled me inside and your future promise of stargazing was never answered.

You robbed me of my greatest love and I am still clawing to get it back and I don't understand how you ever thought a girl with stars in her blood should be hauled back inside like an escaped convict while rolling your eyes. Why did I let you, why didn't I fight you? Oh, why did you have to smother me?

The sky does not smother me, the air does not fight me, and those glittering stars kiss me with a love of which you were never capable.

-After, August 2023

(s.m.)

We used to count the ways we had been together in chunks of time: the halfway point to engagement, the halfway point to the halfway point to our engagement, when we will have been together longer than we had been alive without each other.

Will I remember one day, when I will have been without you longer than I had been with you? That my distance from you is longer than the length of us. That seems so far away.

-After, August 2023

(s.m.)

So often, I find my fingers reaching for you. Thumb paused over my phone screen, on any thread I left open, a small bridge. I sit there and I wait, staring, until I lose the nerve or gain the courage. A failure and a success.

Edit:

Less often, I find my finger reaching for you. My thumb no longer hovers over my phone screen, I cut all the threads, and the bridge sits crumbled and abandoned. I no longer sit there and wait, and when you do cross my mind I watch the thought flit away as fast as it came. My courage is present, and I think I will always be both a failure and a success in whatever way I choose to define the stakes.

-After, July 2023

(s.m.)

Tonight, I finally admitted you had me afraid. That last night as the words poured from your mouth, I was afraid of you. How terrible, to not only lose love but safety.

A very wise women said to me that there is no such thing as closure. She was right, there is only an end and often it is ugly.

-After, August 2023

(s.m.)

I looked over my roommate's shoulder today on accident. It was just an instinctual glance as she tapped her phone.

The screen lit up and there at the top in bright bold letters was "i miss you so much right now" and I had never felt more relieved to not have someone miss me.

My chest started to cave in on itself and then I looked around and took a breath and realized there was no one around who cared. I was free.

-After, August 2023

(s.m.)

Fucking boundary breaker

That's all I have to say. I am not feeling rather poetic.

-After, September 2023

(s.m.)

When I cried over you for the millionth time a friend told me that one day you wouldn't cross my mind--that I wouldn't know why, and I wouldn't realize it then, but I would look back and you would be gone.

I don't know when in the last couple days something shifted but you haven't crossed my mind once. Somewhere in the space between I now, feel, nothing.

-Beyond, September 2023

(s.m.)