“As a young child, menacing creatures would sneak into your closet during a soundless midnight. Today, they have grown comfortable within the barricades of your troubled mind. They’re much louder
than you remember
them to be years ago.”
“I want to know the you before the bombs fell, the hands before they became calloused and weary. The apology in your eyes falls short before it can be spoken. You’re terrified to open a book that’s been shut for countless sunrises and sunsets, but it must be done if you want that spring back in your step. Lighten yourself again. Speak loudly of your remorse before it begins ringing in your jaded ears.”
The trembling shall subside. Scary places aren’t always scary when you learn every corner. Your eyes will always search for north, no matter how dense the fog.
You choose, consciously, to forget every scathing thing anyone’s ever said to you. It takes every fiber of your being, but it’s necessary now. Your skin is too thin and begging to break.
This is how survival gets back on its feet. This is its first breath, its first step forward. This is beginning again, because no one will do it for you.
“The file cabinet of memories is too cluttered to look at. You want to set it all alight and start over, but that would mean erasing years that cannot be replicated. For better or worse, this is who you’ve become after the deep waterfalls and rivers of calm. There will be those that urge you to violently cross out the year you got your heart handed to you in pieces, the year you were rejected from the ones you wanted acceptance from the most. But they make the ones that stayed stand out. If that’s not worth continuing on for, I don’t know what is.”
So this is peace. Savouring the candle’s scent instead of watching the wick burn to nothing in a panic. Eucalyptus, lavender, almond milk. Honey, lemon, sandalwood. This is tranquility in all its glory.
I wish to bury the clock and never see its face again. Let me immerse myself in slow breaths and an even slower passing of time.
