Went through a lot of drafts, and this is also a rare first posting. Dated about 14th March, 2020.
Social media is an overpriced mortician putting
make-up on the dead, or so they tell me.
It certainly felt that way building a relationship
out of the contour you showed to the world while
pretending I didn't exist seven days of every eight -
relationship in this sense just meaning, of course,
that you told me my chest was the chest your
heart beat inside, and we had really great sex a
couple half-dozen times; and just in this sense
meaning, Don't worry, I never wanted to call
myself your girlfriend, in the same breath as
your promise that it didn't have to be a lesser
thing, just because; but, as always, I was defined
by the just.
If I saw you, I think I'd say, I hope you're doing
okay, by which I'd mean, I hope it kind of sucks
right now; it in this sense meaning... I don't know.
It. You seem happy on social media, one day
in every eight, which I assume means you haven't
changed at all; the mortician knows its job too
well, knows how to gut me like a supermodel's
ugly when every eighth day rolls around. I could
bury you six feet under and never think about
you again - by which I mean, block you, and
never think about you again - but I promised to
keep things civil between us, and my soul's
cemetery is not well-versed in manners. I'd
pretend I'd never known you if I saw you on the
street, and I'd do it so well you'd wonder how
you ever touched me without getting freezer-burn -
by which I mean, I'd have a panic attack after,
but better that than letting you see the grisly
mess of my corpse's smile, which is the primary
alternative. Historically, I don't look good with
maggots oozing between my teeth - but, then,
some might say it's hypocritical of me to
criticise the way you let social media lie about
your scars while I play mortician for my own.
And by all this, I mean, I'd never sink so low
as to ask you why you still check my snapchat
story every day, whether it means as little to you
as any stranger's, or if you check it like a double-
rum and lemonade on a Thursday afternoon -
by which I mean, my carefully manufactured
smile to get you through the day, while the
sting serves as reminder of the last hangover
I gave you.
I want to be the ground in which flowers
grow. I want strangers to feel the sun on their
face when I smile. People have told me I was
a ray of light when I was in love with you; it's
this concept of heartbreak which breaks my heart,
the truth that years of working on myself can't
hold a candle to the sunlight happiness of three
weeks of just with someone else. I endeavour
to love myself on purpose, to tend to my heart
like a bonsai - pruning branches to make the
trunk stronger, by which I mean, loving no-
one until I can love everyone, by way of loving
myself. The concept of a forest could not
exist until two things evolved: first, that plants
should hold themselves up by a husk of their
own dead cells, by which I mean bark,
enabling anything taller than a fern to ever
grow; and second, that something could turn
death into feast, by which I mean microbes
turning wood into soil. See, every time I see
your name every one day in eight, I do not feel
like wildflowers could grow from my chest.
But I think maybe I am not to blame for the
maggots making feast of my flesh. I am ugly
when I hurt, but the purpose with which I aim
to love myself is to put away the mortician's
make-up, to lay to rest the foundation of civility
which turns my grief into a #glowup six months
from now. One day, I will wear my old hurts as
my spine, but I must prune the branches of my
unrequited devotion first. One day, a wildflower
meadow will burst from my chest, but I must let
the maggots make ruin of me before then. You
did not mean to hurt me, by which I mean you
hurt me, by which I mean I will wear you as
bark, by which I mean I have lost count of the
excuses I have made for you - by which I
mean, ignore me; this is merely the blowflies
dancing on my tongue.
