Sometimes I find myself falling through the clouds with wings made of cloth and I ask myself why I feel the way I feel. I fall, and I glide, and I reach out and scrape my fingers on the cold stone of mountains and watch tiny droplets of blood float away into the fog and it makes me smile.
The agony spreads like the warmth of the first dawn of spring and I forget the pain that hides like a shadow in a corner of my mind. But it always finds a way out and crawls and spreads and plants itself in pockets of misery that blooms into anxious little flowers that scream in the wind.
So sometimes I wonder. I wonder if my hands are strong enough to strangle the pain and watch it wither away into the night. I wonder if I have the strength to break this body and see if the pain seeps into the soil and moves on to find a new host. I wonder if, when this body is gone, the cells will remember.
Even when I know that there is darkness darker than the black of my own darkness, and suffering and pain deeper than my own, I struggle to walk and run and jump. I fill my time with sex and songs and good food, hoping that time would heal my wounds. But the pain whispers in my ear that at the end of all things, the only thing time leaves behind is death and decay.
I string together my feelings and charm them with wards from distant lands and carve out a box of ice and paint it with my fears and dreams and hopes and I lower it into a void. But the pain tugs at my heart and fills my veins with acid.
I scream and shout and break my bones and tear at my skin looking for where it comes from. But with every layer of skin I peel off, the pain burrows deeper and I cover it with light made of smiles and happy thoughts and bury the light under my flesh. But the light floats back to the surface and explodes in a million different colors and the only thing it leaves behind is more pain.
But then I feel your fire, as you hold me through the night and I want to ask you why you continue to bear the burden of my nightmares, why you continue to cradle my head, run your fingers through my hair and place your lips on my forehead, even as the empty nothingness of my heart feeds off your light.
I want to ask you, why you cover me in blankets, place your fingers between mine and tell me that all will be well. I want to ask you, why you abnegate yourself, for something so broken. I want to ask you, why do I feel this way? I want to ask you, why am I so broken? I want to ask you, can I be fixed?