I felt her presence, then

Pulling me towards the sky,

Magnetic

Swimming in silky nightmares,

Dancing through scattered dreams

She's seen it all,

And yet she still sings for me

Human as I am,

I tip my head back and wait,

Millions of years, no doubt,

Of time between us,

Of light

She has blinked eons ago,

And I can only see it now

And so she calls to me,

And I feel it, even when I

Cannot hear it,

Cannot see it

She flits across the sky,

She breathes the darkness,

And withers in the light

She sings for me,

While I wait for her,

Millennia after

Millennia

Golden brown curls

big curved brown eyes

with so much expression beyond his sight

beautiful flared nose

Followed by his full pink lips

That sun kissed skin

and don’t get me started on his cute little fits

trying to fill our silent air

I just love the time we spend

You fill me up with so many emotions

You’ve filled all the void I once knew

When I wake up

I am anxious to get to you

and before I fall asleep

I pray for your homecoming to be soon

I love you with every cell in my body

every inch of my heart

If we could trade places

I promise I would,

from the very start

This has been no easy journey

but for as long as you’re here

This trip will all just be a worthy memory

like

jam

spread

on

flat

bread

I

forgot

to

rise

only

a

hint

of

sugar

survives

there are some things

too horrible

to comprehend

like the little boy

who played with a lighter

and caught his Christmas tree

on fire

and killed 12 people

including

9 children

in apartment row houses

in Philadelphia

inside brick walls

where he

will never fully leave

not really

not mentally

I have held the suicide hotline in my hand, ready to press the number. I have curled up on train platforms, the cement ground touching my face, and I have picked my day of death twice.

It all comes down to a conversation where I lost someone I love. In my writing, I try to make the words flow. Sometimes they don't come, and I'm stuck in bed at 2am, hearing the pay phone dial tone like an erotic whisper. The one where she hung up on me, while I was in the hospital. When words fail, there's nothing but pain.

She's not dead. Not even close. She goes to Harvard, she's married and has three 'fur babies.' I'm some deadbeat who writes for s___ and giggles. Maybe someone will hear me in the internet void. She saves lives, or is studying to. She is better than me.

She is better than me. She is better than me. She is better than me.

I made a mistake. I didn't apologize. Not even over the hospital's pay phone. I didn't even cry until after she had hung up. I don't know if I'm repressed. Maybe I am. I went back to sleep and didn't wake up for three days. I texted her when I got out and she didn't respond for hours.

I'll never recover from the mistake I made. I didn't know, before she disowned me as her sister, that you can die while you're still alive. That is something I will never recover from. It's a sprained ankle that I didn't go to Urgent Care for, and now I'll limp forever. She doesn't love me in the same way, in the same amount. If I had a penny for every time I think about what a piece of s___ I am because of it, I would be able to afford the cost of fifteen million plane tickets to visit her, but they would be as useless as the pennies themselves.

I don't know how to recover from it. That's my answer. In filling out a response to this prompt, I thought I had something to say. Maybe I don't. And maybe that's the problem. I have no words. One of us will go to the other one's funeral, because one of us will die first. And there will be words uttered there. Words like, I'm sorry for your loss. But she's already chosen to lose me. And that's where I'm stuck on this prompt. Because how do you find words, or emotions, or thoughts, when you've already sealed the coffin on the relationship?

There's no real answer to death and I'm not sure there's an answer to what happens after someone decides you're a toxic piece of trash.

I went to the hospital for her. To save our relationship.

Click, goes the dial tone. I hear it in my sleep. I'll hear it after I'm dead.

It's funny how that sound can come up in casual conversation, conversations where she doesn't ask me about how I'm doing. Harvard's so great, she says, eyes glistening. I can't see them glisten, but through texting, there's a certain emoting that comes through with certain emojis. If she were an emoji, she'd be the little smiley one with a pink face. I see her as bubbly, punctuating my life with pain. Punctuating my life with little moments of regret and stupid responses to meaningful prompts.

You’re my winter, he’s my spring

You’re my winter, he’s my spring

The sadness has melted away

The spring has finally reached me

You’re my winter, he’s my spring

The winter keeps frosting away,

But the spring keeps shining through it

You’re my winter, he’s my spring

One day I’ll leave here

And only spring will remain

You’re my winter, he’s my spring

But still will I miss my winter one day

You were always just a spring that was trying not to wither away.