Clarity

It sweeps over me sometimes.  It's a sudden onslaught of absolutely paralyzing clarity.

 A reminder that you are truly gone.  

Before I can move, breathe, think, rationalize again, I have to close the flood gates. 

 There are too many memories.

Long walks in the middle of the night.  Your camper.  Summer evenings so humid our skin felt as if it melted together.  The pool.  Signaling from the guard chairs.  Your smile.  Your laugh.  The way our hands fit together.  How you always just knew when I needed a hug.  Our salvation army date.  Your suit jackets.  Our first time under the stars.  My ring.  Ice cream runs.  Your indulgence in my crazy rants.  

Your tears.  My trust.  Secret-telling.  Impromptu rapping.  

Voicemails where you sang to me. Passing love notes.

How does one let go of someone, or the idea of someone, who shaped her soul?  

I breath deep, like the therapist taught me, tracing "tranquil" in my mind because I like the curves of the cursive. I close my eyes, squeeze until red dots invade my black, and when I open them you are more ghost than real.
 I step back and tell myself its over.

It's over.  It's over. It's over.  We are over.

Yet  my heart breaks for the umpteenth time.  I don't even know if that's true.  I think it just stays broken and never really gets sewn back up.

How can it?

How do I ever bounce back from my stability erupting, leaving me alone and speechless and broken?

More than a year, and I am still brought to my knees by this paralyzing clarity:

 my best friend, a part of me, left without looking back. 

see saw

we are the abandoned see-saw in the corner of the park:
 unwanted, untouched, overlooked.

we are full of divots and carvings and a splotchy paint job.

we are the one that parents warn children of, considered unhealthy and dangerous.

the years we have endured are recorded in paint color:
 red, orange, pink, blue, white, green, and yellow
each trying to claim the most space on our surface.

we are carved.
we are marked by the brave who ventured close enough and long enough to leave their impression on us, and we are unable to rid ourselves of them.

we are beyond conventional repair. 

we are all alone, left to mull over our pasts and have fruitless hope
that the future will be different.

we are uneven, unstable, undesirable.

we are us.