Buried

The wind whips harshly against your face, the burning sensation the only thing you’re able to feel besides the raw ache pulsing within you with every agonized beat coming from your chest. Just the same as yesterday, the previous day, and the day before that. You reach out for his heart of stone in front of you, only to find it as cold as it always is when you’re seeking comfort. Fighting off the impending shiver, you wrap your arms around yourself, not for warmth, but to keep the pieces he broke from falling apart and crumbling down to be stepped on like the brittle leaves crunching under your feet.

         You’re beyond the point of reason as you feel the turmoil crescendo until it reaches its peak inside of you as the volcano of your emotions erupts and the glowing lava spills out of your lips and runs parallel with the tears streaming from the eyes you wish were as blind as you had been. “I can’t keep doing this anymore; the acting like everything is okay when I know damn well it’s not. So this is it – I’m just going to say it and put it out there. Unfiltered honesty.” Heart racing wildly, this moment is the most alive you’ve felt in a long time. Realizing that you’re taking measured breaths to stall, you swan dive head first into the dark waters waiting to embrace you below. “With every sweet memory that you’ve turned into a nightmares, with every scar you’ve given my masochistic soul when all I wanted was to matter - especially to you, and with every morning that I wake up with the bittersweet memory of your name on my tongue, I hate you.”

Voice cracking, you take a moment to gather your wilting resolve and what comes next is nothing more than a defeated whisper that the tortured look in your eyes demotes into a plea for mercy. “I hate you because, despite knowing all of this, I can’t bring myself to hurt you. But more than any of that, I hate you because,” you pause to swallow, shoving down the part of you telling you to stop, to keep that cork firmly in place. But the pressure building behind the precipice is too much and the words continue to loose themselves as arrows from the quiver of your mouth, your voice the bow holding enough tension to let yourself send them flying across the bottomless chasm between the two of you. “I hate myself for still being in love with you.”

           Eyes closing in an attempt to stave of the dizzying nausea, it all comes barreling to the fore, demanding to be acknowledged and refusing to remain chained in the secret shadows cast by the harsh sun of brighter yesterdays. How night after night you woke to the ghost of his touch. You could still feel his hand on your cheek, his lips against yours, and his breath on your skin. Waking up shaking and hollow, you would force yourself to push it out of your mind yet again. You heard him whispering your name and turned to find an empty room, partly relieved while the hollowness deepened, going through you completely. The sound of his voice brought you back to the warmer, brighter days from before. You made yourself go numb in order to make it more bearable; you would rather feel nothing at all instead of tormenting yourself every second of each day. Sometimes a memory slipped through, one you could not hold back or ignore. For a brief moment you would smile, but then reality set in and you were left wondering, trying to figure out what was so wrong with you for him to leave you so utterly, completely alone. You could no longer sleep without being plagued by your heart’s wishes; seeing him almost every night and it nearly killed you each time. If you could forget, maybe you would be happy. If you could let go you could move on.

Newly clear eyes opening to the present, you free yourself from the weight of the cross you’ve borne for so long, dropping it on the ground at your feet and cementing it in place with your last words. “So I’m going to give myself what you never could – ending this in one fell swoop, because I am done. This. Is. Over. I’m not going to let you hurt me or drag me down to the rock bottom floor you hold yourself to anymore.

           You kiss your fingertip before placing it on the elegantly carved marble, letting it linger there as you close your eyes and you allow the last tear you will ever shed for him to fall before cleansing yourself of the evidence. Opening your eyes, everything comes into focus and for once they see with clarity. With each step you take away from where you buried the broken piece that poisoned you, you find yourself being able to breathe easier. Unrestricted. Freely. The thin, golden rays of light streaming through the holes in the smothering blanket of clouds above swath over your face, and for the first time since you began your descent into the endless abyss, the heat of it reaches your hypothermic heart and starts to melt away the numbness in which you have hidden.

           Walking away, you leave the weight of your pain and regrets buried in the graveyard where they belong without looking back. The gravitational pull ebbs and weakens with each step you take away from the cold, heart-shaped stone with his name carved as deeply into it as it is the one thumping in your chest. Both will erode away with the harsh embrace of the coarse sand of time, but for you it will be sanding down the rough edges to render you a smother foundation upon which to build a better tomorrow bathed in warmth with absolutely nothing to break you down or hold you back.

           As you exit the rusted gates, a heavy lock clicks into place in the chain’s links, thinking to yourself, it crosses your mind that they’re not as menacing now that you are no longer the one whom they bind.