A thought that contradicts what you feel
The noise inside the calm
I sit inside my own quiet, letting the world soften for the first time today. I breathe like someone who finally remembers she deserves a moment with no noise, no weight, no demands.
Silence holds me like a small, warm room built only for me. I almost believe I'm safe here, that nothing can reach me.
And then, out of nowhere, a thought crashes through-
"Buy a pineapple."
It doesn't belong here, but neither do half the things my mind throws at me when I'm trying to heal. Still, I return to the quiet, even if a part of me is now wondering why it had to be a pineapple.
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Foot Bindings
I asked my grandmother how she knew she'd fallen in love. I am not sure I ever did love him, she said. This was before I met my husband. I was naive, a naked spring, a raw nerve of a thing. That cannot ever be me, I knew. Sadness swept in gently like a Moscow thaw. It is no simple thing, looking into a woman's vast soul and seeing its foot bindings. Now, in Italy divorced with my skin singed off, when I say I don't love him mean: I have succeeded at feeling nothing most days and it mostly works. Do you want the comfort of Nothing? Do you want Nothing, too? Be warned: you'll never be free, even when you are nothing. Here is what doesn't work: Accepting the stages of grief. Talking about it. Sitting with the feeling. Missing him—no, the person you were when you believed in death do us part. Writing poetry. That, too. When I say I don't love him I mean: I feel capsized in an endless, starved tide. What sometimes works: selective memory. You must forget ripe tomatoes and his beard and feeling perfectly sheltered in a big blue world. Forget coffee in bed, laughter watching TV, blowing out the candles on the birthday cake and the quiet all-encompassing knowledge that you are chosen. Remember only how love turned to a banal everyday survival act, a trapeze act unsure whether he will catch you, how the warmth stagnated and became sour, remember the foot bindings and remember the resentment boiling in your veins as you stick it out for the kids. Six-hour Netflix binges help, too. A man's fingers tracing your spine. Frozen pizza at 2 a.m. Random trips to the museum just to stand near things that last a while. The realization that crying won’t change anything. Seeing that life is just a dream, and refusing to participate in your own suffering. Bite your fist. Walk on eggshells around joy. When I say I don't love him, I mean he didn’t break my heart, he just stopped touching it and it forgot how to beat right.
By Ella Bogdanovaabout 14 hours ago in Poets
The Piggy Project
I’ve had so many names in this life I lose track of which ones were ever really mine and which ones I wore because someone needed me to. Some were handed to me before I had words to refuse them, before I knew what they meant, before I knew I could say no. Most weren’t meant to hurt. That doesn’t mean they didn’t leave marks. Marks that told me who I belong to, who I am by way of who claims me, recognizes me in the good and bad, who walks beside me.
By Fatal Serendipity7 days ago in Confessions
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