There are some girls
who can wear sadness like it’s
a gossamer negligee
falling over their shoulders;
sadness takes to them beautifully,
the way morning mists take to a sunrise,
and when these girls weep,
they weep softly,
prettily,
all dewdrops on cobwebs
and rose petals falling
and Sunday afternoon rains
in the summertime.
Sadness is such a lovely colour
on these girls.
But it has never looked quite right
on me:
my face is a renaissance painting when I cry,
eyes the colour of unopened love letters
and cheeks stained red
like they’ve had wine spilled onto them;
when I cry,
my body collapses in on itself,
lungs gasping and swelling
like pink butterfly’s wings spreading open,
pins-and-needles waltzing on my fingertips –
I do not cry often
but when I do,
I feel it trembling in my blood,
vibrating in my bones,
less like rains falling
or flower petals dropping
and more like an earthquake.
It isn’t pretty at all.
Maybe this is why
I’ve never been one to cry
in front of other people:
something about it has always felt
a little too much like a confession
and I would rather be hurt and
alone
and pretending not to be hurt
than reveal weakness to the people
who have been waiting
for me to fall
from this tightrope I’ve been dancing on.
My heart is a locket,
you see,
and the last time I unfastened
the joints of my ribs and
unclasped my chest,
I found that my heart was made of
wounds and wings and winters,
because when it comes to
fight or flight or freeze,
I have always been
exceptionally good at all three –
but never any good at
allowing someone to love me.
There is a reason my skin is so smooth:
I haven’t let anyone touch it yet,
let lips like bombs fall onto my cheeks
or tongues like pistols into my mouth,
because sometimes I worry
love is nothing more than
an unusually beautiful way to decay,
the sweetest of wars,
but a war nonetheless –
and the idea making this body
into a battleground
is terrifying enough to make me
heave with another earthquake
of a sorrow.
After all,
there is something unendurably sad
about a woman who is too afraid
to love
or even to wear her own sadness,
never quite able to drape it
over her body
or wear it like a halo
over her head
the way the other girls do.
