The Heaviest of Freedoms

I. Walkabout

I removed the gold chain from around my neck. The one that holds the inscribed half-heart and the ring.

I seem to have swallowed all the bitter words I never got a chance to throw at you.

I have them sitting in my stomach, a dense mass of letters flavored with an angry tone.

I hear every sound from the distance of the top of a high dive. But I've already plunged, so it must be the water that clogs my ears.

I smile and make dinner, I laugh and play the part.

I am either the world's best actress, the world's worst liar, or the world's biggest fool.

Then again, maybe it's the way I'm screaming inside, so loudly, that makes everything echo from far away.

I know I am crazy.

I may call you again.

I may love you again.

It was your turn to chase me. (The way it always will be.) Maybe I finally tired you out. Maybe I finally drove you away.

And to think, I was holding back.

I don't feel any of that lightness I thought I would feel, bubbling up inside me, lifting my burden.

I was probably wrong.

I was definitely cruel.

I am too strong for my own good.

I think you got off easy. I think you're the lucky one. I think I let fear call the shots. (I thought too much.)

I twisted the passages from my heart to my mind one too many times. They are straws leaking precious emotion.

I think this may be as happy as I get.

I am weighed down by this heaviest of freedoms.

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II. Boomerang

You made sure your mother called to tell me about the emergency.

The medium is in the hospital. The one who talks to ghosts, who said I was beautiful outside and in.

(You see why I was skeptical?)

I did the unthinkable and ran away. But you didn't even know I had left you.

I am torn between frustration and relief.

It's the little things that always pull you back, the gossamer-thin spider webs that we have erected between us.

I hate the distance.

I hate the unfairness inherent in the distribution of resources.

More than anything, I hate my fickle, cold-blooded heart.

The same one that catches in my throat when I reach for my necklace and find only unbroken skin.

Thin strands of gold lie in a resentful pile on my dresser. We never did write our names on the back of that heart.

I called you. Dodged your lazy bullet questions.

I gave you an in.

I don't know if I'm hoping you'll take it.

I could never sell my soul for a kiss, but I'd buy yours.

Keep it in a vial around my neck.

Wear it as a shawl, a blanket, to keep me from freezing. (How do you stay so warm?)

Run it up a flagpole, sew it into my pocket, prick it, cure it, love it, destroy it.

Melt it and mold it into a key for these fetters.

Open me up again.
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~~~~~AEW~~~~~

Temporary Soundtrack: It Doesn't Matter by Allison Krauss.
Quote Trapped in My Head: " The world is too much with us; late and soon..." from the poem by William Wordsworth.