by Bella Ziade
I am going to keep the dead flowers in my room until I feel better That way I won't see my bed as a graveyard but rather as something that gives and lets go Blooms and buries And though the smell of decay is not sweet Nor is it sour Perhaps it will serve as a reminder that I will always be followed by this stench that is my sadness And that there must be another place to mourn that isn't this body
I am not a garden I am just a girl I cannot water the trees if I am thirsty too
I often think back to when I began to thaw in the summer When the light forced itself onto my face And the grass in my backyard reached my knees I would sit in it for hours writing the same poem over and over A manifestation I hoped to plant within me Believing that I could write you out of existence with sentences that grew to overcome me And I would try to pick out the weeds next to my feet But end up with handfuls of dandelions and other beautiful things
So when I realised I was hurting, and that there was nothing I could do to make it go away, I forced myself to stare at the naked body in my mirror All skin without soul All hands that don’t want to let go
I felt you between my wrinkles And in the far corners of my eye
I depersonalised into an existence where I forgave you
Who am I if I don’t love you?
My body is growing more secular every day And I can see that in my reflection So, I run myself a bath And watch my fingers prune until it I believe that they are just skin and not anything more than that
And I hear silly things in my meditations Affirmations like the way I love myself is the way I let others love me And only I can allow myself to let go But still, I grip the rough edges of the amethyst in my left palm
My receiving hand has let go more than it has held
Until I feel my muscles swell around the crooked rock Now my heartbeat is felt in each breath This is now the only way I know it’s still there This is the only way I know I am feeling
I have no more hiding spots No more parks or rosemary bushes to sit in And so I go to empty car parks with dirt in my hands Trying to see myself as the garden they say I am
Instead I am settling into this self that others’ use as a temporary home Where the guests lick their plates clean and always ask for more And I know that goodbyes are hard So, I don’t ask them for one when they leave Instead, I frame photos of them on the walls I keep having to build Now my mind is a long hallway of faces I will never forget
I’m a haunted house with the windows open And the lights always on I’m a house fire waiting to burn A warmth is inside me that cannot be touched
I have tried to decorate the absence I live with Fairy lights and candles and art I have tried to find beauty in grief But it sits on the windowsill next to my dying flowers
I’m still learning how to not love you
When my hair gets oily and I leave it for a few days in a bun All grease and pillow sheets Kept secrets and chipped nail polish This is when I think of you the most And with the mirrors steamed in my bathroom I fingerpaint a smile on my face And I watch myself bleach every strand on my hair that you may have touched
Unloving you is messy
Tonight, I am the dirty laundry sitting in the corner of my room But I’m telling myself it’s okay I don’t need to be clean right now I have nowhere to go I have no one to see I can’t leave without a mask on anyways I can paint my skin I can hide this
I am so used to trying on new faces to keep up with the people I’m becoming
I know I’m not a garden because my soil is poisoned Nothing grows where I live I have never loved without getting hurt Even if I burn my skin in the sun just so that the light feeds you I will still have to carve and cut your roots out of me when you leave And stick band aids on the wounds that bleed
I am in an introverted war And I think I might lose
But I know that I will remake myself tomorrow morning
I am planting seeds in the part of me that I have never met before
I will fold myself into origami and avoid the rain Just to hide the self that is too scared to face you