Words carry weight. Some are light and airy while others are heavy and dense. Easily formed with a flick of a tongue and a thought. They are powerful tools to lift up or to tear down. I love words, they help give meaning and define the length of a presence or moment that is otherwise meaningless until it has purpose.
I am quite familiar with words that weight differently and mold the fabric of realities. I have formulated my own versions of phrases that fit me, that help to define who I am and create a singular culture. I also know that in those words, there can be drawbacks that can stunt even the mightiest of men.
In the time that I have spent in this mausoleum of fractured parts, hidden in my books and labeled tinctures within a quiet apothecary, I think of the words that were spoken to me. Words that once carried weight, only to be filed away in old tombs and books. The “I Love You’s” the pet names and the sweet nothings that were used to fill up space. Each vowel and consonant that rolled off silver tongues and word smiths.
Phrases that hindered me motionless in my own skin, parts of me that I gave up to relish in the lexicon of repeated spells and incantations of admiration. A pity I allowed myself to hear such silly things and take them for truth when in reality, a stranger could say the same things and with more meaning behind it.
I stand in the dark, not alone or in despair, but understanding that these off-white bones under fine silk clothes is a simple reflection of a body that has been stripped of flesh based on the words of a man.
A person would look at me and think “why did he do it to himself?” I did it when I felt it was my role to play. I did it to fit in with a title of being loved rather than showing love. Not to another that would try to form me too their ideals, but to myself and the man I see in the mirror.
I surround myself with dead roses, fragile bits of life that was once beautiful, now only shells of what they were. The boneyard beyond my tomb glows with the wisps of ghost that were once former lovers who haunt me, moaning their words in unison to lure me back into the void.
I watch from a distance as others, new bodies form around me. They say sweet things and try to make me believe, and part of me wants to allow them in, but the wards around me prevent them from getting to close. I want to to invite them into my space, but I fear that I don’t have enough coffins to share with men who speak with lukewarm intentions.
If melancholy lives in my eyes, I have hidden it even from myself in the most undignified way. I long to feel the warmth of a hand intertwined in mine. For lips to be to pressed against me. A place I can call home. I watch from a distance and witness the lingering spectral lights pass by.
I have come to realize that I am DELICATE, soft on the inside with a jagged edge on the out. So much of me wishes to just soften this outer shell, to allow myself the chance to love again. I think about that wish and contemplate what I would want, only to stop and realize that I have to continue to love myself first.
The right one will find my tomb. They will not save me like I wanted for in the past, but see my ghouls, ghosts, and skeletons as decorations of a man who fought in a war, who raised his sword and even though battered and bruised, he will see my scars as beauty and in it…nurture them as I him. The dead roses that lie around me will spring to life and in that life…happiness.
But first…I stare at man in the mirror. I see his pain, shame, guilt, stupidity, loneliness and smile. He does not wear those scars in defeat but in honor of who he is and will be…
He will soon be free.
