I sky you

I hold her diary open on my lap believing that if I can understand her, I can understand myself.

I think I want to know if I’m romanticizing my pain but I already know this is what I do. So really, I’m here looking for a justification: tell me something good can come of us; tell me I can spin this into something worthwhile, fantastic, or even interesting.

He roams. I roam. He shows up on my doorstep confused, broken. We stand in front of each other and cry. We put our hands under each other’s shirts and touch haptic heart beats, nipples, shoulder blades. We cling to each other.

The world around me sometimes feels as though it’s so fragile, so fractured. & still, I center this man above all else and above all others. I think of her; she’s having her leg amputated and she holds up her surgery to tell him to fuck off one last time, to tell him how earnestly and maddeningly she loves him one last time.

She takes him back. In her journal she writes, “you rain on me, I sky you.”

“Do you really want to be Frida? That woman endured hell her whole life.”

Love is always embarrassing and always involves suffering I say. My friends are bewildered. And tired.

I turn through her diary almost in prayer:

If this is who I am, show me how to make it art. Show me how to make it exquisite. Don’t let me be pathetic.