By Riley Lynne
1. Today, you don’t recognize me. I am waking you up at 8am after a night of drinking, my brain is doing cartwheels down the sidewalk disregarding the threat of scraped knees. Today I am doing ten loads of laundry one after the other and vacuuming the house without stopping to take a breath, because crawling out of my skin is an understatement- too far to claw myself back in with enough time to tell you that you look lovely. Remember to bandage my bloody elbows on the days I am too high to reap the repercussions.
2. Today I am loving you out loud from the tops of buildings, I have kissed you one hundred times in the past hour and told you I love you ten times in a minute, written twenty poems in my head about the rhythm of the heartbeats in our hands when they’re touching. Euphoric, I am climbing skyscrapers for you today, overwhelmingly manic, drowning every inch of your tired body. Remember that on these days I love you the same as the days I forget to be proud of you.
3. Today, I keep asking you how you feel about me, because for all I know in the seconds since my last string of questions you’ve changed your mind. I mean, who could do this forever, really. There is only so much room in someone’s heart to love a multitude of personalities, only so much time in someone’s day to check in and make sure I’m okay, only so much patience. I can’t stop apologizing. Remember that I mean it.
3. Today I am angry with you for no reason at all. Remember that it isn’t your fault.
4. Today, my texts are short and the silence is long. I won’t kiss you for more than a second when I see you, and I’ll spend most of my day sleeping in your bed. When you ask me what’s wrong, your question becomes rhetorical. Today I am backwards. When your arms find their way around my waist I will pull each finger off of me one by one because today, being touched feels like prison, the air around me is tight enough. And I’ll cry for hours if you’ll let me. Remember sometimes, you need to let me.
5. Today, you are sweeping me up off of the floor, kissing the scars on my thighs and asking me how I am- not knowing if it will take me a second or an hour to explain. Today you are loving me unconditionally. Tomorrow, you will do the same. Remember that I am the lucky one.
Riley Lynne is a twenty six year old living on Long Island in New York and dreaming of traveling the world. She writes free verse poetry and prose, and believes that healing is an art that deserves to be shared.
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