Let's play a game.

It's called fire truck, he told me.

---------------------------------

You start. Three pair.

My turn, three pair.

Five pair. My turn, five pair. 

Yours, seven pair. I throw in two eights.

Then,

Double aces. 

---------------------------------

Red light. Red light!

Oh wait, fire trucks don't stop for red lights. Oops. 

---------------------------------

Pass. 

No? Okay, four pair. My turn, four pair.

---------------------------------

Let's play a game. 

It's called, "Guess where next?"

---------------------------------

Two kings.

Wait. Stop, it's not like that. 

In this game, we keep going. Keep taking back the used cards and reshuffling them and drawing a card with each pass. 

But how about...

Not going? Here's a six. 

---------------------------------

Wrong again baby, now you're just going to have to wait longer.

---------------------------------

Pass.

---------------------------------

Ask.

---------------------------------

Here's a Six house.

---------------------------------

I can't hear you. 

---------------------------------

Um.

Pass,

---------------------------------

Okay, next guess. 

---------------------------------

 I'm waiting to play a five-card.

---------------------------------

Wrong again.

---------------------------------

"Then I'll play you pairs."

All the left sides of right.

She'llloveyouwhenyou'rebeautiful.
Whenyou'rebeautifulbeautifulbeautiful, onlywhenyou'rebeautiful.

There's a voice in my head on repeat.
Cold and insistent, promising. It fades in and out like background music that doesn't quite stop.


And so I swing-
Dangerously, painfully, destructively back and forth between whisperings that creep up my spine in such tragically, suffocatingly comforting ways and moments that I feel like I actually have you. All of you.
"We're okay," you say, forehead to mine, nose to nose.

I don't know where I am, sometimes. And I want so much to believe you but there are moments I catch myself standing in the middle of the room and feeling like I'm fading. It's like I'm bleeding out at the edges and fuzzing out into the space around me.

I want so much to believe you.
For my skin to be quiet and not wish for you. To not think up reasons in my head that couldn't be accurate.
It's not like that with us; we're not made up of games and pretty words.


So tell me how I can stop being all wrong?



Whenyou'rebeautifulbeautifulbeautiful.
Oh,onlywhenyou'rebeautiful.

She'd always run before she knew she was running.

I've never thought myself to be flighty..
But I'm thinking about time differences
Thinking about long distances
And how tempting it is to disappear
Go off wandering streets littered with memories I know nothing of
Leave behind all the little bits of broken that keep getting caught in my hair
So that I could maybe convince myself that I can do something right, that I am doing something right.

I'm thinking about time differences
And long distances
But I never thought myself to be flighty..

Sent from my iPhone

Once the foundation's cracked

Give me a day, Jaime
Bring back the lies
Hang them back on the wall
Maybe I'll see
How you could be
So certain that we
Had no chance
At all.

Down the road

It's funny how you think you can outrun a certain kind of hurt or pain.
You can't.

When it all comes down to it and in the right now, I'm happy. I'm happy with you. And you mean the world to me.

It's just that I've always been a dreamer. And I think up things so I can move towards it. And when it changes, I think up different things.
I've also always been a giver. Wanting so much to give people exactly what they want or need.

There were always things, however, that I held tight to. Dreams that were just my own, and no one else's. Pictures nobody could touch with a ten foot pole because they were mine and mine alone. To go back to, to tweak, to adjust, to add layers and layers and layers and smile at.
Then you came along.


You're enough for me.
And you're worth it. All those tweaks, all those adjustments to plans, all those choices. All those opinions i value and take into consideration. All the wants and needs I'd never want to overlook...
You're worth it.
Believe me, you're always going to be worth it.



But i suppose, simply put,
I wish I was worth it in those ways too.

A letter to old dreams, hopes and things I

Dear you,
I will always be grateful for the time that you were. You've made me the person I am now and even though old scars sometimes sting, Mostly, I am happy.

And here's a spot of truth-
That I am truly happy for the paths that have been taken, that are being taken, even though they're going in an opposite direction from mine.

You are dreams and wishes and hopes that I am letting go of, that I am not reaching for or heading towards. Not because you were ever useless or because I couldn't make it, but because I found myself propelled towards very different wants and needs and goals.
You belong down a very different rabbit hole, and I hope the Charis in that one will find herself again, will always remember the strength she has, and more importantly, look back and know that it was all worth it. I hope she is happy, or that she learns to be, the way I am learning to again.

We couldn't have reached each other, even if we tried. And sometimes, in all my childish quests to have something to prove, I ache with the wanting us to have been the marriage that fell into place. But we weren't. We're not and we wouldn't have been.
Instead, I have different things waiting for me that I am now making my way towards. They're not necessarily better than you, but I figure they're most certainly better for me.

I'm sorry.
That it didn't work.
But I'm not sorry for where I am now; i couldn't be. There is a way that my dreams and plans now, in all their uncertainty, fit themselves around me.

And sometimes, I will ache for the Could Have Been that you are, but I know that right here is exactly where I am supposed to be.

Love,
Charis


Sent from my iPhone

And that star-flung sky hanging heavy above, was the only witness

I am falling away, willing someone to find me.
But I don't know why I'm doing that when I don't even want to stay long enough to see what you think you might put your finger on.

I'm somewhere between clawing at the dirt beneath my skin and disappearing into whisperings of a voice I haven't yet heard. Except I can't move very far.
So then I guess, when you realize there's nowhere to run, the next best thing would be to
Close your eyes



Sent from my iPhone

I was fading and chipped like rust

There are questions I have. 

Some for specific people and others, for no one in particular. 

There are a lot of whys, a lot of then-what-ifs.

 I've been reading a lot. And I've been getting caught in the torrent of memories. I haven't been writing. I don't know how. Or I'm a little bit afraid. I don't know. 

Then I pull a book off the shelf- one I've written in years before and I understand myself a little better. I understand why certain things make me so sad sometimes now, but render me incapable of responding. And so I press down on a familiar ache and excuse myself to the toilet instead. 

As it's been happening, I haven't understood. I haven't been able to say why I back away, or back down or shirk when your voice hardens or there's a sharpness to your tone. 

I freeze up. And against my will (much to my frustration), my eyes fill and all I need is to get out of there for a second or two. 

But then i tell you nothing's wrong.

Why do I do that? Maybe because when I remember having a voice, I was always wrong. I was always, always wrong. 

I've been a little bit sad of late. In ways that just makes me want to sit by myself in little corners, or parks. Sip on wine. 

I'd say write. I always do, and a part of me wants to but, like I said, I've been a little bit afraid. 

But oh, maybe hearts always break themselves again along the lines of an old scar. 

___________________________________________

And that star-flung sky hanging heavy above

Was the only witness as I whispered words you would not trust

What I said was,

Say to me, all the things that you think I could never handle

I could be the anthem you sing to yourself, 

When you're slipping away into sleep when the lights are so low
it goes
oh