mermaidmel16

it’s friday and you think the week wasn’t so bad after all; you didn’t do half of what you should have done, but you trick yourself into believing that you’re enough. when did disaster become the new normal? it hurts to read nowadays. the worlds hidden in print taunt you seductively with their million flavours you can never actually taste, and it’s a game that ends in brokenness. you devour the books anyway. when does it stop? you wonder sometimes, in the breaths between meetings and chores and workouts and meals and so much all the time, when exactly you’re going to settle for what you have. it’s liberating, i thought, and yet you struggle. maybe life does end when you stop wishing for better. despite all the wishes you stay still, drowning in the status quo. the weight you need to lose hangs on softly like regret, the decisions you avoid making coat every single thought. your family looks up to you with a sureness and positivity that cracks you just a bit more

you realize you are lonely in the grocery store, when you look over to your side and ask if the bread is all gone at home, but you look over and there's only a roll display that heard you talking to yourself. someone sneaks english muffins into someone else's cart and they both laugh softly. you feel your heart crack open like the eggs in the refrigerated isle and focus on the smell of wheat and grain. it smells like home but a house is not a home without enough people to fill it up. you remember you are lonely in your car, when you change the stations to find a song you like and start singing along, and you almost expect someone to start singing along with you, but it's only the artist on the radio that sings about love and loss with you until it ends and the woman starts to talk about weather. there's no one else to reach over and change the station so you sigh and do it yourself again, pretending the knob on your hand is someone's knuckles brushing against yours. instead of singing

He’s four and he’s asking Gino, who does, but who answers in licks and wags and whose shims and shakes are themselves a verbal communication. They’re on the sofa and I don’t want to disturb them but I can’t stop watching or listening. Over and over he asks, and the ‘good boy’ plunks his hunky head onto his little lap- pawing his arm to try to tell him. You do love me, don’t you Gino? he says as he holds his jowls in his hands; and the honesty in both their eyes leads to a fluffy kiss on his forehead. And I, need to press both my hands, hard to my chest and wonder how these two creatures just saved my life. © Linda R. O’Connell

It was never my place to question and I refuse to want or need For I have already grown so accustomed to waking up to face the cold