I miss you.
Spill from me. Relinquish the blade that has torn me; drop the knife. You’ve sliced me with your metronome. And stood still in the satisfaction of the silence. Come quietly from the depths of my being until you scream with undying fervor to escape from the very lips that kissed you. This is my love song.

Warm milk drips softly while the sugars of fondly remembered bedtime stories bead upon my open ears. Gently you whisper. I sleep on the floor for fear that if I can’t see what is under my bed, the darkness will gnash its teeth at my ankles in the night. Hold me as I smile into the perfume of your body-the comfort of your skin. I want to hold the moments closer, I want to die and remember. I want to run and forget. Hide to spell out the rhythm of each heartbeat and savor this vanilla milk. Honey. Sweet.

What shall I call this memory? How should I retell the childhood wonderment? Lost in a sea of voices, I have found my own and in so doing…yours. And that scares me. I am not your astronaut, pulled tight by lifeline to your gravity. I am not a projection of some triumph over sin. I am not to be cast off OR to be held close. I am numb in the familiarity of your arms, limp to their perfection. I am everything I could fancy myself if only I had the words to express that or even the means to express it with. Please, please keep me warm again. Rest your palms over my open eyes until I can see once more the constellation of an imperfectly perfect youth glittered gold with adolescence. I wonder if I have wasted away in the sweat of unexplainable guilt.

You’ve foamed up into the crumbling basin that is the shell that I have become but haven’t refilled all pores you’ve created. Your ocean waves up into my own passions and in every thing I do. Bitter waters of a seaside morning fill the spaces between my toes. Lapping up over the shore is a peace- a calm that washes over inner calamity. Illusions of this momentary disruption fog up everything and though this is a glint of resolution I know my time has come.

I worry time has not been enough and that even in adulthood my ambitions have been shaded by the very essence of you. This burning, acrid taste in my jaws grinds to cement a hatred for my dependence…my sacrifice.

Billow up in plumes through my throat in relevance of a sweet drug that has plagued me. Make my heart murmur to the wind in a sound so earth shattering. Touch your red lipstick to tissue paper. Shadow yellow eyelids. Coffee kisses and into the mirror- one last pout. A pearly glow- amber in the sunlight. The crackle of linen, pressed. The smoke of a cancerous lullaby. The unmistakability of you in all things.

Four steep white walls of numerous beautiful moments confine me in the most torturous enclosure.
This song I sing to rid my body of this beautiful horror is unmistakably a love song that burns through me to get to you.

My name is Emelia Malcolm…this is my eighth year at the asylum and mother, I miss you.