Tell them I love them

I don't really think about how I am.

I feel as if when I do, me myself and I build a wall of secrets, sharing our deepest paradox exclamations with one another.  

This includes me locking my door,

Includes me figuring out new hiding places,

Includes me digging up old souvenirs of suffering,

Includes me ripping through scarred over skin,

Includes me showering my body with tears and pieces of tissue paper.

Fall so deep into myself I invert my entire body, create a mold to which I step inside of when I need to be okay.

Mom will say, “Julia if you do not save yourself soon, you are going to fade away.”

But mom I do not want to be saved.

I do not want to be thrown the lifesaver, and pulled to shore.

I do not want to be the charity case.

I do not want to be the pile of donations in the brown box.

Please let me fade, let the colors in my eyes, and hair, and face become a series of vanishing objects.

Let them hold their breath until they are blue, until they are bursting at the seams with jailed air.

Until they rupture, letting go of all being held captive.

I like that feeling.

The feeling of drowning, and watching everyone around me able to breathe underwater.

Don't ask me why, don't ask me why mom.

Just enjoy the enveloped warmth turn to ice, and crackle at the surface when in contact with heat, or love.

Crystalize my heart and dip it into the suns eyelashes.

Have her bat the breeze away, and have my skin melt into drinking water for the needy.

Tell them I love them.