How To Stay Wild
Notes From A Saturn Return
On the way home from work, my fingers itch.
I am trying not to call you. I know
that if I do, you’ll answer on the second ring,
eager and soft.
And darling, to be candid:
I want better for us both.
In the cool dusk of the ride back to my silent apartment,
my eyes prickle with unshed heat.
I tell my therapist that I will never again
take a lover who does not celebrate everything wild in me,
who fails to put their faith in my feral.
I tell my mother that I tried my best with you.
That you stopped growing with me, somewhere in the freeze
of our last desperate winter,
started to choke the wild
right out of me.
I don't mean violence here.
Rather,
I tell my best friend that it was as though
you’d wanted my edges blurred.
Like the spill of ink on my shoulders and the scent of summer lightning in my hair
was suddenly too potent – distasteful, even. (In contrast: the night you first laid your hands in awe upon me;
told me you’d been looking for me
since as long as you could remember.
Only magic until I'm acquired.)
On the way home from work, I give myself exactly one love song,
one that I know will make me think of you, and probably cry
more than a little.
The way I hold the warm leather of the steering wheel changes. The way
you used to hold me
is becoming a memory.
And the grief I feel climbs into my throat,
cloven-footed,
and I let it –
I invite it in: here,
take my last thin strand of breath,
render me sharp and blind.
I am no mother,
no wife; nothing soft or preordained.
The harsh beat of the reminder: you were never built
for cowards.
The apartment is still standing, somehow.
There’s no real emergency. The death of you and I
felt serrated, an attack,
but really,
it was liberation
however bloody,
however rank the cauterized flesh.
I’m an animal newly escaped from the gentle deadly press of apathy,
limping but alive.
I stand in my kitchen, the cat winding around my ankles,
listening to the tap run, steel-padded, into the teapot. And I think:
Thank you for this freshly broken heart.
Thank you for the empty bed,
for the microwaved dinner for one,
for the quiet breath of the last time you hung your head and told me
the truth,
for the years of magic rescued.
I will sleep tonight, a thick coat of elderberry tea on my tongue,
and wake to the mutter of the cat splayed content on your pillow;
maybe the only being here who’s known from the beginning
that you never really saw me.
About the Creator
Sophie Colette
She/her. Queer witchy tanguera writing about the loves of my life, old and new. Obsessed with functional analytic psychotherapy & art in service to revolution. Occasionally writing under the name Joanna Byrne.
Comments (2)
Again, this is great. The painful liberation from a relationship. Favourite lines: you’d wanted my edges blurred. Like the spill of ink on my shoulders and the scent of summer lightning in my hair That sense of knowing who you are but knowing that that is no longer enough to that person or that they want to crush you. Horrible. I like that it ended strongly too.
I love the parallel start to end my heart started cracking at' somewhere in the freeze/ of our last desperate winter,/ started to choke the wild/' and was whole by' played content on your pillow/' My only disagreement: 'i am no mother/ i am no wife' you may not have borne children through this world but you guide every one you see through it. You treat every relationship with the preciousness and significance of marriage. You are not made for cowards, correct. it takes the courage to watch the lion roar and roar back. in fact-actual lions never manage precise essential sometimes painful truth in the effective dose you mix on the spot. Id prefer to be eaten than taken apart, though it is consuming me now anyway. You see everyone as beautiful. you deserve to be seen, too.