The Knife at My Throat

You’re seared into my memory like a brand. I’m hidden in yours like an attic you keep locked, hoping the door will rust and seize shut. You never thanked me for holding still while you cut me out of your life as if performing an exorcism. I didn’t even scream (at least not out-loud).

I knew we were losing our balance. I knew our foundations were losing their strength. I didn’t realise we were standing on a railing of a ten storey balcony until you pushed me over the edge.

The saddest part is, I thought you’d change your mind and save me before I hit the ground. Now I am all broken bones, twisted limbs, a paralytic mind and blood. So much blood.

And even now, I wait for you to come and pick my mangled mess up off the pavement like you did so many times before (like I did for you). The devil on my shoulder tells me I could forget how you pushed me if you helped me fly again. The opposing angel sings me songs of the closure I crave. You offer neither - no explanation and certainly no clouds tickling my fingertips.

Your friendship was the ocean’s waves, moulded from the moon itself, curling like a smile. Your betrayal is a tidal wave…

Ruthless.

All encompassing.

Unavoidable.

...

I run.

And run.

And run, breathlessly searching for higher ground. But you were always my salvation; the only helicopter to ever offer a rope ladder; the only one who made me want to brave the fear of falling.

I’m trying so desperately to not let your absence be the knife at my throat, but does it really matter what I name it, when it is still drawing a line of red on my skin?

I study your cloud written claim of happiness, writing up equations I call poems, struggling to figure out if it is real like the sky or forged like the Astroturf beneath your feet. I hope you really are dancing under sunrises of bliss and contentment, I only wish it didn’t have to come at the expense of my own lavender and peach horizon.

I write out my heartache as fervently as I wish you’d constructed your goodbyes.

If you never read my words, then I hope you never realise how jealous I am of your ability to let us go so easily.

But on the off chance that you do, I want you to know, I’m sorry my presence could not save you in the way my absence seemed to.