Who Am I?

The mascara stains on her cheeks say more about her than words ever could.

The purple-black smudges sit on her face like streaks of orange sit on the horizon as the sun sets.

Tears, rivers in their own right, make their way down these paved streets.

How can one person be so dependent on another?

It is almost sick to have all your happiness pinned on one single individual.

A horrible practice that human beings inflict upon themselves.

A type of pain that might leave temporary rivers of black on her cheeks but deep marks of red on her heart.

Just like the marks her nails made on his chest and his back when he pulled her so close they became one.

When they were one, breathing in sync, forever coexisting, she knew what he was.

She knew who he was.

But when he was gone and she laid in the wide expanse of sheets, tossed about like silky waves on a stark white sea, she was less sure.

She still knew who he was.

It was now herself that she didn’t know.

Was she the stains on her cheeks, or perhaps the marks on her heart?

She wanted to think that she was the scratches on his back, the smile that lit up his eyes, the deep belly laugh that filled the air with life, the curls in his hair which he forever hated, and most of all the eyes that reflected her soul back to her.

Those eyes that shined and glazed over and loved and hated and smiled and cried. Those eyes the color of a storm on the sea.

But when they weren’t there to reflect back her soul how did she know she even had one?

Was she sure she even existed at all?