doing feels like dying.
No final farewells, no kisses on the cheek. Just the abrupt absence of my shadow as I stare at the back of her head, her formless body bobbing away in the dark. The two of us, old friends who know better than to say goodbye.
Thinking about doing feels like a shelter. It’s safe, fertile, and oddly intimate. It’s where my shadow and I sit and chat. Pour us both up a cup and feel the warmth of the fire. Watch the clouds through the window, everything gray. She talks about this and that. She always knows what to say, she embraces me in a hug for far too long to be polite.
When she’s here, my words — poems, stories, sketches, paintings made with my hands — are slipped beneath trap doors in the floorboards. She doesn’t care to see them.
She never knows when to end the conversation and leave. She overstays her welcome.
On the other hand, doing feels like dying. It’s a suffocation of the self. A mutilation of perfect. Like slowly gasping for each next breath.
Sitting at my desk, hands posed at the keyboard. My eyes search through the wall for answers. Putting words to the page feels like agony in my chest. My breathing shortens, quickening with every step forward.
Doing is starting before I feel ready. It’s writing one careful word after the last. It’s clicking publish.
Reaching in and finding my heart.
Finding it soft and pink.
