remembering

she cries the tears from my eyes,
she pulls the arrow from my heart and hers begins to bleed,
she steals my pain and leaves me numb,
with a gaping heart that does not bleed,
and a lasting pain that's lost its sting.

I'd like to explain those lines, please forgive the self-indulgence.

I was just looking at White Oleander, and something in the movie brought me back, it brought me back to the day I drew my line in the sand, told Natalie how I felt, what I wanted for us from here on, I sat ever so still, with the glass window to my heart open, unprotected.

As she stood there, calmly working things out in her head, I could barely breathe or hear anything above my own heart beating out of my chest. Then she spoke. She tried to let me down as delicately as possible, after which I couldn't feel, literally, it was as if it wasn't real, I felt I was on tv, this was a scene being played out for an invisible audience, the happy ending would happen any time now, any... time...

I think she could see the life sucked right out of my eyes, and she began to cry, I couldn't understand it, those were my tears, how could she steal them? How dare she take that away from me? I felt angry, but it paled against so much loss I thought I'd cave into myself.

I remember her shoes, I remember the walkway, I remember the grass on the small hill and the stairs running up it, I remember how beautiful everything looked, how cool the air was, how this would be a perfect memory. When I think of it now it all seems so foreign, as if it were really something I saw on tv, but a little part of me got so beaten and bloodied that day I thought it was dead, but that's the price you pay to love, those are the scars you pick up along the way. They become part of you, as any true scar should, you learn to work around them and soon enough you forget they're there, but every once in a while you'll glance down and see the faint remnant of a line, and you'll remember.

Justin | 3:34 AM