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HER

I wake in the morning

To tangled sheets and sunlight,

Chasing the feeling of her skin

Trying to drench myself in her perfume

The smell of it fading from the pillow

Where the night before she had laid herself

Bare

Long waves framing her beautiful face

And I am dizzy from remembrance

Of her in naked glory.

My knees bruised from hitting the ground

To worship at her feet

Her breasts and supple skin

Alabaster

flushed with rosy passion,

Purple and red love marks I wish for all to see

In undeniable proof that I beheld her once

But like the feeling of a fading dream

She eludes me while all the while

Teasing my imagination with delicious agony.

Leaves

I fell for you like leaves in autumn,

Knowing it is time to let go of the tree and float on the breeze.

I fell like the colors of fire,

Allowing myself to be carried on the wind of your sigh

The gentle flutter of your eyelashes a butterfly effect

Shaking my sturdy roots until I am quaking on my branches.

The Girl of My Memories

I remember the first time I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize the person staring back at me. Gaunt and ghostly, the girl I saw was as pale as she was thin, and when I say thin, thin is an understatement. She was flat, like a paper doll, as though there was nothing inside holding her together. Blood had been replaced by water, organs had been removed leaving cavities of empty space. The empty space made it easier to confine the rest of her insides, make them tighter, push them together until they were indistinguishable from each other and you couldn’t see where one piece of meat ended and another began. Bones became wires, pulling tired limbs out of bed every morning, moving stiffly about like a puppeteer that had become its own creation. The bags below her eyes hung for miles down her frail face, her bones protruded from her sallow frame like death had already touched her, because I suppose in a way it had.

The girl in the glass struck me, for I could see the similarities. She was me, I knew it, but unlike me she wore her hollow on the outside for the world to see. Anyone who cared to look at her would know from a glance just how empty she really was, how broken and beaten and bare she had allowed herself to become but they could stare at me for hours and think I was whole. That I was happy, that I was alive when inside there was nothing but black disease and bitter loneliness, because I remembered who that girl in the mirror used to be. I recalled her bright smiling face and that ridiculous laugh, now turned to  silence and the face of repeated rejection. What used to be a plump, healthy figure, round curves of flesh over all of her surfaces, no part of her skeleton on display, had hardened to jagged stone edges, brittle breaking bones, dying from the lack of love she had given herself.

That girl was me. The sound of my heart tearing into final shreds drowned out the sobs wracked from my dry throat when I saw what had become of that girl. I saw how far she had fallen and I knew the girl I held in my mind was nothing but a memory, a ghost to haunt the one who stood before me, and as I looked down at myself, at paper legs and protruding elbows, I realized I had done this to her… to myself.

That night I cradled the girl of my memories, tried to hold her in my arms like smoke on cool water, barely touching but it was enough. We sat until dawn, unmoving, and as the sun rose, the fog that had made its home inside my head like an uninvited guest began to dissipate. The cobwebs clinging to every dark corner inside of me were dusted away, and the windows I had kept locked were thrown open, letting the warm morning sun shine into the fractures in my soul, illuminating me from the depths of the blackness I had allowed myself to become accustomed to.

So forgive yourself for every time you forgot your worth. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and if nothing else, understand this: love yourself. You are you for a reason.

Chromesthesia

Music blared through the small speakers on the long, oak desk as meat sizzled away on the stove. The beef ‘popped’ every now and then, splattering near objects with scalding grease. The house was empty, save for myself and our two dogs, so there was no need for me to worry about what came through the speakers; no lyrics for my mother to become upset over, no phrases whose meanings I’d have to explain. It was one of those moments I felt okay, dancing around the kitchen to Guns ‘n’ Roses as I prepared supper for when the house became more populated later in the evening. The day had been rather long and wearisome but when the light, buttery yellow of “Sweet Child O Mine” surrounded me I felt at peace. The color was barely there, like a mist in my mind’s eye, but its presence calmed me and made me think of daffodils and autumn afternoons. My anxieties and depression seemed to disappear on the warm breeze that blew bright leaves around my dancing feet and I forgot all else except the pleasant sensation of contentment which enveloped me like warm rays of sunlight as the taste of caramel melted on my tongue.

When the song ends, the scene dissipates with it and in the few seconds before the next song begins, I turn off the stove. The color blue explodes in my vision with the opening to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. It’s bright, like a cloudless sky above a glassy lake in the evening, getting darker as the sun goes down and the song continues until it crescendos in the blackest blue and the rising of the moon. The nipping night air tingles against my goose-pimpled arms and sends a chill down my spine as the song shifts. Happiness rises in my chest and my face breaks into a smile, something I haven’t truly done for some time. As my lips part and my laugh bubbles from my throat, it feels… right. Bon Jovi’s sap green spills into me like oil and I see a dusty old Chevrolet and the smell of cigarettes sits in my nose. There are long walks and ripped grey jeans, empty guitar cases and the feeling of sitting alone on a bench in the park. It is summer and heat and the sweet relief of living. No longer am I dancing, but swaying my hips gracefully to the music as I chop vegetables and place them in separate bowls on the counter in front of me.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” floats in, the words coming to me like nostalgia and the red pepper my knife slices through reflects the color of Freddie Mercury’s voice, bright and commanding attention. A fire flickers in my imagined fireplace and a warm woolen blanket wraps around my shoulders as the taste of black coffee permeates my mouth. I hear friends laughing and feel dirt beneath my bare feet and the smell of my mother’s home-baked cookies fills the air. The color floats and falls around me, darkening and then shining in my vision before it fades to black and is gone.

No more sound comes from the speaker, no more colors in my mind. The colors return to grey as quickly and as easily as they had come, leaving me feeling hollow with loneliness for them. My anxiety comes rushing back in, depression, like a cloud of disease settles itself over me once again. I finish my preparations and step back from the counter. As I breathe in deeply, my eyes falling shut, I can still sense the colors’ lingering presence. I see them like particles in the atmosphere, I feel them under my skin, in my veins. Even though they are not visible to anyone I know but me, they are real. There are others like me who “see” music in colors, who sense them like eyes seeing after they go blind. Scientists call it chromesthesia, a form of sound-to-color synesthesia. To us privileged few, music is like individuals; no songs are the same. They come in different hues and tones, like a giant color wheel inside of me. Each one invokes different sensations, shows a different scene, displays a different part of me. That, my friend, is the power they hold. The power of the colors of music.