Glass dances in the darkness of the night sky, reflecting our truth over dark waters and I’m not alone anymore, I have you.

We are all made of pieces. Pieces of broken ideas, of past encounters.

Pieces that are left behind by those who touched our very souls.

The ones that showed us how to make bread, how to dance in the rain, how to hide the bruises they gave us.

Some pieces are big, sharp, still cut deep, some are tiny glass already eroded by the waters of time, colourful sea glass beads remain.

A beautiful and unique mosaic that makes the light dance when held up to the stars.

I collected those whose pieces shone in the tone I find most beautiful.

I dealt until my hands were dark with the weight of deals unbroken, bindings of my own flesh. I craved and carved, I rose and fell and in the waves of the dark waters I found my people.

And when the marks appeared like cracked porcelain I smiled, for the first time I smiled true.

I miss the incense, old and strong rising on the halls of memory, dressed with pelts and velvet as we prepared for the day ahead.

But the smoke will rise again and when the starlight filters in the court of shards will bathe the halls in their light once more.

I’m at the cliff’s edge,

Wondering if I will fall or learn to fly; if I will crash and what will I break this time.

Is not the first time I jump, it will not be the last.

But right here, right now, this jump is different, every jump is.

The buts and ifs, the hesitation, the pacing around the edge for weeks, months, visiting it every day at least once until I inevitably take the plunge, cause I always do.

I’m a risk taker, I’ve always been.

I used to jump without a parachute, without a back up plan, then I learned or so you’ll think.

I made plans, back-ups, escape routes, then I forgot to use them and smashed myself into pieces each time.

So I stopped doing that too, now I jump bare again.

Whatever will be, will be.

It engulfs you like a blanket.

Cold but inviting, covering your tracks, keeping you from peeping eyes.

The Night.

That night that I can’t get nowhere else but there.

I keep thinking back to it.

How I miss it, coveted, dark until you can’t see past your arms, without a hint of light.

Only stars break it when they show, only the thunder from the storms, only the glowing waters of the lakes and shores.

Their waters dark, driving you in, cold as the ice,making you feel warmth in their glow once you settled in.

Many lifetimes have passed, and I remember it like it was yesterday, like I was just swimming in those waters, like I’m still riding through those forests.

I still taste the sweetness of the fruits of the trees, I still smell the iron on the blood, and I still taste the raw of the meat.

The hunt.

I still feel the thrill just talking about it, my soul waiting at the ready, claws and teeth bare, as if I’m sitting, hunched down until something takes off for me to follow.

I still remember the music, the clothes adorned to look like starry nights, drapped with gold and glass, and everything else in the halls.

Not that I took part in it.

I miss it dearly, and every so often, I turn the light out and close my eyes, and I can nearly feel the dark, nearly.

But it is not that tangible, not that thick, not that covering.

Non the less is still dark, and I welcome it, for I thrive in the dark.

You tricked me.

You looked like the sun was peaking from in between the clouds above the calm sea, you smell like cherry tarts, sweet, so sickening sweet.

You were my favourite smell, so sickening you were I got a headache.

You came when I was in a desert, like morning dew, just enough, I had to lick the floors to clench my thirst, enough to keep me waiting for more, and I drank like it was the best rye I’ve ever tasted.

You were kind, inviting, exciting, with those umber eyes and your ebony hair over your alabaster skin.

Your voice soft like rain, refreshing and so alluring.

I thought you angel when you were a hellborn by right, you still are.

By the time I realized the scent of brimstone and rot you hid under the sickeningly sweet cologne you wore, I was too deep in.

And so you broke me, you picked my brain apart and put it together again, whatever way you found amusing.

You scraped my insides, you broke my smiles, you destroyed my soul, and I’m still picking up the pieces and trying to stitch them together.

Your own methods should be applied to you, little by little until you break.

You are truly a master of pain and torture. You nurtured me and destroyed me in a terrifyingly well crafted cycle, a circus you were the master of.

You found my weaknesses and exploited them until you got bored, just to then create new ones out of thin air and use them against me.

I was your favourite toy, and I believed it.

They say everyone needs a second chance but I gave you enough of those.

And now, years after the puppet broke its own strings, it finds itself thinking of you, the puppeteer.

How would you like to be tied up to a wooden cross and made to dance around to the rhythm of my voice?

I used to be scared of the prospect of ever crossing paths with you again.

I hope you like the taste of your own poison.

Oh, the day we finally meet again.

I miss the late nights we used to have, the sounds around you.

When we would sit in silence by the wicked man and just listened to the gentle whispers of the wheat dancing in the wind, only for you to break it with the click of your zippo, turning your cigarrette on.

The sound of the crackles as you smoked it, giving me another so I could get close to you and turn it on with the ember of yours, still on your mouth, glowing like a lantern in the dark.

The late chats, the laughters in the middle of nowhere.

The time stood still, like the world was holding its breath at your arrival.

How you will always break the silence singing the same song, your favourite song.

It was by your side I first understood what looking at the sun felt like, so dangerous and dazzling to your eyes you shouldn’t do it, yet so mesmerising.

When you left, the world lost its shine.

No more late night, no more cigarettes by the wheat, no more sunflower field trips at 3am in the morning.

Not with you anyway.

The world was quiet, the wicked man never sang to me again.

It has been years.

And I still can’t listen to the song, every motorbike reminds me of you, I smoked every cigarrette hoping yours would pop by the side of my vision, get close to my ember to and turn it on so you could blow your smoke at my face, laughing.

It has been years, and the world doesn’t have that shine it used to do with you, but there are certain times, certain people that make the silence a bit less quiet.

I know you would love them as much as I do.

They are my ember in the dark.

I don’t have many memories of my childhood, I’ve always been curious but scared of remembering what my brain doesn’t want me to but the animals and insects, I always remember.
Like when I was only a small child I would catch ladybugs and fill a box with leaves and put them in.
Or the canary birds and bunnies who loved to make their homes on the side of the road beside the clay pigeon place in front of my childhood house.
The small black dog that bit me on the hand, I still have the tiny scar over 20 years later and I still remember the stinging sensation of my mom’s perfume on it cause we had no antiseptic left.
The tiny little yorkie my dad came home with and how much I cried when the real owner turned up after I had managed to convince my mom if they didn’t I could keep him.
The small pup my dad brought home and because they thought he wasn’t going to make it, brought the sister a day later only for him to make it.
The sister, Gin and the last pup she ever had, Ichi, hiding under my blankets when I was already a teenager because my parents don’t allow the dogs in the bedrooms but I always bring them in any way.
The black feral cat I begged and begged to keep and I did, she became my shadow and I waited for her 3 days when she left, only to be told the neighbours had hit her with their car by mistake. She was a mother of 5 kittens the year before that, one remained with my sister and she had her eyes.
Rats, I had for some years and every time one passed I got another one so the ones left would not get sad, I stopped having them cause it broke my heart how short their lifespan was.
The rabbit I loved with all my might but I had to give to another family because I decided to move out of the country for a better life and could not bring him with me.
And now is been 5 years and I have no pets, no companions, no purrs and growls of excitement when I get home, no tiny licks and kisses.
But there is a cat, she might not be mine but I know, just as I remember all of them, I’ll remember her when she is not here anymore.
She meows and meows when you come into work, she sits on the sofa and purrs when you touch her.
Her long fur swallows your hand as you scratch her and her disappointed look when you stop cause you have to go back to work breaks your heart.
I miss having a companion, I miss the joy of everything they do, their company and their worry when you’re not well, and the calm they bring you when you need them most.
Their love knows no boundaries and I long for it.
I don’t know who I am without them, all my memories are tied to them and without them, so I look for animals near me I can pet and love, for I’m not me otherwise.
My sister’s cat, my coworker’s dog, a patient’s pet that comes every week to see them.
And now as I write this I recall more and more, silk worms rescued from mulberry trees being taken down, a dog I took care of cause their owner could not for some time, the fosters we took in over summer, a dog I used to pass by every end of shift and will not let me walk until he got pets and praises for being a good boy, the many horses I rode and the ones I always said hello to on my walks around the Spanish countryside.
I miss that love.
I miss a piece of me.

Recently I was told, “I’m living, not just existing”.

The words came out of a much older and wiser person, a patient of mine reliving her former years while telling me a moment that would change her perspective on life forever and while she was doing it that same moment was being reenacted.

After I left her room I wondered and came to the reality that, for the later half of my life I have been just existing.

See I wasn’t supposed to be here, I had made plans to make sure of it but sometimes plans fall through and we never take a rain check on them.

In the last few years, there have been times in which I have felt alive but I can count them by the handful and if I’m here to stay I need to change that.

So I devised a new plan, a plan I have to take a rain check on if it falls through.

And so for the first time in forever, I made New Year’s resolutions and found a new spark, I’ve reconnected with my roots.

I’ve started living, not just existing, and it feels good to be alive.

He was a charmer when we met.

He knew how to say the right things, how go make me laugh and how to pull me in.

And so he did, and I fell for it.

And there I was, on my knees, ready to be his perfect toy.

He did as he pleased, and he had all he wanted so when I came along he took from me what he believed was his, it wasn’t.

What he did to me is ingrained deep on my body, never to leave me.

He learned how to make me cry, how to make me forgive him too.

His bed was warm, his touch was too, so I leaned in and he stripped my soul away.

He played with the colors of my skin like he was an artist and I learned to wear long sleeves, leave my hair down, take two smokes every time, sometimes three, just to get away from his grey room, from his tight grip.

I learned to say yes, to let him in, to not fight it so the aftermath would not be as bad.

I learned to hide my emotions, to not feel them, I learned to disconnect.

And still, his hands still plague my nightmares, his cigarettes still burn my skin, his words ring in my ears like he just spoke them.

I still wake up in tears, I hide away from someone else’s touch, I wait for the worst to happen, for his hands to be the ones waking me up.

I still hate loud noises, sudden moves, I still feel like I don’t deserve to be loved, cared for.

He broke me and sometimes I think is beyond repair.

He broke me and the pieces are still too sharp for anyone else to hold, I’m still scared it will cut them and they will leave me too.

You wake up one morning and the shadow is small, sitting at your shoulder, wispering terrible words in your ear but you ignore it.

For years you ignore it until it becomes the person who doesn’t know when to leave after the party is over, always beside you, bothering you, never helping, always in the middle, the shadow growing every time you look at it.

Until it’s words are too loud to not listen and you pick up the blade.

And over the years you have learned to ignored until is to loud to ignore, until is towering over you again, then you lean into it once more.

And you know what is wrong, you know how to make it go away but no one is willing to help, there is waiting and excuses but never real help.

And you look at yourself in the mirror every day while the shadow, now bigger than you, holds on your shoulders and whispers everything you should look like and you don’t, everything that is missing, everything that should not be there but is, points all your flaws and you’re fucking tired of it, so you pick up the blade and it smiles while you bleed.

You almost won me over, I was ready to be 6 feet down under, I didn’t know why I was wrong but I do now and you have a name.

Dysphoria is such a bitch.

I wake up every morning and the reflection laughs at me and the image of who I should be cries in my head and the shadow curls it’s tendrils around my neck until I suffocate.

And everything I do reminds me of how wrong I look, how wrong I feel.

And I pick up the blade.

Everyone has a scent, a natural odour that lingers when they don’t.

Since I was a child my dad has always smell like an old wooden and leather trunk, tucked away on someone’s attic, full of secrets to be discovered by a curious enough child.

My mother has always left on her walk the smell of a forest after the rain, when the sun shines and the soil starts to dry, of the wet moss beneath the bare feet.

My man smells like sunny days, like hot sand meeting the cold salty ocean, like the busy coasts brimming with life.

You, you smell like the seconds before a thunderstorm, the ozone creeping down to meet the earth at the side of the ocean at night, the silence only filled by the sounds of the storm, of the rain that follows when you dip yourself in the night ocean and the only thing you hear is the drops hitting the water surface, of the salt water being washed away by the skies as you walk out into the sand.

And when you go I bury myself in the pillows you slept on, by my side, and imagine us sitting on the sand, letting the rain wash away our sorrows with our laughter the only other thing breaking the silence of the night, my mind wandering of what it could be if we only had the means.

I think of you as I fall asleep hugging those pillows, dreaming of you being by my side again, under me, with those bewitching eyes and your scent filling up the air between us before I cut the distance and drown in that scent at your neck, all around me.