ICARUS

I am surviving on 2 hours of sleep a day. I try to sleep early only to be waken up by midnight. The best solution is to go back to sleep. But I am afraid. I am afraid you'll come haunt my dreams again. I am afraid that I might not survive the day if I start wanting to find you again. You belong in the past. The present you is not the you that I know of. And that is heartbreaking as well. I cannot go back to sleep because I know I cannot go back to the past.

Hey, do you know? I met a guy, his name rhymes with Heathen. He is cool, sweet and adorable but looks like the bad boy type. He calls me angel the way you did. Like I was something ethereal and innocent but we both know that is not the case. Let's go first about what I feel. When he called me angel for the first time. I was shocked, no one called me that but you. So in doing so he unlocks something vulnerable, my past, the fragility of being in love. And it warms my heart, expectedly. He has been calling me that ever since and everytime he did, my heart craves him more. I know this isn't love, not yet. But if this continues I am in danger. He reminds me so much of you and it scares me.

I am done being so optimistic so let me rewrite it. They say to never look back especially not in the past. But what if the past is the only place where my name was said without breaking What if it’s the last room where I knew how to sit still without apologizing for taking up space. I try not to turn around. I really do. But the present keeps slipping through my hands like water from the faucer I’m too tired to cup, and the future feels like a promise written by someone who doesn’t fucking know me. So I look back. Not carefully. Not wisely. Obviously not thinking. I look back the way you chase someone who didn’t say goodbye properly. There’s a version of me back there who hadn’t learned all the ways things could go wrong. She still believed effort meant something. She still thought love stayed if you were good enough, quiet enough, patient enough. I want to run to her. I want to grab her shoulders and say, don’t go forward. Just kill yourself now. It is much better for you, for all be...

They say to never look back especially not in the past, like memory is a cliff and regret is the fall, like the years behind us are all teeth and no tenderness, like nothing good ever lived there. But sometimes the past taps my shoulder softly, not to drag me under, just to ask if i remember how I once breathed without counting the cost of air. I don’t turn around to worship it. I turn around because my heart knows the way even when my feet are tired of pretending they were never bruised. There are days I look back and see a version of myself who didn’t know the words for survival yet but survived anyway. Who smiled with gaps in her armor. Who loved without a helmet. They say looking back will slow you down. Maybe. But so does grief. So does carrying everything unspoken like groceries with no handles. The past is not a monster. It’s a house with some broken windows and a few rooms still warm. There are places in it I don’t enter anymore, but there are corners where my name was spoken k...

I saw you in my dream again. Only I didnt know it was dream. You were there wearing our school uniform, sitting on a desk right next to me. I forgot the melody now but I'll never forget what I feel. I felt light. I was happy. I was singing a song I wish I could remember. You were there, I was with you and everything felt so vivid that when the dream broke it was so sharp. How could you keep doing this to me? Why do you keep appearing in my dream like some kind of salvation, only to throw me to the pits of hell after? Why Icarus? Why?

I still remember it, all the times you called me fragile. In my desperate attempt to prove you wrong, I destroyed myself. Until I couldn't even remember what I was before all the wreckage. Then I finally understand, calling me fragile was not an insult but rather a fact, And the time you didn't want me to do things that would hurt me, was not because you think I was weak But rather you didn't want me to hurt You tried to protect me but I took it as an offense. Would it have been different if I stayed as your fragile angel?