The In-Between

I’m enclosed in so much love.

Every morning, the sun beams upon my sheets enveloping me in the comfort of waking.

But its cushioned embrace is suffocating.

My mind shrivels up in itself under the weight of a million words left unsaid,

a hurricane of thought putting the balance of happiness and its opposite in ruin.

I mourn the version of myself that booed away the sun

bought smoothies for her brothers and balanced all three cups the way back home

rode roller coasters and screamed and cared less about the way the world thought about her voice

and I miss shutting down and praying for a day just as good as it was tomorrow.

I yearn to recall when tomorrow had stopped coming.

My brothers got in a fight that never simmered down the way it did before.

My parents began to refuse facing the same direction of the same view.

But I never let go of our happy moments together

and watching them turn into memories is the worst feeling in the world.

And so I tell myself, missing comes like love came, then cry after who we once were.

Because those people I remember

have never really existed at all.

I have come to be the in-between of the past and what lays ahead.

The present is not a gift. The minutes pass, and as evidence of time, so do our stories. What is yet to happen will be forgotten in years time. And forgetting is my biggest fear.

Piercing through the interstitium of the past, present, and future —

no matter how sharp the knife you carry —

is never ever forever possible.

I think I’m losing my strength to the truth of never being strong enough to let go of the past.

To forget.

Perhaps I wish to dream in those memories forevermore.

Perhaps the past was but a dream to begin with.