TW: Trauma, Marital difficulties

As I say this, I imagine two cysts in my ovaries leaping sideways—

a soft, curveball-style motion to remind me I'm still alive 

yawning in a grave

surrounded by angels hula-hooping on Copacabana,

typing my name on a Windows 98 computer

since God forgot to update the register while I was busy

hurling a racket with two shuttles instead of one,

missing the mark with both.

              And then he comes…

shows me his scars, doesn't ask for a bandage—

but I give him one anyway,

my fingers bleeding, no metaphors this time.

A few drops fall on my skin

picked and disappear before

I hold his hand.

"We'll go far," I tell myself more than him.

But midway, I lose

the way

& try to find another shuttle, 

another racket –

Not that it was shiny or that I needed it

but to breathe—the ground had been too suffocating

& i instantly became an infidel…

I worked to earn bread for home;

he played games—not because he’s insensitive 

but ‘cause he, too, was drowning

like myself…or

Less 

perhaps….

but I failed

to peddle the tide.

Tried to start anew,

held his hand back, his therapist-delusional:

wife-gone-came-back beads of a necklace too broken to be held together,

for a promise: 

we, both orphans, would

will 

stay together—

without home, without a to-do list, 

swallowing black syrups of depression:

two children trying not to make scrunched-up faces when they taste bitter medicine.

We even chalked our names on saintly barks of trees as Buddhas of a parallel universe

on blackboards with a different chalk each time for symbolism:

wrote "I'm here for you," with white 

"Let's build this together," with green

"Please seek therapy," with yellow

"We can do it together,” with red

but no color or shape helped:

pearls refused to bind, 

bushes gave away our location

sun eclipsed our shadow

& blood froze in time where we first met.

But we chose to live together—

he, for lack of a home,

and I, in search of one.

                                        It’s a relationship

still…

until the word forgets to exist.