This one time when I had road rage

Anchored hands jerked the wheel

perfectly ten and two.

tossed liked the hull and bow of a passenger liner 

bowing to Poseidon

back and forth

back and forth

over the violent deep.

The sound of my own voice.
Did I startle at this curdled cry, wet

as a baby.

Unspoken

It was quiet. No platitudes. No casseroles. No broken heart emoji laden tributes.

unspoken. 

I wonder who bought the dress that they put back on the shelf. On my flesh and bones it sat, briefly, tucked into my waist with a pair of bull nose clips. But it was magnificent, and I deserved to see me in it. I won't have the joy of kissing in it next month, but I like to imagine the day in store for it after being hemmed up to the height of the right girl. 

No one died, but there's a part of me calling for the space and time to respect the fallen. And to be acknowledged within my grief and relief. I have both, and sometimes they bicker. 

Where's the narratives to look at that feature women who try and fail. Someone needs to write a guidebook for the ones that got away or got away upon. 

I am not lost, but I lost. 

My ghost of a September wedding. For a bride-to-be that isn't to be, I'm left wondering what I can do with this time. I didn't realise before now that you could observe a countdown even when the vital components of ritual have been deconstructed. 

I have almost lost to time the tactile memory of it, my ring, cold on my skin and nestled between the two low creases of that fourth finger. 

 

Post Two Hundred and Thirty: Unspoken

I've had this word, unspoken, in my head for weeks. 

Unspoken. 

I don't know what to do with it. I don't really know what it might want from me. I've played with it, toyed with it as a concept and a tool, and I've let it sit and steep like a tea. 

unspoken. 

But where do you start, and how do you stop, when you're polishing stories like knives and forks and serving truths.  

I cringe at the noise of social platforms. I cringe harder at the irony of pointing it out when I contribute to the endlessly rising volume. Considered things, talk and text that fit a smooth narrative. Things that speak of a transparency, but through the lense of creation. Can something formed ever be free of shape? 

Here, I will speak to this, the picture says. 

This is something that you can talk to me about, I say into the screen. 

This is what I feel safe to share.

unspoken. 

There are things that I preference. That we preference. And this comes at a cost to the issues that cause us discomfort. That cause me pain.

I am slipping my fingers between the gaps in my thoughts and spreading them open like the threads of a long, thin knitted scarf.