Again

I woke up this morning with the realization that life goes on, even three years later.

In the early morning dryness of the room made up for Seamus, I could see it. Peeking through my blinds like it always does, what I had looked at all morning as a girl and only stopped seeing recently. If you lean to the right you can see it coming down the street. To the left just so and you'll see it inbetween the branches of the sweetgum tree.

The sunlight.

The world had kept turning even though my own had stopped.

You call and tell me something I didn't need to know. I knew it! Long before you did. (You've always said I was smarter) Part of me wants to shut you up, to close my ears off to it and never hear the horrible truth I had been trying so hard to cover in my own mind for so long. To go on as we had been doing, ignoring the fact that we couldn't go on any longer. To savor the dream, the save the fantasy, not to let the glitter fade again. But childish hope is a feeble thing; and you're getting old now anyway. I have to sit on my hands now everytime I think of it. Bite my lip, suck in my own anger.

Paint on my smile like always.

You''ll never get the best of me. You never knew me at all, did you?

But this is how things must be, and I can't play dress up forever. This burns me worse than I'll ever show. This burns me worse than anyone will ever see. This burns me worse than anything I've ever known. And it isn't hurt, it isn't anger, it isn't saddness. It's a burn like the cold New York wind biting up at my cheeks, calling out all the moisture in my frail fair skin... that feeling that isn't a feeling but the abscence of one indeed.

I'm never going to wear those red shoes again, now so out of fashion... I'll never glow blonde again. I never told you that the blonde, it all fell to pieces while you were away; coming out in the shower and in the Mason Pearson you gave me that first Christmas. The amber underneath was so much stronger, more lively, less pressured without a charade to keep up. You liked the blonde better... you never saw the beauty in the amber underneath it all.

You'll never see what lies beneath it all.

And looking out at the sunlight, seeing the sweetgum tree once again budding as spring never quite left us... (she never left me) I realize that I no longer care.

You lost. It took three long years, but I did it. I beat you and sent you back from where you came.

And finally, the numbness hits me into a definition of what I'm feeling.

Sweet release.