Uplifted

 "You know I love you, right?"
She rolls her head over to look at me and her soft, pale skinned face sinks into the thick pillow. She bats her eyelashes and they brush against the soft fabric like fingers in lightly fallen snow. Her crystal blue eyes look up at mine and sting into me like an icicle. She closes them slowly and I see a small tear roll gently down her cheek.
   "Baby, don't cry."
I feel something swell up in my throat and my eyes get heavy. My stomach feels like an entire universe is spinning inside of it and I can feel my eyelids fill up and begin to empty all the feelings I've been holding behind them for so long.
Tears begin to pour out of my eyes like a warm waterfall and stain the eggshell colored sheets below me. Even with my eyes closed and tearing I can feel her eyes open and turn towards me. I rest my elbows on the stiff bed and cradle my damp face in my palms. I feel the mattress shift below me and feel her shaky arms envelop me in their warmth.
   "Shhhh," she hushes at me trying to calm me down. "I love you, too."
   "Rosie, I can't do this, I can't lose you."
She pulls away from me and leans back on the raised bed. She brings her hands up to her face and rubs any stray tears from her eyes.
I pull my face from my hands and look at her. Admire her. See her. See through her milky white skin and empty scalp. I look past the scars on her tiny wrists and sadness in her deep eyes and see her. I mean really, really see her. I see her flaws. Like the way she bites her nails without noticing and the loud way she breathes in her sleep and that little snort she does at the end of her laugh even if she denies doing it. I see these things that she calls flaws and I realize I want to experience them for the rest of my life. I want to love them and make her believe that they aren't flaws. They're her. And they're perfect. And they make her the exquisite, unique specimen that I've come to know and love. I look deep into her and I see my future. And with one blink of an eye it disappears.


I walk into the dark, empty room that feels like it's filled with the presence of death. How is that possible? How can such an empty room feel so filled with this emptiness? I walk over and sit on the neatly made bed and feel every organ, every bone, every muscle, every nerve, and ever hair on my body collapse. I fall completely onto the flat mattress and break down. Every part of me. My body. My mind. My hopes. My dreams. My life. I watch it all come crashing down in front of me along with the thick, supple tears seeping from my eyes. The ghost of her white, porcelain skin engulfs me and sucks the last of the life from my limp, hopeless body. She is gone. And I'm laying here staring at the ceiling she was forced to look at for three months.
Suddenly the cold, empty room is filled with not an unbearable emptiness, but her warm presence; her laughter, her full smile, her long, thick golden hair. She wraps herself around me.
   "I love you, too."
Then my body releases one last tear. One last droplet it can handle.
One last blink.
One last breath.
And it's over.

Weight

"How much do you weigh?" he asks.
The question stings into me
like the scorching heat of a thousand electric
shocks.
How much do I weigh?
The question twirls in my mind
and wraps around each of my limbs
my fingers
my love handles
my toes
my stretch marks
my legs
my chins.
How much do I weigh?
"Well," I reply,
"My legs are filled with the weight of all the places I've traveled and all those I've yet to go,
my stomach holds the weight of all the home-cooked meals I've eaten, and all those I missed out on when my mother left us,
my lungs are weighed down by the millions of breaths I've taken in my life, and the tragedy they endured the day they almost took no more,
my arms are burdened by all the weight they have pulled in carrying my family and myself through the hard times that darkened our days,
my head is troubled heavily by the depressing thoughts of suicide and hatred that flow relentlessly through it daily,
and my heart is filled with an everlasting emptiness, a lack of love, and an absence of life that drags me down like an anchor, brimming with the need to be accepted and wanted yet never finding the sweet satisfaction of knowing such.
So, if you must know,
that's how much I weigh," I breathe, finally.
A blank, pale face mirrors mine in his now dampened stature.
And with all this talk
of weight
and pounds
I feel myself becoming even heavier
as my eyes fill up with tears
and a heavy emptiness
consumes me.