Elisabeth Writing

I feel like I slip through the world in shadows, gathering a cloak of stars and darkness around me. I like the way the night curls around my long fingers, and the swelling secrets I hear on the murmuring wind. 

But –

I didn’t ask to be invisible. 

I’m cold. Is this a version of Hell? Freezing and alone. The sun doesn’t reach me even as I stretch my body and stand on my tiptoes, trying to feel that warmth, to banish the gloom. It slithers just out of reach, every time. I beg for just a moment of that glowing ardor.

I didn’t ask to be invisible. 

You don’t see me as I pass by, though I wear bright red lips and sunflowers bursting across my body. I smile, sing, dance, arch my back, trying to get a reaction, just to know I’m alive and not a ghost. Won’t you acknowledge me, even for a moment? Or am I really not here? Maybe I’m just a phantom, an amalgamation of otherworldly memories. A first kiss, the crack of a heart breaking, the sheen of amber whiskey, manic green irises. Or maybe I was never here at all. 

I don’t want to be invisible.