Elisabeth Writing

Dear It’s Best If We Don’t Talk,

We won’t speak face to face in this life again, but I hope you know I don’t wish you ill. Quite the opposite, in fact. I wish you no harm, nor would I hex or curse you. I wish you growth and happiness. After all, it was you who shot me into the Void, so that I could discern between the comforting silence of stars and soothing darkness, and the terror of beasts in the shadows that only wished to devour light. We catapulted into the realm of moonlight, laughing and breathless. Then we fell, Angel-like; into an inky and suffocating gloom, claws that pulled us further away from peace in that vast, endless sky. I wonder how long we spent down there. I wonder if the ghouls ripped out pieces of myself, with their sharp teeth, that I might never get back. I wonder if that’s a good thing. 

Sometimes I ruminate on how things went so very wrong. Once you were Hades and I was Persephone; our world was vast and beautiful, black opal flowers and intelligent ravens, a palace of monsters and delight. We danced, in love and free. And then we went to War. You threw ice daggers, I shot poisoned arrows. Our words, spoken and unspoken, were like hand grenades, tossed with malice and malevolence. I remember when they were like sweet nightingales, soaring in midnight indigo. One day we set the world on fire, and burned everything to the fucking ground. If I came back – your friends and family would be villagers with pitchforks, driving out the monster (me). If you came back – my friends and family would do the same. And so there would be fire… everywhere. 

This month I think of you, as you think of me in February. I think we were mirrors of one another; lessons to learn. I’ve been working so hard on myself. I’ve still got eons to go, skins to shed, gardens to burn and replant. You helped me look into the mirror, into the monster that I am, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I wish I could grow flowers and storms on my skin, to show my journey; the part you were in it. Devils and demons we were to one another, diverging paths; now I fly on iridescent wings, to another place. I don’t think I’ll ever be fully tamed. I’m sorry for the shards of crystal and glass that hit you as I broke through the windows with my wings, wings that shredded themselves to bits on that journey and the one thereafter. I’m not sorry for the person I’ve become because of it; because of you.

Here I am, loving and needing and growing and being. Here I am, kissing every freckle on my cheeks and shoulders, stroking my stretch marks, gripping my curves. Here I am, collecting feathers and dried roses to build wings that are stronger, better, lighter and brighter.

Here I am, healing. 

Somewhere, somehow, I hope you are too.