Stuck On Repeat

I like to replay you like a song. Over and over I'll go back and change what I said or what you did and wonder if we'd be engaged by now. I'll wonder if you've changed much sense. If you ever kept those pajama pants, the letters, the memories? Did you pack them all away and pretend it was fine just like you liked to? Do you still play hide and seek with what hurts hoping it will never catch you hiding? You made it so easy to love your flaws. To let you overwhelm me, drown me, wrap me up in lies then smother me in whatever truth was left. I repeat you like a favorite classic. Over and over until I'm dizzy and sick with memory feverishly trying to grasp at the past as always. But it never really works out, because you see you're just a song on repeat that I can't get you out of my head. It's as simple as that. 

Chantell,
xoxo

Sunday Afternoon

I had never felt more at home than I did then. Standing in the middle of a big family affair for people who were nowhere near genetically mine. The house had become a revolving door of guests all coming and going at once. Conversations laying over onto one another lazily in the fall sunlight that late Sunday afternoon. Feeling home had been a sensation of my past. I had never thought I'd find that same warmth of being where I belonged again like I had before and lost so abruptly. I suppose home is more about where you are loved than anything else. And I was. Even having never seen some of their faces before I didn't feel lost for once, but blended. Everyone was beaming with having so much to be happy about curled up into the heart of one home. Generations of family and warm friends sprawled across the tile floor munching on sandwiches and chips. It was almost enough to bask in. And I did, closing my eyes letting it all sink in like perpetual sunshine in the form of laughter and community. I could not have been more grateful for that farewell occasion. To stand in the crowd and be firmly myself but fade into everyone else. It felt good to be home and even better to be loved.


Chantell,
xoxo

The Empty Guitar

While absent mindedly looking at the guitar in the corner of my room you had yet to take back it struck me. I was everything sitting there from the simple wood grain to the delicately carved sides. The rounded opening strung with cords that had always been so much hollower than it seemed. You had played my melodies so easily, as if it had all come so naturally to you. The only tune I can feel hum inside me anymore is the distant beat that your heart used to play on windy afternoons or on long winter nights curled up next to me. And now for some reason those leftover tunes play just deep enough to show me how hollow I have become in your absence. They reverberated though me dull and aching as if just a simple breath could topple my bones over like a house of cards. I have become an empty wood shell that is only played by what used to be, which makes everything hurt that much more. I guess I've discovered I don't know how to be anything other than your pastime or anything more than a faded lullaby.  

Chantell,
xoxo

Stars

The night your heart stopped as I listened to the monitor dive into a steady straight noise from it's slow usual pace, the stars outside the window slipped behind the clouds and all in the sky went dark. No light shone the rest of the night as I left though the hospital doors one last time. I thanked god for the pitch pigment that blanketing the city. In the darkness there was no reason to hide, I was already unseen. Unraveling my thread tied to your heart like a knit sweater snagged on a fence. I let it tighten and snap as I entered the quiet solidarity of my car.
I was too numb then to feel anything past shock. Even after knowing for months that you'd leave I still found myself believing I'd be back tomorrow to find your peaceful sleeping face amidst machines and quiet evenings. 
I spent most of my visits reading to you. Offing you quite possibly the only way I had found to run away from the situation thinking maybe you'd like some relief too. That night I never went home. I drove to the notch in the mountains where if you park just right you can watch the sun rise above their monstrous peaks and kiss every living surface between it and you. I must have waited five hours just sitting there, waiting. 
And as the sun peaked above the points shining brightly into my eyes I held my breath. As I exhaled the tears rolled down my cheeks. Fat with rage and full of sorrow they dropped down into the dirt and onto my shirt. Every night sense then I look up into the sky and wonder if I will ever find an extra star up there twinkling with the same beating heart as yours.


Chantell,
 xoxo