Jes CC *You Held My Hand, But Had Nowhere to Take Me Black and white faces, green eyes and my face cupped in the palm of your hand. Trust is a four letter word handcuffed to the bed. We can’t find the key so we dismantle the bed instead. There’s a glass of water left on the dresser, I haven’t awoken thirsty in months. I used to dream of waterfalls, fountains cascading around my bare feet. But now, hiding between your sweaty shoulder blades, I dream of nothing at all. Copper pennies and salted tears, the stain of last night’s wine on my teeth, I tuck them in the broken drawer on the right between the silky nothings you never tempt me to wear. Snorting salt and crushing crystal, the promise of sweet illusive gardens and emerald palaces drowning in your eye. I’m only free when far from home, and so I’m always running. You held my hand, but had nowhere to take me, so eventually we both let go. For months I ached with the taught promise of lovers circling each other like tigers, amber eyes locked, limbs ready to pounce. But every night we slept beneath heavy sheets, rarely unfolding to desire. I wanted you to know me deeper than skin. Once I skipped across a rusty bridge and saw pieces of mars in the sidewalk. I felt the moon in my wings and forgot I couldn’t fly. There was a magic in me. I wanted it back, if only for an instant. I stopped eating, sleeping. I lost track of the pills because the stars were blotting out the days. My skin dissolved. Sunbeams stung like jellyfish. The sound of your thoughts hurt my ears. I felt everything, with such intensity. Reality became pliable, a dream for me to shape any way I wanted. Everyone else moved slow as insects in molasses. I felt sorry for them. I sprinted down the middle of the road, daring traffic to stop for me. I needed to tug my body loose. I needed as far away from this life as possible. Trying to outrun a manic episode is like trying to outrun an eclipse. Eventually blackness swallows everything. Oh, but those moments of staring straight at the sun! Silver wrists and asphalt skies, the sinking feeling of staring up at the clouds when my head is spinning with too much me. I couldn’t remember how the streets went together, but I knew it had something to do with the mesh in my veins. The entire world was suspended in my arteries, kisses were giant pink planets, I spun at the core of it all. You looked so tired and sad. Two weeks I sat inside the mirror, watching myself on the other side. Flat blue rhythm world, vibrating at my fingertips. Little salt and sugar packets fascinated me, I was tempted to comb my hair with a fork. Cameras never left my face, I felt safe and protected. And then like thread through a needle, they pulled me through into someone else. Handcuffs rattling in the corner, and our lives are thrown on the floor. You step over me like something empty, I’ve left you unfulfilled. I tried to show you it would be like this. Wait for you to wipe away the dreams caught in my eye. I dig through piles of dirty laundry, hunting for those orange afternoons, pigtails and warm sinks of soap and you hungry mauling tender. Purple cave evenings, heavy breathing. Your kisses between my toes in the bathtub. I try to believe in something beautiful. “Get your head out of the clouds” you say. No, see, I’d rather not. You’ve turned me into something very ugly, and I don’t like your face anymore. You hold the door for me as I leave. In reality, I don’t look back. But, under the cover of dreams, I always do. I still sleep on the edge of the bed, and imagine you undressing me the way you did the first time, like the moon stripping the shore. Bare. But I always walk away. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night, one hand clasped within the other, and I realize there are bridges I was meant to cross alone. *Originally published in Writeresque Vol. 5 ![]() “I wasn't the kind of person who was afraid to show her scars. I saw beauty and strength in survival. Now I see survival, strength, beauty. And scars.” Carella is a writer and digital artist, published in numerous literary journals including Columbia Journal, Chestnut Review and Crannóg. Her writing was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she is a 2023 Door is a Jar Writing Award Winner. Her art has appeared on the covers of Glassworks Magazine, Nightingale and Sparrow, Colors: The Magazine, Frost Meadow Review and Straylight Magazine. instagram.com/catalogue.of.dreams / twitter.com/catalogofdream Comments are closed.
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