Breaking My Own Heart

The things I need don’t exist in reality, so I dream during the day to prepare for the chill of the night. I sleepwalk under the sunlight and make my way to places where moments can be touched and god, I hold them so close to my heart hoping they reach out to hold me too. They never do. They never do. But I keep walking, because I never learned how to not chase dreams. I latch on to beautiful things until they rub against me just enough to make me feel butterflies or goosebumps or like maybe somehow I matter. I let that feeling swirl around as long as it wants to stay, and then I watch it fly away. The beautiful things…they always leave. I keep pieces of them here in memory of that time when I couldn’t stop smiling. But I hold those memories like a loss. I hold them like something I failed to keep. I hold them like I wasn’t good enough to make them stay. And I keep walking to find more pieces I can use to break my own heart with. Because someone has to and it may as well be me. It hurts less that way. I can blame myself that way. I can keep kicking myself back into reality where nothing is beautiful and everything hurts. Habits like that are hard to break. But hearts…. they are so fragile. I’m so fragile. So, I break my own heart to save someone else from doing it. I make excuses and come up with reasons to call kindness a lie because I just can’t believe it’s true. But what if it is and I doubted it? But what if it’s not and I believed it? I can’t win against myself. I keep walking though until the sun goes down and the night breaks my trust as it watches the stars point and laugh. It was always the moon that showed me my true colors. It never was shooting stars bringing dreams to my feet, It was thunderstorms showing me how nightmares are made and the proof was always in the way the rain didn’t stop. I taught myself to pour more breaking into the cracks of what could never be repaired, to seal the darkness in and keep the light out. I grew inside the storm until I became the only thunder that could break myself.I keep walking to meet the sun when it rises to search for more things that will stunt my growth and sabotage my healing, because after all the beautiful things have never stayed to prove me wrong. It’s the thunder that scares them away, not everyone can handle the sound of my breaking, so they run before they sift through the pieces of me to see sometimes… my storm is fucking beautiful; the sky doesn’t cry for no reason.

Stephanie Bennett-Henry

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