Author: Madison Gulli-Callaghan

We are a car stuck in reverse.

We only go backwards.

I am shaking.

By “shaking,” I mean not because of the temperature.

I mean I am shaking because my thoughts are causing a riot in my mind and stampeding through my blood vessels.

I can feel my spirit being run over.

By “run over,” I mean I still get hit even though, around you, I walk on eggshells.

You paint the colors of rotten fruit all over my limbs and justify your actions by explaining that self-sabotaging is your sin.

I am weighed down to a blue bed.

By “weighed down,” I mean imaginary metal chains wrap around me like a harness so heavy my arms are purple and limp.

By “blue bed,” I mean I am holding my breath like I am having a contest with myself and the universe.

The hours of your absence suffocates me.

Maybe you ran away because I gave you the sickness of uncertainty.

My mother says that I like to fix people, but people are not broken.

She says my need to be a savior will not be rewarded.

I am not Jesus.

I am not holy enough to purify the sins of myself let alone others.

I am a black hole consuming anything to feel less alone.

I do not know how to exist on my own.

You are in the drivers seat, but it is my car.

When I reach for the wheel, you grab my hands and hold them.

By “hold them,” I mean you hold them hostage.

You tell me to trust you, but you regressed from a lover to a stranger and

I cannot trust strangers.

I desire an existence where I am uncomfortable in chaos;

one where my body is not stuck in fight-or-flight.

I am constantly between fleeing from or fighting for your love.

Loving you is like loving someone who cannot stay still.

You are always just out of reach or slipping between my fingers.

You are a precarious rollercoaster that is always breaking down and

I am an adrenaline junkie whose favorite sound is your voice.

I scream at cars and they scream back.

By “they scream back,” I mean I imagine cars screaming back at me so at least

there is something surprising left in a world I have been finding so dull.

By “dull,” I mean I told my therapist that my life’s purpose is to love you and I cannot allow myself to.

You do not provide what I want nor need.

You do not understand that loving me means no hesitation.

You do not understand me at all.

I have been bruising in my sleep again.

By “bruising” in my sleep, I mean I beat myself up trying to exorcise you because

I am a haunted house.

You materialize in my fondest memories.

I wish I could write you as a riddle too complex to solve.

My father says people never win more than they lose.

You are in my life, but I do not know how to platonically love you nor do I want to.

I cannot exist in a world where we are not together because, with you, everything is better.

I know that I will love you forever as you are my long-term curse.

The only thing keeping me sane is reminding myself that love is not enough.

“How can you stand up for a monster?”

Monsters are created.

Anything created can be transformed.

I have been touched by his light and scarred by his dark.

I defend his life as if mine is tied to it.

I used to tell you to consume happiness in bite-sized pieces.

I told you that, one day, you would feel full.

I told you to stop rushing things; that time isn’t real.

I told you that bright lights are not always blinding.

I told you that you will always have a piece of my heart.

You showed me that you did not want it.

Featured art: “Pomegranate and Paper Wasps” by Joe Helms.

I ate a shooting star hoping to become your once-in-a-lifetime wish, but all I did was burn from the inside out.

The Quake.

It started with my head. 

Reminiscing our past caused my skull to crack and chip until brain tissue leaked from gaping holes. As gray matter seeped, I began to forget if you smelled of musk or linen. As white matter oozed, I began to lose memories I once treasured, like how you made me mint tea in the park or did laundry in the grocery store. 

You.

Yuo.

Uoy.

The Cough.

I wanted to talk to you. When I tried, I would choke. All the things I wanted to say built up in my throat until I passed out.

I woke up coughing up confessions until all that was left was bloody teeth.

The Inflammation.

My eyes grew inflamed staring at pictures of us. Your arms wrapped around my waist in our Christmas photos broke at least seven blood vessels in my watering eyes. The polaroids I kept hidden almost made me blind. 

The Rash.

A rash broke out everywhere your hands have touched me. From my neck down to my wrists were red. The trace of my waist and shoulders displayed splotches in the shape of fingertips. I scratched my arms until they bled trying to rid the feeling of you. I could not stop until nurses noticed and put me in restraints. 

The Blisters.

When you came to visit me at the hospital, the blistering began. You reached to hold my hand and it became a surface of raised bumps.

My skin forgot who you are.

The Drool.

I tried to answer your questions or thank you for visiting me in the hospital, but all I could do was drool with a swollen mouth.

You looked away.

Was it because you made me this way?

The Crust.

I tried to blink at you in a code you could understand, but my eyes began to crust until I could see only the colors of your shirt, skin, hair. As my eyes glued shut, the face I used to stare at for hours became a distorted blur.

I would have given anything to see you once more.

The Breath.

You always pointed out that I held my breath around you. This time, I could not help it. 

No one tells you that when you consume a shooting star, it survives off of your oxygen supply.

The Shedding.

Perhaps the worst part was how my skin shed off onto you. 

I flaked at your touch until my bones were exposed. I felt you wipe me off your fingertips, disgusted. 

I wanted to scream with a mouth I could no longer open.

The Death.

You never got to hear about how my organs simmered inside of me like a slow-cooked stew. 

Doctors studied my body in ways you never cared to do. 

As I was dying, I heard a doctor ask another if I had tried saying your name.

I did.

Featured Art: Unknown

Birthday candles are just wicks coated in layers of wax or
vessels for wishes to travel in and yet,
every year,
I wish for you to love me like you used to.

I will tell you a secret.
When I am desperate, 
I relight them and wish again.

Shooting stars are just small rocks traveling through air or
meteors on fire that will die out before they hit the atmosphere.
It is silly of me to wish upon a dead thing and yet
I still wish.

11:11 is just a constructed concept or
a time we consider prime for magic, but
time has done nothing except erase you from my memory.
Why waste my wishes upon it?

You or
a person that I want to belong to.
If only I could tell you, but
my wishes would not come true.

Featured art: Unknown

I escape into the bathroom. My back runs along the wall until I meet the floor. Staring straight ahead, all I see is a rich brown cabinet. The lines in the wood are fairly consistent, running in a vertical direction like small claw marks. The tile is cool along my palms. Sometimes, I lay down and invite the chill into my face and back. I leave the shower running, watching fog devour the mirror. I write confessions on the glass and watch them disappear as memories of him reappear.

I smoke in the bathroom; inhale nicotine and exhale worry. Dense clouds prohibit my vision, making the world look how I feel: foggy. The rise and fall of my chest has become irregular since he left. When he was here, he would remind me to stop holding my breath. He would tell me to breathe, holding his breath until our breathing synced; a symphony of ins and outs. He would tap my wrists and the top of my hands to a rhythm only our bodies understood.

I find myself studying my fingers through the smoke, wondering if they remember the rhythm. I try to tap my thighs, but my skin feels like someone else’s. 

He messaged me today telling me that he hopes that my “day goes well”. I tell him that it is not. I tell him that his voice sounds different; jumbled and electronic. He asks me why my day is not going well. I tell him it is because his words are starting to sound a lot like “goodbye”. He tells me that he does not understand. I tell him that he never does.

I have glow-in-the-dark stars across my bedrooms ceiling. I scattered a few along each of the four walls in the directions that I toss and turn. It has been four months since I bought them and their glow has dulled.

Ever since I was a kid, I looked to the sky, admiring the stars that scientists say we are related to. The man on the moon, more than a myth, kept me company as an only child with insomnia. I talked to the sky. I asked the stars if they talk like J. M. Barrie wrote in Peter Pan. I still talk to the sky. I ask the stars why they never respond before deciding they are too busy to answer.

It has been four months since I have met him and we are starting to lose our spark.

In June, he went to France. He talked to me all day and night, every day and night, the entire month he was gone. He sent me photos of vintage jazz clubs and local coffee shops, captioning them “i wish you were here, ma fleur”. He is back, but I am starting to wilt.

It is complex how distance and time work; how they do not exist in any sense other than in one’s mind. Someone can be right next to you, yet you feel thousands of miles away. Holding his hand became holding air. I grasped for something tangible and warm, but I could not hold a phantom. 

The French say, “Il y a”. It means, “There is”. If you run it together, it is a beautiful name. I named everything he gave me “Ilya”, but there is no value in his things I possess. I find myself taking down the movie tickets from our dates I taped onto my walls and placing them back up in new spots: by my bookshelves, above my bed, next to my records, and in my closet. I rearrange my room during the hours between one to four A.M. They say only the loved and the lonely are awake so early, but I think it is just the restless.

My twin flame and I decided that September first of 2017 was not truly the first, rather September second was the first. The original September first was too full of anger to be a beginning. I cannot start a month with a toxic taste in my mouth. A bitter name on the tip of my tongue. A ghost haunting me disguised as a shadow.

On September second, I woke up, got dressed, and went on a walk. I never go on walks, but I went on one; hot Florida air nearly suffocated me. I screamed at cars until my throat stung and my voice grew rasp. I swung my arms out, let them dangle and mediated on how they felt. They felt light, like I could swing them so hard they would fling off my body. I walked for an hour, putting up and taking down my hair several times; Eating an almond and throwing one to squirrels or birds along the way. I drank water, smoked cigarettes, and called my best friend. I crashed a birthday party at the park.

Red balloons remind me of the silence before a scream in horror movies, like when the victim turns around and meets the monster. Cake reminds me of calories, like the ones I avoided for years when I consumed a diet of air and flushing meals down toilets. Children remind me that time-travel does not exist. It is impossible to return to a time when I did not know you.

A child at the party asked me who I was. 

I said I was trying to figure it out.

I had a breakdown in the hours of his absence. I told him I needed someone to talk to and I received silence. He apologized the morning after and I responded with silence.

I was in the passenger seat of his car many times this past summer. I always wore an outfit that would match the intensity of his red car. One time, we were driving and I was looking out the window, one of his hands on the steering wheel and one wrapped around mine, and he told me that if anything were to go wrong, that he hopes at least he’s influenced me enough in a way where I feel more comfortable speaking my mind.

I tell him that he has failed.

He tells me that he does not understand.

I respond with silence. 

Featured art: “Pandemonium” by Kim Jackobsson.