You The Blackhole, Me The Fabric That Tore

I remember sitting in the other room

Watching you go about your routines

Slow, ragged, dragged

Thinking to myself this is the rest of my life

Thinking to myself the rest of my life is this

The rest of my life is watching you drag your feet heavily on the thin wooden floors of our basement apartment in Queens

The rest of my life is watching you slowly rise long after the sun has risen, long after I have risen with the sun

The rest of my life is running ragged behind you, making sure you feel pursued, you feel loved, you feel enough, you feel seen, you feel, sexy, you feel chosen, you feel important, you feel alive, you feel heard, you feel like the star of a life in which you are not the star. You are the absence of stars. You are the opposite of a stellar explosion. You are the collapse of a universe, and the end of traveling light. You are more than a black hole. And I was the fabric caught in your riptide, each thread tugged apart from the other. Each thread loosened from the rest. I was the fabric that held you tight, like a child afraid to sleep without his night light. I was the barrier between you and the world that you did not want to be a part of. I cloaked you from the night that consumed you from the outside in.

Each thread unraveling as the darkness made it’s way through you into my pores. Into my valleys, interconnected, sown. You tugged at the cloth, you dragged me through the filth. You hung me out, ragged, in your storm. Watched until my feet slowed. Until my breath rattled. Until every inch of thread was swallowed whole, into your black hole - your withered star. And then you asked if I wanted my freedom? I leapt and yelled yes. I ran along the edges of our remaining universe and pulled at the curtains that had blocked out the sun. I shattered the rings of dust that had begun to orbit around my spirit. I jumped into nothing. No soft earth to catch me. No padded ground to call home. I landed on myself. I crumpled into a million little things. I shrieked into the night and found bits and pieces of myself that seemed familiar. Threads that you could not stomach. I stitched them together. I wore them around my neck. I draped them over my back. I cried when that cape did make me invincible. I laughed when I found moments of flight. I dressed myself in threads that ran deep under my skin, black ink that scarred me. Needles that strung me together. I became bigger than the little things. Bigger than giants that are grains of sand on the coast where your damage and my healing crash into one another. I took hold of my legs, and swung them forward. I quickened my pace as your unhinged jaw swallowed the world around me. I ran my feet ragged until I reached the edge I always feared and finally jumped. I landed on myself. Padded. Threaded. Soft. Whole.