last words of a sacrificial lamb

for as long as i can recall, anger has never been an emotion that has come easily to me. ‘frustration’ has always more aptly described the feeling of wanting to understand, to be understood, to forgive but not being extended the olive branch to reach what would ultimately put my heart at ease. recently its been creeping up on me - jumping out at me from behind corners and grabbing my ankles from beneath my bed, startling me and reducing me to tears. i want to kick and scream and punch and hold and kiss and cry and forget. i just want to forget. i want to want to forget… but i don’t. 

in my pursuit of becoming a shepherd, i became the lamb. how could i not? i was so fresh to this world that i was barely even a person, let alone one that could guide, one that could protect. my naivety was a greenhouse at the heart of which she resided, soaking up my warmth, blossoming and growing the seeds of affection i sowed in her. naturally, as the seasons passed, she occupied more and more space in me and i became so distracted by her presence there that i failed to realise how empty it was of me to be so overwhelmingly full of her. what was once an act of devotion turned into accidental suffocation; my warm glass walls became scorching to the touch, our love became hot ashes in my mouth and i was willing to choke on them. i became an urn for everything we were and everything we never got to be. smash. she cast the stones needed for her escape into the outside air and the sound has echoed in my mind ever since, making me flinch every time i recall it’s harshness. her cold, torturing demeanour toward me seemed to be a small price for her to pay in exchange for cooling down any flammable emotions in the process - a worthy trade. 

i took so easily to the blade, to the red seeping through my new woollen coat, my insides beautifully spilt like a stream of sopping crimson yarn, a river of all i had to offer. infant sheep laying in a field of shards, bleating to deaf ears. i didn’t know how to get stains out yet. no one ever taught me how to clean up blood. the tenderness of her violence towards me almost distracted me from the cruelty of the act itself. the cruelty of making me love the life i shared with her only to make my death all the more excruciating.

tonight i look up at the moon and we share a knowing glance and a little secret between the two of us. a secret and countless memories of drunken giggling and pointing and shoving after cheesy little lines that still make the corners of my lips twitch upwards. she told me the moon only shines so bright because of the sun. maybe it was all a facade. an elaborate reflection of myself. maybe the moon thinks she is only beautiful to others because she keeps herself so far away, bouncing back energy that can never truly be destroyed. daedalus warned us of getting too close to the sun but failed to mention the moon. he failed to mention that i would get close enough to see all her cracks and craters before she panicked and left my orbit once more. did no one ever show her that cracks are what let the light in? 

more is known about the moon than the ocean. sometimes i feel i knew her better than i know myself. what became my anxious monitoring of her dictated my own emotional tides, the constant ebbs and flows until i was pushed back further than i had ever been. now i understand that it was all just a build up of momentum, a slingshot being stretched to its limit to bounce back to its fullest potential, to become my own anchor in spite of my nature.

i poured myself into her, maybe excessively so, too naive and blinded with infatuation to know overwatering inevitably leads to drowning. is there any real difference between love and violence? twin flames in the intensity, in the passion, the power and pain. i tossed and turned and ruminated on a way it could be my fault, my mistake to correct, for a way for us to swap fates so i could reach out and make it all okay but instead i sit here drowning in waves of grief that come and go and come again whenever i think their cyclical torture has finally come to an end. freedom and loneliness - twins separated at birth. i still catch myself wondering if her world is also still warm from me or if i really am a permanently temporary person. at least if she dug her nails into me whilst leaving i could’ve kept the scratches - cherished them, even. maybe i’ll always be in love with the person she could not become. maybe she will become that person for someone else. maybe she butchered the me of yesterday but perhaps i overwatered the her of tomorrow.