For all the times I have abandoned myself. All the times I’ve abandoned them; it might be easier to count the times they’ve felt seen by me.
I manage a regurgitated echo of their pain and it leaves my throat as something so ugly and desperate. I bark and bite behind a waterfall and I’m sick of being stranded on this island that is me. I pretend to be free; my angry veins refuse to unleash me from the pegs hammered so violently, beautifully, into the earth. My heart punches faster under the strain, so hard it might break through my skin and I look to my chest, bare and vulnerable, and beg. Anything to break this vault. And I plead. Relieve me from the responsibility that I may take the wrong turn and feel the weight of guilt and shame. Desperation. Force. Pity. Resentful at the trinity and at resentment itself.
Everything vies to a vast cacophony of tumultuous noise. Under the surface. Contained. Dare I express. No. Do not open the vault. Not in any circumstance.
The slowest form of self-harm. Genetic suicide. Die from the inside out. I heave and nothing comes out but an ashy retch. This is what I get for the blatant abuse of power. The sadist. The victim. Embodied as one until the loop of intentionally inflicted pain and the silence of their suffering is just a black hole dressed in the light from the stars from its neighbouring galaxy. And the light softens the dark. A gentle strength.
They look up from their protective hands which are usually placed firmly against their face. My attempts to look away are limited to a blink, blink, as their eyes penetrate my own. How dare they ask me for anything. I feel the heat on my face which gets so raw it fills my heart, dropping from its delicate frame. They speak so eloquently yet without words.
I feel a familiar, harmonic sound. Something that connects my heart to theirs. A chime of wind and metal; I’ve drowned out the drone for so long and now quiet is all I want. They grab at their moment, bow in hand, and rest the hair against the strings and I’m afraid. Of its beauty and of its pain. And as soon as there is friction, their pull, the closing of their eyes, their heart cracks open and I know. The way out. And I wonder who is the real sadist? Me? Life? A predicament of my own design that I alone can set myself free of, if I could only ignore the allure and go through the pain of separating from pain itself. What a beautiful predicament it is. Masterful. Elegant. The test of self against the self.
Despite my ignorance and arrogance, the strings of their cello tell me all I need to know. And for once I plead for them to never stop playing for the voices in my head, too, are loud and unforgiving. All along I’ve abandoned their cries, their pain, yet it is I who needs their support. It is I who cowers in the corner. Alone. I reach for my own bow and reluctantly breathe in. The bow and strings embrace. I close my eyes and as I exhale I begin to play. Beautifully and eerily harmonic to their melancholic melody and, finally, as I exhale, we are connected by the strings that connect us to the heart that forever binds us as one.