Casey Gilfillan

I tried to set you free, but you were gone long before I opened up the cage of my mind, sawed the iron bars of my heart that had been licked and sealed shut with a binding rust. I still did those other things anyway, with hardened palm and moistened cheek, to ensure it was not the echo of your shadow wedged somewhere tight that you had left behind. There was nothing, yet I shouted and begged for anything that should remain to be gone.

There was nothing, and yet I continued with this burdensome, loathsome force, a possession that guided me to fantasies of you, tortured me with delusions of your affection.  Some sort of sinister apparition with the intention of deceiving, but from where would I have contracted such a spirit?  I knew not for I could not concentrate, my thoughts a murky flood of attempts to impress and obsession about you. The infection of you upon me, the crushing weight of your presence had cast it so. It was in my brain, stifling my thoughts, stuffing my free will full of distorted illusion; in my mouth, making me a fool who trips to death over her words, who delivers herself unintentionally to submission; compliant as a grain of sand against the wind; vulnerable as a pebble in the path of a tornado; helplessly eager to bask in the warmth of your adoration. On my skin, you strike like a match against me and I am burning. I am ablaze and passionate and dying of proximity. You have the water; you are the water (if you wanted to be, anyway).

I did the only thing I could think to do: I went away for a long time. I secluded myself, missing you all the while, and then rejecting my body and mind for betraying me so intimately. When I returned home, a pile of scrolls awaited my arrival. They were small and could have easily fit into a bird’s beak; they were knotted with ribbons that kept them bound, unopened yet. You signed each of them; addressed to me. The jump of my pulse to my throat at the sight of this correspondence, at the premise that you had thought of me too, only to be extinguished by the distant leash of your sentiment.

It was then, with eyes dulled from the absence of your charm, that I could see clearly. Not completely released from delusion, but enough to reason my way through the fog. I felt the uncurling, the loosening of the grasp spontaneous to my volition. I just needed to see you be yourself about it. For it to truly and fully pass through me, I needed to be able to see you beyond the haunting extension; to no longer be ladened with the lingering touches of want, those insidious effects of my desire for you. And once I did, I could finally let go, or it finally let me go. I felt the phantom daggers unsheathe from my flesh where they had been buried so long they had made a home. Blood pouring from my abdomen, my eyes, my fingertips; I am free, I am free…