you once told me that everything is controlled by gravity,

that we are nothing, not even a speck compared to the nearest star.

you told me that the wind wasn’t really wind, it was simply the breath of the ocean, the sigh of the sea.

you said that paint wasn’t chemicals, it was the flesh of every human being liquidated. you said that if i could paint beautiful pictures it was because beautiful people surrounded me. you said that every time someone walks down the street they are only thinking of the air and the space between their eyes. you said that gold wasn’t a colour, rather a state of mind that eminates and glitters from all the joy around it. you told me there was no use in trying to be somebody because it will turn me into nothing, you said that I already am everything, and I didn’t understand because how could one girl be the world, the universe, the gravity and the stars. how could I be gold and paint and an overdue book. you said that anything anyone ever needed was all inside of me, that I would be the one to save the world, to fertilize the trees and press the paper.

on the day we were supposed to leave you locked yourself in your room and told me to go without you. I didn’t move from your door for 4 hours, and I couldn’t hear you breathing from the other side anymore. you said that I am all anyone needs, but that I need some time alone. I have to drain into sidewalk gutters and show the rest of the world how to shine. you said that you didn’t want to keep me from flying, that i could now cut the strings away that attached us all to the world and I could just go. i pounded on your door and i started to cry but you said my tears would make the wooden floors expand and open and swallow me up, you said wouldn’t that be a waste of a pretty face.

so i left.

I stayed in the tongue of my bed for hours, I breathed in the lungs of my head and covered my nails with charcoal lacquer. I tried to calculate how many steps it would take to bring me back to where everything started but I lost count and made some tea instead and watched the streets. I didn’t try to call, and I never knew anyone else who made me feel so powerful.