... AND SHE BECAME. - by Chidera Odom

This isn’t the tale of how I broke. It’s pages of a journal I left open in the rain pages smudged, but still mine. Some bits are messy, some sound braver than I felt. Don’t think I met someone new. It’s the past jumping out to play GRAB, but I’m faster now. Some people are made for you, meant for you. Some others come to you like in a dream. Some need you, and you need others, but, Oh, what it is to be made for someone because they need you and cannot live fulfilled without you- Glorious and burdensome. Once today, I had to take a stand, and I did I looked a man in the eye and said the truth. Not all of it, but enough so that he is not permanently maimed. I was scared, so scared that I would care, that I would change my mind and weep like the child I felt like. Not today, I told myself, because, I couldn’t bear to let myself down. It had been a lot of that lately. I keep letting more of me slip into ashes, fall away like dust and get lost in the pages of Wordsworth. Not anymore! They said only time would tell, but, I couldn’t wait for time to tell me how to say what I felt. I would not wait to be told by something so fickle and unfeeling how I would hold the hammer and break my glasshouse. Time would not know the pain nor the pleas, the plots nor all the twists. All my fears became real, Eventually, I found solace in another pair of deep blue eyes. I couldn't sleep, just stare, because I still saw the black eyes in my sleep. My many horrors are at an end. I gave myself the excuse of being hurt, and I started to act out my desires, filling out my playbook with bad blood and bad juju. I only hesitated the first time, and after that, I forgot that fear had a face, hands, and a beating heart. I beat and burned the few things that reminded me of fear so I could scatter their ashes in oblivion. They can touch me only in the dreams where I blubber and cry and beg for the wild things to swallow me whole, because anything is better than being right there. I know what you are thinking Everything has gotten so hard lately. I am so beyond reach; you think you are losing me. Maybe you are, but it's not your fault. Every day I look, but the girl I knew is so far gone Not even a memory is left. I was so proud that you were me, but how could I know it was to last only a short while? Our generation will weep deep tears, for the loss of a love that was void of fears – mine. Yes, I loved you and gave you pain, but, you gave me the years of self-loathing I hated the girl I became for you. One you could sway easily because, yes, that is what love, no matter how misconstrued, does. What I called weakness, you called ‘your mess’. How do I beat an understanding like that? The fever is past, that I can swear, but those pieces of me are still scattered across time. They are old and so loved, so pretty and unlike anything anyone can ever be. This is why in need them back, and I can trust only time to keep them safe, while I take my sweet time finding them. But if I ever return whole, it will not be as the girl who left pieces behind, but as the woman who learned to live among ruins, growing gardens from bones and rain. Let them say I vanished, I would say I became.

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