ring pops and cigs

19

showers aren't shower anymore.

they are a new place of both redemption and a song of sorrow.

i look in the mirror and i'm starting to realize i don't look the same. i try finding what's different. i try finding what is hurting me, my finger nail skims across the bare skin.

maybe its the fingers. they seem longer, more nimble. maybe its the way they tremble, or how the thumb's nail has been deformed by a set of chattering teeth. maybe its the skin. the skin of my fingers were much lighter than that of my forearms; my forearms were a deeper bronze, while the skin of fingers were like caramel milk. maybe its the new scratches lining my knuckles; deep blues, deep reds, a lavender.

my knuckles make me smile, and perhaps that is what has changed the most.

i smile with a more cynical type of hesitance, like i'm snickering at the world's worst joke by the world's worst comedian out of pity. it isn't a rushed sense of bliss anymore, the smile that used to catch everyone-even myself-surprised. instead of a jubilance, the climax of a symphony, i bare my teeth like i'm ready to bite. it seems harsher, colder, and there is no sight of the moons that replaced my iris and
my eyes seem different, too.

my eyes have sank deep into my skull, the puffiness of the eyebags dangling from my eyelids shrouding it, as if its already deteriorating before i even have died; or perhaps, i simply aren't living enough. my arresting brown gaze has now been diminished into something less warm. my eyes didn't seem like pools of honey anymore; it was like someone took two spoonfuls of all the worlds deepest organic matter and scooped it into the sockets. it wasn't the dirt that harvested the lilies, instead the mud that contains many whisperings of all of the world's what if's. my eyes twinkle with something a bit colder, more resisting, deep with the roots of what could've happened, what should've, and what didn't.

my eyes are scared.

i can see it in the way it still glances around, as if i can still see the way his neck had whistled around the tube as he thrashed around.

papa, where is that puppy you promised me all those years ago? remember when mama put me on the phone with you? when i kept my voice as steady as possible when i reminded you of your promises? when mama has to continuously remind me that just because your body is sleeping, your spirit isn't? that just because you're in a coma doesn't mean you can't hear?

remember when mama mentioned me crying over the puppies you promised me? a lab, a golden retriever, a husky. remember when your body thrashed? when every vital sign started beeping?

where's your spirit now?

remember when you held me? when you cried and rocked me because you knew you were gonna die before we did?

i don't.

my memories of you are buried next to you. maybe i can visit them sometime.