You’re fading from my existence, like blue haze over hills, like broken blood vessels under flesh.

Because I apparently can’t stand up like a normal person, today I slammed my ankle against the underside of my desk (???!?) and now have a bruise the size of a ruler stretching up my leg.

Purple used to be my favorite color, but now it’s yellow; luckily bruises turn both of these.

I’ve been thinking about you a lot today, and I would make some metaphor for how bruises only hurt when you touch them just like memories only sting when you remember them, but I’m tired of metaphors. I’m exhausted by metaphors. I’ve spent the last however many years smothered by metaphors that only just now am I relearning how to inhale properly so that the entirety of my lungs inflate. And still I stumble into metaphors like walking into doors, or kicking desks.

Just like bruises were once purple but change to yellow, you wouldn’t recognize the me I am today. My hair is blonde again. Today I bought a shirt from the guys’ department that has pelicans all over it; I learned that “boy buttons” button opposite “girl buttons.” My room is now gloriously stuffed to the brim with fake flowers, but I’m slowly learning how to take care of real flowers too. I find myself talking to the fake ones, like I’m practicing. I’m rebuilding my stuffed animal collection.

To anyone else, these are unremarkable blips in the continuation of a life. To me, and maybe to you except I don’t really care, they are mountain ranges proving how high I am climbing, and how far I am moving from the valley you dug me.

One day I might tell people your name. For now, you’re Ankle Bruise, you’re Donation Pile, you’re Trimmed Flower Stems. You’re fading from my existence, like blue haze over hills, like broken blood vessels under flesh.

You are purple, and I am yellow, and I am getting rid of metaphors.

xx,
Meg