The Disappearing Hand.

My earliest memories are of your hand slipping away from me, like sand through my fingers, across the land, agonized that you don’t understand.

Bruised, beaten hearts are my brand, ripped me apart like poison, and somehow resilient, I still stand— devoid of anger, an unchanged man, despite your plots against our plans.

So I raise a paper cup to my parched lips again; a toast to your assault of your best friend. For you, I would’ve dived the depths of every ocean, or ventured to the edges of the Earth, if only you had asked— but your neglect was enough to destroy my worth.

So I chased my dreams at the bottom of bottles instead. Drowning, despair embraced me as I descend; here is where I belong, safely sedated by a siren song.

I crash into jagged shores that tear me open— though I swear I’ll be whole again. If I survived abandonment, there is no wound from which I cannot mend.

But healing is not heroic— it is quiet, it is humiliating, it is slow.

It is learning how not to reach for the same disappearing hand every time loneliness starts to grow teeth.

And maybe one day, I will remember that what slipped away from me was never meant to be what holds me together.