An Atlas Of My Undoing

‎

【An unfinished prayer for a man who no longer calls me home.】

‎

‎dear God,

‎

‎i have become a beggar at Your gates,

‎and shame has worn my face so thin

‎that even the angels must look twice

‎to recognize the girl

‎You once taught to stand.

‎

‎i have brought You everything

‎my pride,

‎my sleep,

‎the little future i had folded

‎like a letter beneath my tongue.

‎

‎i have laid them at Your feet

‎and asked for one impossible mercy:

‎

‎make a stranger of him to the world,

‎if You must,

‎but not to me.

‎

‎i am so tired of being told

‎that what leaves was never mine to keep.

‎the grave takes what it loves, too, Lord,

‎yet every night the living bring it flowers.

‎

‎so tell me,

‎what am i supposed to do

‎with all this love

‎when its address no longer exists?

‎

‎his name has become a country

‎i am forbidden to enter.

‎still, my heart crosses its borders in sleep,

‎carrying contraband memories

‎beneath the ragged lining of my ribs.

‎

‎some nights, i wake speaking to him.

‎not loudly but

‎just enough to frighten the silence.

‎

‎and then i remember...

‎

‎oh, God, how cruelly the mind remembers,

‎the body still reaches

‎for the warmth of a hand

‎that has long since forgotten its shape.

‎

‎i have tried to bury him.

‎i swear i have.

‎

‎but grief is a terrible gardener;

‎it waters what i wish would die.

‎every morning, something of him blooms

‎where i had planted an ending.

‎

‎i have asked You to take this love away.

‎i have asked You to make me furious enough

‎to cauterize the wound.

‎i have asked You to let another face

‎be the last thing i see before sleep.

‎

‎but my heart is an old cathedral,

‎and his absence is the only bell

‎that still knows how to ring.

‎

‎forgive me, Lord,

‎for making an altar of a man

‎who could not even keep

‎the small promises he laid upon it.

‎

‎forgive me for confusing his hands

‎with the hands that made the stars.

‎for kneeling before a locked door

‎as though the wood might soften

‎if i wept beautifully enough.

‎

‎i know he is only human.

‎that is what makes this worse.

‎

‎i could have borne a monster.

‎i could have hated a demon

‎and called the hatred healing.

‎

‎but he was human

‎capable of tenderness,

‎capable of turning away,

‎capable of holding my heart

‎as though it were something precious

‎and dropping it

‎as though it were nothing at all.

‎

‎and i have spent so long

‎trying to reconcile those two men

‎that i have forgotten

‎which one i am mourning.

‎

‎God,

‎i do not know how to pray for him anymore.

‎

‎if i ask You to bless him,

‎my tongue feels traitorous.

‎

‎if i ask You to break him,

‎i hear the girl i used to be

‎crying somewhere inside my chest.

‎

‎she loved him so purely, Lord.

‎she thought love was a language

‎that could teach even the cruel

‎how to be kind.

‎

‎i have not told her

‎what the years have taught me.

‎

‎i cannot bear to watch her face

‎when she learns

‎that some people can be loved

‎until your knees are bruised

‎and still never turn around.

‎

‎so i let her keep believing.

‎

‎at night, when the world is asleep,

‎i let her sit beside the window

‎with her foolish, beautiful hope.

‎i let her imagine that somewhere,

‎beneath the same indifferent moon,

‎his heart has stumbled over her name.

‎

‎perhaps it has.

‎perhaps it hasn't.

‎

‎there are questions, Lord,

‎that become their own kind of torture

‎when no one answers them.

‎

‎and i have made a lifetime

‎out of asking one man

‎to explain the death

‎of the girl who loved him.

‎

‎you know, God,

‎i used to think miracles were loud.

‎

‎the sea parting.

‎the dead rising.

‎a thousand stars catching fire

‎in the palm of Your hand.

‎

‎now i think a miracle might be smaller.

‎

‎it might be waking up

‎and not reaching for my phone.

‎

‎it might be hearing his name

‎and feeling only the weather

‎passing through an empty room.

‎

‎it might be looking at the life ahead of me

‎and, for one unguarded second,

‎not searching its corners for him.

‎

‎but, Lord,

‎i am not there yet.

‎

‎tonight, i am still the woman

‎who would recognize his footsteps

‎among a thousand strangers.

‎

‎still the fool

‎who could hear his voice after years

‎and feel every locked door in her body

‎swing open at once.

‎

‎still the sinner

‎who asks heaven for a man

‎when heaven has given her a thousand reasons

‎to ask for freedom instead.

‎

‎and perhaps that is the prayer

‎i am too frightened to finish.

‎

‎not bring him back.

‎not make him sorry.

‎not even let him love me again but...

‎

‎God, if he is never coming home,

‎then please, please,

‎teach my heart to stop setting the table.

‎

‎i cannot keep a candle burning

‎for someone who has forgotten the way.

‎

‎i cannot keep dying

‎in the doorway of a life

‎that is still waiting for me.

‎

‎and i cannot spend the rest of my years

‎mistaking the ache of his absence

‎for proof that he belongs here.

‎

‎so i am leaving his name with You.

‎

‎not because i have stopped loving him.

‎not because i have forgiven what he did.

‎not because the wound has closed

‎or the nights have grown merciful.

‎

‎i am leaving his name with You

‎because my mouth has become a grave

‎and i am tired of swallowing the dead.

‎

‎keep him, if You will.

‎keep every version of him

‎i have loved,

‎every version i have lost,

‎every version i invented

‎to survive the man he was.

‎

‎keep the boy who made me believe.

‎keep the man who made me doubt.

‎keep the stranger who inherited his face

‎and took my future with him.

‎

‎i have no more room inside me

‎to house them all.

‎

‎And, God

‎

‎if he ever remembers me,

‎if my name should rise in him

‎like a hymn from some abandoned childhood,

‎if he ever wonders whether i still love him

‎do not answer for me.

‎

‎let the silence speak.

‎let him learn

‎what it means to call into a darkness

‎that once answered

‎with an entire world.

‎

‎as for me,

‎i will try to learn the language

‎of a morning that does not need him.

‎i will try to forgive my heart

‎for being the last place he lived.

‎

‎and if i never stop loving him completely,

‎if some small, stubborn ember of him

‎survives the winter of my years

‎then let it survive.

‎

‎not every ghost must be exorcised

‎to let the living breathe.

‎

‎but please, my God,

‎please

‎

‎when i am finally old enough

‎to look back without breaking,

‎when his name is only a name

‎and not a blade dressed in memory,

‎

‎let me understand

‎that You did not abandon me

‎when You did not return him.

‎

‎let me understand

‎that sometimes the unanswered prayer

‎is not a punishment.

‎sometimes it is a door

‎that refuses to open

‎because there is still a life

‎on the other side of it.

‎

‎and if I must walk through that door alone,

‎then stay with me.

‎stay when i turn around.

‎stay when i miss him.

‎stay when i mistake loneliness

‎for a reason to go back.

‎stay when the girl inside me

‎still believes that one day

‎he will come looking for what he lost.

‎

‎because i do not know

‎how to stop loving him tonight.

‎

‎i only know

‎that i cannot keep asking You

‎to give me back the person

‎i was before he broke my heart.

‎she is gone, too.

‎

‎and, Lord

‎

‎if You cannot give me back the love,

‎then please give me back the girl.

Instagram: @mniminii / bled_ink