Torn Pages


I am raw today.⁣

My book is open and exposed. ⁣

Embedded in its thin bent spine are the ragged torn edges of missing pages. ⁣

Irreconcilable words that worried my skin like the relentless prickling of a thoughtless woolly sweater. ⁣

It dug into the hollow of my underarms. It’s fibrous hold squeezing tighter and tighter around my ribs.⁣

No matter how much I pulled and stretched, it refused to fit. ⁣

Even as I tear the page off, its serrated rip-rip-rip accused me of cowardice, failure and defeat.⁣

But in this book too are dog-eared pages, left by a past self, for this future me. ⁣

Reminding her to come to it again on these hard days. Knowing these times always come. ⁣

Her love notes to tell me that these loaded days too shalt pass. ⁣

Hastily scribbled in heavy uppercase, thrown out in a last bid attempt to maybe, tether me one day.⁣

"𝘛𝘙𝘜𝘚𝘛 𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘗𝘙𝘖𝘊𝘌𝘚𝘚" she whispers to me through this haze of ashen grey.⁣

Two bold lines underlining it. Linear runes to anchor this tenuous present. ⁣

One to stay the course. One to keep the faith.⁣

But the ink has faded. ⁣

My fingers bear the guilty inky smudges of dormant fretting. The unconscious rubbing away of all I can no longer bear.⁣

There is no past wisdom for me to moor myself to in these moments.⁣

Just jagged edges of a torn page that found no belonging today.⁣

Yet. ⁣

It is this absent page that speaks volumes.⁣

Not how wrong I have been.⁣

But that as long as there is a blank page.⁣

I can write my own belonging into being.⁣

For a future self to know, she made it once before. She will make it through once more.⁣

So, I begin. ⁣

Slowly. Falteringly.⁣

But I write...⁣
An intimate setting of a vintage typewriter with a peonie


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