The Decorum of Pretending

I won’t tell you what these colors mean.

If I could explain them, I wouldn’t have needed to sketch them, splash them, or drag them across the page.

Lately, disappointment has hurt more than heartbreak.

Especially when it comes from someone you thought you knew. Someone you trusted. Someone who was not supposed to become difficult to recognize.

The hardest part is standing in front of that person and knowing you still have to behave like nothing changed.

Because before anything else, we were friends.

And maybe we still are in some altered, quieter way.

But I miss us before we required this much composure.

I keep thinking about the room where silence had not found us yet.

Back when I didn’t rehearse my face, when I didn’t wonder what to say, or what not to.

My face has never learned the decorum of pretending. It tells the truth before I am ready to speak it.

So I am learning to become someone you can see without me bleeding all over the floor.

Contained. Not cold. Just held together.

So I bring it here.

To paper. To ink. To color.

Blue for the part of me trying to stay still.

Magenta for everything I could no longer contain.