NEW STITCHES // DONIA ELMAGHRABI

I can almost see it. 

You’re staying in bed, somebody let you down again. The world seems far too big, far too cruel, and you ache in places you never even knew existed. It aches to remember, it aches to breathe. 

You think of yourself as spoiling fruit, too ugly to even be seen in white light. You hide underneath the covers, chasing the shadows of people who didn’t have the heart to love you anymore. You lose yourself somewhere in the middle of the chaos in your head, your hands burning from all the scratching at the edges and the clawing at the walls. Your feet are tired from spending so much time running away from them when you always end up running into their open arms. 

Your voice is a drowning siren, I can see your rage turning red. I can see the coldness biting deep into your chest, I can see you trying to think of anything else but the way you feel. 

Counting the shapeless figures on the ceiling. Pushing the earphones a little closer. Making the music go louder and the car speed faster. Letting the numbness take over. But still, you remember every nuance of every word of every time. You measure time in bursts of clarity that come way too scarcely. You measure it in whispers, in words, in the distance between two sounds. It stretches, and it shrinks, and it takes you back to places that make it harder to want to wake up in the morning. 

But let me tell you just this: I’m here now. I’m braver than your loneliness, and I’m stronger than the tides that pull at your heart.

We can jump off buildings together and turn into soaring birds on our way down. I will make you so full of light, you would forget where you buried your darkness. I will love you so hard, it will feel like anchors opening up our hearts from the inside out, and I wouldn’t mind. I’ll tear your old self from its chains and hinges, and I will love you all the way into finding a brand new heart. 

I will teach you never to hold your breath unless you plan on letting it out, and how there always is the good kind of breathless. I will teach you that it’s okay if someone you love undid your veins with a seam ripper or took a blade to your almost-but-never-quite-healed wounds, I’ll have the patience to stitch them back up no matter how tired I get of holding the needles. I will be new stitches to all of your old wounds. 

You know I’m not the “hold your hands when they’re quivering kind of person”, and I’m not the “let you cry on my shoulders” one either. But I could try to be the person who makes you laugh so hard, you hardly remember the tears striking your cheeks. I can be the person who makes you forget to remember that you’re still hurting. 

I’ll be your armor, if they come with their hurtful words and their chainsaw memories to get you, they’ll have to cut me down too before they get anywhere near you. It will ache anyway. I know that. But if the aches turn into open cuts and broken bones, I will heal you. 

So let the noose of rope find its way around your neck, let the concrete ground embrace your falling body, let the venom course through your blood and the razors cut into your skin. 
I will save you every time.