I trust subtext. Almost exclusively.

I don’t see my mom and dad as I often as I once did. I suspect that’s generally what happens when you no longer live with people.

Maybe absence has made our hearts grow fonder. Perhaps that explains the pleasantries.

“Get well soon,” I suspect, is what they’re saying.

“Let’s make the most of what we have,” is what it sounds like to me.

It’s the dark spaces between the well-intentioned lies that resonate most genuine. Echoing deafeningly between boundaries. Engulfing fissures with their impossible volume.

My smile is a mask. A disguise cut from a half-read book. Simple. Effective.

But hollow.

It doesn’t fit so well anymore.

My frown is the same.

Both worn and tattered garments, but garments nevertheless.

Symptoms of insignificant states. Quantifiable values in some emotional dimension that can be erased and rewritten. Reimagined, recalculated, redefined.

Then further revised.

Named. Renamed.

Detached.

Reattached.

Potentiated.

Outright fucking murdered.

Mercilessly survived.

Ghosts made flesh.

Untouchable.

Beyond killable.

Haunting beautiful spaces that remain perfectly livable.

Long story, short:

I let someone in, and got very hurt.

I’ve spent the past six weeks trying to convince myself I didn’t deserve it, and trying to develop a set of rules to ensure it never happens again.

Fools’ errands.

These things do happen.

Invulnerability is a seductive dream. Toughness is a hard-earned skill.