Rose has arranged a few days away for us both as a birthday gift. We’re running away from home, but we’re packing all our vulnerabilities, the broken bits of heart into our suitcase. Bringing all the demons along, the way it feels like I can’t quite catch my breath all the time. Bringing the nightmares, the portal into darkness and loss, waking with the memory of rope tight on my wrists, the burning lights of his touch in my skin. Bringing the dreams where I try to make things work out, dreaming the same dream a hundred times and no matter what I try it all ends in loss. Bringing the pain in the lines around my mouth and the futility in my hands at rest. I’m running away from the days that flip from good to dangerously bad without warning, from nights where I only go to sleep after checking with my love if she’ll be safe in the darkness. I’m running from the split in my world: it’s a beautiful day/I’m dying inside: because they’re both deeply true and tearing my heart apart. I’m running away from feeling so good, so loved, so blessed that I’m holding myself back from lying my head in friends laps and crying with joy. I’m running away from biting down on the scream in my chest because there’s nowhere in my world that could bear that kind of pain without catching fire. Running from the house full of tender soft baby things. I’m taking the self hate with me, sewn into every inch of my skin. Running somewhere with wide open skies and deep black nights, somewhere my heart can swell to its true size, feel all the love and all the pain without waking the street.