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There's a little bit of me left everywhere I've been.
In the countless corners of my childhood bedroom, I hope someone looked at the pink walls and unicorn wallpaper and wondered about the little girl that slept there.
I wonder if I'm afraid to be forgotten, I know no one will remember me, so I leave trails like breadcrumbs hoping someone will pick up a piece and carry it with them.
In the upper corner of the art cabin at camp, who found the folded note tucked among the rafters? Did anyone? Perhaps it's still there.
Death feels crept up inside my ribs, like I'm already gone, like this is purgatory.
Under the roots of the big cedar, where we built our fort and hid away from the world. Where the hawk crashed from the sky brought down by many smaller birds. Is the tiny pencil and paper still there? Are the notes still crying?
I wish I didn't feel this way, but I don't think it will change. I just want to get through it. I want to be safe.
The smear of burgundy red on the closet door, were they ever able to figure that out? Do they know it's just risen pigment from a child's art project? Or do they think as others do of blood?
My blood, pieces of myself washed away down the drain. Maybe I gave away too much, maybe this was the final straw.
Penmarks etched into the door trim, carved into layers of white paint. Proof. We were here. Together for the last time. Together.
I don't want to lose anything else, I can't and I won't. These are mine. They're mine. I hold them to my breast and snarl, mine.
Smears of red and blue and purple around the edges of the sink, a nest of hair behind the counter, a hairband left on the bedroom table.
Pieces of me, please remember me for the moment we shared, not everything after. Not everything you came to know.
Who still holds my art, the drawings I gifted and gave? My essence trapped in the dried ink and graphite. Were they discarded?
This is a world in which I can't exist.
“You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.”*
Becomes the mantra in which I follow.
I'll go on, I'll go on, I'll go on. Even without my soul in my chest, I'll go on.
In the items I've given, do they carry extra warmth? Does the blanket wrapped around your shoulders plague you with visions of what it has seen? Perhaps there is only dryer soft fabric in the place of horror and you sleep without a thought of me.
I've been trying to run away, trapped now at the breaking point. Nothing left to give but everything. My hands are shaking and the water below is so cold and thrashing. Its touch I know by scent alone and salt spray mist clings to my skin as if trying to pull me back.
Before me is the shining barrel I know so well. I've stared down its chamber and know the abyss that follows.
“Jump and I'll chase you.”
“Run and I'll find you.”
“Can't you feel the leash around your throat pulling you back?”
My heart is hammering, the blasting wind is frigid against my back. If I were to fall it promises to catch me, but the bruises on my body say otherwise.
There's nothing left to do, nothing left but to fill this beautiful husk with the press of metal against my lips. The card of fingers through my hair.
The leash around my throat tightens and my knees bite into the rocky ground.
At least here, my name will be remembered.
*Samuel Beckett- The Unnamable.