Arrhythmia

It’s cold and each ventricle hesitates. I’ve turned off my warmth and I sigh the crystallized, grief-scented release, standing barefaced in the whip of the truth that I am not enough.

A flash bang of pain and memory weigh my upside-down frown back upright and for a brief moment I feel the sting of my new name.

My core quickens at the rustle of approach so I bleach away any evidence of effect. It was only a little bird who whispered this confirmation.

My mother told me Spirit screams in whispers.

The quiet still voice warns my fears of the destruction and terror found in validation and Birdie’s whispers of brokenness reached the parts of my soul I didn’t even know love could swim in.

But there I stood.

Cold inside.

Drowning in the icy winds of good sense.

Crushed under the weight of the water, knowing that whatever warmth you had left to spare, evaporated off a little birdie’s wings, dissolved into nothingness.