day 103

My mother always told me to never cry over two things:

Broken hearts
and paper cuts

She would always say,
"Shush. It's so little. You only feel it now because you can see how broken it is."

When my boyfriend broke up with me,
she told me how dumb I looked for crying over a boy
I wasn't even married to.
She then continued to lecture me about how the only man she's ever cried over
was the poor excuse I had for a father.
Said,
"Three children and millions of affairs later,
I had no choice.
He was just a paper cut I ignored for years and
years and kept giving my treasure of a breath to.
I didn't cry because my heart was broken
or because I didn't send him a love letter
enveloped by disappointment,
I cried because I had become a hollow needle
waiting for someone that didn't want to stick around."

To this day,
every time I get my heart broken,
I just tell her I got a paper cut.
Her truth stings less that way.


When my mother underwent a liver biopsy,
I came home to her standing in the kitchen eating lunch.
She told me that she closed her eyes,
they put her to sleep, and they stuck a hollow needle into her side.
Said she was just a little tired
and that her body ached, but there was nothing to worry about.
That night
she asked me to help her into her king-sized bed.
Her body ached too much to do it by herself.
After seeing her struggle to just lift her body up,
to move,
to even hold my hand,
I found myself struggling to breathe.
Like every breath I took
would feed into the paper cuts her body was storing.
She just kept her eyes closed,
screamed out that she was in so much pain,
but never shed a tear.
I kept reminding myself not to cry in front of her.
That the sound of a sob would just be enough
to wake up the broken body she has called home for years.
To be the strength she has lost and the strength I had grown
To ignore the sound of the shattering heart I had
just pieced back together
To ignore the sting of a million paper cuts slicing my skin
every time she held my hand

"Shush. It's so little. You only feel it now because you can see how broken it is."

Nowadays,
I keep my eyes closed until I'm ready to see the damage.
I don't watch myself bleed anymore.
I hold my breath
and remember that I don't need help to dream
and that I don't need to wake up next to a love letter I never wanted to write
and feel the sting of being torn apart by the hand of the lover I was dealt.

If it's one thing I've learned from my mother's lectures,

It would be the fact that my breath is golden
and that I should only open my eyes to send a lost love
one last sob
and to seal an envelope of the stinging
millions of shattered heart I have left.
but I no longer dare cry over broken hearts
and paper cuts,
I cry because I've let myself become a hollow needle
waiting for someone that didn't want to stick around.