Metaphorical Oblivion by

The way my lips form a curve whenever I see your name come up on my screen as the notification goes off, *ping*, you are online. My heart does that thing it does, you know that thing, where it skips a beat or a few bars, kind of like that girl in a bar who drank too much and fell off her heels on the dancefloor after one too many shots of tequil – a.

Deep down I know it’s not real, but this metaphor is like a sandcastle that we built in the air and not with sand but with words and the pictures of our days, play in my head like a film reel and this forms our exchanges and our conversations.

Cyber-ficial interchanges of ideas and thoughts of what makes us tick and of what makes us talk. We miss each other. But what is it that we miss if not something we can touch? We have built this metaphor of emotions that are not tangible, but yet we can feel it.

We feel it when we say you and when we say I and when the word love is weaved in between the two to form a sentence that to most would read I love you, but to us, it remains invisible to our naked eye…

because we cannot say it, not to each other, it would be a lie, because you cannot love a metaphor. A symbol, an image, a façade, you cannot love a representation of your imagination.

You cannot hold a screenshot of the last message that came through when you felt lonely and their online presence was the only thing that comforted you like the virtual presents that he would send you.

You cannot kiss the text message that reads “I want to be with you”, as your lips part and you read the words and envision his lips touching yours as you mouth the last syllable out loud.

I close my eyes and the images that flood my mind open the valves of my tear ducts and the salty water escapes and burns my cheek as it falls to the ground, like my emotions fall – slowly, but it makes a loud sound.

One that makes me open my eyes and stare at the veil that is between us, the veil that has become my refuge.

I tell myself: I want more. I need more. That’s when reality sets in and it feels like a knife has been pushed through my heart as I catch my breath and in that moment I realize… I AM IN LOVE WITH A METAPHOR