Aliya Talbani

Weights

By: Aliya Talbani

It’s more than a lack of. Thats the usual assumption, I suppose. I don't think that’s a very accurate speculation. It’s painful. It ends like a burn; it starts like a weight. It’s hard to say when it begins. You don’t always notice that it’s there. It builds slowly and only when it’s bad do you realize how

far gone you are. It’s not like falling, you don't crash. It’s like travelling; the distance between you and what you know grows until you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere. It starts with a pressingyou’re compressing- pushing yourself into a tangle of sheets because your first reaction is that you don’t need to give in. You let it hold you down in hopes that it’ll eventually let you go.

It doesn’t.

You should know that release isn't so simple. You curl up because you think that if you’re smaller the pressure will be less. You try to pull your sheets up to your chin, but thats when you realize your hands are shaking- they’re quaking- spasming to release whatever it is that is shoving you down into your cushions and rolling into a ball. It’s not you, or maybe it is, but you surely hope it isn’t because that’s the last thing you want. The last thing you want iis the arms that are wrapped so tightly around you to be yours. It’s hard to realize that you’re both the person who is fighting to hold yourFall2014 41

self together and the person who bred the toxic thoughts that led you here in the first place, By: Dominique Davis-Hart

You will know it has hit you when everything you breath in is all you just exhaled. It feels like ropes wrapping around your arms, shifting and pulling tighter.

It is cold and it is cruel. There aren’t hands suffocating you, smothering you until breathing is no longer natural. There are weights.

I guess it’s loneliness.

I don't mind being alone. But being lonely - well, thats a whole other thing. I didn't think my body could handle ache so severely with what I was sure had only been a pain in the mind. I didn’t think a concept could keep me up until I couldn’t remember what day it was.

The worst part was the burn. It wasn’t odd for me to have wounds- too frequent were the occasions when i dropped my curling wand onto my foot or accidentally clamped my hand around a hot pt- but to have such pain manifest from my emotions… that was unusual, and it hurt more than anything. There was neither cream I 42 TheEcho