Sometimes the boulder feels like

Fine, black, packed sand, a boulder wrapped in bubblegum, heavy like a million tons of wasted time, of the years spent chasing some kind of relief for the aches in my veins. It’s a home I inherited and can’t afford, dusty, worn out, empty, cavernous rooms, and a darkness like the new moon. No windows, no front door, no back door, no trap door, just an endless, undone, merciless cavity. An old, run-down shack of whispers from generations before who never lived there long enough to fix it up. Forgotten, familiar, ours, mine. If these walls could talk, they’d just weep to pass the time. Plastered in unrelenting quiet, if these walls could talk, they'd scream until they go blind.

It’s not a pleasant place. I feel like half my being lives there and half of it is struggling to find its way back from right down the block. I feel it all over my torso and just underneath my skin– this nagging, gut-wrenching longing to get home. An all-consuming, sick-to-my-stomach, breathless kind of fear, that even if I make it, it still won’t ever feel safe there, that it could burn to a crisp any minute, that it would get swallowed up by the earth with me still in it. It’s a strip of skin from my throat to my gut that I wish I could rip off like a bandaid. It gets so hot in here I get the chills, my outer layer steaming and growing thin. There’s a part of me stuck there, clinging to the ceiling, desperate to be found. Wishing wholeheartedly that I will one day return with enough stuff to make this place a home, to finally feel whole. 

She’s never seen the outside. She’s spent her whole life breathing restless air, daydreaming about what’s out here and convinced it would find its way in soon enough. She'd only leave over her dead body. All this waiting will be worth it, she’s sure of it. What she’s meant to have, she is certain is coming. And the only way to make it out alive is to wait and see if someone comes to save you. If you don’t wait, they will never come. If you don’t stay put in the darkness, counting your blessings, building a shelter of hopes and dreams, setting yourself on fire to light up the corners and send smoke signals, they will never come. If you don’t pace back and forth, walk laps around this empty room, keep tally of all the times you tried to find the door and failed, bite your fingernails and pray that what you’re meant to have will bust down the bricks to come find you. 

If you don’t wait, they will never come.