body

The way we feel is of the body. Bodily. We take the information in and turn it into some physical affliction. Disappointment becomes flu. Guilt becomes cancer. Anger is a migraine churning the bile in our stomachs. The things we have said to each other heat our flesh till one day we spontaneously combust. The stigmata of the things you said to me dripping fluids from the palm of my hands. And we, sisters, who were once conjoined walk free in the world with the raw flesh of our separation still weeping.

Guilt

I will never outrun it. It marks the distance between us, and each year this gulf widens. I stand at my side and I peer across and I am reminded of how you drew a line across the middle of our floor. My side and yours. and the distance between you and me impassable. What began in childhood is now thick and heavy and scarred over.

Mostly I forget about you and you forget about me and there is this scab of distance between us. Nice. So long as nothing smashes into the wound, like guilt, the hammer, thumping the wound till it splits and bleeds all over the place.

Hardest

My friend needs to be brave enough to write the hardest thing. We can edge around it making craft, we can potter in the shallows making pretty pictures with our words and the ideas will be fine, good enough. But the hardest thing is where we struggle. The harder we struggle the better it will be.

I have settled on my own hard thing and although it hurts to write it, it will be rewarding. Throw yourself into the deep end and if you swim it will be strong and fast and the kind of life-saving swimming that makes a good spectator sport.

I know you don't want to write it, but just do it. Now or in ten years or later still. You will have to come back to this eventually. Do it now while I am standing at your side promising that I will not let you fall.