Buried are my feelings, buried is my heart.

There is a spot in my backyard where I lay. That’s not the truth, It’s not I who lays there. She is someone I used to know and someone I’ll never know. Her hands are tied for she needs them not, but her mouth is red and ready to speak.
My back to her she smiles at me. She is nothing like me.

I lay here while she walks our life. That is not the truth, for she does not walk but floats. A ghost in her, our, life.
She visits me sometimes. She hands me her love and her wrath; “Keep them” she says with disgust. I treasure them, they are, after all, mine.

I’m a hole of shame, she is the picture of perfection. I know her well; her fears, her ugly truth and wretched self. All of it is buried with me in our spot in the backyard.

She thinks I hate her, the girl in my backyard. I do but also I don’t. Most days I just wish to be like her, for my footprints to leave mark.
I do not talk to her for my lips are sealed with lies (a lie).

When I write there is dirt under my nails. Scraps of truth filter through my words, through the dirt in my nails. I know she likes it when I’m like her. I don’t. I do.

When I perform for others, hide and lie about the girl in my backyard blood coats my fingers. I know she is trying to dig herself out.

Night and dawn I sit in my ivory tower but glance longingly through a tiny window to the girl holding my secrets in the dirt. the girl in my backyard.

We grew up together, the girl in the window and I. We learnt about right and wrong. Praise and shame. We learnt the price of a mother’s love.
We learnt to sail calm waters and held ourselves together during hazardous storms.

Conceal and smile. Sin and scream.
Be good, be perfect, be sweet.
Be God. Hate God. Hate the girl in white. Hate the girl in black. Be both and be none.
We learnt life together.

She took me to the backyard, the future girl in the window. She was I, I was her. She told me to stay and dig.

The girl in my backyard never stopped digging, after all I have much to hide.

Tonight I watch her from my tower of lies. “The hole has gotten too deep” I whisper.
Tonight I watch her from my hole of shame. “The tower has gotten too tall” I scream.

The girl from the window is now before me, this time she does not give me her back.
The girl from the backyard is now before me, this time she does not smile.

She, pure white, holds me as she once did. I bury a knife in her back
She, dirty black, holds me as she once did. My sword’s edge strikes her heart.

“I never really held all your shame”
“I never really learnt how to lie”

Our final words to the girl we never knew, the girl we learnt to hate, the girl we almost were, the girl we always knew.

We die as one, as the girl in the backyard and the girl high in her ivory tower.
I’m glad I killed you. I’m glad you are gone.

From our ashes is she, the girl of fire, wielder of storms.

I hope she never meets the buried.
I hope she never meets the digger.

Her steps will leave mark and she’ll learn to run.
Her shame won’t weigh her down and she’ll learn to fly.

A love letter to the girl in the window, to the girl in the backyard.