Mud Vein

by Tarryn Fisher

“The truth is for the mind,” he says. “Lies are for the heart. So let’s just keep lying.” I kiss the man I lie to. He kisses me with truth. I am set free.

“Don’t die,” I warn him. “I’ll chase right behind you if you do.”

This is what it feels like to love, I think. It’s heavy. Or maybe it’s the responsibility that comes with it that’s heavy.

I fall backwards. For the first time I feel my mother in the fall. She chose to save herself. She couldn’t bear the weight of love—not even for her own flesh and blood. And in that fall, I feel her decision to leave me. It rocks my heart and breaks it all over again.

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”

“I like pain. I like when it lingers. It reminds a person of what they’ve lived through.”

It’s a painful thing to look inside yourself and see the whys and the hows of your clockwork. You are a lot uglier than you think, plenty more selfish than you are ever likely to admit.

What you wrap around your soul determines your outcome—

Forgive me for not recognizing our soul-likeness sooner, while we still had time.

I was sitting in a white room hating myself, until you breathed life back into me. You loved me so much that I started to love myself.