Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash
by Mileva Anastasiadou
Broken and discarded and floating around like a jigsaw determined to fall back into place but can’t. He stares while my pieces linger undecided, like he hasn’t noticed I’ve fallen apart, like he can’t tell I’m broken: hands disconnected from the arms, torso lingering above the head, legs folded under the armpits. Only the eyes and the mouth are still well placed on a face that floats between two hands, like they’re holding it, but in fact wave aimlessly at passers-by as if asking for help. He kneels down and kisses my mouth. He raises his hands up high and catches my hands and holds them tight like he cares and I’m enough and he loves me, and I do my best to fall back into place, to realign my body parts, and if I could speak, I’d cry for help, help, help, but my tongue is misplaced somewhere under my feet, my heart still beating somewhere, only I can’t see it, pumping blood through invisible vessels, as he breathes life back inside my soul, because he can’t put me together, but he can keep me alive, hold me together while I repair and glue back what’s missing. We inhale, exhale, we breathe and we smile and we glow, like we’re safe and we have all the time in the world and everything isn’t dark and ruined and pointless, but as it should be.
Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece and the author of “We Fade With Time” and “Christmas People”. She’s the flash fiction editor of Blood+Honey and the Argyle journals.
