It’s hard to change; to accept change. That’s why you struggle, grip, claw, and cling. It can feel like you’ve wasted time, so you hold onto it, and try to forget the voice in the back of your head (the one that you deny because it calls you to change). Sometimes it’s giving up your home, your sense of belonging, the quiet comforts of familiarity. You can feel like a house having your walls slowly ripped out, but that’s better than being a fire having its flames smothered out…

I kept returning to the pairs, the complements; fire and water, morning and night, clouded and clear. I can see it though I’m not sure I understand it. Why does light feel so much like something? Why does the darkness feel so much like nothing?

I drew the curtains, put a pillow on the floor, and sat down. Stiff and stretched breaths, where the spine was tightly drawn. Back further, deeper, his arms, and her feeling safe. The tears that slowly rolled down my face felt like marbles, with weight.

My chest physically hurt in a way that confused me. An overrun garden – the ribs had split through the heart and circled back around, constricting like Ivy. Yet, through the thorns and prickled brambles, I still felt that softness. Spaces where even silk or butterflies could grow.

A winding, dirt road, narrow enough for only one car, and to the left a steep precipice. Coming to a plateau, I’d stopped and realised the sounds. The wind cutting through the silent mountains and the deafening cicadas, as if they were echoing through the valley. Descending then, another hour more, until I began to smell the salt through the pine trees. Sougia’s village was almost still untouched, with only a handful of small hotels. A wide, stone beach stretched down to a cove. Hippies had tents and hammocks lined between the Tamarisk trees, their raw bodies sheltered between the rocks. I swam naked, out beyond. That Mediterranean blue like electricity or heroin. Past the largest rock of the cove, the temperature dropped so rapidly that it startled me. Diving under, recognising that the water was much deeper, and the floor was now lost. Remembering the words, I watched the clouds while floating, wondering about the emptiness of freedom.