Broken With You

I remember the first time you opened up to me.
You were uncomfortable, your plush couch, previously made of clouds had seemingly turned into jagged rocks.
This all started when I asked you how you were.
"I'm fine." You said. But you said it like you the words were walking on the tips of rocky mountains, too careful, to busy to cover up your pain.
"How are you really?" I asked.
You looked surprised back at me. Your butt didn't know if it were on clouds again or if it was still balancing on knives, so you changed your position again. Your hand went up to your face and you wiped it from your left cheek, over your lips, to the bottom of your chin. You held your hand there as if it was the only thing supporting your entire body.
I didn't back down. I stood firm. Well, I was sitting, but I wasn't letting go. I cared. Still do.
You didn't know what to do with this. Sat there, on your knives, holding yourself up by the chin like my caring was a bullet blazing slowly to you.
Then it hit you.
It went strait through you. I turned the whole world upside-down right then in that room with one bullet and no gun.
You looked at me strangely. The world WAS upside-down for you. North was South, South was North. Your compases spun. Your GPS was broken. The books were made out of ink you used to write on paper pens. The fire in the fireplace burned snow and every light in the room emitted darkness. You couldn't take it. Your mask was on the inside. Your emotional guts exposed waiting for the damage the bullet had caused to take its effect.
I said your name. You watched a little spittle come off of my tongue and drop onto your hand.
You thought it was gross. And that was your anchor. So you dropped it.
"Gross." You said, it was barely a whisper, but it was an echoey room and it would surely grow loader.
I asked you if that was how you felt and you paused, then said "no" in a calm, but firm tone. You were anchored after all. No matter how silly and inconsequential the dirt and rocks you anchored to were, you were still anchored.
We were both silent.
Your world upside-down, you tried to gett some footing, to walk your words gently over to me. "I'm..." you said, "I'm..." you searched your entire upside-down world of all its inhabitants and its chaos for the words.
You felt rushed. Like a shark was swimming behind you, but then swam beside you doing a backstroke just to mock you.
"I dont know." You said, looking at the floor, at nothing that interested you.
Then I said something that shocked you. Something that made you remember summertime and winter all at the same time. Something that made you comfortable on those knives in your seat. Something that was so big that it crushed the buildings in your world and rebuilt them in an instant. Something so simple that it was complex.
You didn't see my face till I was done saying the words. But you brought your head up so fast that the world in your head would have broken if it wasn't so strong, even if you did think it was broken.
"I know." I said.
Your emotional guts were fine. But I broke your well constructed mask. The one you had taken years to craft, to shield you from the world, or just to hide yourself. I broke it with one bullet. Two words.
There were no words after that for a while. We just sat there and forgot to remember the future. We just lived there in that moment for a while. Your mask shattered on the ground. My mask lying in wait for me.
There were no words. They weren't needed anyways. They weren't there. We just held each other from across the room. And I repeated my words again, "I know."
Your world wasn't less upside-down or ruined than it was.
Your heart no less in ashes.
Your mind no less broken.
But I sat there and held you and your tears, hoping that your tears could wash the salt residue off my face.
And we were sad.
And we were not content.
But we were together.
And I am grateful.