pain and joy in equal measure

part poetry blog part emotional dumping ground part diary. this is where i wish for things. this is where i'm scared.

[honey-ache]

cough syrup

i revile the idea of approaching sadness with an open mouth. letting it slide down my throat like a snake coated in petrol. if i must swallow it then let me maul it like an animal. let me tear it with my teeth. i want to taste its blood. i want to crunch on spun sugar. broken glass. cobwebs and old tree bark and bits of wet dirt. anything to wash the bitter taste from my tongue. 

[honey-ache]

there is a rot in me that won’t go away. it counts pennies at my bedside. fills my mouth with the taste of metal. makes my head buzz like an insect. 

[honey-ache]

I am glad to be alive.

[honey-ache]

the rainy season’s started and all the world is green and lush. cars drift though their own mist on the road and everyone packs a little tighter under awnings and balconies. I like it like this. I like the quiet susurration of water against land. I like the rain in my hair and on my feet and along my legs. I like knowing that everyone is the same beneath the clouds, a little wet, a little cold, a little lost, angling for the nearest dry, safe place.

[honey-ache]

sometimes I feel like I am something that is not quite human but human adjacent. 

[honey-ache]

cut me open and lay my organs on the table to see. here’s the heart, a little smaller than most. here’s stomach, swollen but empty. hungry. the brain a rusty screw. the mouth still gnawing even now

[honey-ache]

should I work to be more human? to feel things as if my skin weren’t coated in glass? to make my eyes hot and wet when sad things happen like I am supposed to? 

[honey-ache]

maybe sometimes I just want to be at peace with being a monster. 

[honey-ache]

sometimes I feel like I am something that is not quite human but human adjacent. 

[honey-ache]

cut me open and lay my organs on the table to see. here’s the heart, a little smaller than most. here’s stomach, swollen but empty. hungry. the brain a rusty screw. the mouth still gnawing even now

[honey-ache]

should I work to be more human? to feel things as if my skin weren’t coated in glass? to make my eyes hot and wet when sad things happen like I am supposed to? 

[honey-ache]

sometimes I feel like I am something that is not quite human but human adjacent. 

[honey-ache]

cut me open and lay my organs on the table to see. here’s the heart, a little smaller than most. here’s stomach, swollen but empty. hungry. the brain a rusty screw. the mouth still gnawing even now

[honey-ache]

sometimes I feel like I am something that is not quite human but human adjacent. 

[honey-ache]

Sometimes I feel as if my father's love is eroding. The more time passes the more it wears away. The more he realizes I'm not the daughter he wanted, the more diminished I become. Easier to devalue. To degrade. Queer children realize very quickly that their parents' love is conditional. That love unencumbered by expectation is something very rare and precious.

Sometimes I wish he'd just hated me from the start. I hate this limbo. I hate watching him learn how to stop loving me. 

I just want it to end.

[honey-ache]

small kindnesses

i woke up today with my cat a warm alive thing beside me. the sunlight made golden geometry across the floor and outside a bird was alive as well. it sang to let me know

[honey-ache]

on a lighter note this morning while i drove to school an awful little roach with a spiky butt climbed up the glass of my open window. i decided i hated him on the spot and i tried to close my window but it only prompted him to scramble inside and make himself at home on the ceiling of my car. at a red light, in full sight of a man at the bus stop, i tried to gently prompt the darn thing back outside with my pen but that endeavor too, was a failure. he fell on my lap and i shrieked very loud and slapped at my bare legs and missed my green light because of this centimeter long harmless organism. i blame it on his terrible crawly little legs. i don’t know what fate befell him but i suspect he’s still inside my car. waiting for me to return so he can scare the shit out of me again.

[honey-ache]

my chief complaint this week is that i can’t stop thinking about my dad dying and how i will never be prepared for that cataclysm and i will never really recover from it.

the other day i was in bed drinking tea and reading a good book with my cat purring soft and warm in my lap and suddenly i could not stop imagining how cold i would feel once the inevitable wheel of time ran me over with the loss of her too. i hate that. i hate that. i can never love something without being afraid of losing it. is that a testament to my love or just my mental illness?

[honey-ache]

i want to swallow the sun. i want the warmth to suffuse my cells. i want the night to end. i want

[honey-ache]

i don’t want to decay and die. i suspect that i am wasting the days of my youth. every sunrise is a slice of apple that rests upon my lips and i fear that i am letting them all fall away, rotten

[honey-ache]

my body loves to worry. it loves to keep me awake at night. in the dark. in the quiet. it tells me im a knife and it's only the handle. i cannot be happy without hurting someone else.

[honey-ache]

it’s always a bit of a heartbreak to realize that you are designed to circle sink drains. there are bits of my mind that have sharp edges and they cut into the rest of me and they do not care that i am bleeding. the parts of me that i like are all soft and wet and too weak to fight back and i start to wonder sometimes if i like them at all or if i just prefer them to the bleeding.

[honey-ache]

look at an x-ray of my chest. in the grainy swirls of old silver you’ll see that you were the closest i’ve come to loving anything more than i was afraid of losing it. see how my heart beat too fast. see where it broke my ribs.