death is a myoclonic jerk

i keep telling myself that.

[pasteldangerous]

I can hear the soft remnants of piano through the apartment walls. The candle in front of me burns listlessly and reminds me of myself. I'm sitting here quietly, still but for my breathing, and I can feel an aching warmth in my legs, in my bones, in my muscles. Nothing to be done about it and forced into stillness like the flame burning in its jar, I cannot move, I cannot move, I need to but I do not want to. I nod at the candlewick. It nods back at me.

[pasteldangerous]

i'm a little selfish

a little insecure

the camp is quiet

except for the gentle

breath of the woods

and all i want to do

is hold you

still

i hope when you look

up at the sky and see

bright pins of light

you think of me

and i hope when you

look up at the sky and

see a shooting star

two shooting stars

one million shooting stars

you think of me

every time

i hope i hope i hope

still

the earth breathes her

fresh air in the long hours

while my lover sleeps

in the dark, and

out of the way

still

i love her and i miss her

and i want you to think

of holding me. and of

yearning.

home soon

still

i am still selfish

and i am still insecure

will you think of me?

[pasteldangerous]

It's been a year. 365 days. I wish I kept count of which ones were good and which ones were bad - all I know for sure is that your birthday is in 21 days and I don't feel very worthy of love. Keeping you so close but out of reach hurts. Nothing is the same. Death is a prettier curse than this one, though far less easy to get ahold of. 365 days since all my firsts began. How fitting to end that year cycle with one more. A first and a last.

[pasteldangerous]

'I really wish i hadn't,' the glassy surface of a sea of misguided resolve. You are twisting within yourself. I am wilting. This water is icy, and she does not nourish. My roots are necrosed. I am drowning.

[pasteldangerous]

You ever wander back into the mouth of the creature who bit you because the warmth of their breath feels like the only comfort you have left?

[pasteldangerous]

We do not love the dark parts of ourselves. We seek to take them to the river - i want to wrap my fingers delicately around his neck and submerge him, an unwelcome final baptism, an unwilling gift from the parent who could not nurture. Perhaps therein lies the problem; we see these dark parts and address them with fear and shame, we loathe, we hate, we scream and cry until our vocal chords run ragged like the bow-hairs of a tortured violinist. We could pluck ever so gently and coo and bring our soft lips to these dark children of ours. I love you. I'll hold you. You'll be safe with me. Instead, we neglect them and leave them to fester - a child, brushed aside, will seek attention by any means necessary. The act of revoking our love from these most tumultuous, stormy pieces of ourselves, of dangling it above like a cruel test, cultivates the very thing we blame our darkness for doing: when we cherry pick who might receive our love, we encourage strife and discord within ourselves. We foster the hatred we want so desperately to stamp out and we fan those desperate coals. They roar into flames and we cannot quiet the burns any longer. I desire to take him to the river and watch the air leave his lungs, but i take him to the river, and we skip rocks and dip our toes in, try to catch fish as we wade into knee-deep waters with bare feet. I feel no love for you, but i will make you feel loved. I will find that peace within myself. For you.

[pasteldangerous]

Words do not come to me.

You ask me to close my eyes. If I close them, the world as it is will be revealed to me.

It is difficult; some days more than others I find my eyes snap open, and closing them once more is akin to climbing a rugged, unforgiving mountain.

There's a hole in the wall. You tell me, as a last-second thought, about the girl who visited you today.

About the girl who visited you yesterday.

About the girl who just happened to be in the area last week.

I bite myself in the vulnerable parts of me. Hard. I claw and I scratch. Sometimes I feel violated. Sometimes I feel as though I am being defiled.

Sometimes I feel like nothing I feel is justified. If I closed my eyes, perhaps the lies would melt away. Perhaps I could see the world for the truth within.

I think about e-mailing a therapist. My pen taps nervously on the journal lying on my lap. Bruises bloom under the skin of a bitten lip, and these fingers seem to end in more wound than nail.

Trust.

Where did mine go?

I talk. You listen. They listen. Nobody listens.

Nobody can hear me. Maybe I don't want them to.

There is a glass bubble in my throat.

I fear if I swallow it down, the pressure will crack it.

Never thought I'd die of a shattered esophagus, but never is a word we're taught to avoid for a reason.

So, there it sits. Patiently complacent. Twiddling its thumbs while I am listened to but not heard. Courteous while I am throwing away the trust I do not have in an attempt to feel connection.

Something.

Anything.

The vulnerable parts of me leak. I am not satisfied. I bite a little harder.

I used to call it commitment issues.

The commitment is fine,

It's the trust I can't seem to find anywhere.

[pasteldangerous]

I think the act of loving someone can be a selfish thing. Sometimes it feels as though I am suffocating you with my love. I am remembering you fondly throughout the day, missing your touches and those little quirks you have. Do you think about me like that? Does your sun rise with thoughts of me? Does it set with love?

It is selfish. It is my little way of telling myself i'm not too much. I will suffocate you with my thoughts and remembrances, my quiet desire to feel close to you and be beside you through all things. I will be selfish until you ask me if you can breathe.

[pasteldangerous]

I'm ripping the cosmos out of my chest

With those teeth, pearly white

Like the stars in the void of night.

Every unholy feeling laps at my feet,

These shores smell like heartbreak

And panic. I spare a moment

To look back at you, the wind

Catching a strand of your hair

And it reminds me of the fates

And their infinite spools of story.

I can't read you like a book.

I would like to. I want to crawl

Inside you and know what is going on

And see what might happen. I want

To know you inside and out.

My lapses in judgement - how unsafe

And pitiful. The stars drain out

Of the wound I committed against

Myself, and a spray of aurora dapples

Your pale cheeks. How colourful you are.

My teeth hurt, my chest hurts, but

Dear Goddess, not more than the

Feeling of seeing you, refused access

To the real you. Oh,

I long to be privvy to your little secrets

I wish to see your hidden places

And have those talks.

The last of the universe trickles down my

Palid flesh. You may depart, my queen.

You have seen enough.

[pasteldangerous]

We learn vulnerability from the papercuts

The slivers

The stubbed toes

We learn vulnerability from deep breaths

And from that first, big morning stretch

You and i, we are two people

And we cross paths and see the bodies of one another

Those hands have held joy

Those hands have held sadness

We learn vulnerability when we drift to the wrong side of the walkway

And you are staring out into the scenery, lost in thought

And i don't know you, but i am admiring you

[pasteldangerous]

I wake up another day and I know I'm not supposed to be here.

14.

16.

18.

20.

Every year my sickly corpse remains is another year I serve as a reminder.

I am an affront to the God who tried so hard to keep me in his flock.

I am the sheep with flesh so rotten even the wolves will not bare their filthy craws my way.

The strength it takes to remember my purpose wanes every time the veil grows thin;

In liminal spaces, I find myself incapable of repenting.

I do not seek forgiveness.

I seek only an end to the regrets that are driving me mad.

Rumination stirs in my mind,

Sticking in between my teeth like gristle,

And I was never any good at flossing anyways.

I always miss something.

Cavities build up like the pressure behind my forehead.

I am reminded that I could have been a real person.

I was cursed from birth.

What evidence exists of me?

The shadow of death has tarnished my life from the womb forward.

I am a piecemeal hollow; as my flesh sloughs away

And the foul stench of rot follows me

A miasmic cloud of death and defiance weighs heavily

On the air.

Nobody else can see it.

They don't see how I decay; they don't smell it.

They see the puddles of rot I leave in the meadows

And they wonder if a small animal died.

Might as well have,

Because every time a piece slides wetly from my putrescent form

It feels as though part of me is dying.

I know I wasn't supposed to be here.

I am not supposed to be here.

The ghosts are so close to the surface

And everywhere I look

The end could be so, so near.

[pasteldangerous]

Bruises flower on my skin where your soft hands met my body with need. I trace the thumbprints as the music pulls at my attention. You cannot heal me.

The future stretches long ahead of us, early morning mist concealing an uncertain dawn. How will our parting be? How will we hurt one another?

I am so bitterly aware of how I hide myself. You've seen me, all of me, you think; but oh, how I hide the wistful thoughts and the pain that lives within my heart.

You will not know. The music is a gentle lull in the background, pleasant to my senses. My grip tightens over the bruises. You cannot understand.

I cannot make you understand. Care is such a fragile, delicate thing. I am a tightrope walker, and if your breeze is too strong I will plummet.

The pain provides warmth and reprieve. I close my eyes for a moment and forget about the end. You cannot heal me.

[pasteldangerous]

I wake up on this morning, weary of being appraised and projected on by every mask that stands around me wearing a body for a cloak. Anticipation and nerves flow through my veins - not like blood, but like butter - and as my arteries clog and my heart begins to fail in fear I smile and greet the man who stands at the foot of the stairs. I feel faint in that moment, butter-nerves clotting in my throat, yet I swallow it down and meet his kind, unfamiliar gaze with my own shakey laughter. A flower, he tells me that I tremble like a delicate blossom kissed by its first breeze. He does not use those words exactly, but I know what he means. I talk. I ramble, I play myself down. I have never been comfortable like this before and I am afraid of breaking through the wave and getting lost in the currents. Beautiful, he tells me, tracing the constellations on my back. His skin is warm and here I was not a month ago believing there was no place where one could ever see me like this. Here he is, and here I am. For the first time, I am the one who reaches out. It is done nervously, clumsily; I am met with genuine, sweet laughter. I realize partway through that I do not feel as though I have been appraised, nor that I have been projected on. We have come to a mutual agreement and there is respect and care in the way he treats me. The butter in my veins melts, the clots recede and break up, and my laughter reflects back at him. Our parting is gentle and kind and as I see him leave I am struck with the thought that perhaps I am not unworthy as once I may have thought. I slip into bed, weariness having lifted from my burdened shoulders. I smile to myself at the thought that there are people who should be so caring and for once, regret is the last thing on my mind.

[pasteldangerous]

I do not pray.

My skin burns.

My leg begins to look

Like it has been kissed

By an accordion.

These tiger stripes

Are not sexy

They are not beautiful

Or tragic.

I simply fulfil a need.

Satisfy a compulsion.

The pen drops

The ink bleeds

And so do i.

Scar tissue

Is so much harder

To rip apart

When you're so numb

That you can't even pay attention

To what you're doing.

I do not pray.

Every time my skin heals

I help it find a new wound.

I am Moses

Leading my fingers to the holy land,

Leading the end

Of my sharp to the holy land

I do not part the red sea

I part the pale skin

To see the red roses bloom.

I do not pray

I bleed

And this is where i find

My shallow repentance

My hollow peace

My holy refuge

[pasteldangerous]

This crown of thorns

Atop my head

Is made of hands.

The weight of piercing expectation

Digging like untrimmed nails

Into my skin.

I awaken with a new sin

On my face, my back, my arms -

The scars of old sins brandishing me

With weakness.

I am a tainted soul

And the weight of my tragedy

Perches heavily upon my heart.

A ball and chain

Anchor me to this earth

Where I am cursed to relinquish

My immortality.

The dust will not wash off

These thorny hands.

I wake up, another morning.

I bleed.

[pasteldangerous]

It all slips away.

I am afraid.

[pasteldangerous]

death is a myoclonic jerk. i keep telling myself that.