[silence-cacophonie]

[silence-cacophonie]

there’s an image of you imprinted on my tongue. i can still taste how sad you looked that night. i can still hear how beautiful we both were.

how many knots will i tie myself into to keep your name our of my mouth, out of my head?

[silence-cacophonie]

je passe le balai dans ma tête pour me débarasser de toi. de la poussière qui porte encore la trace de tes doigts. je trouve un de tes longs cheveux, et mon souffle le fait danser dans l’air. je le regarde flotter, flotter, tomber. j’ouvre une fenêtre dans ma tête et j’espère que tu comprendras, comme une mouche perdue, qu’il faut que tu sortes par là. faut que tu sortes. je t’en prie. sors et laisse-moi.

[silence-cacophonie]

my hands smell like bleach once a week. every saturday morning. the odor follows me like a cloud. for one day a week, the bathroom counters are spotless, and my head aches from breathing in the fumes. or maybe something else. hard to tell.

i eye the scale. no point in standing on it. i know what it will tell me. but i do it anyway, if only to take a break from scrubbing.

130. no surprises. and that’s fine. i tell myself it’s fine because it’s always the same number, but somehow i’m a little disappointed.

i had a bad week again. slept too much. ate too little. wanted to read that poetry book my sister got me. couldn’t do it. wanted to get up and take the dog for a walk. couldn’t leave my bed. wanted to take a shower and feel clean again. couldn’t convince myself it would be worth it.

that dull ache eats at my abdomen. i scrub harder. i ignore it. there’s leftovers in the fridge. i tell myself that. i ignore it.

i think about the absurdity of weighing 130lbs and feeling so heavy. i stare at the hollows of my cheeks in the mirror and wonder what i’d look like 10lbs thinner. don’t want that. not the point. being healthy is the point. i tell myself that.

i think of myself, 14 and foolish, head resting on a cafeteria table. too tired to buy myself a sandwich. no appetite for it. or maybe that’s not true. maybe it’s just things 14 year olds do, refuse to eat in the hopes that they’ll shed that last bit of baby fat and look better for the snapchat. but i know that’s not it either.

i think of the ache. the ache in the pit of my gut. the only thing that would keep me awake in class, keep me in check. i now know that i was the one keeping myself in check. i’ve come to understand that the ache was a punishment, but also the reward. years later, i’ve come to know the ache by its real name, and call it what it is.

hunger.

i was 14 years old and hungry. staring into a fully packed fridge and closing the door. walking to the tims and ordering an iced coffee but turning down the sandwich. skipping breakfast and blaming it on waking up too late.

i’ve always been a good student. a good daughter. but somewhere along the line i began to feel that my ambitions were not enough. would never be enough. to be successful is to be endlessly hungry. i gave myself hunger in the hopes that it would move me forward. that the emptiness would beg to be filled.

maybe it helped me. maybe it hurt me. i can’t know for sure. but years of hunger are not easily satisfied. three meals a day are not enough. two part time jobs won’t cut it. seven classes in one term are insufficient.

i’ve spent years trying to fill the hole. i know it’s bottomless. i tell myself this. i ignore it. i pour more in.

i scrub the bathroom counter until every inch is clean. my hands feel raw. i empty and refill the dishwasher. my head hurts again. i vacuum the stairs, the main hall, the bedrooms, the kitchen. i don’t open the cupboards. i don’t check the fridge. the hunger eats away at me, but i ignore it. i tell myself stop. i ignore it. i tell myself rest. i tell myself eat. i ignore it.

i let myself enjoy it.

i let myself enjoy the hunger.

[silence-cacophonie]

there’s water trapped deep in my left ear and the back of my knees are sunburnt. i felt so weightless in the lake water i forgot just how jealous the sun can be. it beats down on me still, sweat dripping from my lips as my mind fogs up with steam. i can’t remember how i came to be here. i don’t ever want to leave.

[silence-cacophonie]

sometimes i want to hold someone but no one’s around to hold. so i hold myself. hug one knee to my chest and ghost my fingertips over my own shoulderblades, feel the hollows of my collarbones and see just how deep they go, feel the valleys near my hips and try to map myself out, remember what exactly it means to occupy this body, to exist as a being worthy of tenderness, of the touch of another. i drag my fingertip from the crown of my head downwards, along the cartilage of my ear, the line of my jaw, the softness of my shoulder, the goosebumps on my arm, down to my palm, back up my inner forearm, along my armpit, wet with cold night sweats, stumbling over each rib, the curve of my hip, all the way down to my toes, and just hug my leg against my torso. hold on, hold on. i breathe the words into my knee. just a little bit longer, just a little more. it can’t be much longer. just hold on.

[silence-cacophonie]

scratch skin crack knuckles wring fingers dig nails into palm into ear eye thigh neck lips blink shudder tic twitch make light shake like strobe like disco like this is a party yes make this a party so they don’t see how breath will catch in throat lung tongue teeth biting down on cheek biting down on the fear or the shame maybe all of them at once or maybe just something

a little more palatable.

[silence-cacophonie]

for my daughter; here is your inheritance.

1st, the busiest of silences. cacophony even in the dead of night. a mind that seldom quietens.

2nd, cold sweats upon waking. breath shaky. uncertain of your surroundings, you’ll worry everyone you love has died. or worse, left you without saying goodbye or telling you why.

3rd, the unnerving feeling that your work is never done. that success is unattainable, yet primordial. that even at your best, you fall short of every goal, every expectation.

4th, these radiation scars. don’t be fooled by their invisibility. they’ll always be there, just under the skin. just a relapse away. never forget.

5th, a quick metabolism and the ability to go hours upon hours without food. put yourself second to your work in all you do, and never be satisfied with the frailness of your own bones. you’ll never be as small as you once were. mourn the smallness of that body.

6th, the inability to admit your wrongs. an apology is an admission of failure, and failure is unnacceptable. when your wrongness is undeniable, choose silence. choose kindness to soothe over the wound but never admit to your own guilt. let it eat at you from the inside instead. take it to your grave.

[silence-cacophonie]

my mother tongue has always been silence.

[silence-cacophonie]

[silence-cacophonie]

fragments de délaissement

j’ai toute la tendresse au monde à donner. à qui est-ce que je vais donner toute cette tendresse que j’ai?

peut-être qu’on a été amies. j’m’en souviens plus.

on reste dans les platitudes. ça fait moins mal de même.

j’ai une forêt dans mon sac à dos. tu pèses sur moi.

toutes les pommes éclatent en même temps.

tu longes le seuil de mon vide. fais attention de pas y tomber.

j’ai été interminable. j’ai été infernale. je me désole, je me désole, je me désole.

j’aimerais que tu puisses lire ce poem à un arrêt d’autobus en janvier et pleurer.

je te le souhaite.

[silence-cacophonie]

i’m breathing down my own neck and you’re dancing in the corner. i’ve never seen your hands so high in the air before, every finger reaching for the sky an important question you’ll never have the guts to ask me.

when did i become a stranger to you? will you ever stop dreaming of me? am i still the first thing you smell when you walk into a room? do you flinch every time you imagine my skin grazing yours? do you talk to the dust on your shelves every time you wake up hoping i’ll hear you somehow?

every heavy breath of mine, an answer i’ll never give.

[silence-cacophonie]

[silence-cacophonie]

[silence-cacophonie]

[silence-cacophonie]

[silence-cacophonie]

never have i so badly wanted to cut out my own tongue, set fire to my vocal chords, burn you out of me. what sage, what tobacco will smoke the traces of you out from my lungs? when will my skin finally shed away your fingerprints?