No soy capaz de apreciar lo bello cuando me embarga la tristeza, todo se siente con un sinsabor que no sé expresar. No me acostumbro a este sentimiento de apatía tan ajeno a mi forma de ver la vida.
Últimamente todo se siente así... ajeno. Mi pluma intenta dibujar arcoiris en donde solo encuentra un cielo nublado y cuando lo logra aquel tornasol no es capaz de ver sus propios colores.
La pérdida de mi musa me ha dejado el corazón roto, el tintero vacío y el cajón lleno de cartas a medio escribir. En la interminable busqueda del momento perfecto para adorarla, la perdí. Entre largas esperas, noches a solas y ausencias...Se cansó de esperar y se marchó.
Cada vez que miro a alguien tomar las maletas y apartarse de mi lado siento que se lleva una parte de mí que nunca podré recuperar. Un poco de confianza, algunos secretos, aromas de sus ropas y un poco de mis sonrisas.
Siento que muero un poco y en cambio me quedo con un poco de ellos. De sus conocimientos, de sus conversaciones y sus abrazos.
i used to believe that was peace—it was because i was a river. i was flowing forward without looking back. i used to believe it was a good thing.
it dawns on me, now, it may have been that i was nothing at all. you must live to have regret. i was not invested enough in my life to care. i could dig myself a waterfall at any time and bow out.
a river runs clear. it runs clean. it fights the paralysing cold. it beckons life. a pool of blood feels nothing. it trickles from the deer's still warm skin, from it's hot guts, steam against biting air. it stains the frozen ground and there it remains, only sinking at best. a lucky rivulet may successfully seek it's way to running water, get to feel the rush for just a second before losing itself to it. orange smoke and then nothing. as it were.
sometimes the truth only exists if you hear it from anything but the horse's mouth. it drinks from the pure river, transforms clarity into filth, infects and taints. sometimes you need the hunter with the license to carry. is this what you wanted?
we just started and never stopped.
i think it's time, now.
you must understand; i don't regret pain for the sake of regretting it. i don't wish to undo the wounds i've held, whitewash, unweave my scars. your sickly sweet burning rot, though, it's eaten me up. trees decay from the inside out. wet soils cause uprooting (they can't get a proper grip, and neither can i). the wrong wires crossing, wrong lives, it's what breaks things down. a mountain can stand solid so long as the sea doesn't lap away. that's the nice way. the truthful one is, we are balancing on a globe. and we're good at it, but odds are odds. and i'm kicking them with steel toed boots. i'm routing the river over them and watching them break down over millennia because the cold water weakens my hands so i can't dig it myself. i have a pile of sand and burning eyes. that's the fruit of my vigil.
it's dawned on me, i don't know peace with you. i know a miserable semblance i feel only when i'm forcing myself to stop crafting lies to justify the rage i have for you in the midst of the affections. that's love. and i regret it all.
i drink instant coffee. i wear jackets that are everyone's but mine. i keep an inhaler on me. i straighten my back. i smell like vanilla and tobacco and coffee. i dry lavender and press flowers. i dig my hands into the rich earth and feel it crawl in and curl up to hibernate under my nails. i get anxious travelling with suitcases. i collapse on myself. i can't apologise. i add some sugar to savoury meals i cook. i don't cry. i run my hands under the tap until they're red-hot. i sit in the forest, shaded by the trees, for hours on end. i am alive when i'm alone. i go home. i survive. i don't tell you how i feel. i know there's an unspoken line for the bus. i wait until it's too late. i drown you. i survive. i know how to swim. i go to graveyards alone to visit graves of people i didn't know. i weep over lives that expired last century. i don't cry over my own dead. i don't smoke cause it was lung cancer. i carry smokes cause i like the smell. i survive. how much does a headstone give away?
i listen to instruments from my corpses times. i listen to everything that survived his childhood. i listen to the stuff that should've been mine. i never lived in the countryside but it's the only place where i always have. i knit. i sew. i read. i plant meek things that never survive long enough to fruit. i neglect everything in my care and ache when it wilts, as if i have the right to. i survive. i pick up the strings of others' pasts and presents and weave them into myself as if you can adopt the pains of another person. it's more selfish than it sounds. i love a view and i'm scared of heights. i add a little salt to everything sweet. i know not to use the whites of a rind. i prefer cats. i wear women's jeans. i'm scared. i like my eggs cooked at a 6 minute boil. i think houses should be red. i had to teach myself. i count in the shower. i get sugar free applesauce. i know it's all garlic and onion. i tell people they look nice. i switch between cursive and print when i write and i don't know why (it always reverts to cursive if i care, even if i fight it). i take walks longer than every life changing event behind me. i still fear you'll leave me behind in the city or on the side of a road like you threatened, even now, when i can care for myself. i don't like wheels, or being above them. circles are the worst shape. i wait for hands to be wrapped around my wrist, all the way around, up my forearm. i wait for big eyes. i wait for gripped by the shoulders and shaken like it'll fix me. i wait for a cold shower down my skull and neck, wet clothes, not enough air, something big to shock me out of it. it's like breaking an arm to distract from a cramp, you get that, right? drowning a crying child. i still hold my breath when i feel too much. i keep my card in my phone case. i recoil at touch i used to lean toward. nobody does anything on purpose and it still fucks you up so royally. i try to see the best in people and it pisses me off when i catch it, cause a good reason doesn't mean you don't deserve better. i'm sick of people making excuses for me. i reach out and end up hovering. my cheek is pressed against the air next to yours. my chin rests on something invisible above your shoulder. it still awakens a glass housed bird in me when people laugh or whisper or look too close. i still seek out good rocks. i still have the ones i collected as a kid. i spell like a motherfucker. i write. i dont cook anything without the vent hood on. i scare myself. i make notes in the margins of books. i step over my feelings like theyre laundry piles. i dog-ear pages. i hide in and outside my body.
the point : i am a quilt, or if you prefer, chewed up digested shit out pile, of all the people i've loved and hated and the strangers around them. they shaped me, still,
i cant grasp the concept that i affect the world around me. my hands pass through everything. i am a weightless presence save for the burden i cause. i dont make changes deeper than shells. when i disappear and you call me and i pick up on the third call to a sigh of relief and in a watery voice you thought id killed myself. when it hurts you that i treat your feelings for me as if they were never substantial cause i don't think they are. when you tell me you want me and i say there's nothing to want. when people care about me, they're claiming palpability from me when i'm not real. you direct feelings at me and i step aside, out of their path, and watch them fall into the hole i dug in the wall behind me, clatter into the cavity between the insulation sheets. then i ache over empty.
i'm sorry for being so focused on cutting off and keeping in the new growths springing off me, i didn't realise i was slashing your exploratory hands in the process. i will let the world dig it's fingers into me again. i just need time. is that okay? i just need time.
i'll put the trimmers down, stop cutting flowers that bud; i'll survive the bloom. again and again, i'll survive. i'm going to be more. every opening doesn't have to be a wound. i am going to grow into a poultice for both of our bleeding hands.
I used to think you smelled warm. It's just stale now. Closed in. I'm trapped in the basement of your chest, and you won't breathe me out. I'm bound and gagged, weaved into your ribs. Wound around the wound where I slipped in after my blade. You barely bled. You're bored with me, you won't bleed for me, you won't bend me, still you won't break the boards barricading me in. Just in case you get sick of someone else, I suppose. You want begging? I'll beg.
I lean in to you and I sink to my knees and I pull you down with. You open me for yourself and keep me there, the way you like your options. Cold floor burns flayed flesh. Is this wide enough for you? I dig my fingers into your skull, as if your bone would give when you don't. I press your cheek into my face or my face into your cheek, whichever you prefer, whichever. Anything. Whatever. You breathe. I wish I could steal it. Even, in the way of not caring. Bouncing off your ear, my voice comes back more desperate than I wanted to betray, gasping, broken the way you like it. Me.
Tell me. Say it. My grip tightens, and I ache to hurt instead of just slip through you, perfectly fitted between your atoms. Tell me you don't want me so I can leave.
You shudder and shiver under me, like old machinery. It's acting. You're newly built, renovated, well oiled. You have people that see to that. But it's good acting, and I swear to suspend disbelief, to drop it, to unhand you, if you would just end my grief. But your voice leaks over my wrist. I can't do that. Drips slowly then faster, running in rivulets down my arms. Like my skin itself is opening up vertical fissures from your shockwaves. It smarms down, hot, red, viscous. It disconnects at my elbow, pools at our feet, thick grease. I don't wipe the corner of your mouth.
Use me, then. My grip slips, fingertips sliding down your skin. There is nothing to hold onto here. There is no anchor. Your rope is around my throat.
I'm at your disposal. So use me.
I sink to level with your shoulders, burning eyes pressing into your polished skin. Granite. I scrabble at your edges.
I can't waste you. I can't consume you.
So I'm just a sticker to you. Collectible. Unstuck. Dusty. I drag my fingers through the pool at our shoes. I smear it on myself. If you won't kill me I can play dead. The blood's not real but neither are we.
I eked out an echo of your esse and it ached more than if I'd eschewed everything you'd been. My voice stronger than vice
Grip on the scribbled slip of supporting signals, shrouding slips of the tongue, of my fingers
Too close to the way they grazed your face
I rang out over the courtyard, rousing ravens, a stray mouse. It wasn't right, it wasn't how I write, not my carefully wrought plan. To honour the wordwright.
It was supposed to shake, to break, but I stood solid as your newly engraved stone. I rang out.
I rang
Your phone, still expecting you to pick up. Do they leave your voicemail open, down there?
Are you yet settled in the spoke of your spine, sleeping in the soil? In death, a spiculum-straight no-nonsense speculating wraith, clawing and clinging to my curtains, like you want me to know I have to stop thinking.
