Remnants
I dug deep into the bowels of the internet today, and buried in the archives I found the remnants of us. Poems and pieces written from our lives 18 years ago, when you were thriving in social justice work and I was just a gangly preteen. It tugged at my heart in a way I haven’t felt for a while.
It reminded me of when things were good between us; when you were my role model. When we would talk trash together, make out with statues, wander downtown and be punks together. And then I would come to Sisters and watch you work and own the floor, tenderly holding space for everyone you touched. I had so much pride that you were my mom. We were so misfitted and abnormal, and I was so grateful for how special we were. I didn’t know anyone else like us.
The first poem I ever wrote was for you when I was 8. It was secretly about you; how everyone saw your flaws, but I saw your light. You cherished it, reverently writing it out as I spoke it aloud. You framed it in your scrawled artwork and hung it on the wall.
Entombed in your old journals I found a lost memory of us: You had just dumped your abusive boyfriend after an abortion, and I helped you write a song to bash him and make you feel better. And as I read the words I felt my body physically transported to a bus stop downtown, happily screaming it with you as we scratched out his tags on old brick buildings and weathered benches.
We hate pomo
Yeah!
We hate pomo
Yeah!
We hate pomo so much that we’ll die in hatred…..!!
It became our anthem, a catalogue to our secret language. You embraced my rage like no other could, so proud of every violently bleak poem I wrote. You soaked up my teen angst like it was nectar and reflected it back; to you it was magnificent. Our conduit of love was in our shared suffering, in the raw and ravishing mess that defined us.
And yet the pattern never changed; A few weeks later you took him back and told me to stop singing the song. It took you 3 more years to leave him.
I miss those days when it was just us, when you made me feel so alive and whole. When I could shelter myself in naiveness to believe it would last, that we could forever stay the way we were. I didn’t know how deeply rooted you were to your torment, that it became your forever home, a shell so thick it obscured your sense of truth. You were the victim, and the world was your fodder, you couldn’t see the perpetrator within yourself. The cycle of violence you chose through your blindness.
You broke my heart again and again, and yet you were my muse; my cherished chaos.
When I outgrew the suffering that bound us, you resented me. My joy became a reflection of your grief, my success - your despair. You hated me for breaking free, and yet you gave me the key. You told me not to make your mistakes, but when you saw me - all you could see was what you never had. My happiness tore you apart.
Slowly I closed in, I stopped sharing my life with you. You quit asking questions and just talked, and I learned how to dissociate and listen. To submerge into your world to be close to you, until my energy was sucked out I could no longer drown in your secrets.
I became a stranger to you; it took you so long to see me that you no longer knew who I was.
And I forgot that there was ever a time before - because the changes were so slow. A time when I could do no wrong, when your love was unconditional and your words for me were tender.
When I came back to Ecuador I snuck pictures of you with me. Old images of us; You, looking badass in your docs and short coiffed hair; gloriously beautiful in your butchness. And me, so small with my bowl cut and polka dot dress; freshly carved of this world. I see so much how you have shaped me, the patchwork amalgam I have become of both us tightly woven together.
You have always been with me, I never left you behind. My joy is yours, my healing is ours. The distance between us was not forged in anger, but created in love.
Every step that I have taken; Is for both of us, and I hope that someday you can understand this.
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