Then and Now

A couple of days ago

I am trying to write you out of my skin.
That is to say: You are still here.
You are running in circles, you are making me dizzy. I am confused.
I thought these years had put me back together;
you’d found me broken, now we were whole.
Then you broke the promises you made and I’m not ready to break again.
I’m trying to write it all down, every corner and jagged edge.
That is to say: I am not finished.
I never can be, can I? I meant what I said. I never will be finished.
These words are stains on eyes and lips, on the tips of planes
that have torn the skies and crashed, buried in an afterthought.
I’m trying to end it all.
You already have.
I am trying to catch up with time, all over again.
It was light outside when you left for work. I was barely awake.
I should have stayed there, in sleep, in a permanent dream.
That is to say: I should have drowned.

Now

Poems are finicky things. Portraying a girl, wondering
what it is so wrong about her, what is so worthless?
And that is an accurate picture, and I would never
want to bury her without the decency of flowers.
She was just left to falter. She was just wordless,
having been betrayed before, just not by anyone
who had promised certainly never to do so.
A shock like that strikes the hours apart,
solitude can appear to push them aside with a touch,
and words start to flow and at first it's just hope,
getting all tangled in reasons, reasons that
trip over hemselves as they rush to leave.
Then it's just choking on doubts, covered in dust,
carrying you, the words all there and all lost
before they even leave the mouth. Unravelling.

The picture becomes different once you sweep up
the remnants, change the bedsheets, rearrange the life
you let go of without protest. Knots loosening from
around your heart. A sailor to the wind, to the stars,
broadcasting to the world- I am not broken, not
unravelling. This is nothing compared to what has been.
The memories and the memories of nightmares-
products of wanting and unwanting and biting back.
When you run, run away, isn't it because nothing
makes you happy? Or because you are asked to do so
and believe in the reasons? It wasn't one giant mistake.
But I was mistaken, I was gullible. That is a fact.
Running away- never explaining myself.
Running away- never letting the nostalgia in,
though it made me sick, though it made me ache.
Running away- finding myself somewhere
that I never expected to be. I'm sorry, and not sorry,
and I'm relieved I am myself again.
But after all this running,
I'm asking permission to return.

We don't know the same song anymore

Sharp Objects

From the TV series 'Sharp Objects' and quotes from the book by the same name, Gillian Flynnn

Adoxography

Stay

The hope of what can be made real, even if it seems ridiculous ot others or highly improbable or very difficult to reach out for, let alone make steps towards- well, that's always better than the disappearing act. When you start to disappear from the world, you lose things: memories, friends, idiosyncracies, rroutines, purpose, aspiration. It might be a solution to the terror of failing and the fear your hope will never come true, but I'm leaning towards not abandoning hope, because it's it's always been hope that kept me alive. 

The apologetic verbal tic

8 Friday Thoughts and a sonog

i. I am my own worst nigthmare. A glass drops into my hand and my palm shatters- conclusion: I'm too fragile for all this. I try to bite the rust from beneath my fingernails- conclusion: there are endless walls and walks and rides and the damage collects, and I know it, I'm just no good at fixing it. A book opens and closes, another on top of it, a hand is raised expectantly in a school room- conclusion: I am a question, unsure of being answered. A phone rings and rings, hands shake, the blinds close- conclusion: I am afraid, I would prefer to be invisible. So why is it that it means so much to me that I am remembered, noticed, loved? I blush, I hide, I need, I rattle. I am a nightmare.

ii. Pits of hunger feel better again. I'm a fool and buckling and I know it. I used to be able to stop it. Where did the strength go? Where did the rain go? Why don't I talk anymore? I would give anything to go back and start over, to when I could be and wanted to be heard, and I didn't see a tombstone standing in my doorway, and I didn't see myself from above and see an eyesore.

iii. Somewhere, sometime, someone said I was going to be okay. I didn't believe them before. I believe it now. I am still porcelain and not stone. I am still rust but not decay. I suddenly finding it strange to be myself.

iv. Possible diagnoses (not yet invented): disenchanted brain; history not one's own (delusion); abandoning of flight; undemanding tightness; birdbath stomach ache; translucence; corner cowaredice; blind trust; a healing through scar tissue; sanity through sentene structure; a reckoning.

v. I suppose this is half-imagined. Like imagining choosing songs to whistle in the mounains or to sing on the street, like a radio looping in your bain. Like looking straight into an eclipse. Meeting a cheerful ghost at a rundown factory. Leaving something special behind when you go.

vi. The walls sweat anxiously and you whistle softly to me. There's nothing but nostalgia in the clouds and a heart thrumming in my mouth- mine or yours? Why did I never have the right words to say? I tried to write them. I tried to be a dream more than a nightmare, but maybe self-knowledge at the end of it is better than being just a phantom of regret.

vii. Someday- if I have the time- all of this will get the better of me and that will be the end, and I'll go to a place beyond this with books and bathtubs or just waste. Or it won't get the better of me and I will shrug it all away, or else I'll do anything at all- with no exceptions, besides having to remain alone forever- to fit the puzzle pieces back together. Loss breaks me apart in a way I can't articulate. I'm not finished. I'm not crazy. I do love.

viii. I don't know where I am going, or who I am, or what I can do. You have to tell me. I'm just made up of mirrors. I've known dead-ends and disasters but I'm still here. I shouldn't be but I am. War should never be happening, but i is, always will. I don't deserve to be happening here, but I am. Isn't that some kind of evidence that magic really exists?

Words at dawn

I don't blame anyone for not understanding how it is to hurt with both hands, like a blown circuit. I worry that the genesis of my brain is disenchanted, uprooted from its stem, burnt at the stake. I feel like- I worry too that I feel like- my body is a lost continent; the evenings sit and become nights and become mornings without rest, just empty eyes. Am I rusting? Am I still here? Stitch me back to something. I hope this will be more probable in the next few weeks. Winter tends to the prayers of the lonely.

Sometimes I am sure I'm alive because someone else isn't. My life and heartbeat whisper obligations. I panic, I lose my lungs for a minute, breath pouring o ut of me, stale and hot like mercury from the remains of a broken thermometer.

I know I'm sick. I know I'm not myself. Does one depend on the other? I hope that soon I'll be able to look at my reflection. I wish I could feel it again- that glimmer of hope, even just a glance of that fool's paradise.

A new recording

I apologise for my apology (?) towards the end and all the quietness. It just moves me quite dramatically, the lyrics.

Split

Taking a stroll down the knife-edge path
dragged by apathy, vague ambivalence-

Looking in the mirror and the immediate
need to leave the room, lest you pull it down-

Out of breath, on the floor, in the shower,
forgetting the words to explain yourself.

Worth nothing? Worth nothing? No.
You are not merely the contours of shadow.

Where you are walking, dreams don't go.
I know that because once I felt worthy.

I want to be invisible, to disappear, but
that's not true. I want to speak, be heard,

I want to be remembered. I believed?
Didn't I? Yes, I always have, I still do-

I'm screaming into silence.