I am that wilderness

Photo by Michael Olsen on Unsplash

I have too many emotions.

They stick in my teeth,

in my twisted viscera,

in my glowing red heart

in my stiff grey lungs.

They are my hands and my feet

and all the spaces in between.

–

Feelings can’t be ascribed

to any one organ

they rise up between

the solid bits.

They are a void.

They are eternal

right up until the moment

of exchange.

–

I am inconsolable

whatever my orientation.

Viscous and viral

there is a wilderness

so wild and so vast

that no map could ever

hope to translate it.

I am that wilderness.

–

I never have

the same emotion twice.

Each emotion is its own construct.

The only thing which is certain

in me is uncertainty

but that does not

bring me comfort.

–

I sleep hundreds of hours a day.

I am the dream, not the dreamer.

I do not wake but every now and then

life comes pouring in like salt water

and takes me to another place

and in that foreign place

I take on the arduous task

of drowning.

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Nightmares and Past Lives

Dear Dm,

For the last few days I have been filled with stories of us. Stories of the lives we have shared and stories of my own design. Last night was a tragedy. As with all dreams it began in the middle and branched out from there. It was the story of a mentally ill woman who attempted suicide after a breakup (a breakup that began with a kiss on the lips and a warm hug). I was that young woman. Difficult. Tortured. Manipulative. Naive. Selfish. You were the young man. I wish that she/I had stood there and listened to all that you would say. You said to the best of my recollection. “I’m not sure if my life is better now. I think I liked my life better before.” She/I did not listen. She/I stormed off while shouting something spiteful like “fine return to your old life then and forget about me.” She found a pair of scissors in an empty library. She fled down a staircase past children selling drugs. She pushed open countless doors. Doors without knobs. Doors with no rooms between them. Doors with only darkness. She found a space deep within her labyrinth of doors and slit her wrists vertically.

“How did you find me?” She asked feeling herself lifted. “I always know where you are.”

The next she woke in a hospital bed. You stood at the far end of the room or rather she sensed you. Your voice was soft. I don’t remember your words. In the final scene she sits in front of a dirty vanity mirror. She’s outside and the country landscape is exquisite. There is a nurse beside her instructing her to clean the glass. She scrubs and scrubs but cannot find any reflections in the mirror. The nurse admonishes her to use gloves when cleaning, otherwise she will never get the mirror clean. She passes out and into your arms.

I woke from this dream very upset. When I think of it now perhaps she was in a mental asylum all along. The children selling drugs might have only been patients lining up for their medication. The gloves might have represented the need to set boundaries. The endless row of doors might have been the doors of her own mind, of every futile effort to save herself without relying on anyone else. I do not know if you were a visitor, a caretaker, or a figment of her imagination. I do not know if she only imagined you in the faces of others because deep down she longed for you to return and save her. I do not know if she imagined the whole relationship. I do not know what happened because I was in the mind of a troubled young woman and I couldn’t see beyond it. Perhaps you did find her and save her and then moved on because she wouldn’t or couldn’t follow you back to the world. Maybe you were there beside her every moment.

I decided to finish the story, to fill it out, to rewrite the tragedy. In my dream you end the relationship because your friends and family don’t approve and she doesn’t fit into society much less into your life. You want to be happy and she is messy and complicated. In my version you visit everyday. You brush her hair because she likes it and it gives you something to do in that, sometimes, too quiet room. You kiss her brow, her hair, her hands. When she is happy and coherent you kiss her mouth. You hold her while she sobs and she clings to your clothes gently. At first she is silent, withdrawn but by degrees she begins to talk and to listen. The days pass and she gets stronger and then one day she turns to you and says “I’m glad we are friends.” She still does not know that you love her and in what way you love her and her obliviousness hurts. Then again it is possible that you have never told her what was in your heart. So you show her and notice that she reciprocates even without knowing all that is in your heart and bit by bit you start to speak more freely with her. You speak and she listens. Then when she is stable you convince her parents to release her to your custody. You marry her. She is a terrible cook and she isn’t much of a housekeeper but you love each other. You meet each other half-way. Somewhere between insanity and sensibility. You gain wings and she in turn gains roots. You realize that you are both human, both innocent and you forgive. You forgive so that can live and love more deeply.

Perhaps another day I will tell you a different story, one that hurts less in the middle.

I love you. I will learn to listen. I will ask for help. I will offer a hand. I’ll live as fully as I possibly can whatever happens. And I will forgive. You. Me. The Situation.

Stolen 2 (again)

I had an inkling as to the location of the door but I would have to wait until my father was at work to begin my investigation. I left the library using an alternate exit to avoid confrontation. I would have to hide the key when time afforded but at the moment I had no alternative but to rejoin the celebration.

Dinner was painful. I watched my mother cut her food into progressively smaller pieces. She rearranged her food, now thoroughly dimensionless, into careful piles. She created illusions of absence. She ate nothing but air. My mother did most of the talking. She talked on behalf of everyone. I could feel her voice tearing at the back of my throat every time I opened my mouth. I could feel her eyes in my skull, like two hooks. ‘Shut up. Shut up. You’ll ruin everything.’ She spoke to me with her hands. She tugged my sleeve under the table. I spoke only when addressed. I spoke in monosyllables and euphemisms. After dinner there was a short recess. I spent my recess in the shadow of my classmates. “Your mother is very thin. Is she sick?” One of the girls remarked off-handedly. “Oh no, she just can’t put on weight. She has a high…” I trailed off a high what? What was I meant to say? The girl waited impatiently. “Standard…” I had heard the words high and standard linked frequently in conversation.

“Well alright then…” The girl shrugged. She didn’t care enough to press me. I searched my mind in vain for the word.

//

When I entered the kitchen I could tell by my mother’s expression that she had noted, if only just, my presence. Her hand alighted on my shoulder like a frightened bird and she took, what I imagined was, the last breath of the evening. I had prepared an excuse for my unexpected intrusion but it proved unnecessary.

“There you are Eli! Come now it’s time to cut the cake…” She maneuvered me toward the large banquet table in the center of the dining hall. She had tears in her voice.

There were three cakes, one vanilla, one strawberry, and one chocolate presented precisely in that order. It had been determined, after much consideration, that vanilla was my favorite. Strawberry suggested vanity. Chocolate suggested avarice. Vanilla was prudent and therefore the only acceptable choice, I would not even be permitted to sample the other flavors.  If it really was that easy to alter a man’s nature then why hadn’t my parents taken more care with their own diets? Why did my father drink? Why did my mother refuse to eat?

My mother pressed the handle of the knife into my outstretched hand, but she was not permitted to guide the blade. I watched her take her seat, her knitted brows drawing out the terror in her smile. For this occasion I was permitted to sit at the head of the table, a designation I neither deserved nor desired. The guests, which existed purely for their own benefit, appeared sewn into their chairs. I stood motionless above the cake. The cake might well have been a body of flesh and blood and I might well have been a recruit in service to an unprincipled war. I swallowed but the lump in my throat could not be dislodged. “Well don’t just stand there Elijah.” My father barked. I slid the blade shakily through the cake. When it was my mother’s turn, I watched her delicately shave away a slice. Paper-thin. Borderline transparent.

///

I buried the key beneath my mother’s favorite rose bush. She was in the kitchen, embroiled in a war which offered no hope of formal resolution. She would scrub each dish until her fingers were raw from heat and persistence. Once clean she would drop them into the trash one by one, like the shells of discarded eggs. No one dared intercept her pathos and no one dared name it but the cause was obvious. My father retired to his study, drink in hand, he would not speak again until breakfast.

I had been careful not to kneel in the dirt and with my sleeves rolled up past the elbows I believed myself impervious to filth. Against my naked forearms the air was as sharp as a briefly applied cigarette. Not for an external chill but such was the shock of my violation. I had wanted for very little in my short life and had asked for far less but this key held the culmination of all those secret leanings. I patted the earth carefully knowing that my mother would detect the slightest disturbance. If she were for some reason vexed by the sight of the topsoil she might extract the entire plant. The thought that she could kill something she loved to appease her illness frightened me and though I’d never voiced my fear I often worried that my own eccentricities might invite a similar fate.

Healing

Fragments

Were I to gather my thoughts
just as they appear you would
not recognize the portrait.
I am a reflection of the voyeur.
My selves are not selves at all,
they are fragments
of a more substantial being.
A fragment can assimilate
any number of designations.
Make of me what you will.

Each teardrop is a star quilted
in unparalleled darkness,
I unstitch them one by one
but they go up in smoke
before ever reaching my lips.

I shed my second skin
and settle into the pauses
of your sacred architecture.
My derelict bones are dry enough to burn.
Will you furnish me when vacant?
Can you love me knowing
that I am temporary and inexact?

All that spills through my fingers is lost
for I have not the composure
to bend down and recover it.
My fingers stumble down
the length of your sternum.
If you were truly a fish
I would have emptied you
before consumption.

I drink your flesh by the inch
and when I have planted your root
as deep as it can go, I will fall upon it
again and again until I am grounded.
It is the act of loving which makes us whole.

–

really hard to write today, very stuck

Sunday Writing Prompt “Everyday Objects”

The Window

He pressed his palm to the glass. The pane was cold, its expression sullen. The rain had stopped more than an hour ago but the sun remained hidden behind layers of ash-colored gauze. He hadn’t been outside for months and in that time the seasons had changed without so much as an acknowledgment. No one had written, rang, pinged, or visited in over a week. He’d imposed his absence without much consideration for anyone’s feelings, his own included. Even if desired how was he ever to return to his old life? He was unrecognizable even to himself, even amidst the gradations that he alone had witnessed. His beard was long and gnarled like the roots of an upended tree. Shadows gathered about his crevices. His clothes were rumpled and malodorous. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a shower or brushed his teeth. His nails were worried to the quick, coagulated blood stuck to his cuticles. His hands looked old, his face looked old, even his skin seemed out of place on its dilapidated frame. The window’s gaze was steady and patient. He saw nothing of his reflection in the glass, only his own backyard which in neglect, had grown wild. Piles of rotten apples spilled over the lawn collecting vermin and insects alike. Inside was even worse. The air was thick and meaty, food deliquesced in the sinks, discarded and unwashed garments littered the floor. Dust and decay gathered about him and he could feel himself submitting to them by degrees. A towering stone wall prevented him from seeing into the adjacent property, all he saw when looking out was his own walled in lawn, with its dying and disheveled flowers and it’s mealy, brown harvest. The window groaned beneath a penitent wind. “What have I done?” He repeated (as if in response) three times each version more shrill than the one preceding.

Sunday Writing Prompt “Lady Lazarus- Sylvia Plath”

My heart opens with a shriek.

She takes in everything

as if it belonged to her alone.

–

All that is left of my tears

is the salt on my cheeks.

I scrub my skin raw.

–

Deep down I know

that I am the moon

my face pale and wavering.

–

Too proud to ask for help

but not too proud

to declare myself deficient.

–

I can’t bare it you know

this devastating mediocrity

I’d rather be a ghost.

–

I look askance,

arms outstretched

how dare I ask

–

for a moment of your time

when you have paid so much

and I so little.

–

How could this feeling be false?

A mere ploy?

When I can see my life thinning.

–

Right before my eyes

everything that I have loved

presses forward

–

and I falling backwards

cannot hope to catch up

so I stand looking on quietly.

–

I hold in my hand

the greasy, black umbilicus

but it cannot be torn free.

–

I cannot rewrite the script

it is set into my very bones.

All that is left of me

–

is the knowing,

is the romanticization of this illness

which has become my identity.

–

My indemnity, my indignity

what a joke, what a fate

to be defiled by my very own mind.

–

I feel their eyes on me,

their theatrical hunger

and if I were to die

–

They’d say “What a pity!”

“What a waste!”

“She was too young!”

–

It’s not a fix, dying

I think this sin should follow me

beyond the grave.

–

For

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/sunday-writing-prompt-lady-lazarus-sylvia-plath/

Based on my teenage years which was a very dark period

Sunday Writing Prompt “Satire”

“You’re not special enough. We are looking for someone with distinction, someone with a strong but vacuous presence. How many labels have you acquired? Did you bring your personalized glossary? Do suffer from independent thought? We can’t have you thinking, that would never do.”

“You have not suffered enough. We can’t assist you. Come back when you’re dead, better wait until decomposition starts and you’ve gone a little sour.”

“Did you say that you were real? We don’t work with anyone who hasn’t been under the knife. You must be tailored specifically to our aesthetic. I can see from here that you are not a factory model. Your skin is too supple and did you know that your breasts are natural? The breast must not yield on contact and under absolutely no circumstances should the nipple point south of the horizon. And please tell me that you brought a syringe, heaven forbid you should emote during business hours.”

“Did you say that you train? No that can’t be. Why you don’t even have a thigh gap and where is your 6 pack? From the looks of it you eat at least twice a day. I hate to ask this but do you eat carbs? You’ve got that doughy look. Have you ever considered lipo? I happen to carry an airbrush in my bag I can touch you up before you leave, we’ll straighten those curves right out!”

“Did you say that you had a mental illness? No that can’t be everyone knows that depressed people live underground and that they never, under any circumstances, get out of bed. Therapy isn’t for your kind. Now if you’ve had mediocre vacation recently I might be able to get you a few days of sick leave.”

–

Accidentally posted my prompt here! The actual prompt is here

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/sunday-writing-prompt-satire/

The Sunday Whirl Wordles 360 and 362 and Sunday Writing Prompt “Quotes”

It’s 3am and I am walking backwards,

up and down the staircase in a faulty rhythm.

There is a knot in my throat the size of a fist

and whenever I speak it tastes of gravel.

–

My dress climbs higher with each step

the pattern indistinguishable at certain altitudes

and I reflect sadly on my once trim thighs.

Time forces the soul to the surface,

turns us inside out and right side up

or upside down depending on our persuasion.

–

My brain feels tight and heavy

and I can’t make out the path ahead.

Under siege, my emotions come one and all.

I take a sputtering, bloodied breath

but the moment for enlightenment has passed.

–

A spray of shrapnel catches my left ventricle,

I grip the edge of my kitchen countertop

to keep from spilling onto the linoleum tiles.

Between lakes and pines I feel invincible,

a beast can only live in wild spaces.

Low light softens even the gravest afflictions.

–

My thoughts are audible as they pass.

I travel landscapes like the simple quilts

woven by my grandmother’s hands

but the distance does not bring me

any closer to a sense of freedom.

–

I keep tripping over the same fork in the road.

Are these obstacles gifts or signs?

I spend my days fighting the fires in my infernal heart

and my nights closeted by baseless fears.

Is this my picture perfect, my life as I have willed it?

–

for

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/sunday-writing-prompt-quotes/

https://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/2018/07/14/wordle-360/

https://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/wordle-362/

Wordle #191

I draw each thread closed,

wounds bending into caricature.

I gather the corners,

these four white walls a shroud.

I dabble in death,

in dreams that come and go

without thirst or warning.

–

The pen in my hand

is red tipped,

a minatory bride

scattering dreams

in her crepuscular flight.

Complex and intransit,

I have more layers than substance.

–

I find myself clinging

to each impasse

afraid of the sobriety

that momentum affords.

Do you think me unthinkable?

Erudite or woefully inconsistent?