Jacquie Crass

On the worst of nights this is what it feels like: I. There is an ocean inside my skull, only without the water. So, just the ocean floor, I guess. So, my head is filled with sand. II. There are sea creatures too, crawling along the sea bed and gasping for water; giant, monstrous, beasts too terrible to be seen. III. Every second is one grain of sand. My head aches with the weight of it all. Why does it hurt so much? Why can’t I just sleep? Why can’t I sleep?

Somebody asks if you’re okay, and you say yes. It’s the only answer.

PART ONE: WHAT THEY TELL YOU Your hair is made of gold, nothing stays but you’re in this for the long haul, there’s no exit-lane from the bitterness of growth. It’s better when you stick to the edges, let yourself get knocked down by the stronger winds, the ones that burn going down, but of course you’re not better in the end. You don’t get nine lives or even two but you do get to watch yourself die every day for five years, and if you think you’re finally alive after that then you’re wrong. Heartbreak hurts, & you’ll want to give up but you can always carry that brick wall around with you even when it looks like a mountain. Even when you don’t call them bad days anymore they’re just days, they’re just weeks, this is just your life. PART TWO: WHAT THEY DON’T When you cut all of your hair off people don’t stop calling you ‘sweetheart’, they just do it without the smile. There is an exit-lane, it just doesn’t lead to anywhere good, and in the edges or the thick of the woods there are just as many monsters, some of them just dress  differently and talk differently and look at you less before they take you apart. There are no better days, there is no greener grass, this is your life. You can do with it what you will, but your heart will always ache and your spine will always stand up straight at the sight of a big dog with sharp teeth because of that time when you were four, and the brick wall isn’t actually a wall it’s everything you were dealt in the card game nobody wins. You don’t have to carry it. You can put it down, you can decide you’d rather build something out of the scraps, whatever you like— it will still hurt but you don’t have to carry it.

We cannot keep from starving just by telling ourselves it’ll all be okay—then again, we’ve made it this far, living like trees in winter, bare arms open to the sunlight that may not come.

I have been a ghost; more rainstorm than person with stones sewn into my skin and prison bars wrapped around my bones. And it occurs to me that I have not been happy, even when I have. Do you see? Sometimes the weight of life becomes unbearable. Is it the sadness that makes the poet or the poet that makes the sadness?