Hades' Pet

The House Rules:

1. ​I’ve been here for a decade now. The archives are heavy, but I don’t delete the history. I just outgrew the lighting.

2. ​I’m from the underworld, but I’m enjoying the sun right now. Expect a mix of both.

3. ​This is a space for the "unpalatable." I’m tired of the curation of wellness. I’m here to be a disaster, to be a poet, and to be human, all at once.

4. ​I write for the sake of the ink, not the audience. If you’re reading, welcome. If not, the void hears me just fine.

​Currently: Romanticizing the mundane.

my brain: you're gross

i did the math today and realized you’re 48 now.

and for some reason, that unsettles me more than anything else. maybe because in my head, you never aged past that version of you i knew. i don’t even know what you look like now.

but in my head you're still there. in College of Science, uniform pressed, shoulders squared, that restrained smile you never let fully happen,

just the slight lift on the right side of your lip.

it’s strange how that stayed so clear, when everything else faded.

sometimes i forget it’s been more than a decade since i last touched you.

i owe you an apology i never had the courage to give.

so i want to apologize now. not in the way i should have back then--this is obviously too late for that -- but at least in a way that’s honest now.

i'm sorry

for not telling you the truth,

that you no longer fit in the life i was building.

for choosing the easy cruelty of blocking you

instead of the harder kindness of honesty.

for every call i cut short.

every message i left unanswered.

your birthday i forgot

because i was too consumed with becoming someone else.

i’m sorry for how i pushed you, how i challenged you in ways you probably didn’t expect from me.

i’m sorry for letting you feel something that might have been love. maybe it was.

was it?

i cared about you. that part was real.

but care isn’t always enough to stay.

i’m sorry i gave you my first. i didn’t think about what that might mean to you, or what it might make you hope for.

i’m sorry i left you there, in that town where everything started and ended for us.

i don’t know if there were others after me. i used to think there weren’t. you didn’t seem like that kind of man.

but then again, i didn’t seem like that kind of girl either.

sometimes i think about how easily it could have gone differently.

if i walked into your class that second year and didn’t tie my hair up so high that you later said made me look like a cat. didn’t wear those green skinny jeans you said made you notice me.

if i just… didn’t catch your attention at all.

maybe i wouldn’t have disrupted your life the way i did.

you always said, “you can do this, kid.”

you were right.

i did. i made it.

just not with you.

and i think what stays with me isn’t that we didn’t end up together

it's that i never gave you the ending

you deserved to hear.

What do you say? you bring wine, i’ll bring books. i’ll read to you while the river hums, and we won’t talk about anything that needs fixing.

I wasn't listening. Not really. I was too busy trying to stay inside my own body while my brain kept showing me the cliff. The wind. The bottom rushing up. It's like having two screens open at once and you can't close the bad one.

She looked at me and her eyes were all lit up. Like someone had plugged her into a different, kinder world. Strawberries. A valley. The open road. She was so busy building it, she didn't notice I was standing in the doorway of a room she couldn't see.

That's the thing, isn't it? You get so good at the performance. Nod. Smile. Say "yeah, that sounds nice." Meanwhile you're thinking about how easy it would be to just stop being a person. To fold yourself into the static between channels and disappear.

And you can't say it. Because what would that do to her face? That hopeful, strawberry-field face. You'd be the one who took the light out of it.

So I let her talk. I let her have the valley. I stayed in my dark corner of the couch and I was grateful --not for her ignorance, exactly, but for the fact that I could still hide. That I could still protect her from the thing living behind my ribs.

it is genuinely, physically exhausting to perform the role of a person. i’m not even talking about the big stuff, i’m talking about the micro-maintenance of appearing "fine" for the sake of everyone else's comfort. i’m talking about the fact that when breathing feels like hauling rocks up a hill and my brain is a dark, heavy fog, i still find the energy to reflexively mirror a smile back at a stranger. why is that the default? why is my survival only acceptable if it’s wrapped in a bow?

we’ve been conditioned to think that being human is only allowed if it’s "decent," but who decided that being a mess was the opposite of being decent? who decided that the "ugly" parts - the greasy hair, the staring into space for three hours, the complete inability to be a functional member of society for a day - are things we have to hide in the basement of our personalities?

the world is so repulsed by the "unbecoming" because it’s inconvenient. people don’t actually want you to be okay, they just want you to be quiet. they want you to curate this life-loving, "it’s a beautiful day to be alive" persona because it keeps the illusion going for them, too. but i’m tired of the curation. i’m tired of the aesthetic of wellness.