pillbug

Sprouts through the ribcage

Pushes sinew aside

Hope is a zombie

Growing in your lower left intestine

Splits the viscera

Bisects the intercostal

Cuts the pancreas into untidy halves

And finally

Pushes out your mouth

Vines across the soft and hard palette

So your whole mouth tastes like a tight tangle of copper

Hope is a zombie

Hope doesn't let you

Die

Hope watches you take a spear to the colon

Ten swords through each eye

But puts bracers under both your knees to stop you from collapsing

Hope commands you walk

Hope will drag you if it must

Hope is a cancer that can't survive without it's host

So it will haul you anywhere, like a sack of forgotten hopes stained the colour of too-old apples

Just so it won't die as well

If you wish for the ease of collapse

The gentle embrace of acquiescence

The way pain lifts from your shoulders and

Flattens into bleak and cool nothing the moment you give up

Hope will not endow it you

Hope forces you to keep walking down a path inlain with thorns

Makes you take each bloody, mutilated step

Down the road towards light, towards life

When the comfort of the dark would do such wonders

For your already broken skin

Your already shattered bone

Do you know what they say

About the indomitable human spirit?

That it's the only proof of a soul

That there should be no reason that nature can discern

To keep moving when injured

To keep fighting when beaten

Concession is better, safer

A pallid, subservient life, neck bowed to the overseeing hand of fate, where one does not dare to go against it, is safer

But hope will not permit such a life

Hope will kill any part of you that impedes it in its goal

Hope is a zombie

With all the years on one flat surface, spiralling out and around.

Or, less literally

Imagine all of your life and history happening at once

Held in equal truth by the world, by the stars that are only just now seeing the Cambrian explosion and the Gods and Angels of the future who Know all that is to come.

Now imagine you're in a tunnel

Bloody, bleeding, bruised, an elbow to your stomach, vomit and breath all out and on the floor

The floor which is so dark you can't see it for your feet and your own thick, sticky shadow.

You're lost in the tunnel

Can't even tell which way is forward or back

And there's a roaring, a rushing, a screaming like an underground express train barelling and screeching at full hilt somewhere to your left

But you feel dizzy, you feel faint and thirsty, and cold and hot and agonized

And you can't move out of the way.

You can't move at all.

The train just barely misses you

...

You sort of wish the train would hit you,

Wake you up

Bring you back to life

You wish for the headlights to flood the impenetrable darkness

To illuminate the walls and reveal, perhaps

Messages written by those who have passed through before you

Maybe someone could tell you how to get out of this place

But the train just barely misses you,

And circles, screaming all the while.

You put one hand to the wall to steady yourself

You're just standing

Just standing

Standing is surviving

Standing is alive

So you're standing

And the air gets thicker

And granier

And harder to breathe

You start to cough, alone in that tunnel, molasses in your lungs

And you're quite sure you're going to die.

...

You don't die

The train just barely misses you.

I'd like you to walk, shuffle, trip and drag your feet half a meter forward

But you don't even know which way IS forward, do you?

And you cannot move for the train that's there

So instead I want you to just imagine

Imagine the outside of the tunnel

The entryway where light beams golden and the day crashes aloud like a brass band

There are streamers of every colour

And a cherry pie just for you

It smells and tastes like a pub garden on the brightest, goldenest day in summer

Where everyone is sweating like a God in heaven,

Close, so close to the sky

There's even ice cream

Outside the tunnel.

...

So you can't get out of the tunnel,

You don't know how.

That's fine

Didn't I tell you all of time was happening at once?

We can skip to the ending, I promise you nobody will know

In fact, you've already made it out of the tunnel

You have already made it out

The train is far, far behind you now

Your ears still ring at the memory of it's noise and commotion,

But the train has circled back and away

Which means you are safe, here, outside the tunnel, in the garden

And the thick, acrid air pulls it's sinews off your lungs and shoulders

You take a deep breath of glory, of morning air

As sunlight pierces into your eyes

You collapse to your knees, the world sharpening into the most brilliant warmth

And then.

Cheering.

Loud cheering.

Loudest you've ever heard

And people, countless people, their skin so warm and rich and sweaty, their eyes pools of deep familiarity you wouldn't yet understand,

Their clothes bright cloth, so real to the touch you could count the threads as you take them into your weak and waiting arms

People run up to you

Lift you from the floor

You are pressed into that warm embrace

And everyone who loves you is here

And everyone here loves you

And they scream,

"Oh my fucking God!" --

(the sound reaches your sternum like a kickdrum at a live house)

"Oh! She made it! She's fucking made it! Here she is!"

Like they knew you would come, but were waiting

Like they were scared cause you were late

When you said you got held up

Cause of the train.

So now imagine you're back in the tunnel

That's how it feels, right? Like a tunnel

Deep and dark, so incomprehensibly deep and dark and

Cold, most of all

And lonely

That you could be in a tunnel or perhaps the very bottom of an old, disused

Swimming pool

That's gone frigid, with ice blocking off the top

You're gonna stink of chlorine but, ah well,

Anyone who stinks of chlorine gets a pass

Because that shows they've survived inhaling it for the past however long

So you're in the tunnel, or the pool, and you don't know how to move forward, or how to do anything

I don't think I know either,

I don't think I can tell you

The train's gonna keep circling you, but

I've seen that day.

I've seen that day you get out of there

So just stay standing, hand against the wall, knees locked and skin cold and shaking

Stay standing, please.

And at the end of that dream, I went home and on the way bought a huge cake. The chocolate kind with a french name that you're meant to eat cold. I remember clearly the size of it - I think it easily served twelve people. And now, in the real world, away from the dream, I grow hungry. I wish I had that cake to hand.

To catch someone is to give them total safety. It's okay if you're scared, it's okay if you struggle, it's okay if you trip and almost lose your balance. It's okay if your feet fail you and you plummet seven leagues to the bottom of the sea, having to claw your bay back up along the side of the wall with bleeding fingertips. It's okay to progress at a snail's pace, doing anything you can not to fall. And guess what. Even IF you fall, that's okay too. There is no fate you cannot recover from when there is someone waiting at the base to catch you. Make any mistake you like, fuck up beyond comprehension. Someone will catch you. A soft, safe landing is your right, it is guaranteed for you. The one waiting at the bottom with open arms, wide like an embrace, gazing up into the glare of the sun... that is dedication incarnate, isn't it? To catch and be caught is to have total assurance in everything.

But to catch is also to threaten.

To catch is to pursue, to hunt, to inhale blood like a hound and set upon the trail, never stopping, never thinking, only pushing forward until the prey is caught. To be caught is worse than being hunted, because the hunted are free. They may only be free to run, but what are the caught free to do? Squirm? To catch someone in this sense is to swallow their freedom whole, to make a meal of their subtle bodies and weak lungs.

A catch is a pretty person you've managed to woo. A catch as a deceptive condition ruining your chance to make it out unscathed. You can catch a useful piece of gossip or info on the wind as easily as, on that same wind, you can catch a cold. "Catch" is perhaps the most divisive word in the English language, in my eyes. The epitome of tenderness and the embodiment of heartlessness.

So when you say you're gonna catch me,

If I could see you again, Sparrow, I would do something to entirely destroy my self-respect. Let me explain. I think of seeing you often, although maybe not more often than is normal, given the terrible, untidy ending we made for ourselves. Once every few months, I'd say. Briefly. I usually just imagine what it would be like to run into you at the store in a week or on the street in fifteen years - in both instances I am doing wonderfully, I am gorgeous and molten and loved and desired and you wonder why you ever let me go. In those very brief dreams I have of us once again meeting, I usually hope for you to realise that we could have been great - that I have been great without you anyway. Because I want to realise that too.

But I heard about you yesterday from a friend. You intruded on my mind without my foreknowledge or planning. I am not used to thinking of you outside of my little delusions of grandeur. This friend told me you changed your hairstyle, and I realised when I tried to picture it that I have, strangely, forgotten what you look like. I can't picture your face like I can Tomoe's, can't formulate the shape of your nose or mouth or where your moles and freckles were. I remember the colour of your eyes, as cliche as it sounds, but thats about it. How terrifying. How terrifying that someone I loved so dearly, someone who broke my heart so violently, can slip away into fuzziness after only a few years. And so you're sticking in my head these days.

It has gone past just the desire to have you see my glow-up. If I met you now... I think about doing things I know I would never actually do. Not really, I don't think. There IS no way to meet you, anyhow. I will not scrape through the dregs of our destroyed world looking for one. But the fantasies of what I MIGHT do, of what I secretly WANT to do, they change. And I think that still matters.

I would tell you I'm sorry I was cruel and stupid. I would explain to you as graciously and humbly as I could, with great humility, that I was volatile and aggressive and problematic towards you and Kate because I was in love with you and I just didn't realise. Losing you made me feel horribly unwanted and horribly unstable and horribly, horribly confused, and in that confusion I hurt myself and I hurt you both. And where Kate has forgiven me, you have not. You must have your reasons. But I still remembered the birthday card you made me for my 15th that reads 'I'm ever so happy you were born and I could never stop loving you'. You are perhaps not a very good person now, Sparrow. I hear you've hurt people and you've hurt yourself and you refuse to learn from your mistakes. I like to think I'm not as bad as you might be. So while I know you're objectively not a great person, I don't hate you. I still... A part of my heart is still forever yours. I can live without it, I can grow a new chunk to fill is place, but the piece of my heart that is yours remembers where it came from. It remembers me, and so it's inaccurate to say I stopped loving you entirely, point blank. And so I wonder if those childish words ring true. Can you hate me, as everyone says you do, and still love me as you once promised? To be honest, I don't really care. I'm some way, I'm glad for that - I have realised you and I will never be in love and get married and that is okay. I do fear nobody will ever love me like you did, but then I suppose you didn't really love me all the way. You didn't love me the way I loved you. But it felt like you did. It felt like something I've not known since then and I always fear I never will again. And I don't really have a remedy for that fear other than patience and faith. Those words are comforting enough, so I'll take stock in them.

But at the same time, its not all virtuous. In truth, I don't care if you'll never love me like you did because I don't need you to. But I don't need you to because if I had only one day with you, I could satiate myself with that. I am not as pure a creature as I should be, Sparrow. Are any of us? Probably. Maybe. Perhaps. We humans like to think big, have big grand moral plans for how to be perfect and healthy and squeaky-clean. We aim to be angels but we are only risen apes, filled with filth and sin and failure. When I was 15 I thought I was evil but I was just 15. Now I'm 18 and I think I'm perverted - am I? Or am I just 18?

One day and I'd beg you not to love me like I thought you did back then, but to love me the way I'm now desperate for from anyone. Your body, though it has changed in the years we've been apart, is still yours. Mine will still remember. You are comfortable, familiar, safe. You were once a safe enough place for me to put down a piece of my heart, so even if you've grown volatile and cruel, even if you would spit at me and call me pathetic, the body... the body remembers where the severed parts of it were once laid down to rest, to be warm. I want to have sex with you because I know you, or I knew what you were, and for one night I am capable of forgetting that you're not still like that anymore. I like being degraded so you can say whatever you like and use the sex as a means to try and hurt me. Until this moment I never considered that you might use it to try and hurt yourself, and now I have to think about whether THAT would deter me. Probably. Because I have enough self respect, just about, I think, to not actually do any of it. But god, I can imagine it. I can imagine crawling into your arms like I've arrived tired at the end of the universe, I can imagine you holding me like you couldn't back in quarantine, finally making me feel like I'm worthy of every type of love. You made me feel so worthy. Can you do this for me too? I feel like I'll be better after that, knowing that someone can desire me. But knowing it is still only you, that it has only ever been you, will in reality probably make me worse.

I yearn for what we had sometimes. I wake up with things to tell you. You'd love the new show I'm into and you'd love me loving it and I'd love you loving me love it and it felt so good to be in the love vortex when we were kids. We cannot go back there. Those days are gone and dead. And I can only look forward to someone LIKE you in my future. But Sparrow, I wish for you sometimes. My first love, that's what I call you. In truth, you were not. But you were the first one that hurt. Perhaps I shouldn't measure love by how much it hurts to lose but then again perhaps I should. After all, that is proof you were worth having, that losing you hurt so badly.

I would grovel at your feet, I would do anything. I don't care how evil and messy you get. If I close my eyes for one day, you could be my Sparrow again.

But I will never see you again and this is the only letter I will ever write you, and I'm not going to send it. I don't know your address, after all.

You were desirable, like molten gold

Like a statue chipped of marble and pearl

You were gilded

Lithe, the slope of your porcalien skin like the tops of mountains

Kissed only by the cream-like clouds and the

God-like sun

Your eyes, jewels inside a balanced, polished, breathtaking face

Full lips, thin, graceful neck

Your whole body poised like a flower,

Ripe and opening,

Heavy, scented, blooming

Your hair was glossy and your waist a smooth terrain of soft, pink flesh

Your step graceful, elegant, your poise undeniable and ruinously attractive

When I met you, you dressed like you wanted to ensnare the world with your beauty

And when I met you, it worked

And now you are older

Fatter

Duller

Your lustre is gone.

Your skin slopes around bumps of fat, dimpled and hairy

Lumpy and asymmetrical, not such a graceful statue but more a garden gnome

Rugged and rough and dirty and

Partly forgotten by the world

Out of eyeshot, your visage weakens

Grows dull and unkempt, with flyaway hairs and unshaven armpits,

Thicker eyebrows, a disappearing waist, like an unassuming lump of clay.

You are no longer attractive, no longer desirable to most. You have become commonplace; no longer God and instead animal - wild and crooked and breathing and sweating.

And yet. And yet I look at you - untidy hairs tousled from sleep. Stomach pudgy with delectation. Clothes askew and unfashionable, clinging comfortably to your old, persevering form. Skin that has wrinkled and puckered from exposure to the sun.

You are warm. You are comfortable. You are fed. You are alive, and you show it. You are a liturgy of proclamations, written on the body - I have been warm. I have been comfortable. I have been fed. Look at me - I have survived it all.

Rip the heart out the body

Put it in ground

Bury

Bury

More specifically, I take breaks from my fantasies to picture myself

Grip in hand and barrel aimed towards some sort of enemy

Defending myself

Defending others

And making myself worthy of praise

When I think about sex, I think immediately about defending myself

I immediately and instinctually, as if I have been taught, think about shame

Think about killing someone

In a way so noble and impressive that it will let me be redeemed

When I think about sex I think about saying sorry the least humiliating way I can

By shooting someone just to show my strength

As if giving in to lust a few nights a week causes me to lose it all

I think about the hard, long, unwavering edge of the pistol

The comforting slot of the trigger against my finger,

The bullets loaded heavily inside, begging

To be released

I think of the poet who once told me that she'd learned to call love a cheap and vulgar thing

If even guns can look noble, I suppose I've done the same

Sex is cheap and vulgar and embarrassing and unforgivable

Even killing someone is easier to permit

So long as it is for the sake of protecting something

Even if that something is just my pride

That way it seems less selfish

Less selfish than something that exists only to please me

In all my memories of the things I used to love

There comes a moment where I shoot them all down in front of all my friends

As if to prove that nothing in this world exists for my wanton consumption alone

Not even that which is made to be consumed

I read porn for the plot

I draw smut for the practice

I love for a noble and lofty cause

I keep my gun always raised, always ready

Justifications springing to my lips

Desire is a black smear of paint across both my eyes and

As something much bigger than just your little life

In your backyard in 2010 with rain and plastic gardening equipment

You see lawyers in seattle on tv or hear about

Hurricanes and the dust bowl

And America feels like a different plane of reality

And its hard growing up because the film seperating you from the world,

That slick, sticky, opaque sheen

Breaks away like gunk from your sleepy, blinking eyes

And you see the world is a 6-poly flat block

Filled with humans and taxes and shoes and the same 9 emotions on a cyclistic little loop

Nothing is special and you know everything there is to it

People in the dust bowl were just poor

People in seattle clean their bedsheets and watch the office and miss the train

Everyone's world is a tiny fragment of a greater fragment

And the fragment is entirely grey

So thats what I mean when I say I want to go to a place outside time

A place before I could see the world beyond my garden fence

A time when the storm pounding at my window came from a distant, magical place over the endless ocean

A place where it was easy to romanticise anything because I knew

Nothing

I know the world, now

And I love her, but she's lost her

we would get back here again?

To these banished lands -

to this place I submerged in a thousand layers of fire.

I buried this place

I exhumed myself from the wound of the world, that summer, scooped it off of me and out of me

until I was hollow, bloodied, a cesarean babe borne of the

vivisectioned world.

I hacked off sloughs of summer-time skin

I stripped myself bone-bare

I buried my body

along with this place

in the sun-warmed earth

and my hair fell down into my eyes to blind me,

to wake me

up.

And yet

so many years later

the long-healed scar

a thousand leagues deep, reaching down to the heart of me

into my very mortal make-up

has been called back here, to this place which has found me once again

somehow, as alive as it has ever been

wearing a masquerade-face to keep it safe -

or at least safer - from those old, prying, inwards facing eyes

and it calls to me,

gently,

softly

like sun-lit rain

that golden place

is still alive?

I put my hair up again in a small, elasticated hair tie.

I remembered the song of the old world.

That golden world that breathes with nary a scar on it.

That golden world breathes

lungs filled with millions upon

millions of

I pick up wood chips and chew on them

Tasteless, sucked dry,

Leeched

These pistachio shell passions

Its almost fun to knaw them

To chew them, examine them, pick them to pieces with my teeth

Its nice to look at them, no longer blinded by a senseless

Hunger

But they get sticky with spit and cling to my fingers and I have to throw them out

They're waste, now

Remains

Sex is fun while there's oil in the lamp

I love how it burns and melts and turns you to molt gold

But when the metal clanks empty against the barrel chamber

When the light won't catch, when all you have left is

Unpleasantly wet hands

How boring it is

Sex is boring when you've had your fill

I conflate desperation with joy

Being satisfied is dull, still, lifeless as a bloated corpse

To be hungry, to be chasing something, that my friend is life

Starvation presses your back and chemicals sear your brain

Paws churn the earth, love, your eyes almost don't seem to see

I love that tunnel vision

Stability is a pale, steady blue you can drown in

What do I do at night if I'm not vomiting my own heart and eating it?

What do I do at night if I'm not desperately touching myself?

What do I do at night when my needs are all met?

When the world flattens out like a stable heart rate

What then? I feel almost as if I could go to work

Like a normal person would

And die in the span of six seconds

But desire can kill time

Obsession can pause the world

As it shivers

On its axis

But I'm fine now

That's the weird bit

When you're totally full the one thing you still lack

Is lack itself

With no lack I have no goal, nothing to chase and nothing to reach for

Contented, I am convinced to stay in place

Growing sedentary and obedient