online diary

moments ago, it was filled with laughter and warm food. careful indulgence. i can smell the spice on my hair and my clothes.

my brother leaves for church, loves a girl kindly enough they speak to god together in the same breath.

something crooked, a bad weld, a long walk towards which they believed was sacred. a small bird, a loud car that almost hits you as you walk into the unprotected road but misses by just enough.

the driver yells but you cannot hear him through the glass shield of windows. he gestures, throws his hands in the air, but you both know that he transmutes his fear into anger.

things look blurry as you walk the like towards what could have been salvation. cry with strangers, become stone to those you know. flip your sanctuary inside out in order to defend what keels over deeply inside of you.

drink from the holy land but do not eat its fruit. look to the sky and find meaning in the clouds. meaning in anything, deciphered pictures made of misted water than allow you to find belief in something other than your own hands.

pull the roots from the dirt. dig into the mud, hands thrusted unto wet ground to stave away the perpetual dying for just one more evening.

eat again, and again, and again. turn the nutrients into fuel the way the plants have turned the sun. know in a small way that you are fed of the sun even though you are not graced with directness in its sight.

created by energy, light in a darkness full of chemicals reacting over and over into perfect patterns that allow for life. watch it glaze over, turn away, never look back. turn to salt if you do.

ask favors of people who do not know how to say no. move up the food chain in a quiet, maneuverable manner that allows you to climb, climb higher, maybe high enough to touch the clouds you have created meaning for. maybe if you had touched them their purpose would crawl itself into you and you would know what it means to have mattered.

fall off the ladder, so hard your removal leaves a pounded absence of dirt. while it has not been destroyed, it has been changed, pounded into the shape of your body, pounded and disturbed by your touch and left lingering on your skin.

i remember nights strung out in my bedroom with your hands interlocked in mine, letting me cry on your shoulder as i revived old ghosts that would have been happier staying in their graves.

i remember the first time you handed me a knife and your smile as you did it. i don’t remember, though, what it is that made you want to turn it towards yourself.

i watched you bleed and bleed, cauterized and bandaged each wound while you turned against yourself. i watched you disappear slowly into something unrecognizable. i let the remains of your body bite me, bruised and bleeding for your unjustified cause.

it would have been kinder if he had just wanted to kill me. instead, he desires for me to hurt, just as i had hurt him.

the small man, the cruel man, decides my fate in front of me. he drags the knife across my body in intricate, detailed patterns. something skillful, artful even, if i had not been made canvas by the small, cruel man.

he draws an X over my heart for the times i made him ache. across my knuckles for the times he gripped sheets above my head. my elbows, knees, jaw, for each moment i immobilized him with fear.

i do not believe the crime fits the punishment. across my eyes for every time i’ve pained him with my gaze. my lips for every time i hurt with my words.

but what do i know? what am i to suspect myself the judge, to reject the vengeance he believes i deserve? across my back, for every distrustful moment i’ve shared with him.

once i am covered in blood, he grabs a warm cloth and drags it across my body. the villain, the healer, the cruel small man. he not only wants me to hurt, but he wants me to live, nurse me back to health to garner some trust between us. to share knowing he is capable of doing this again. a warning, a redemption, followed by his justified forgiveness.

a nearby deer breaks a branch, turning my head to follow the noise. it stands only a foot tall, tiny creature that couldn’t hold any more years than the lifespan of any average household mouse. it turns its head to the sun, and i follow it once again.

my eyes squint and i pull my hand over my brow and i make contact with this ball of light. something so far reaches close enough to burn. too much of a good thing, it leaves marks on my skin avoiding only the parts of it i was smart enough to protect. wouldn’t it be my fault if i scorch anyways? i, never knowing when to pull myself away from something that feels warm and gentle while it hurts.

i bring myself back to the creature, studying it closer, making contact with its eyes. for just a moment, we hold the gaze long enough for me to feel a stirring in my chest. a warmness that spreads through my fingertips. the moment where something beautiful turns sight into a feeling. to be held there in solemn connection with something you may not be able to talk, but can surely be understood.

she is beautiful and spotted. her long lashes flutter and catch the light she gazed into before her eyes met mine. she holds a knowing, some shared experiences between us that we can sense, scars on our bodies in the same places.

knees laid on the steps of the chapel.

the priest lays a hand on my shoulder and whispers his graces to you.

robins perch on the tree outside the window,

nested comfortably in their open landscape of a home.

sometimes i wonder what it would be to fly as them,

knowing you’re safe in your ability to run away.

the only ones who can catch you are your own kind, something faster, something smarter,

but it would not have mattered, because a swift, outsmarted death is better than no meaning at all.

like me, on the chapel steps,

praying to you, knowing you are hearing me,

here it rains.

it’s only about ten degrees warmer there, living parallel lives with yours filled with more heat and mine more energy.

i trace the lines of my own palm and remember what it felt like to touch you.

i decided it was a little more trouble than it was worth so i threw on my coat and walked out the door. in the woods, i walked by a man who smelt like a memory. he was wearing a bruins jersey and smelt like ashes. he was much like any man i’ve met out here in new england.

he asked me how i was, i said good. in returning the question, he told me not well, and then we walked off and will never see each other again.

i loop around like lake and spend the time in my head and not my body. i remember conversations i had near each memorable tree. touch some of them, reminded of each moment that passed.

i remember the time i brought you to the lake on the other side of town. i had brought a few boys there, and im not even sure your memory was my favorite. maybe the one where i almost kissed my last boyfriend, and when i leaned in he turned from me and picked up a log to distract himself. maybe doing tarot with an old friend, talking about the stars and watching him run his crystals under the water to charge them.

but regardless, i remember walking the smaller trail with you. you told me about your mother, told me about your time in hawaii, taught me a little prayer the people of the island said when they entered a natured space.

we talked about god, much as we had been for the last few weeks before then. i remember calling on the porch in a new hampshire hotel in december, shivering my way through spilling the secrets of divinity.

you asked about love. about family. you asked to hold my hand and in it you placed gently a part of yourself that i held onto tightly.

although, someone who questions very often does not have the ability to hold onto the truth he is given. if we perpetually ask, when can we relax into the knowing? i don’t really believe you’ve known much of anything your entire life.

and maybe it’s not to the fault of your own. but it isn’t to mine, either.

i have been a cemetery for the last rounds of my lovers. a burial ground, a place to dump the body. somewhere safe and sacred to be visited in moments of grief, but it is no place to live.

i have been a hand to hold. a mouth to fuck. a warm body, a beautiful mind. i have been an object of desire, the dartboard, the bottles in aim of the sniper. i’ve been a bad dog, who bites much, much harder than they bark.

so i don’t mind being assigned to whichever extreme you decide to give me. i can live as the martyr or the demon or whatever side of divinity suits a narrative you will have to comprise to cope with such loss.

a lost future sometimes hurts worse than something you can grasp in your hands. if you have something in front of you, it can make sense to let it go. but what you have ripped from yourself is the sanctity of the ideal, the perfect palace of your mind to escape to.

scrub the door of your name.

leave it open just a bit, in case you decide to turn around and walk back through.

so i will drag my body out the door,

place myself in the seats i belong and look forward in the car. maybe i will sneak glimpses in the rear view, but that is no safe way to drive.

so i will place your things in the back of my closet,

along with the other secrets i hide. your origami doves live in tandem with old liquor bottles shoved away for no eyes to see but my own.

so i will let you fade,

i think a smaller, hungrier part of me exists in the temptation to love you. to know you. curiosity, a silent killer, followed by a taste of something so satisfying, enough so to be brought back to life.

i think about a yard, and a pool, and some semblance of future that lies within the words you sing to me over the phone. sweetness, kindness, replaced tenderly by contempt, just enough to not disturb the system. just swiftly enough, softly enough, to not notice the difference until i’ve turned my back to see that gold that once lived here has turned into heavy dust.

it’s a magic in its own right, turning hope into fear, turning love into hate. an alchemy of sorts, an ancient haste of transformation. oh, how things can be so different within such little time.

when i was eight years old i fell off my bike and got a nasty scar. it rests itself on my skin to this day, a reminder of pain healed.

what happens to those bruises we can’t see? do they clot and scar like the rest of them? do they mold, calcify into something stronger? do they rest as stitching between our hearts and lungs and stomachs leaving strings only to be pulled?

do i want to be reminded of who i’ve been? would it be easier to forget her, lose pieces of me tainted by the hands of others? would it be worth it? would i forget all the love too?

i am not grateful for my pain, but it has strengthened me. i deserved to grow kindly. to know what love looks like, to recognize when it is wrapped as a shield around dominance and control.

but to change the past is jump to the stars and expect to hit anywhere but the floor again. aching in possibility, rooting itself in the reality of the laws we are dictated by.

watching your grandmother’s look back at you.

picking at skin, rifling through sand at the beach. pressing the elevator button five more times hoping it comes faster. wanting more, waiting less, asking, begging.

walking past places you’ve cried and reliving the moments in flashes before it goes away. avoiding rooms, feeling lost. picking yourself up, putting it down.

missed calls, not showing to class, spending hours laying down in the same position and getting up just to pee.

eat the same meals over and hide your tools of self destruction. brush your teeth when they start to hurt, brush your hair when it starts to tangle. spend time on post-maintenance rather than preventative.

invaded and softened by disease.

wraps itself gently towards her soul,

making her gentler in return.

hard woman, turned soft woman, turned weak,

becomes frail and kinder.

she gives away her things, wraps her self in blankets of joy. defeated woman.

we spend time in her home,

straighten out the curtains before we lock the door.

drink wine with the young ones turned old,

laugh all night and then cry when they return to the car.

cold woman turned warm,

the muse. the one to be gazed from the artists eyes, the one to be entombed into art. captured spirit, a capsule of time breathed to life to someone who has dedicated something as simple as time.