i drink instant coffee. i wear jackets that are everyone's but mine. i keep an inhaler on me. i straighten my back. i smell like vanilla and tobacco and coffee. i dry lavender and press flowers. i dig my hands into the rich earth and feel it crawl in and curl up to hibernate under my nails. i get anxious travelling with suitcases. i collapse on myself. i can't apologise. i add some sugar to savoury meals i cook. i don't cry. i run my hands under the tap until they're red-hot. i sit in the forest, shaded by the trees, for hours on end. i am alive when i'm alone. i go home. i survive. i don't tell you how i feel. i know there's an unspoken line for the bus. i wait until it's too late. i drown you. i survive. i know how to swim. i go to graveyards alone to visit graves of people i didn't know. i weep over lives that expired last century. i don't cry over my own dead. i don't smoke cause it was lung cancer. i carry smokes cause i like the smell. i survive. how much does a headstone give away?
i listen to instruments from my corpses times. i listen to everything that survived his childhood. i listen to the stuff that should've been mine. i never lived in the countryside but it's the only place where i always have. i knit. i sew. i read. i plant meek things that never survive long enough to fruit. i neglect everything in my care and ache when it wilts, as if i have the right to. i survive. i pick up the strings of others' pasts and presents and weave them into myself as if you can adopt the pains of another person. it's more selfish than it sounds. i love a view and i'm scared of heights. i add a little salt to everything sweet. i know not to use the whites of a rind. i prefer cats. i wear women's jeans. i'm scared. i like my eggs cooked at a 6 minute boil. i think houses should be red. i had to teach myself. i count in the shower. i get sugar free applesauce. i know it's all garlic and onion. i tell people they look nice. i switch between cursive and print when i write and i don't know why (it always reverts to cursive if i care, even if i fight it). i take walks longer than every life changing event behind me. i still fear you'll leave me behind in the city or on the side of a road like you threatened, even now, when i can care for myself. i don't like wheels, or being above them. circles are the worst shape. i wait for hands to be wrapped around my wrist, all the way around, up my forearm. i wait for big eyes. i wait for gripped by the shoulders and shaken like it'll fix me. i wait for a cold shower down my skull and neck, wet clothes, not enough air, something big to shock me out of it. it's like breaking an arm to distract from a cramp, you get that, right? drowning a crying child. i still hold my breath when i feel too much. i keep my card in my phone case. i recoil at touch i used to lean toward. nobody does anything on purpose and it still fucks you up so royally. i try to see the best in people and it pisses me off when i catch it, cause a good reason doesn't mean you don't deserve better. i'm sick of people making excuses for me. i reach out and end up hovering. my cheek is pressed against the air next to yours. my chin rests on something invisible above your shoulder. it still awakens a glass housed bird in me when people laugh or whisper or look too close. i still seek out good rocks. i still have the ones i collected as a kid. i spell like a motherfucker. i write. i dont cook anything without the vent hood on. i scare myself. i make notes in the margins of books. i step over my feelings like theyre laundry piles. i dog-ear pages. i hide in and outside my body.
the point : i am a quilt, or if you prefer, chewed up digested shit out pile, of all the people i've loved and hated and the strangers around them. they shaped me, still,
i cant grasp the concept that i affect the world around me. my hands pass through everything. i am a weightless presence save for the burden i cause. i dont make changes deeper than shells. when i disappear and you call me and i pick up on the third call to a sigh of relief and in a watery voice you thought id killed myself. when it hurts you that i treat your feelings for me as if they were never substantial cause i don't think they are. when you tell me you want me and i say there's nothing to want. when people care about me, they're claiming palpability from me when i'm not real. you direct feelings at me and i step aside, out of their path, and watch them fall into the hole i dug in the wall behind me, clatter into the cavity between the insulation sheets. then i ache over empty.
i'm sorry for being so focused on cutting off and keeping in the new growths springing off me, i didn't realise i was slashing your exploratory hands in the process. i will let the world dig it's fingers into me again. i just need time. is that okay? i just need time.
i'll put the trimmers down, stop cutting flowers that bud; i'll survive the bloom. again and again, i'll survive. i'm going to be more. every opening doesn't have to be a wound. i am going to grow into a poultice for both of our bleeding hands.
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I used to think you smelled warm. It's just stale now. Closed in. I'm trapped in the basement of your chest, and you won't breathe me out. I'm bound and gagged, weaved into your ribs. Wound around the wound where I slipped in after my blade. You barely bled. You're bored with me, you won't bleed for me, you won't bend me, still you won't break the boards barricading me in. Just in case you get sick of someone else, I suppose. You want begging? I'll beg.
I lean in to you and I sink to my knees and I pull you down with. You open me for yourself and keep me there, the way you like your options. Cold floor burns flayed flesh. Is this wide enough for you? I dig my fingers into your skull, as if your bone would give when you don't. I press your cheek into my face or my face into your cheek, whichever you prefer, whichever. Anything. Whatever. You breathe. I wish I could steal it. Even, in the way of not caring. Bouncing off your ear, my voice comes back more desperate than I wanted to betray, gasping, broken the way you like it. Me.
Tell me. Say it. My grip tightens, and I ache to hurt instead of just slip through you, perfectly fitted between your atoms. Tell me you don't want me so I can leave.
You shudder and shiver under me, like old machinery. It's acting. You're newly built, renovated, well oiled. You have people that see to that. But it's good acting, and I swear to suspend disbelief, to drop it, to unhand you, if you would just end my grief. But your voice leaks over my wrist. I can't do that. Drips slowly then faster, running in rivulets down my arms. Like my skin itself is opening up vertical fissures from your shockwaves. It smarms down, hot, red, viscous. It disconnects at my elbow, pools at our feet, thick grease. I don't wipe the corner of your mouth.
Use me, then. My grip slips, fingertips sliding down your skin. There is nothing to hold onto here. There is no anchor. Your rope is around my throat.
I'm at your disposal. So use me.
I sink to level with your shoulders, burning eyes pressing into your polished skin. Granite. I scrabble at your edges.
I can't waste you. I can't consume you.
So I'm just a sticker to you. Collectible. Unstuck. Dusty. I drag my fingers through the pool at our shoes. I smear it on myself. If you won't kill me I can play dead. The blood's not real but neither are we.
I eked out an echo of your esse and it ached more than if I'd eschewed everything you'd been. My voice stronger than vice
Grip on the scribbled slip of supporting signals, shrouding slips of the tongue, of my fingers
Too close to the way they grazed your face
I rang out over the courtyard, rousing ravens, a stray mouse. It wasn't right, it wasn't how I write, not my carefully wrought plan. To honour the wordwright.
It was supposed to shake, to break, but I stood solid as your newly engraved stone. I rang out.
I rang
Your phone, still expecting you to pick up. Do they leave your voicemail open, down there?
Are you yet settled in the spoke of your spine, sleeping in the soil? In death, a spiculum-straight no-nonsense speculating wraith, clawing and clinging to my curtains, like you want me to know I have to stop thinking.
my voice avalanches into yours. (i try to peel it off, but once it sticks... i'm better off licking a pole in the winter and waiting. right?)
sometimes, i can't peel oranges. see dogs in the wrong color. see them in the right one. tell stories. roll dice. walk into orange rooms.
if we're both in here, what's in you?
if you live inside me, where am i?
you are could be the
emptiest person alive
and
still,
i don'tthinki'deverfit.
toothpaste on the wrong side of the tube, maybe, frozen soup in a ziploc. (soup, that's another one for your side. how dumb.)
anyone's hands on my head turn into yours, crown nightmare-shifting into spiders, with love like you pet a dog and not your equal, i was always on my knees in front of you and drowning in your clothes. holding my breath just cause you begged. gasping.
when my tongue burns. when it doesn't.
fucking inhaler loyal to me like i was to you, stuck to me like a paper wristband (hospital, fair, festival, hospital, fair, festival...) even though my lungs work fine (you'd know). because yours don't. i should've choked you. i couldn't ever. here she comes, little saint bernard. was that it? was that all, then.
heel.
yeah, i like to think
you knocked down walls and expanded the floor plan and locked me in the broom closet. nest like you always did
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i was never great at being a teenager. or a kid either for that matter. these days, i worry that a lifetime of fighting to make good decisions catches up to you, like i'm waiting on hold.
i keep praying for a cigarette between my fingers or train tracks on my back or poison in my veins. maybe it's just more fun to risk it when you've got responsibilities outside of being responsible. maybe i missed out. maybe it won't pass. maybe i should've given into the craving to topple it when there wasn't so much to build back up--then again, i guess i just skipped straight to the sharp end of a toothpaste tube, pencil sharpened hips. what did my parents teach me that that felt milder than a healthy dose of underage intoxication?
the worst bit, is that good kid credits don't carry over to the next part. you just keep fighting yourself, and then sainthood makes for the deadest of adults.
i dont know what i think will happen if i let it go. if i let anything touch me. eternal damnation? very possible. spontaneous ignition, hellfire, etc. (though i think brimstone would go just lovely with the kitchen cabinets.) plausible.!
i have an ache. same one you've heard so many times before.
on a mountain. it's grey as the sky, as the horizon. your face is pale. the world follows. wind claws frantically; it's the type of cold that shrinks you; it's nothing but gravel and frost, like this world spilled out of you. i'm watching you leave. these teary eyes are from the whipping wind. it tastes fresh and sharp, my airways near bloodied. you don't turn around. i don't ask you to.
some soirée i'd attended to be alone. the evening had been too warm. you'd joined me on the balcony and asked me for fire. i'd wanted it to be quiet. you didn't talk enough. i'd wished we were on a higher floor, wished people wouldn't have been lovely to me, wished you would've held me without touching me. if you could've pressed at me from another town. it'd felt better to be lonely and wish i wasn't, than the other way around. (sometimes i'd wondered if i liked missing you more than having you there.)
on horseback. on my way away, always. you didn't wave me off (it wasn't that kind of disunion, we never were). i think, at first, this beast was yours... you barely let me pet her, like i break anything precious i touch. i don't. only ever you. of course, i wouldn't have known: not like you ever cared to pry your lips apart for more words than one could survive off. it was always onward with you. onward, quiet, don't touch my stuff. precious. you let me touch you, though. i had time to wonder about the opinion you held of yourself. what function i had to it. i never wanted to be that, didn't consent to it, and i think it's only fair, frankly, that i bring her with me. that's your onward for you.
i regret most- no, most wish that i regretted, how easy i always made it for you. i was forever ready for onward, quiet, don't touch my stuff. i shouldn't have been your dog. not when you still fought me tooth and nail like i was doing anything but leaving the door unlocked for you. always for anything you wanted. and still, you could tell me to play dead, and i'd be at your feet no questions asked.
i think you loved me and so i became something foreign. i think i felt familiar enough that you confused me with yourself. never did i deserve your turmoil. i wasn't yours to hate.
if i told you, would you understand? i love you, and i want to kill you with my own hands. that you could be anyone, but anyone has to be someone. that i don't know why it's you and it terrifies me, that everything ends and i want it gone but i don't want a vacancy, that i wish you'd hurt me properly. that i want you to want to.
i have an ache. your silence took up a lot of space in me that i can't fill with anyone else's, and surely not my own.
yes, an ache, profound, and the horror is that so does the world.
on a mountain. i never knew if you were listening to me or not, i just spoke anyway. more for myself and the horse than for you.
endlessness only feels claustrophobic. these lands are too vast for me alone.
i misplaced my joy in the darkness, i'm in the wrong season. all warmth does to crypt-cold skin is burn; your rigor-mortis claws were not made to caress gently and a coffin is only built for one. i'm not running, just watching. observing a creature that doesn't want to be seen and won't let me look away. my legs are dangling off the edge, into your abyssal moat. the dead don't appreciate sonatas, they rattle the bones something terrible, and still, ive been making papier-maché treasures for you from my sheet music. when i reach down you grab at my feet instead. pull.
my hyponychium did not burn from gravel tears, my mouth didn't wake tasting coins, my clothes didn't dampen with earth all for you to undo me again. i kick your hands off. the crunch is sickly.
but i will bring my joy in the summer, and for now it'll warm my own bed. a coffin is only built for one.
