#julia lauer

(Julia Lauer)

(Julia Lauer)

january 28, 2018.

from memories my brain cannot physically recall, wedding bells and tiny red dresses, the honest smile on my mother’s face, my father’s soft shirt, childish babbling, applejuice! cake smeared across my face, i love you, you love me, we’re a happy family, buried under blankets filled with yellow giggles and smiles. The imaginary life of fairies and faraway worlds, curiosity and wonder, until the world hits me, reality hits me, and i grow up.

Another world, the prospective if only. The deep thicket of Russian forests, berries and sun weeping joy upon my face. The marble white metro, adorned with art. The bazaar, sugary sweets and the scent of a humid city, the crisp air of the countryside and the wooden dacha, red welts of mosquito bites. The clear blue skies, the indigo night never falling until the wee hours of day, crickets chirping in the meadow.

And then the darkness, enveloping me as i age, suddenly not so blissfully unaware, but struggling, striving to find a place. a place in this world, where i belong. The swirling abyss, grasping, choking, consuming, blood running down my wrists and dissipating into nothing.

until a light, something to hold on to, something to feel and think and live. and so i threw myself into this existence, slowly but steadily, still broken in pieces, still toxic like acid, but trying, goddammit trying.

paint, not blood, ran down my skin, streaked across my face, and i felt alive again.

#6: the space i exist in.