the fragility of openness

i recognize grief by their hands—always dripping with blood— too enticing not to reach for in the way that gore often shoves your face in its mess.

i’m different too, this time. able to soberly meet their eyes, ask for help.

they see me swallow and point to my throat you still hold me there my rib cage shudders as i breathe they point to my chest and there my joints creak as the weather cools and there and there and there.

what an atrocity   to heft around two decades as a fiend.

these are my hands, my busted knees. i’m becoming less skin and bone.

the accouchement of a new life is an art, like everything else. i do it exceptionally well.

i do it so it doesn’t feel like hell.

i can hear a bellow deep in the belly of the universe as we dance around the obvious. is it? dare i say… a laugh? is the biding of time the most sacred bit?

in some ways (that apply directly to you; to this) i am a child of only 15 with the vocabulary of a scholar with a mouth of a sailor and the body of a siren; warning me of any perceived threat that might cast me out to sea. might leave an echo of ruin in its wake.

i guess what i’m trying to say is i’m afraid of anything i can’t put my finger on and get bored with everything else. and it’s funny how history repeats itself long after we’ve forgotten the pattern.

but look, i am infinite repetitions of the past stacked on top of each other in a trench coat and i want only to be seen. can you witness it from this distance? permeating this limbo-space of ether; can you breathe in all that i am and relish the high?

my heart shatters constantly, but i’m still reaching out. breaking my fingers while i’m breaking the patterns. (this is and this is not, who i am.)

so go on then, put your fucking heart hands on me. glance at my hands heart while you’re at it. i can’t say that i will handle it well. i mean, you must remember the state of my fingers from all this reaching.

i went to bed that night and realized oh, this little joy vibrating inside of me this is what it means to be alive.

i’m sitting on your kitchen counter eating olives off my fingers and you’re making some rice bowl— it’s one of your rare taking-care-of-self phases.

we’re dancing in your kitchen, it’s 2 am (it’s always 2 am with you). my mouth is dry and my throat is in knots and i’m watching from the living room as my head falls back as i laugh and i would sell my soul to the highest bidder to be in that moment again.

we're in your kitchen again, i’m screaming at you as i gather my things and you tell me that i remind you of your mother and now it makes sense. everything makes so much more sense from this vantage point.

i was wrong, i was never the victim. we tore through each other’s lives. trying to make homes out of halfway houses. i’m still learning about us, but i finally believe that you loved me.

i’m sitting in the passenger seat of your car, you’re showing me music that we have no idea will tether us between realms.

i’m in your bed, there’s music playing somewhere, a cat is scratching at a door / we’re in your living room, there are tears in your eyes as you’re begging me to stay / you’re on stage and you’re beaming and i’m watching your hands as you play the guitar / you’re seething, putting all my things on the sidewalk (it’s 2 am again) / we’re smoking by the fence under the trees and the ivy / you’re pushing me up against a different tree, you’re inside of me because you wanted to try something new (you were worried i was bored) / we’re debating at the bar and, even now, i’m riding that high because for once i have you stumped / it’s my birthday (you forgot).

you’re laughing. you’re laughing. you’re laughing.

we’re sitting in your room and you’re holding me and i’m crying as the 2016 election results are announced, you knew this was coming / we’re on your couch and you’re serenading me with bob dylan (or is this a dream?) / it’s snowing in portland for god’s sake so the whole city is shut down, people have abandoned their cars on the 26 and we’re writing “ass” in the snow as big as we can / you’ve just returned from florida and i’m on your bed and you’re standing over me and i catch you looking at me like you love me for the first and only time.

we’re at the bar, in a few days i’ll be moving away, it’s been a year since we’ve seen each other. you ask me if i’ve been eating, i ask you about your heart and you say feeling more times in one night than i ever heard you say over the course of 3 years unless it preceded angry, but then you say fentanyl and i know this will be the death of you. 

i’m between your legs as you shudder at my touch

because it’s too much it’s too much it’s too—

there is drywall everywhere.  there is so much underneath.  my studs are exposed. 

coming face to face with all the answers to why i self-destructed for so long is ugly and painful work. 

but if i am anything, i am a passionate mother fucker. 

when i find something i love, i lose myself in it. it becomes my whole identity. i take up space and i’m loud and i’m always always learning. 

i’m funny and stubborn and very opinionated. when i’m under-stimulated, i like to create a little bit of mayhem.  i love staying up into the wee hours of the night even though it makes me feel like garbage. 

i don’t sleep well. 

i like to disappear, but i deeply crave community.  i have a lot of shame, but i don’t regret anything, save for the pain that i’ve caused. 

i cannot believe i lived so much of my life in silence; music is the thread between worlds/dimensions/realms but also something a bit more simple like making us feel like the main character. 

as i’m writing this, i’m wondering where the trauma ends and i begin but i’m not sure how much that truly matters.

i’m here. 

i survived it — by the skin of my teeth. my safety mechanisms made that so, and they are a part of me. 

i’m building a strong relationship with the  parts of me that have done the most damage.  i’m lonely, but i’m so happy to be on my own. 

i don’t strive for hyper-independence, i need people and hugs and connection through vulnerability and sharing books and i hope somewhere in the future i will fall madly in love many more times.  and i hope i will accept romance and intimacy in a way i’ve never been able to before. 

it’s just now, i need the quiet of solitude to make up for lost time spent trying to decipher everyone else’s sound. 

i have a lot to say with too many words to say it.  i allow myself to fail with grace with maybe only one or two white knuckles.  i’m learning the patience of progress and relishing in the dopamine when i arrive. 

i wish i knew more about my lineage. i wish i had blood family i could really talk to. i wish i could spend the rest of my life cuddling with my pets but like, somewhere in europe. 

i’m proud of this beautiful life i’ve built for myself   and this home  with my bare hands  and my bare heart  and i was fucked up for the vast majority of it. i can only imagine what i can build now. 

i want to know what’s on the other side.

addiction is like an itch that is coursing through your veins demanding to be satiated.  to scratch it would mean to claw through your skin in hopes of reaching it before it continues on through your circulatory system.  (you never catch it in time)

and the best trick that it plays is this:  there is nothing in the world that won’t pique its interest.  i can get hooked on anything if i try hard enough. currently i’m addicted to fanfic.  reading is better than cocaine or booze, yes but it’s still the same insatiable feeling. (again, but this time with enrichment)  can’t stop ‘til there’s nothing left.  can’t stop ‘til the birds begin to chirp  and the sun begins to rise.  what’s next? 

addiction is a life sentence. i will always have this hunger eating away at me from the inside. i will always feel the disease in me— demanding more. 

deuxième partie:

maybe that’s what it means to heal.  instead of a demand it becomes a craving then a desire.  desire morphs into longing.  longing eventually drifting off to sleep at the bottom of your brain.

to be an addict is to devote your life to lulling parts of yourself to sleep. 

troisième partie: 

i’ve been writing love letters to the addict within me.  in hopes of validating and placating her.  it feels like holding all of my past selves at their rockiest bottoms. 

i worry less about the time that she’s awake and more about the time she spends asleep.  (not a morning person, wakes up with a vengeance)

i understand now, that from a very young age,  she was only trying to protect us from the pain we were born into. 

sometimes, her longing for life gets me out of bed. her dedication has taught me piano and french  and forced me into facing myself.   we’re building something instead of tearing each other apart. 

she is not vice-less  but we are learning.

I know you thought I didn’t see you falling. But you are merry-go-rounding over and over and over in my head. (I know, I could throw up for you.)

Listen, thank you for being so young, but 29 is a lot of years to be continuously digging in the sandbox searching for treasure only to build sandcastles with moats you’ve filled with booze.

You are dripping in liquid and your fridge is empty.  Even though I admire your hunger for knowledge I never want it to be in the form of picking me apart into pieces at your plate. Do not dissect me into enough reason to leave.

I have dissected the bits and pieces of myself enough as it is. 

But on the goods days, you told me the best way to cure serotonin was sleep and let me rest in your bed. You forumed your way through a threesome and told me that there is no way out of the aftermath when you’re falling to sleep just the two of you.

I’m sorry for dry-heaving your car into another  and coming home to you as a hit and run. I can’t help but laugh at you for saying that you were angry by picking me up an unnecessary amount of water bottles.

I love your subtle lisp and the way that your crooked tooth catches your bottom lip. God fuck. Your heart is the only heart I’ve ever held responsibly.

And that fucking brain of yours. I don’t want to quit opening my eyes wide enough to shove all of your knowledge into my sockets so it can leak into me. It also felt illegal how much you would teach me in an hour.

I’ve watched you while you’ve watched your mind turn you into your internal dialogue. It must be so fucking loud in there, my love.  We might as well have been childhood friends. How we fashioned our love with abandonment and growing up way fucking faster than we should have. We are not the mistakes that we made when we were child adults. All I’m saying is, I see you. Remember when your convictions led us to pour ourselves out onto your dining room table into our Thai food? Only using our mouths? “I’m scared”, you whispered through your MDMA lock jaw. (I always hung onto every word of your vulnerability.)

“Well at least we are in the same boat and I’m pretty good at navigating these waters.”

I still feel how you draped over me like a drunken cloak and I wore you into oblivion.

I wore you until I was invisible.

I've gotta do the swallowing and the screaming and the "honey, baby, Ivy, sweetheart.”

It's been a long 24 years.

It's been an on and off bloody rough patch that I’m only just beginning to learn how to stitch up.

Remember all those times you used your love and vulnerabilities as a weapon?

Remember when you believed nothing worse could happen?

All the panting on all fours in front of locked doors and the humans behind them submerged in their drunken stupors?

Well, I'll bring those versions of the my past selves up close to my chest to warm them.

Can you warm them?

I can't warn them.

I've worn them out.

A flotation device for everything that is endlessly sinking in my chest.

Stomaching breaths and rationalizing time as though it's something other than petit theft.