thewreckard

Feeling depressed? Get a haircut.  Get a shampoo and enjoy the transient moments in which a stranger caresses you.  Have very nice hair for the rest of the day. Become showered in compliments for a new change you are not yet comfortable with.

Cut your own hair.  Concentrate on trying to turn your dreams into reality.  Straighten your hair to check its evenness. Shower. Retrim your hair. Lose yourself in this meditative process of measuring and cutting.

Shave your legs. Shave your armpits. Shave your face. Tweeze your eyebrows.  Pluck the hairs around your nipples.

it isn’t fair, to take and give nothing,  when you have other love to get, to  ask that you take some of mine.

When you leave, you have her, who you have chosen when you leave I have only me and a feeling like the taste of pennies

like blood

I am full of emptiness

and every empty space fills with blood  and empties itself again, and it hurts. 

you want skin, not blood, you do not love my blood.

but the skin is warm because of blood, the blood is a carrier my blood is a messenger 

bruise is blood, scabs picked on my face from worry are blood

the skin is soft, is only what you see

If you loved my heartbeat, my lungs, the machinations of my viscera, it would have felt different, but you only wanted skin, it must go deeper

you must think deeper

land skin dwellers trying to make love to oceans

he did ask

do you want me  to stop? and I answered by closing  my eyes because the answers  were many

I am cold. I can’t get out of bed. There is a dull ache in my left foot, as if there was something through it– a railroad spike.

what web am I weaving, what lies, what funnels to stretch over my face, a gasp of dust, choke, gagging in the bathtub sink, how many strands am I to make before I feel like something has any pull

when the only line I can really feel is yours, the rest is fear I think ours is red, but maybe mine’s broke, and it’s just a wet string lapping in the waves, making me feel like something caught

when all I have is a rope I’m spinning around my neck and tightening, can I feel that? Can I feel it? no, it’s blurring into light,

We are a series of gestures, but perhaps I am screaming to myself, turning my own hands over and over in the light, trying to understand my own form. This word, we, I roll my tongue over this wet thought and think.  Yes, there is this, but this is what, exactly? I feel myself curling as lichen, clung to the bark, wrapped around myself, becoming brittle, unfurling; but I swore I would not do this, swore to, this once, be silent.

I must be frozen and not dead.  Patient and not waiting. I must curl into myself if I am to break, fall into the earth silently.

I am a dead leaf, curled into my own palm. I am new greenery I have ripped from the branches; I am tearing myself into pieces until my fingertips smell like something new, I am throwing myself on the ground.

A Spring so short you barely bloomed before drowning in rain, in perfume. Now the sun burns, the wet sticks, the air shall be heavy as your steps shall be heavy, as your heart, heavy, the weight of the claw in your stomach that meowls like a feral cat Let your hair grow.  Let your hopes go.  Find something to employ your time, to pay for your empty prison home you love you have you love

Learn to be alone.  You were made for this.   For loneliness, shaped like butter pressed to the bowl of a spoon, your back  twisting as your arm twists--

doesn't that hurt you?  yes. why didn't you say anything? I didn't need to.

Hurt and claw and meat and heat the sun will burn but leave no scars, no marks say nothing, or say something, it will not be heard either way

I am something that needs nothing. I am something that needs nothing. There isn't smoke burning into my eyes, there isn't blood pooling on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.  That boy did not have a seizure this morning, he was not moaning on the floor of the hallway, and you are not failing, and you are not falling.  You do not love.  You do not have feelings.   I am something that needs nothing. You do not need food, you do not need company, you do not need sleep.  You need nothing.  You are nothing.  Don't pretend there is a form to this madness Do not think you can be seen, felt, understood, cared for, desired. You are a ghost, care comes in wisps as a ghost, not for your form but for your image; you are unformed, you are malformed, you are deformed, you are unraveling skin.  You are a knot of thought caught on the meat of your neck, tearing open your palm, red lines like cuts, you are a wound.   You are not anything.  You do not need anything. You cannot have anything.  You are not real. 

I should have made the letter last night, slipped it into your mailbox an illegal prayer – I love you I love you I love you.  But I did not.  

Wrapped up in the things I thought important, I woke after dawn and worked to get that job you told me about- they’re all over the city, you told me.  Somehow you’re better at finding them than I am.  My lateness was good, though, I met the owner, who liked me.  I dressed the way you told me to, brought the things you recommended.  You know so much more than I do, it’s always been that way.  

In evening, I slunk into a coffeeshop where the barista hit on me several times as I asked about employment- “You’re hired! I’m not in charge, though.  If I were, I’d hire you, you’d be hired right now.” Sweet but I don’t think I even smiled.  Not interested.  Preoccupied.  Distracted.  

I roamed the internet and was vaguely productive- met with a friend who happened to be in the coffeeshop across the street.  Walked him home and hung out for a bit.  Had trouble paying attention- should have known something was off.  I noticed only the cicadas- they’d pulled themselves up from underground, crawled in the dark to the trees to shed their skin.  To grow wings.  

The toilet had flooded at the friend’s house.  He scrambled around before kicking me out.  He had to call his mother and didn’t want her to yell over the phone when I could hear.  I told you I was coming, I don’t know if you saw the message.  

Almost as soon as I arrived, you disappeared.  One by one, everyone left, and I was in the living room with a sleepy half-drunk boy paying with a small cat.  Endearing, but not exactly company.  He was summoned to the back room, your new friend didn’t even look at me.  Thought maybe you were sad or talking, realized maybe you were throwing up.  He came out eventually, told me they had it under control.  I wanted to come in anyway, I don’t know if I know how to handle those things, I just know I love you and I didn’t like the feeling of uselessness.  Of being extra flesh hanging around.  

I came in at the end, you were already falling asleep.  Your new friend seemed to think I was in the way.  If they didn’t think that, they acted as if they did.  Maybe I was overreacting.  Maybe I just wanted to take care of you.  It was like they kept telling me no it was fine we have it under control.

Helped you to the car, I could do that much.  Asked if it was okay for me to follow on my bicycle, to make sure you were okay.  I was granted this.  Paced around the apartment trying to remember anything that had been forgot- your phone, your bra, your glasses, your wallet, your water bottle you carry always.  Brought the teddy bear and a change of underwear and some hair stuff in case you wanted to shower in the morning.  

Held your hair back while you hung over the toilet- nothing left to come up.  You started to cry a little and said you felt sad.  ”We know, That’s okay,” he said.  He left to ready the bed.  

“I feel…the color blue.  I’m the color blue.” “What’s it feel like?” “Sad.  Not good. It feels so cold.”

“I feel sad.”

For the first time in 5 years, I held your hand.  Until you fell asleep.  He made me leave the room.  I would have liked to stay, to make sure you were okay.  They had kept assuring me I wasn’t necessary.  Maybe I needed to be there for me more than for you.  I wanted to be sure.  To watch you myself.  He made me leave the room.

“Did she say why she was sad?” I asked this in the kitchen. “Well, when you’re drunk, you get sad about…everything.”

I felt like it was my fault.

We tried to put a lamp together for half an hour.  It was crap and then the bulb didn’t even work.  

He kept saying there was no reason for me to stay. I tried to explain I felt shitty.

“I feel shitty.” “Why?” “Today’s been a weird day.  First the flooding thing, and then everyone leaving and  I didn’t know what was going on.  I feel like it’s somehow my fault.  Like I wasn’t helpful, or I couldn’t have been.”

“There’s no reason for you to stay.  You should go home, to your air-conditioned house.” “I’d rather stay.” “There’s no reason for more than one person to be here.” “I want to stay, just to make sure she’s all right.” “I’ve got it under control.  You should go home.” “I want to stay.” “Well, you’re not going to.” “I want to stay.” “It’s my house, and I can kick you out.  Besides, in order to be comfortable, I am not going to wear clothes- since I don’t have an air conditioner.” “I could stay in here, apply for jobs.” “You can stay for a few hours, but then you have to go home.”

And so I left.

When I got home, there was a package on my door. I knew it was from you. But I was upset.  So I left it on the floor.  Wrote first.  

When I opened it, I saw it was a book. One I’d asked about- you had quoted it, and I wanted to borrow it to read it.  You bought it for me, and sent it to my house.  And I could not even write you a letter.

this is not what I was asking for, what I had wanted, not to come this way,  from that direction

but I was asking for it; had just finished the lament of loneliness that is my nightsong, turning over to sleep when the crows cawed and I knew.

grieving would begin. 

even when I love them, my skin begins to weep and the aching  the silence and the snailing and the circling  in, in, in, burrowing my thoughts into my flesh until it grows old, the layers underneath dissolve;  but it takes time to make me callow

several times to make me sure