i want to stand in the darkness of my life and curl my shaking body around the fist of my past and say - i was loved, and that mattered
but when i open the book of my life, it is always the same song about aching. the same rabid aria of flight, of fingers breaking
i was loved, and the hollow of my body remained unholy for the entirety. i was the floor of an ocean, and i strangled the light quickly
i could be loved so wide that it would break the greenhouse and kill all the plants inside. i could be loved like an explosion and still be cold
whatever is broken inside of me only wants to devour. the love just slips right off from where i can feel it, a little swirl of toothpaste
in the sink of my childhood: little white menthol fingerprints spelling out - i wish i was better. i did everything i could.
and i just waste it; this life of mine. hand over hand. the days slip in between each other and nestle in ugly spurs. what did you do today? how many hours have i spent, neither truly here nor truly there. just frozen. wanting desperately to begin anything. get up and shower or work out or drink water or make a change or dance along or be a person - just get up. my insides, coating the edges of blank atrophy. how hard can it truly be? people do this every day. they make their life every day. why can’t i? why am i stuck here? why am i stuck like this, with only my heart and no boat? the shifting warning - you need to start swimming, you can’t always just float. but what else, when my limbs don’t move and there’s no sound for the breach of my throat? what else, and where am i going? what shore am i supposed to even be wading out for? nothing and nothing and nothing. the swinging, empty bridge, and no railing.
the days feel unripened. the winter does this to me. i stand in and out of my own body. i feel scripted rather than graceful - clanking my way through habits and basic requirements as if each bone was concrete. i make to-do lists. i chew candy. i do all my self-care techniques.
the day is long. it is okay if i spend it curling around a cup of tea. the birds will come back. the world will be warm. in the meantime, carve me a small slice of sunbeam. i will find a treasure in tiny pleasures. i will horde laughter in jars. i will find a book and eat each word like ice cream.
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“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” – Marcus Aurelius
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“I keep trying to feel who I was, and cannot.”— Jack Gilbert, from “Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina,” Collected Poems (Knopf, 2012)
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oh, i love that we decorate things! i love when we make our homes a little picture of ourselves! i love how you can step into a house and sometimes know - oh, you made this yours! i love looking up to a window and seeing the hopeful little green heads of potted plants! i love the cheery bright fairy lights in your childhood bedroom! i love that we paint our nails, i love that we dye our hair, i love that my house’s front door changes color every year! i love finding little chalk pictures and little hearts in the pen aisle of art stores and little stickers on the outside of waterbottles! i love the clip-on earrings and the little tassels on the end of new bike handles and the bird on my favorite plate! i love that in the darkest part of the year, when things are scary and sparse, we put up cheesy snowmen and flamingos in scarves and big, tinseled hope - hi, there! we say, i’m in here! this is what my light wants to look like! come see! come see me!
Ah. Am I supposed to view my body as myself? As my vessel? As just an extension of my brain? When I look in the mirror that is not me, that is someone else who I take care of. She is secondary, and her back hurts, but she is not me. Is a body supposed to be a sheath to a sword. Is a body supposed to fit. I feel that I am a wild swing and uncontrolled sharpness. She wants and I give. Or she wants and I stop her from getting. This is not my body, it is an untrained animal I am dressing in clover. I have no sense of my own image. I just know she is supposed to be lovely so I make her as lovely as I can. Is this a body’s purpose? Is my body supposed to be mine? Do I belong in here? What do I owe it? How do I look at this body and somehow be kind?
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“Sometimes, I can still taste the blood of the past and hear the echoes of old voices that cease to exist. Sometimes, it feels like my soul is stuck in history, and my current life is none other than a show of play pretend.”— Lukas W. // Blood of the past
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