Around what do we circumnavigate?
Colors, seasons, passions, family
Or perhaps a cornucopia of
Screens
The flow of validation
Where we document the
Colors, seasons, passions, family
Assuring ourselves
They happened
They matter
And why should we feel shame
For wanting to remember
And wanting to be seen.
We post for connection
We post for attention
We post for validation
We act like what we love
Doesn't matter
Until they
The ensemble
Say it matters
We share beauty
In return for a chance
At something
Trading precious limited
Unmeasurable moments
Like countable commodities
For dollar bill wealth
Because we crave
Something that has been
Inside
Underneath
All along.
Searching We wake up Searching We reach for our devices Searching We scroll We click We process Picking and choosing Information A haphazard conglomeration of Cultivated lives Authenticity A bendable fading truth Real life It's somewhere out there Not in here.
It's a creeping painA slow patient pain The layers thicken Before they flake
Her hiding place dissolves The past becomes now Her hands become putty Weakness cradled by pain
She is numb Held hostage by unconsciousness His want replaces love Her love replaces anger
An inebriate coupling A black mark on a porcelain surface Giving in giving up As hope melts to softness
She sleeps in the bosom of regret But upon awakening Her hands are strong again Recovered by night's forgiving embrace.
I'm still learning who I am
A woman
With boyish handwriting
A voracious appetite
Nothing is ever enough
I want to shake harder
Sleep more but lie supine less
Do more
Be more
Dare I say have more
Know more
Write more
Back when I drank
Drink more.
A woman
Open to womanhood
As a map
To joy.
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Opening to what isThe shadow side of sweetness The flaws beneath An impeccable surface Smooth to the sight But not to the touch.
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Here
My stretch marksAre fairy scratches Visible and invisible
Like a fine feather Tickling my inner thighs My lower back and my hips
They are tattoos Passive self-mutilation Stuffing my body with more
They are me My past my present Pointing towards my future
They are not me I am a different woman Than the girl I used to be
Pinstripe reminders Warnings of weakness Branding my skin
Battle wounds Between me and myself Heal but never disappear.
For this week’s prompt at Tipsy Lit, we are to write about insanity. What would push your character over the edge? How would they snap? Is it a one time, violent snap and then return to sanity or do they cross over forever? What does that look like? Do they know they’re crazy? I’ve learned to adapt to my mother’s quirks. She doesn’t attend parent-teacher conferences without Jasper the guinea pig peaking out of her carpet bag. My teachers look at me a bit differently after they've met my mother. She dyes her hair a different color on the first of every month, hues of copper and sunshine and mahogany, because she believes it keeps others from recognizing her. Never mind that she has worn the same obtrusive floppy hat and cat-eye sunglasses and shade of Revlon lipstick (burnt sienna) for longer than it takes to turn over every cell in the body.
She lists her occupation as “Mother” although I fit the role better than she does. I cook the spaghetti and clean behind my own ears and forge her signature to pay the bills and intercept the phone calls. After she got arrested last year for too many prank calls to the 911 operator, I started locking up the telephone. She hurled a crystal vase against the wall the first time I did it, but I scurried out the front door by the time it shattered like an airplane crashing. She never mentioned the phone again.
I wish I could say that something happened to make her this way, and I suppose it had to be a lost chapter of her childhood, something she will never admit. Because her photo albums tell a different story. She led a privileged life, a girlhood of equestrian endeavors and private schools and holidays in the Mediterranean. She achieved her first expulsion at my age (thirteen and a half) when she walked through the halls of her prep school naked as a newborn.
These days, from what I can tell, she devotes her life to stretching. She calls the yoga mat her sacred space. She can twist her limbs into a pretzel and she can sit cross-legged all day long. I bet she was sitting cross-legged, looking zen as a Buddhist priest, when she made those phone calls.
Sometimes I hate her. When I tell her so, she threatens to jump off of the Aurora bridge. I know she would do it. It's too easy to close my eyes and see her broken body flattened in a parking lot, human flesh turned to red paint. She says I’m her only reason for living. And so I have learned to swallow my hatred when I feel it, blistering my heart instead of my mother's. I can’t help but love her. It’s like an addiction.
Errant words of wisdom mosey through my mindStrutting like rhinestones, sparkling but weak I kiss them hello with lips that will curse them Roused by sincere reverence that fades by tomorrow.
I am no hypocrite. I am someone with dreams Smooth and supple on the inside, pretty on the outside Lungs crimson with blood rather than charred with Smoke and fire and tumors stocked with poison.
The church says to confess and repent and be healed But God already knows every heart I've broken, so I tell them to go to hell, they say I'm going there soon I say we might be here already.
There's no escaping destiny when it's contained by Sagebrush and juniper trees, tumbleweeds and desert breezes Stale motel rooms where a companion costs extra Even the pizza man if he comes in and shuts the door.
God does not want me to heal, God wants me to Bruise and bleed so I can slip out of this body and Into another. Maybe my soul was not ripe enough for now Maybe this valley leads to a mountain with a view.
When I climb out from under my skin, the scars will stay Dissolving with the defiled flesh of a hypocrite A liar, a thief, a charlatan, a childless mother. Everything temporary like this body I never learned to love.
It tugs on your lapels like aNeedy child needing you and only You, traveling through brain mass Finding new spaces to fill, breaking Your life into two neat pieces. One for the addiction, another for Everything else, everything that matters. You hold the pieces together with your knees, Careful not to move your hips, gambling on The outcome, the hit, the blow, the shot. You reel, you breathe differently, you feel The new space where the cracks have widened And the vapor rushes in like epoxy or Super glue, which always does a better job sewing Your fingers together than the fractures.
Black coffee sweatArmpits moldy Whisky shit Eyes varicose gray
Wrinkled knee caps Nits clinging Scabby lips Nose drips red
Bones protrude white Cavities hungry Purple nails Crescent-shaped spine
Nappy curled sweater Underwear cut Soulless shoes Shit-stained pants
Stomach scraping whining Fingers fumbling Cracked toes Fissures pulsing pain
Mind body numb Spirit fighting Choked heart Hands stretched searching.
Written for Trifecta. She soaked in a bath tub topped off with a bottle of champagne too flat to drink. She held a book in one hand and a hand-rolled cigarette in the other. She burned candles, their flames balanced on all four corners like controlled suicide threats.
Still holding the accoutrements, she submerged her head, allowing alcoholic bath water into her nose, ears and mouth; while locking her eyes shut like windows. She decided to count the seconds.
At the same moment she hit ten, the ten-second countdown began. Her drunken neighbors shouted from the apartment below, echoing through the walls, through the water, invading the perverted hideaway of her thoughts.
Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!
She broke the surface, squeezing air into the very bottom of her lungs, and it was not unlike being born. She heard, though she wished she didn't, bells and explosions and the silence of a far-away kiss. Exhaling every last drop, she completed her first breath of the year.
On her second breath, she dragged on the cigarette and resumed the novel where she'd left off. She was free of anticipation as she lived in the shadow of expectation. Everything that mattered was behind her, or so she believed.
