This somehow reminded me of the lyrics of Nell's song, A.S.
"You paint, my pain
With your vacant rain,
And make all these worthless fears go away."
A.S stands for "After Sex", if I'm remembering correctly, and at the tender age of 17 when I discovered this song, it was the most beautiful portrayal of something which not only entirely terrified me, but I had no interest in ever experiencing.
Meanwhile, those around me were pursuing whatever it was which caught their teenage fantasy in the most blood-rushing, chemical-producing way possible. I chose to stay unaware of the conquests which fascinated my peers, and I spent the energy of those years on academics, believing a poet who also sang of such tender admiration and vulnerability existed somewhere on this earthly sphere.
I'll be twenty eight years old in a month. I have been in therapy, actual, serious therapy, for a year. I have not learned to distinguish between shame and guilt, but I have learned to ask myself to try. I have not conquered my anxiety or my people-pleasing, but I've learned I will survive my next panic attack over someone's criticism. I have not forgiven myself for all of my mistakes, but I have felt God forgive me for all of them, and He has taken the shame calculator and smashed it with His fist.
I try on different labels like a kid tries on shoes; meaning, I lay on the ground kicking and screaming because my sock seam is in my toes and the sides are pinching and this isn't it.
My brain is whirring and I am not producing my best explanations at the moment, but basically I still have no idea how to explain myself to someone else, and I long for someone else to care about that explanation, and I wish to be given hours to discuss it, without the nagging fear that he will realize my brain was very pretty but the fat bulging right under my bra strap (where he places his hand) is ultimately disgusting, and the size of my thigh (where he places his hand) is the greatest turnoff he has ever experienced. I will never be able to wipe his skin cells off those parts of my body, and they will be outlined in white chalk on the murder scene of my life until forensics is done examining them.
I reached the scathingly boring conclusion, after coming home, that the people who have known me the longest don't necessarily know me the best. This is partially because my reaction to being different was to make myself more obviously different. Pretty much everyone hated how they looked back then, but my solution was to be as extravagant, outlandish, and loud as my mother would allow. If everyone is looking at you because your clothes are weird, no one is looking at you because of your stomach, or your acne, or your height. Those are secondary concerns to them- their initial confusion is as to why you're dressed that way.
It feels like everyone concluded I was perfectly, incredibly fine, and only their house was breaking beneath their two feet, and mine was intact.
But as we drove home and I asked a deeply inappropriate question outside the Family Dollar, I also revealed that one day in 2007 I was convinced I'd just been abandoned.
I wonder why that comes as such a shock.
I should be seeing the news
Alien life forms, room temperature
Super conductors, and the agenda
Seeping from my childhood toys
Bleeding hot pink,
But I'm standing in the dining room
Holding my tongue, the greatest truth
Right on my lips, right on your lips
You kissed me
It hurt and helped and exploded
From the top of my head to my soul
A thousand dreams became reality
In a brilliant rush
I care not for anything else
I would rather enjoy my time on this rock
Curled in the safest and scariest arms
I have ever known.
Everything is now green,
like Kishi Bashi in the spring
on an afternoon of bright
lights and sweet delights
melona ice cream
and red bean bread
please don't tell me that these
beautiful things, their magic and
this singing,
don't tell me it will end
...
well,
can we make it again?
NaPoWriMo #8
Brown eyes in the sunlight
And all those silver hairs
Wrinkles at my smile lines
And between my brows
My face freckled more each year
The sun's kisses rarely fade
I don't think there's anything
I'd really like to change
NaPoWriMo #5
You make me a little girl again
A princess dancing in her
Purple floral dress
With my hair in pretty curls,
My hands in dainty white gloves
You give me candy hearts
They speak of love
NaPoWriMo #4
"You're just obsessive",
You spat it out like a second hand curse,
How come I'm not worthy of
Your worn out trust, like her converse
Filled with holes, the glue coming undone
You think I haven't worked for love,
But I'm the one holding onto us
Grasping in the dark to tell you everything
Watching your eyes go soft, then angry
Because when you touched me
I was reduced to weakness
A puddle of blood on the floor,
Knife in my side, your hand inches away
Shifting into a higher gear, plunging
Deeper into my fear, twisting the blade around
Until I can't breathe; what did you want from me?
NaPoWriMo #2, 2023
the soft kiss of
your clothing to my cheek
smell of burning sugar
like this sweetness, ablaze
we are flames, and you are
infatuated with firelight
tell me one morning
my breakfast coffee won't be
filled with reflections
of my dreams, your face
dancing on the dark surface,
eyes of morning light
the cool sky of an early sunrise
the kaleidoscope of the night
turning to day.
NaPoWriMo #1, 2023
Falls of 90-100 feet
Are associated with 100%
Mortality, and I
Know a place, but the guy
Who comes in a few days a week,
Keith, he's too nice to
Clean my body off the rocks,
I don't want to hurt the
Hands that held me back from
Skin too sharp and blades too soft,
Blood coagulating in my
Stomach, didn't you feel the
Way my entire being caught fire
When you touched me?
The collapsing of each boundary
Built from old pine and lincoln logs
And bookcases,
Burning like signals on
Old mountains, seven
Sisters and seven seconds to decide
Am I gonna dive
Or watch myself die?
The sound of declarations,
proclamation, at dawn
scent of coffee on my tongue,
red-faced, shouting about Calvin,
But I'm thinking of Hobbes,
and the way of gentle holds
June moons and inappropriate songs,
sleeping in the back pew,
She said she knew you,
and my stomach froze,
on the night of a June moon,
her arms and her neck
and your lips all over that,
I buried my head in the sand
on the Carolina coast,
All have sinned and lost
I use vodka shots
to erase the pictures
of her hot breath and pretty nose
and your caresses,
most of those.
Green fields and valleys
where I lay down my head,
Green, green grass upon my cheek
And the sound of a sigh
as you breathe,
The skylight lingers on freckled skin
the brands of summers already spent,
The meadow where we sleep
and the air which you breathe,
And your hands folding,
fingers folding,
the universe folding
in on me, skylight twinkling,
Green, green, green.
Will we always be aliens?
Pieces of me, my essence
Left behind everywhere I go
A satellite losing parts
As it orbits, this galaxy
Is too vast for me to ever find my identity
Serial number out floating
In the Kuiper Belt.
I'd like to climb into
The bottom shelf
Curl up and take deep
Breaths of flannel comfort
Sometimes I fall into the basement
And need to hold the ghost of you
So I read your books
And burn the candles, watching
The wax drip and pool
On your dresser
Ah. I suppose I must unpack and disconnect each of these facets, too.
I did not realize that.
One day when I was gone, the world continued on without me. To you, nothing of me has been changed; I remain the same woman I was ten years ago. But to me, everything has been warped with time.
I will never forget rainy nights and the warmth of the scuffed wood floors in your home. The way your father spoke as if each letter were more important than the last; you enunciate that way when you get angry or upset or very focused on something you believe in. The way your mother was quiet and cold; you mumble when you speak sometimes and you push everyone away at random and we worry about you. Or, I worry about you.
I have to unpack and dissect things down to the log cabin fort in your front yard when we were seven and eight; you had that impish look on your face like you were better than me because YOUR mother didn’t tell you that you’d break your leg up there. The fact you never got your tetanus shots. The texture and feeling of the toys in the upstairs hallway; the little games your sisters would play with me to entertain me when I was bored. We’d dress up dolls and make pages upon pages of dot-pen masterpieces, and then your mother would call up through the grate that dinner was ready.
The way each face looked in the photobooks that would be dwelled upon for hours; the way my eyes always drew themselves directly to yours on the page. The fuzzy images no longer hold any place in my mind, but I can still remember the sound of the train coming at four a.m. and your dog’s shrill barking through the night. I can still remember the taste of forbidden ice cream and special raspberries and grape nuts cereal. The rain filled up the giant puddles in your front yard.
I like memory foam pillows because that was what your sister used. I like fresh bell peppers because that was what your mother gave us to eat. I like patchouli because to me, it smells like your house.
I miss washing dishes with you and your sister. I miss you coming inside from mowing the lawn, and I also, reluctantly, miss the secret thrill of watching you mow the lawn from her window. I miss the sound of your mother practicing piano before Sundays, and the obnoxious Christmas tree lights that made your whole living room look like a weird disco. I miss your dog and his dog-smell, and I miss how your oldest sister used to be the coolest person I knew. I miss the first copy of National Velvet that she gave me. The cover fell off.
I miss waking up one morning and finding it was just you and I and your father upstairs in his room (so basically not even there), and not knowing what I should do so just standing in the kitchen peering into your bedroom like a terrified cat. And then I went in and woke you up and sat in your chair in my blue and yellow striped pajama pants while you blinked sleep from your eyes, and we decided to make breakfast. I think we made pancakes. I don’t remember.
I don’t miss her. I don’t miss the way she made drawings just for you and casually gave them to you. I don't miss that you taped them to your door. I don’t miss the fact she found it very easy to walk into your room and never seemed like a terrified cat whatsoever.
I don’t miss the dances. The yellow dresses and black pants and uncomfortable haircuts and the acne on our faces. I don’t miss the way everyone else came storming into my little world and suddenly, there was a duplicity to all of us, and we were double-agents in a civil war.
I don’t miss that summer. The one when I decided to stop writing stupid poems and listening to Kathleen Edwards and let you glimpse the universe of lemon verbena-scented memories begging me to cling to the past, cling to you, cling to the known and the comfortable. I cut off the parts of me that were clinging because I see all of myself as weakness. I see the fact that you are inextricably a part of me as a weakness.
But we did make breakfast together.
And I still have your kitchen layout memorized.
Ask me where the silverware is.
You’re not interested? Sure.
I’m not interested? Lies.
I am in fact completely interested in time travel. I would be very willing to jump into the next car nicknamed The TARDIS and let it drive me off of a bridge if it promised a return to photo albums and maple syrup festivals and the time I choked on an icecube in the church bathroom.
But I am grown up now, and there are no more of any of these things.
And I cannot promise to provide these things for anyone.
And you cannot promise anything at all.
So I will miss and not miss, compare and not compare, cry without tears on rainy evenings and June nights, and somehow come out of it all alive because I still have you.
My one intact memory.
