Self Medication

I dont know if you can call it “coming of age” when you’re 25, coming into my own I guess. It when your body changes again, like it did ten years ago. Except now the joy you felt at the physical signs of womanhood, are replaced with disgust, fear and revulsion at the reminders of all the ways you are not what you want to be and all the ways that others see you merely as weapons, or tools to be used and abused.

I am coming into my own, into a series of fights that feel like I have entered the ring too late to win.

I am afraid

I am tired

I feel as if any fight that I had was long ago drained away

I want to want to fight, I want to want to resist

But if I am being honest with my self the only fight I have any energy for is the fight not to off myself

And in that moment of honesty is peace.

I want to lay down in the dry and brittle grass, I want to give up, I want to die I do I would rather die than continue to be stuck between what is and what I cannot have

I want to farm, and be at peace, and write and sleep soundly, and be held by those who love me and for my greatest enemies to be deer who eat my radishes and the rabbits stealing herbs from my garden

I want to drift away into oblivion, into the dark unknown of life after death or nothing after death at this point I don’t much care

But also I want to rage against the dying of the light

I want to fight fight fight

I want to try to make the world a better place for all

I want to try to create lands that are safe

but i just dont know how and I dont have the energy

Golden Boy and the Black Sheep: Part 1 The Golden Boy

He’s an angel, always has been

The youngest son, the golden boy, the favored child

Shining and resplendent with bright hair long and fair cascading in curls, far more perfect than mine ever were, down his back across wide shoulders to a tapered waist to put models to shame

“Hes too pretty for his own good” “That boy has more charisma in his little finger than anyone else I have ever met” “see how tall and pretty that guy is?” Whispers follow him, praise even in the dark

In my dreams he has wings white and whole, huge things pristine and glistening except for the golden metallic liquid that the tips are dipped in. Blood thick I alone know that its the souls he's been given and the mark of all the hearts he’s unwittingly broken.

In reality he has long thin fingers, piano fingers that are perfect and kept soft and agile for music and grace, in my head those fingers are stained black from manipulating the ink black minds of poets and kings, inspiring them to beauty and malice and greed.

He doesnt have a halo but he might as well, all the compliments heaped upon his lofty brow make him hold his head even higher from the ground

some days I feel like I should hate him, my perfect, favored, oh so loved bouncing baby brother

but how could I hate he who I helped raise? he who I helped create and grow? he whos potential I saw first and gave him love and space and the words so that he could grow

people tell me I should hate him because everyone else loves him so much

but I can’t because he was the first person I loved too

Most of the famous love poems begin at the writer,

“Shall I compare thee to a summers day?” “How do I love thee, let me count the ways” “When I love you, I become Liquid light”

and the focus is on how the love affects the author.

You are not loved like that

You are loved from afar by a host of witnesses, partial observers who sing your praises and laud your name. I am merely one of many who’s life’s been changed by your black girl magic.

You are the flower and the sun, an entire ecosystem of beauty, pain, feral aggression, and nurturing softness trapped within skin and summarized with stardust.

You are the rot that consumes, dark slick fertility doing away with that which is dead and dying, prying life away from the undeserving.

You are an all-powerful inevitability, like mycorrhiza, interconnected and an engine of reincarnation turning that which you kill with your terrible, exquisite existence into vibrant life.

You are the power of a fire set spinning into a void, so intense that it attracts life and inspires art and who’s mere proximity is the Prometheus of existence.

You are an illustration of regeneration in motion.

You are not just a pretty girl, or a smart woman or a good person.

You are a vision of the universe manifesting itself to experience life and doing it with such style and grace that it takes my breath away.

And so, I will not disgrace you with talk of the love of possession.

the love of self, reflected in the face of the other.

the love only begat by desire

or need

or lust.

Instead, I will pray to you in the way that the moon prays to the sun.

I will describe the love of a devotee as they turn their face to the façade of their goddess and stand in awe of her power, majesty, and the ineffable certainty that they are unworthy.

I will set a record in stone of the magnificence of you.

I will, if given permission, promise to learn you

I will cleave my soul to yours leaving behind a love that endures and will never end, merely change forms

I will inscribe my adoration on the monolith of you, perfect, deific, angelic, demonic, human,  you

I will learn your habits, like how you take your morning coffee

I will create tender, intimate moments where I simply watch and wonder at the gift of you in my life

I will love you, with every burning, bared, imperfect part of my broken, bruised, and barely beating heart

Sweet Tea Time

It's the hurry up and wait that gets you

The slow turning of everyday into some day

The glacial slide of present into future as days melt together like the ice in a glass on porch on a hot summer afternoon

The heat of decision turning ice cold anticipation into chilly condensation as choices lead to consequences lead to cool reality and lukewarm peace as you sip on still sweet tea, less refreshing but still speaking of love and home on the tongue till someone else makes a decision

To put more ice in your cup

Nightmares Part 3

The door opens to a small grey room with only a table beside a bed to furnish it, a girl sits at the table writing ferociously in a journal the only thing visible about her is that she is exotic and has been beaten and tortured other than that she could have been any girl in any room and any journal because you could not see her face for the tears and the hair spilling over her head and into her eyes. As she writes a woman comes in and asks her a question, without hesitation she replies savagely. The woman seems unimpressed and strikes her then walks out leaving the girl laying on the floor with blood-mingled tears running down her face. When she looks up all of the walls have transformed into glass and on the other side there are men, taking notes, she looks down and seems to notice that the floor has suddenly become water. She begins to swim, the climate continues to change and the men continue to take notes and the girl continues to cry, and wail, and try, and survive.

"I think I have cancer, no really I think I have cancer" she said as she shook his shoulders trying to get his attention

"babe last week you had the avian flu and the week before that you had ringworm and the week before that you thought you had meningitis"

"seriously though look I have a growth on my neck just below my ear" she pulled his hand around to feel what she was talking about, he felt the spot and yes there was something there

"okay, I'll call the doctor tomorrow and we will get it looked at" they went to bed peacefully and awoke with all the trappings of the next day forgetting about the previous nights conversation, she mentioned it a few more times and each time he promised he'd go with her to her doctors appointments, or remind her to call the doctor so they could go get it looked at

-but they never did, just like he didn't believe her when she was convinced her cough meant avian flu and her spot on her arm meant ringworm and her headache meant meningitis but this time... they should've

Airports

There’s something romantic about airports

I don't mean romantic in the way of falling in love but in the way of how its an in between hub

airports are a stop from dream to reality

from sadness to joy

from missing to hugging

from chance to certainty

And as I sit in this airport, the day after the longest night I can’t help but wish I could sit in this moment forever 

This moment of chance, this moment of opportunity

I COULD get on the flight that I booked ahead of time and go to my planned destination

I COULD continue on with my life completely unchanged waltzing from plan to plan as some fall apart and some fall into place

Or I could not

I could follow my feet where they want to go

Pick a random gate, buy a ticket at the desk and board a plane to destinations unknown

See what I can make of life in this new place

If I wanted, the option is there for me to start completely over in a new place with a new name and a new purpose

Who would I be if I chose that? Would I still be me? Would a new name and a new place and a new job change me so completely that even those closest to this current version of the person I am wouldn’t recognize me?

Or would I surface the same? Would I have the same insecurities and personality? Would my music taste change or my the way I liked to dress? Or would I be even more me? Like a less watered down version of the me that I am currently?

it feels so disingenuous and false to be writing a personal statement about how I wanted to save the world when I am applying to a university that  contributes to those issues. The world is ending and I am passing my time by trying to put on the facade of a higher class than I am so that what, do I can fit in? so I can get a job? what the fukc is the use of that

Hunger in the Skin and Soul

Sometimes you need to be held, 

The skin holds a hunger that can only be thwarted by the touch, the pressure of someone who loves you. 

But underneath that hunger 

underneath that layer of Mud and Stone that we call Blood and Bone, 

lies a heart, 

A soul, 

A song, 

Something that screams and howls with pain, something that coos and purrs with happiness, something that sighs and moans with pleasure, something that rages and riots with anger. 

Souls need to be felt 

and Hands need to be held

Ours is a life of certain uncertainty and frustrating simplicity

- J.M. Bodenschatz