The Art of Losing

The chipper voices of my neighbors seep through the walls of my bedroom and bang against my ears,  breaking my lonely intimacy and insulting my cochlea with the noise of a thousand rumors. Their words shake my thoughts awake to prowl about my head between my ears, and you slip in between the changing of the guards. Strangers are easier to hold for me in this world of sand-people, because I always know they will slip from my fingers-- I can prepare to never expect anything from someone who I know will be gone. By contrast I've built mazes from buckets and bowls, spoons and coffee mugs, the palms of my hands, trying desperately to cling to the ones I wanted not to lose. Hundreds of grains have slipped away despite my efforts and I punish myself every time. But the irony is that I never realised the cracks and creases that my favorites fell through were lined with my own subconscious and the pain I placed upon my own soul. Strangers are easier to hold, and I find comfort in being left because of it. I don't trust others to love me and so I've gathered a tendency to look for signs of early departure, because it's easy. When my fears are confirmed I push. What if I look for love?

"I'm sorry if I smothered you. I sometimes wish I'd stayed inside my mother, never to come out."

Watermelon

I had never been afraid of death. In fact, at times I welcomed him with open arms. With dried tears and choked sobs I have spent years of my life begging his presence and with him the present of ending my present state of mind. Until I fell in love with you. 

Now each night I fall asleep terrified that the prayers I once whispered upon ears I felt were deaf will finally be realized because my prayer for you took years to be fulfilled as well, but fulfilled they surely were. Now those prayers have been listened to, and I know those ears that do the listening are not deaf but simply slow, patient. When eternity is your lifespan, years must seem like a single day. So I fear that since you were my first wish and death was my next, now that you have come, so shall it. 

But since you are here for the moment, let me tell you. I love you. I love you the way I love looking in a mirror and the way I love my parents when we laugh together. I love you the way I love lazy jazz on a Sunday morning and baking and curling up alone with a good book and a stuffed animal. I love you the way I love my cat. 

I know I love you because I'm scared. Too many times I have loved with the fear of being left alone. Too many times I have questioned the honesty behind a lovers eyes and found myself afraid of them....afraid of me.But for the first time, my fear is not of your judgement, or that you will leave or find me unworthy because I have seen the honesty behind your eyes and heard the truth behind your words and I know you love me too. This time, instead the only fear that leaves me praying is this: I had never been afraid of death. Until I fell in love with you.

Little Bird with the Big Brown Eyes

Last christmas, I bought bracelets for my two best friends and I. They were beautiful; straight out of my favorite art museum in downtown Charlotte. The bracelets were handwoven and fair trade. When I brought them to my friends, we had a mock ceremony. All three making our wishes, we tied them on each other' wrists, sealing the most closely-knit friend group I'd ever had. There was a legend surrounding these bracelets. It said that if you made a wish while tying them on, then as they god frayed and fell off, your wis would come true. Our friendship dissolved halfway through the semester. I kept my bracelet on anyway--a reminder of love. I wished to find my true love. Recently, I've lost hope in the possibility of true love. First, I tore off the woman on one end of the bracelet. Pulling her apart, thread by thread, I felt the magic of the bracelet fall away. Today, I tore the bracelet off. I started taking it apart while sitting, mind-numb, in class. When I looked down at the tattered yellow and while pieces of my broken wish in my hands, I finally understood. I had lost love of every form, and it was my own doing. I wanted to cry. No tears came. My chest hurt.

Tear-Flavored Gelato

He asked who it was. I didn't know. All I knew was that I loved him. I was fifteen. I didn't know what that meant. He never hit me. He wasn't mean. I was hurt. I am scared. I will always be. I pull inside. I wrap up. I want to be alone. He wouldn't leave me alone. He called me names. He was mad. I could tell. But, I could''t tell him. I didn't have the words. I didn't have any words. How can a pain cut so deep it takes your breath, heart, and stomach all-in-one? I was a buffet for the sadness so it feasted. She heard me crying. I'd been so careful. It was in the shower. She couldn't see my tears. Water is always the same. Two hydrogens and one oxygen. Water is always the same. He was next. He was ugly, then, in my eyes--because he was mean. Another called me fat. He couldn't figure me out so his sarcasm, aimed to peel back my layers, made me cut my skin to see what he was looking for. He didn't want me. He was a dick. Literally. I can't remember his face, but I remember the feeling as it hit the back of my throat. As I gagged. As he held. He was polite. He didn't even make me get my own toilet paper. and as I wiped, he left. It was the guy's bathroom. A true patriarchy, I guess. I wonder if it would've been the same had I asked to use the girls'. They asked if it was true. How far I'd gone. If I knew. It wasn't, I hadn't, I didn't. He said he liked my boobs. I guess he liked her personality more. I wonder sometimes if I even have one. Then he came in. I was 18 now. I loved him. I knew what that meant. We slept together the first night. He cheated. I dumped him. I got a tattoo. I moved on. He came, then. I didn't. I didn't want to. It was a grey area. Not a lie. Not quite the truth. It hurt. I asked him to stop. He didn't want to. I offered something see. He took it. He stole it really. I had offered five. He took twenty. I smiled sadly. I wanted to please and leave. He didn't even get me toilet paper. I felt his hands that night. Sometimes I still do. I didn't want them. Every part of me vehemently rejected them. I wanted them gone. He got closer. He whispered. I got scared. I pretended to sleep. He gave up. The next day I ran. He still doesn't know. I met two more hims. I didn't want them so I left. I met a third. He didn't want me so he left. This is it. I am alone. A matriarch now. Next time, I'm taking the girl's room.

Misinterpreted

When you flip a magnet over to the other side, it repels the magnets it once stuck to.
I've flipped my magnet over 4 times and each time, I've repelled another magnet.
But yet, despite the act of losing others, I have not yet found a single magnet to which I long to stick, whose side matched mine.
Ghosts of my past haunt me. I am strong but not strong enough. I have flipped the page and started a new chapter and yet I cannot justify the societal laws I broke when I decided to be happy. Because happiness has come at a cost and it is not possible when loneliness comes into town on it's horse. My lonely horse was disguised as a white steed and it told me that contentment was possible, yet because I broke so many laws in becoming content I have been thrown in jail, alone to rot. Tell me, is it better to be alone and sick or alone and healthy? In which case does the pain end quicker? Pretty hurts. So does loneliness. Would you rather be fabulous and sad or ugly and sad, either way someone else says you're happy. Who do I believe when I cannot trust myself. 

Peppermint Hot Chocolate

I'm scared. I'm afraid that I've lost what it means to feel. I'm so scared of this new state of being happy and supported, because I have become numb. It feels as if I've been polished and clipped and shined till my soul rubbed raw, and when a new shield of skin replaced the tarnished character of old, I think I lost some of the beauty of authenticity. I look and feel like a doll on a shelf. I'm shiny and new, but all of my depth and personality feels plastic and fake as well. I liked my sadness. I was in a relationship with pain and when we broke up I felt its absence as a scar, healed leaving an ugly reminder of not just what I used to be, and why I wanted to leave, but also of why I stayed. Without that scar, and with that pain I was real. I was raw, and I was beautiful. And now? With only content to fill its place, and joy and belonging, I feel only the restless aching of imperfection. I feel the flatness of my lost emotions in the curve of my laugh and my inability to search deeply into any conversation. I feel it in the jilt of shock when I realize how judgmental I've become, and the slap of its echo when insecurities arise and threaten to drown me back to whence I came. I feel the pain, vaguely, but different in my frustration. I become frustrated too often now, when I realize my immaturity and my faults and my shortcomings I get frustrated. I've become a maze of my own design and even I can solve it. I've become a puzzle of imperfection and entangled "shoulds", and I hate it. Now that my sadness is gone I see the true ugliness that has replaced it and whether or not it was a mask and a lonely existence part of me longs for the sadness back simply to hide behind. Because with this happiness, all I can think is what now?

Gypsy Tapestries

I have diamonds in the crevasses of my mind. They're hidden deep within the folds, capturing the light of each new idea and refracting it onto a million surfaces. I have gold within my heart. Small flakes that you could pan out of the blood coursing through the arteries and veins. I have emeralds and pearls in each tear that falls from the corners of my eyes, the sadness I carry is worth more than the possessions of the world. I have rubies at the meeting of my thighs and moonstone in my touch. My love, my thoughts, myself is worth more than the gifts you deign to toss at me. Sprawling glances and half-hearted whistles. Your package of paper and string is nothing next to the precious stones I carry within. But you, your diamond thoughts and stories of pearl, that's why my tastes crave. Your heart of gold and your rubies, these are gifts worthy of my praise, and of the unveiling of my own precious parts. If you want to make a trade with me, be fair. I won't trade diamond for stone, I won't give gold for steel, and I certainly won't give pearl for ice. So open up your arteries. Show me the gold beneath and use the light of your ideas to prove to me you've diamonds to spare, and maybe just maybe you could mine my rubies for your moonstone.

I was raised by a television

Can a person be so abstract as to lose themselves? The days drift by in a hazy lull, and each second I can feel my veins losing not blood but passion and purpose. Someone once said to me that purpose is what humans need in life, a reason to live. Work is simply a filler. But somehow I've got neither and it feels as though my mind is drifting further and further from myself- my soul is already gone. I have become an illusion. Simply a mirror image of myself repeating daily patterns and an impressionist'a print of my true self. When will this painting smudge into realism?

"It's all blood and sweat, and life is what you manage in between."

Is it stupid? Ignorant? Naive? To wish for a false reality? To want to be loved, and supported? Because my friends seem to prove it so, and my aching brain is tired from twisting into mazes without ends. My mother used to say it was okay to be average. But thats just it isn't it? okay is average in and of itself. Is it wrong to want more? As I gather my strength I'm throwing my dreams into the fates, and my friends seem to throw them back, laughing in my face. Beyond that my mind feels dull. Like a blade that's been left unsharpened for too long every thought and sentence, usually beautifully crafted down to the last wit, has become jello far too slippery to cut or even grasp, dancing blithely out of reach. I struggle with the tiniest detail and, feeling shame for my own struggle, these details each transform into pins and needles stabbing the voodoo doll I've had tucked away in place of my heart since I was 12 years old. Then on top of that she mentioned I've gained weight. That awful phrase, those awful chains. I'd only just managed to chisel through half my other pair of cuffs with another dull object constructed of my brain. And so now, I'm shackling myself back up because I hadn't yet learned how to cope with an ED and lose weight at the same time. The thought itself seems so horrifyingly oxymoronic that it has thrown yet another chink in my maze of a mind. As if They weren't enough, there's a Her to deal with too and I'm still weak. Change is what humans are psychologically programmed to fear, yet I've dealt with more change in one half a year than I thought I could ever deal with in one life time and it's hard. I'm just not sure what to do, and my own mediocrity in every way is killing me with shame. I'm hungry but yet I won't allow myself to eat because that wouldn't be "following the plan". Why does that sound so familiar?

The Cat's Meow

Your cat calls are like sirens. Police, not mermaid. Your grating threats are whispered promises. Your simple joke impales the rights my ancestors fought for, and yet you have the gall to get angry because "friendzoning" is "cruel". As if a woman has no right to be uninterested in a man sexually. As if a woman has no other purpose to her life than to be appealing. Well stop. And think. Because you argue that not every man is rapey or misogynistic, but you can't leave that past in the past if you insist on reenacting it. Especially in odds that reoccur every two minutes in a first-world country that declares itself above rape, but then turns around and reprimands a woman for wanting to take control of her body when intelligent enough to know that pregnancy is not her thing. You don't live in a world where your enemy and your friend look exactly the same. So please, for the sake of proving that not all men are what feminists fear. Lead by example. Because us women will stop complaining when there's no reason to complain.

Revealing Shirts

We stay up all night holding a stream of possibilities and watching our reflections in our hands as they act out different scenarios that trickle slowly through our fingertips; we age. As frost closes up the windows of our bedrooms and leaves blow through our minds, we let the last drops trickle away and stand to leave. Possibilities blossom into realities and spring blooms.

Scattered Puppies and Blue Green Skies

You can do anything. That's the lie my generation was nursed upon. You can do anything. Our parents fed us the breast milk of Olympians and sent us off to achieve well-rounded and prodigious feats all before the age of four. Or at least, that's what they'd like us to believe. Because these days, life is competition. Only the strong thrive, and the meek just survive because in the end you can tell when you're mediocre and these days? mediocre is simply not enough. You have to have not only played a sport in high school but become a master and every team needs 50 leaders right? because who isn't co-leader of their team these days. Oh, and don't forget to add the fact that they were student president, master chef, brilliant pianist, made headmasters list every year, in the GSA HRA NHS FHS and all the other acronyms you can think of. These days? that's just the beginning. If you've invented something that has saved over 50 third-world countries world wide, well you can just suck it because that guy you're sitting next to on the metro every day on your way to your second full-time job at a fourtune 500? yeah, he invented something that saved over 60. And yet we wonder why depression and anxiety top the charts of everyday american problems.
Our world is sick. And you want to know the scientific name of the common cold virus that has us each coughing up pain and exhaustion day in and day out? Human nature. You see, what they didn't teach you in school is that evolution didn't do a very good job at preparing us for the society we went ahead and built anyway. It's still catching up far behind us in a marathon where apparently our bodies were driving cars and our instincts and sometimes minds were simply stumbling along, well-equipped and walking with a broken leg and wobbly crutches. Here we see the lesser-awknowledged Amazing Human Invention: insanity.
 Its all a conspiracy. Our society is covering up the truth and the truth is it's okay to not be "enough".  What they don't want you to know is that sometimes just living is enough. And getting through the day is an achievement worthy of 70 countries saved. Because in the end there is no definition to the word "mediocrity". You just are. And when you slow down and stop banging at the door of fate, trying to nudge it in your direction you may just meet happiness. And damn son, is he nice.

We all have marks that will not fade, despite the Neosporin we so generously glob into the cracks and creases, and despite the many bandages that hide our sins and our pasts-- the stains that once tried to prove to us that we were unworthy. We all have places that are sore to the touch, and shadows underneath our eyes that tell the stories of the times when there was no sun to warm us up, to fade away the demons of the darkness. You, and you, and you a thousand times you have molded me. Shaped my mind into a place where i must tread with careful steps, afraid to step on an old bruise or wake the angry voices and unlock the shadows. But i am breaking free. I am being brave and loving myself. If i am worthless as you have told me, so many times, to you-- then i can be so many times more worthwhile to me. I am putting down the weapons i clung onto for so long, not knowing i was going into battle with myself and causing wounds which even the slightest brush of someone else's gentle, loving fingers could not heal. I was turning to the pain of myself, and wondering why i was becoming pinpointed to so many labels while screaming out that that was not me, and binding myself ever further into them. So i finally stopped. And you, and you, and you who no longer know me, cannot harm me any more. I have built a shell of love, my own, because i am my own heroine, my own heroin, and my own Neosporin. and no longer will i display my weakness for sale, like a prostitute on the corner, begging for a quick fix. I am strong. and i am finally free. i don't care anymore.

 But even as i know that. there will always be those nights. When even my own salve won't fix the throbbing of those wounds. because gauze has to be removed to be changed and when the pain of myself is revealed again, i will always remember. And i will always be sore. And though, i may heal myself, you can rest easy knowing your mark has been made. is your legacy one you're proud of i wonder, as i change my bandages, and feel the waves rock me once more away.

Masochist

Someone told me once that I need people to hate me. I don't think that's true. I think instead that I'm afraid of people loving me. I've never felt it. What do you do with love? What do you do with joy? Are you just happy all the time? To me that seems so foreign, so fairy tale impossible. What do you do with the happiness? So I push. Because I know everyone has their breaking point. And I think part of me finds satisfaction in the knowing that I could never be loved, that I am truly unloveable, because no one I push away has ever wanted to come back......but then that's all I want. I crave the person who turns around and says no. The person who takes me up and is stubborn enough to not let me push. That's all I've ever wanted. But I don't think that person exists. Everyone cares too much about themselves to keep at it. And no one could ever care so much about me. Why would they. So I must be a masochist. Knowing what I know yet pushing people away and hurting myself despite the consequences. White knights don't exist. And dragons are worse than monsters because they aren't killable if they're apart of you.

Shit

As i sit and type i am reminded. By the fat congealing around my chin and on top of the abs i work so consistently to not-achieve by stuffing myself with three guilty pieces of unneeded calories in the form of cake; by the song that reverberates around my aching head, pounding harsh memories against my skull; and by the undeserved tears falling against my cheeks as i scream at myself again in the dead of night realizing that not only am i being overdramatic but stupid. Im over thinking something that doesnt even matter. And so i sit and type. And i am reminded.

The British Queen

This isn't mine-- it's a friends. But I wanted a place to put it permanently, to share its worth....


If I die youg
Which I will
Be not sad

You will die young as well

You will join me in my timeless  existence
We will not live, but we will know how
Love was close but death will close
The final chapter on our last bow

The eternal Something
Which could be Nothing
Either a gaping black hole
Or a god of pure white souls
The options are truly bizarre

In Oblivion's wretched grasp
Our memory could soar and sink
Dragging out to the clear we are so desperately near
Screaming out for someone to drink

To drink
To drink
Too much
Too much
To come to us at last
And join us in the blackness
That has become our past
And our voices yell and beg and cry
He hears us in his head
Clambering up to the top to bring it to a stop.
He joins the existence of the dead

In God's clean white and eerie court
His campaign is going strong
Fighting for fear and punishments severe
We step into the throng

I listen intently as he presents his speech
In the hard wooden chairs I abhor
And I feel a sharp pain, and knowing there's nothing to gain
I bleed the mark of a whore

I bleed
I bleed
Too much
Too much
It pours out from my soul
The white chair is stained in sin unrestrained
My skin turns black as coal
He loves me no more,
His mantra does break
I fall from Heaven's tight grip
They all wave goodbye, put my face on some signs
My blood is tuned down to a drip

This life is divine
Not Heaven's confines
We have been built to perplex
I could be God
Or you could be God
Or we could all be Oblivion next

For in this world:

We sin like the best
Cry and scream like the rest
Yet still
We continue
To live

Cherry Pie

There's something beautiful in the nights that linger. Dragging on until the morning, waiting and lilting. They sink and seep and seem to inch into daylight, sifting through the unporous layer of our minds. They stretch out our thoughts and illuminate the darkest holes within our hearts, unveiling the creatures that hide in the daylight and the demons that become burnt and shriveled in the sun. There are many who fear these demons and devils. Turning from temptation and pretending to be holy, they fake smiles and make themselves believe that they are perfect, shunning the most human tendencies inside of them. Sex, desire, greed-- these words are poison on their lips, and slutshaming is, rather than unkind, simply decent and classy. The meanness of those who turn from the dark is considered more proper than the impulse of those who embrace it. But it's nights like that which hold the most tender beauty. That of lust and love, and that which those who sleep till the morning learn to live without. There is beauty in the humanity of it all. It is the sins which give us depth and teach us meaning, and the sins which help to fill out a human being. We are not pieces of art, and our souls should not be pure. We live to survive, and survive to live. So why deny our darkest parts if they hurt no one but ourselves?

thoughts from a cloud

Have you ever seen the sky kiss the ground? it reaches out with its tendrils of pink and orange and blossoms into the sunset, stretching and yearning for just the barest kiss against the surface of the earth. You can see it's final impact in the waters of the globe. Shimmering and refracting off of oceans, lakes and streams, not-quite-seeping into the ponds and puddles and lapping at the feet of lovers and children with laughter; it bubbles up around the edges where, delicately balanced, the sunshine's warmth pops and lands again in the air, bounced back and rejected once again from the lovely earth it longs so consistently for. Every evening, this sunshine yawns, hoping for another brush against the cold, hard ground. And although its stunning array of colors dazzles the spectators down below, the show always ends, leaving nothing more than the echo of a memory upon the pictures of artists and the minds of the many. And every night comes rushing in to cut off the gasping sun and steal the attention of the earth from its great love affair with twilight-- reminding it of the ever approaching dawn.

Pansy

I crave you. Even as the bittersweet thought of leaving claws its way up my aorta, tearing its path from my heart to my head, my blood bleeds only for you. I used to be so inconsistent-- strongly fragile, and irreplaceably alone; A cog in a machine that had broken long ago, with the shattered remains casting a mere shadow upon the purpose it was meant to serve. I was a friendly reminder that perhaps the happy ending does not wrap things up in a neat little bow, a perfect package ready for post, but rather ending in an entangled web of ribbon, discarded and used only for the regifts and the rejects.  But then you came along, and despite the messy exterior and disorganized interior, despite the certain fatality of life, you found beauty in the chaos and straightened my web of futures unforetold. You made me feel lovely and whole, and you shined the tarnished outside of perfectly good silverware that had been left for rust a long time ago. I love you. Even the cloyingly crisp lace of the words feels sappy and sweet in my mouth, and although they stick and seem to glue my teeth shut like molasses, they ooze out of the edges, dripping from my head back into my heart. You’ve breathed life into my veins and made me laugh the way that I gave up laughing so long ago. I love you. Words are thrown around so easily these days. Tossed into the air to be soaked up by the sun, as invisible and light as nitrogen in the atmosphere, and as abundant as well. But these words weigh me down with their burden, begging to be released into your mouth, into your mind. They need to free themselves from the cage my heart has built for them into the home your heart has made for them. I love you. I crave you. I need you. I’m yours.