piedpiper

whats sad is aunt rose yelling into the phone at my sister that day "i'm sure as hell not gonna take care of him!" — him meaning our father, how he was on the precipice of moving in to rose's retirement community in louisville and her blunt boundaries effectively putting the kibosh on that: our plan to basically dump him out of our lives and into hers, even though no one said that directly. because we didn't wanna take care of him either. and no one did — even before he grew up and did the things he would do. those things he never talked about, never apologized for. just cried quietly and died alone. someday that'll be me too, pop. we are the same. we have all the worst things in common.

When I hear tell of you with my name in your mouth, rolling it around as if you know the taste - I would rather die than have you experience that flavor. we’ve been on opposing sides of a legendary battle that you may not recall - on your long road of retribution-imagined, throughout history and outside of time. I remember the tuck of your smile from ages past, on bright winter mornings, you and I cabin-bound, just our breathing in syncopation and the snow-covered roof crying music into metal pots. I know the furrow of your brow as your mind works feverishly, sharpening knives, conjuring foils for hunting - the misery of those long dark nights with you at that whet-stone for hours until a blade was thin with one purpose. And me at your side like I had been for centuries - warming my hands over the fire and working your shoulders like Sisyphus - as if my strength was enough to roll the fury from your muscles - something born in your bones and carried through time and bigger than each world we’d lived. there was inevitable clarity - moments I’d become immune to the contagion of your mania. The times I’d learned i was not a partner but your pig to sacrifice - to stew and sup and nourish you. to be the diamond in your eye that sparks this imaginary revolution against the ghosts buried in your skin - reaching from each follicle, growing wire-strong and humming a minor key before the push of your Wagnerian catastrophe. And when I chose to fall, I fell toward you, onto your weapon and the sure solace of death - tricking you into thinking you’d won, as if that were ever the point- watched your gaze glaze divinely before leaving you for the first of too many times. So now, to hear your poison passing through our mutual channels again, to know you, your evolution cuckolded - to know you miss my dumb cow eyes, the sway of my meat - I grin hard, hard enough to cut glass. I’m not afraid of your rise, your knife. not afraid of your bite - your impotence bastes my memories. I’ve gulped mouthfuls of that bitterness just to live an extra day. I learn the hard way but you never learn. Come closer now and you’ll see what I’ve been cooking.

there's something to be said for these specific disappointments — the kind found at the end of a long nurtured build-up to experience. things you've imagined so many times, the way the pressure rises and drops and rises again in those fantasies, in your body. the tension of muscles in places that hold excitement with the tightest hopeful grip. the taste of something in your mind's mouth, that smooth honeyed slickness, gone flat on reality's palate. there's a freedom in the bubble burst, your trademark shrug. when you're back upright on good feet — a sadder, surer step as you push forward to the next dream. 

this feeling. this particular concrete block taking the space in my stomach and the effort to hold myself upright, so much that i can't. i've been on the bed and the couch and back to the bed, every step a lurch, heavy sailor's rope linked from this block to another that i straddle-drag along the ground behind me, tearing the muscles and tissue with each forward grunt. my hands the coldest tightest fists, bleeding half-moons clenched in my palms like afterthoughts. this is the only way i self-harm anymore. i use you.

if you're gonna be up so late, there better be a fucking reason. i'm not going to stand for anything less than a full-blown crisis of faith (jkjk you don't believe in faith lol)

to tell you the truth, it just feels good. i think about it a lot. it's buzzing anxious and i'm rigid, strings taut, shallow breaths--strong on the balls of my feet. it's got my blood moving around fast. my cheeks are the roundest roses.

did i read somewhere that similes/metaphors are out of style or offensive or something? too bad bitch

this feels bad. i'm working on it, but tonight it is painful. it's the inside of my body trying to beat its way out. there's a stone in my stomach, a cannonball. there's an angry energy pulsing through my skin. a new neck twitch when i'm trying to lay flat, to relax, to sleep, to put my head back against the headrest in the car to take a fucking deep breath. this reverberation along the taut biting wire that is my spine. is this in my head, is this in my body, is everything connected. Anna keeps referring to my "integration" and i always know what she's going to say before she says it. it's like "what the fuck is going on here?" but also "finally, here it comes."