July 16, 2008 - 11:26 p.m.
Notes on a story I know you will want to write:
still looking for the hamartia -
in italics, but no longer foreign
caption, 'the heroine loves irony'
caption, 'how fake does this feel?'
subtitle to a photograph,
altered,
only by the deliberate removal of colour -
black and white
we smile,
kissed cheeks and laughing eyes:
it was real once
now looking for its metaphor, its myth, the story becomes the snake that consumes itself
tail first
to bring this story full circle,
out
of the insularity of this reputed, ill-fated circle of love, hate, strike
I look for a way to trace it, to learn this pattern, to find out how the lines were drawn and by whom.
I open: tell me why we do not love each other anymore?
I cannot help but love you, even as I feel myself devalued in all of this, foolish for caring when I feel myself being slowly cut from this body.
You close: do not project your insecurities onto me.
I did not know I had any, or reason for any, until you told me that I was worthless.
I did not see this coming, from my softened position - having sounded you out... having taken and consumed your words
I do not know what has happened to us. I feel sad. I miss and mourn it.
July 11th. You will always be dear to the people who have known and loved you. You should trust in the strength of that past.
All this to prepare me for the reversal. It follows:
The fall must be great when the flawed figure falls
tragic irony: i asked to have the canker removed
I let my blood leak into the water and told you - 'I am afraid of sharks.'
These wounds were inflicted on open eyes. I have always been a good swimmer, and so, turned to you, to ask if I should be afraid. You said 'no; now hold your eyes open'.
My Medea: is it you or me?
I came with palms open, bearing you everything but children,
becoming them myself.
Off stage, the audience completes the act of violence - blood in the gutter.
More irony: I ask if my meaning is plain
Childlike, I turn with wide eyes, willing this shared skin to keep you from hurting us, reading these lines from a play that I no longer recognize, from a mouth that no longer speaks my language.
Still, as this skin spills
there is no meaning:
I look to you, to her, to you, to the past.
Do we ever know at the time that our suffering has meaning? How will I know when this cutting away has produced a new shape?
It must be you, and yet, I never expected it.
Round shoulder marked with a map
back to a beginning - where
morse-code safety messages meant safety, not s. o. s.
to me once you were these things, both
and now I have become them,
somehow through the inscription on my skin I have become my own net
but find myself caught,
still looking for you inside myself.
I did not know how far we had drifted,
still reading, as I was, your words as you
these messages in bottled space
which came too early
and too late
long lines of text, eclipsed by short slash jugular finger cuts and headaches behind my eyes
how fake does this feel, now?
All these things I want to ask you:
what have i done to deserve this?
how can you watch and feel nothing?
when did you move from love to hate?
how long did this transition take?
what could I have done to stop it?
the canker in this state is you.
if I the body is rotting, I will assume that these holes you have cut
will somehow let you out,
usher you into the place you want to be - outside of me and my heart
it will not be easy to squeeze through, my heart will fight to hold you
and leak its own defense in the process
left to eat itself, consumed with these questions and too weak to know it must move on or be picked off limb by limb
I am still looking for my weak spot,
which may be many.
seeing as how I'm leaking from so many small cuts, chained like clovers -
the spiget is the leech is the flesh it feeds on
decant, make myths, make this mean more than just pain without purpose.
Spill Adonis, gored deep in sport,
tree-torn Pentheus, limb from limb, flesh torn from flesh by flesh
Torn.
i am not yours anymore
and my hamartia,
it is not what i thought
i knew
separate and the same
it is the ability to watch this spill, this slow spluttering, the welling eyes and inability to swim with this weight
to watch it in silence
to watch it and do nothing
to feel nothing
unmoved by the suffering of something no longer connected to the self,
no longer identified as having been part of that flesh,
inside it, beside it, wrapped around it and enfolded by it. a detached observer of pain - the canker in this state is you.
there are two robbers here
you have stolen the only truth I know: the words scratched into a grade school canvas, the scream, my own red and orange wail
i felt it again
again, like those scraped knees and places in my past where I no longer feel the need to padlock the gate
I am accustomed to stepping over those fences -
so I thought.
It feels familiar and present again.
The way children can be fascinated with another person's pain -
you told me I pushed myself down, and some part of me believes you.
this skin has stretched itself
turned to see itself
inscribed with words that are its own
prophecy
we did not need riddles to come to it
you are one and the same
and in choosing to do nothing
you have chosen to watch
Scarring myself with our past as a promise - to remember what had been -
I would not have believed
I would be so easily broken.
that I would ever feel myself slipping,
that we would ever come so far from seeing ourselves as we are, or were.
eyes glazed,
refusing to take that step to claim that flailing part of yourself as something worthy of being rescued,
or at best warned, of the damage it was doing to itself
and it makes me wonder, how carefully I was groomed to step onto this diving block. how many times did my words twist out of my mouth into yours? how many times was i allowed to be misheard and redefined, so that collectively it was agreed upon that I would be left to step off this edge
without even an epitaph. without a trace. that kind of willed forgetting could not possibly happen so quickly - so how long have I been vanishing?
can you see me yet?
In all this - I will not lose sight of myself.
