and all these things
they run through me, in me
they ricochet from wall to wall
i wish they’d stop, i wish they’d fall
i cannot stop, i cannot think
and then its time.
anger
i wasnt angry then.
i wish i were. i wish it was the extent of it. but it wasn’t. something crawled out of me that night. something poisonous that wrapped around my tongue and slithered along the floor spreading the chalky white slime. it i suppose it was just as potent, but you were just as vulnerable. i sat in the park that night, half an hour. i sat there, mouth open wide, willing it to come back to me, to crawl back from where it came. eventually it did. i captured it and put it in a box. it still lives there. i peek into the box every one in a while to check if its still alive. one day, when its dead, or maybe more alive than ever, i’ll wrap it up and pretty and send it back to you. you, stronger now, will see it and see it for what it was. like me, you’ll peek in, smile, and put it away.
til then, i hope i dont get angry
it had been days. one, two, three, four. there were too many to count on my fingers. surprisingly, it had grown easy. unnoticeable like second skin. it was hard at first, that was for sure. but it had been days now since i’d last looked up with a heaviness in my throat, choking me down. i had i fact caught be by surprise that i had in fact forgot it had been, two four six eight, two weeks since i had last remembered. perhaps that’s what they mean when they talk about just waking up one day and realizing you’ve changed and what you thought you are was what you used to be.
giftwrapping
“left over right. make sure the line runs straight down the middle and dips neither left nor right. the tape should fall exactly along this line and their centers should align as lover’s hearts do. crease the edges sharply and fold them over as to completely cover and enclose the box inside. gift wrapping should be an art. it should be a gift in itself”
tongue between her teeth, she made sure to read the instructions three times over, careful to not make a single mistake. and when she had finished, before her stood a beautiful row of lovely boxes. in different shapes and sizes they had all posed a challenge to her on how best to wrap them. now that she was finished, she felt a twinge of sadness. they were so pretty. they were all so inviting. so much so that she wanted to unwrap them and see what she had put inside.
but that was the point. she had so outdone herself that in wrapping these she had forgotten precisely what each contained. and though she had an inkling, she proceeded to stack the boxes and put them, one by one, on the highest shelf of her tallest bookcase. and from that height they looked down upon her, taunting her, reminding her of their presence.
she hoped that day on, though she could see them peek out into the room from the corner of her eye, that time would dull the bright colors and dampen their narcissistic calls. maybe, if she was lucky, she’d forget she put them there at all.
a fire was burning deep inside me. it was hungry and it consumed. it fed on what little it could find, climbing upwards— as if my ribcage were rungs of a ladder— upwards, until it could climb no more. it sat there growing. the space in my chest could only be larger on the inside than it so appeared, for there could be no other reason I could be vessel to so large a force.
i swallowed.
her lips parted to let through a stream of smoke. i wondered how she did it. did she, too, carry the fire? she heard my question echoing in the silence and laughed. her head tilted backwards and her chest heaved. the laugh shook throughout her body so strongly any spark, any roaring flame would have ceased to exist.
i take the cigarette from her hand and my nails grazed her palm. i slowly turn the stick in my hands and note the delicate burgundy print of where her lips had been mere moments ago. like a pair of hunters in the snow, i place my lips exactly on the guide. with a staggered breath in, i feel the heat begin to subside. the flames that had been so bold are now curling into themselves, small and weak.
only the ashes remain and they dance and flutter at any hint of breeze that seems to blow. i suppose its a beautiful sight to see the whispers of a ghost dance, but all i know is the hollow, the cavern in which these things take flight. so large and so empty that it echoes as her laugh echoed before me.
I came upon twin fawns in the display case of a mom and pop toy and science store in Kansas City, Missouri. It took me two years to win the trust of the shop owner and save the money to buy them. A taxidermist spotted a dead deer by the side of the road. He stopped to properly dispose of the body and realized she was pregnant. He opened her and found near full-term twin fawns, he removed and preserved them.
Deer rarely have twins and the taxidermist retained the uterine gesture of their bodies. I built them a vitrine with a light blue base. Their prematurity exaggerates the delicacy of an incredibly sweet thing. The points of their hooves, the length of their lashes, the spots of their hides, nose to small nose in an ur-cartoonish realism Viewers’ eyes trick them into believing the fawns are breathing. The tragedy of beauty is its transience.
The twins live forever in their own demise. They are sleeping beauties.They have been muses since I first saw them … We dress death in lilies and bronze the names of our dead sons on walls. We erect altars of toys and hold candlelight vigils to express hope. My twin fawns sleep endlessly on their baby blue block in my studio. The twins never opened their eyes yet their wondrous fatality evokes an acceptable alternative to death.
— Peregrine Honig
Incredible.
(via bloodmilk)
it rained so hard that night. i wish i could say i remembered the pitter patter of the rain and the lines they drew down my arms and the spreading wetness of my clothes. i wish that the lethargic squish of my shoes and the cold that seeped into my bones is as vivid to me now as it was that night. you tell me all this. but i forget. all i can hear is you crying,” it’s raining. its raining.”
his hands curled into themselves as though they were retreating. they were sweaty and moist, hot like the thick air of the south american jungles. the short jerky movements gave them a life of their own. a cursed and undecided life. in short, the fingers kept scratching, deeper and deeper into his palms. all this he could not feel— he was preoccupied.
(via loveyourchaos)
and the expanse enveloped her. it drew her in and drowned her. it filled her lungs and closed her throat. and when she thought she could take no more, it spit her out. for she was no more than a little thing in this.
