This and That

10/4/15

What 

I 

would 

have 

said...

Maybe I'd have mentioned it, even subtly. Perhaps, who knows, but perhaps there might even have been a reply, with letters and words and sentences insensible and inexplicably grand. And do you know, sometimes I dream about the smooth spaces where the resulting cracks now gleam?

Or, if I chose something infinitely more sensible and, I hope, more important, they might now share the story of the woman who left the air bleeding with things too harsh for them to understand. Then again, these things may seem hopelessly insane and picky enough to avoid any real pain. So they have endeavored to understand the depths they have never experienced from the shallows. Maybe I should wade back towards shore?

I WOULD SCREAM from the top of my constricted lungs the ideas and daggers which have chased my mind in circles these past months. 'Why are you pointing to a wound that does not exist,' they would invariably ask, and in turn I shall most likely apologize for the inconvenience, so sorry for taking up their time, would they care to forget all I have said?

"Strange child, where is your tragedy?"

"Do I need one to feel?"

"In most cases, yes."

Then: the lives of others, all my beautiful, sunset-colored stories; in their tears and aching bones and rough fingertips. It lies in all the things they wish they'd have said, in their hopes, dreams, and friends dashed against sharp reality; across the distant lands I have travelled in their company; and of course, in the splintering way I must pull back when the last word is whispered and the curtain closes.

I frequent the bigger-on-the-inside consignment shops. I take my anguishes secondhand, often patched and stained, with a few buttons missing. They are not mine, but I graft them into myself, and they become as real, yes too real, as the ones hanging, new and shiny and fresh, in the nicer stores. These tragedies may not be original to my life, but at least I chose them. And that, more than most other things, speaks of who I am.