People are People are People

Ash & Fire & Purple Blue Skies

" You know there are some children who aren't really children at all, they're just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them... " - Smoke Signals (1998)

-----------

That's why. 

I stared, breathing harsh, fearlessly into her eyes. I am here. I am alone, but I am baring witness to your greatest mistake and you can do nothing about it. I wonder if she felt the chambers in her heart torn open, if she felt her deepest secret slip past like a ripple or like a great tsunami freed at last. I wondered if it was a relief, or a terrible pain that echoed in her eyes. I couldn't tell. I didn't want to. 

Tears streamed down her cheeks, painting rivulets down the purple and blue bruises mottled on the side of her face. My fingers clenched and unclenched around the phone in my hand. I wanted to take a picture of her, this beautiful ugly being. I wanted to keep it around, a physical copy, so when my first love (whoever they may be) begins to wonder why it's so hard for me to take down barriers that I put up myself... I'll show it to them. Exhibit A. My childhood taught me the best line of offense is defense. Never put yourself in that position in the first place. I'm more booby-trapped house than girl-to-be-loved, I don't know how not to be what I am. It's so much easier this way. I don't want to waste your time, don't you understand? I'm sorry. 

--------

I don't know who I am saying sorry to anymore. 

The girl I see is buttoning up a shirt she will wear to work. The label above the left breast bares the symbol of a local gas station. The girl's eyes are lifeless.  I don't know that person staring back, but that girl is me and I don't know if I'll ever find myself again. And that girl pulls her hair back, and those damned eyes keep on telling me that I'll never find my way back. I don't even know where back is, but I know that if I could rewind my life, wouldn't any time be better than now? I'm terrified, everyday of my life, because I don't understand where I am. Yet, I am the one who brought myself here. 

Fuck. 

How many times have you looked into a mirror and seen your own abductor? 

---------

I'm not even drunk, but somehow the bottle in my hand has transformed the world behind rose-colored lenses. Rose colored lenses? It's like playing a fucked-up version of house. Everyone here is just like me, but we are entirely different people with this music, and that weed, and the smoke that fills the house up makes me feel like an old movie star behind glittering gossamer. 

Am I not drunk? 

I can't tell anymore. They say we are here for a good time but I am standing here wondering how many people had to get dressed up, had to collect  props, had to share with others  to convince themselves. It's quite nice that we share, though, isn't it? This is what it's all about. A communion. Because this church is just a place  we can all get together, share our spiritual interest. Here, in this special house, consecrated by the divinity of all we hold holy, here in this house of worship. 

So I'll take this bottle, you take up the pipe. There's words fluttering around my head and I can't understand a single one, but I'm sure we can pretend, too, that it's something sanctimonious in Latin. Around the room, one by one there are flares like fabulous roman candles. A choir sings high, the bass thumping, low and guttural, and is it possibly just my heart? It could just be my heart, it feels so good to be so high and right now I can believe. I can believe in anything. So you take the eucharist to your lips, and the lips of the bottle touch mine own and what shall we pray for?

-----------

You are the biggest wreck of all. 

To me. You are, in relation to me, the worst that could've ever happened. Here, I am. I have never known a person to change dimension, never known a person could shift their molecular structure. But I have found myself a great many things in the last hour, and none of them are human. 

-------------

"I wouldn't make a good mother." I didn't plan on being a mother, ever, but it was still true. 

"I wouldn't either! God, I mean I love children. But it's an entirely different story if they're mine." You say. 

"I mean, I wouldn't make a terrible mother." 

"Not even a bad one." 

"Not even a bad one on a terrible day." I agreed. "But there are those days where I'd just want to lay in bed all day. I wouldn't even want to move. Wouldn't want to breathe." 

You looked at me with a smile, tentative. It told me you understood. You were the first person who understood. I haven't known you for very long, but I want to tell your best friends that they don't understand that you are one of the greatest people they would ever know. I want to tell the love of your life that he's lucky. I want to call you my friend. 

---------------

I'm still trying to understand how with a single word, halfway across town, you can make me feel as if I'm constructed from used matches. Bones, sinew, I feel like the little match girl. Needlessly trying to alight a fire, again and again. I want to feel warm. 

You are so terribly cold, sometimes. I don't think you mean to be. 

----------------

Today, I talk to no one. 

I simply listen. I avoid everyone except The Beatles blaring from the speakers. 

This is healing.