347

"I hate myself, I hate myself. Not enough, no good, no point in trying to be understood."
That, friends, is the mantra of my broken mind.
My therapist made me take a count, every time it came to me. She made me make a tally sheet, of the times a day I disagreed with me.
Three hundred and forty-seven times, of the times I remembered to mark.
That was just a day at home, a relatively productive day alone. I did my dishes, I took out the trash. I watered my plants, fed the cat, even swept off the porch mat. I cleaned my shower, I mopped the floor.
Still the thoughts endure.
That's a day at home.
At work, I dare not count. I dare not mark the sheet, because that would be a wretched defeat. Every beep, every screen, steamer, item, every dish, drink, and drain... the mantra, the mantra, always, always in my brain.
Repeat myself, repeat myself; only when I shout do I seem to be heard.
Repeat myself, repeat myself; respect is but a dream. Feeble, fleeting, vapid steam, I want to weep, to scream for this shattered dream.
On my knees scrubbing tiles, fingers bleeding as I throw in the miles.
See me, hear me, anyone please...!
Silence met with laughter, the two shared a drink, laughed as I chased the futile, scrubbing beneath a sink.
I'm panicked and I'm starving for some kindness, but I dare not let it show.
I have to be a machine, mechanical, clean.
Speak not of the oil, of the leaks, the rust. In us, place all your trust, hail the nuts, praise the bolts; as the machinist has forbade us from being humans, dolts.
"I hate myself, I hate myself, not good enough, no good, unworthy of the stage."
My shocks are shot, my beams are rusted, my body a prematurely failing machine that cannot be trusted.
My hair is rapidly greying, falling out in clumps, but I'm forbade to speak on that; my suffering is invalid.
"You're smiling, it can't be bad!"
So was Robin Williams; so were others.
So I was I three years ago; when things were pretty bad.
The smile does not negate my pain, even if you can't feel it, can't see it the same.
Pain is relative, and circumstance depends on  what we're made of; what softens a potato hardens an egg.
I am a salad of misfortune. I softened my resolve, so I hardened my heart.
I'm afraid of kindness, I'm afraid of touch, even as I battle the fear, even as I work to undo the damages thus.
Unholy, unworthy, unclean, me. I dare not reach out my heart, I dare not reach for comfort
Not when I lie alone and crying; not even when I am in need of help.

The Yaak House (Part Two)

(More spooky content for the epitome of the spooky season! Unsure how many parts this will end up being, but I have greatly enjoyed writing this thus far)

"The Yaak House" has moved to my dedicated Darker Things Blog! https://andiwritedarker.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Yaak%20House

Brother 21

Written for my brother at heart Charlie, as a birthday gift for his 21st. 

"Brother 21"

I've been blessed in this life brother, to have you at my side, if just for now in spirit; I know more will come with time.
I know you in my head, as the smell of Rosemary and the sound of laughter.
I know you in my heart brother, even born a world apart.
Your laughter is an ocean, your smile is a mountain; great and wondrous things. Your voice, your comfort, soothing to these tattered heartstrings.
You are my brother, blood or not be damned.

The Yaak House (Part One)

Yaak House has moved to my Darker Things Blog! Part One

So the initial short story I was going to write decided to out-grow the technical parameters of the label "Short Story", and I still have a yearning to share it. So I hacked it apart with a machete went through as I was proofreading, then again as I was editing, and found two good points to split it into more manageable pieces to read. Here is the first of those; the next may come as soon as Halloween or as late as whenever it decides to be done.

Brother

I was not born to have a brother in blood. My brother in blood was unborn, unbreathing, lost to the crusade of time and fate.
No, I was not born to have a brother in blood, but a brother I have.
A brother I have; in love and choice. A brother I found at my low, a brother has stood by me, before I saw him as such.
My brother lives in Sweden, and of the family I've been able to choose, I'm glad I found him.
It was no pen pal experience, no foreign exchange, it was what my collective youth is mocked for; the internet, and our humor abhorrent.
My brother's name is Charlie, though I sometimes call him Max, though that doesn't change that he is my brother, a very simple fact.
He's got eyes unlike mine, soulful and brown, warm and loving, the soil of earth's crown.
He likes wine and he likes whiskey, he's a riot if you catch him tipsy.
He can play the ukulele, Against Humanity he can play a brutal game of cards, but best of all when I'm feeling low, he picks me up by the heart.
He's my little brother, but to me it's easy to see where he has lived just a bit more of life than me. That said, I've been in more fights than he, and what a sight would be be, me part Aussie and he a Swede.
Me screaming at him across the bar "Fight me!" and his tired reply, "Andi... please."
I could see him rolling his eyes and taking a shot, then hauling me out, before someone called the cops.
He loves dogs, he loves cows, it's funny to see his reaction when I say either of them are around.
"Picture now!" He'll demand, and I'll allow, because it's family, we're pals.
He's my little brother, it's funny and plain to see. As clear as the fact that he isn't at all related to me.
I get to build my family, to deconstruct the tradition, and I get to choose the nuts that go up in this tree!

Word Versus Nerve; Action

I wish I had the courage, the words; no, the nerve.
If only to make a move in this bewildering game before me, to do more in my life than observe.
I realized not what I had invested, how attached I let myself become, how much by a smile alone I would be affected.
Has the wound in my heart healed over shape of you?
Dare I mar the view, wrest the offending thing from my chest? Create another gaping, bleeding wound on my breast, to match my panic, my soul's misplaced distress. Dare I wrench it free and feel again the familiarity of hurt?
I see the small acts, the things of which heroism is made, and still I sit afraid.
I wish not to hurt you; I wish you not to know the stinging ache I have felt.
Yet I wish not to leave you the greatest pain, alone.
Alone I have felt too keenly, and while this friendly, awkward dance done is seemly, the mere thought of putting a smile on your face... brings me such joy I fear I may be dreaming.
I will celebrate the triumphs, I will cheer through the falls, because at the sound of a voice, my heart thunders against my chest; a thousand hammer against an impenetrable wall.
I see one among the best, I see success, and it pains me so, even to imagine, that heart in distress.
I wish, with every bone in my body, every atom in my soul, little more than to surrender, even but once, into that embrace.
To weep, safe in those arms, to hear the heart in that chest, a sound to remember.
A voice intoxicated my ears, it slides in when I'm nervous and it soothes my fears.
I'm a sad kind of deprived, where even just sitting there in the silence, my world makes just a little more sense.
As though I have been broken and gentled for them, them alone.

Do Scary Things

A writer is a storyteller, a historian, a writer is anything really. A writer is a strange thing to be. The fact is old as language itself, older than documented history.
While I was puttering around online the other night, a writer I respect and admire said something ( in reality, a great many somethings) in a blog post that struck a chord in me, a note that hasn't been played in years. One line stuck with me, and struck me;
“do scary things.”
Do scary things?
I laughed a bit when I read it because he was, is, right. Those words extend so deeply into life, beyond writing.
When I was 16, I gave blood for the first time. Not solely for the sake that I am A-, a harder to find blood type, but much to the alarm of my creative writing teacher (and my mother), so I could understand what it feels like to lose that much blood.
The look on my teacher's face when I told him was both amused and concerned. Mom was mostly concerned.
I've been a blood donor ever since, whenever I can.
Scary things are everywhere in life. It took a lot of guts for me to get up on stage the first Open
Mic Night I read at. It took guts and perhaps 3 hours of getting ready at home, because if I was going to be scared, I was going to look good doing it. I was writing a character that did a lot of speaking on stage. I needed to feel that, to do it. So I did.
That was almost two years ago now… it's a strange thought.
I am the kind of person that sees everything as a scary thing, ESPECIALLY people. People are terrifying to me. I'm not entirely an introvert, not by any means an extrovert… I'm some blighted thing in the middle. I believe it might be an actor.
I am scared a majority of the time,too scared to leave my comfort zone, to do the scary things.
Life is all the scary things, and you have to do the scary things.
Every word out of my mouth is a scary thing to me, every set of eyes, every step into the light, every second on the stage, scary.
Parking? Okay, that's only kind of  scary. Walking in, saying hello, seeing the familiar faces, new faces, signing up, sitting down, scary.
I am always scared and maybe that's not the normal for most but that is normal to me.
Mess up a line onstage?
FUCK
Sheer. Terror.
Lose my place, lose my nerve, lose the steam for a piece in the middle of a reading?
FUCK
TERRIFYING.
Every beat of my heart is a shock, every breath in my lungs is a tornado, every step I take is pain.
I am always scared, even at work. Late night, rough customers, angry voices, damage control, long waits, tempers flaring, voices rising…
The catch of it all is a twisted thing; fear is good to me.
I lived with solid, abject fear for two years… fear that mom would see the awful things my boyfriend said to me in text, fear that she'd find his nasty letters, that she would see a bruise, that she would find the concealers, the cover ups, that I had begged and borrowed from girls in the locker room. Fear when I got to school that he would find me before I found my friends at breakfast, fear that he would take me to the visiting bleachers, fear that his hands would be harsh…
Fear becoming fact when people kept walking when I was screaming.
Fear being fact… when people saw it happen and then looked away.
You've gotta do scary things. Scary things like throwing the first punch to protect yourself after a year of taking it.
Scary things like giving in to the red anger for the first time and not knowing what happened for a whole half hour of your life.
Scary things like saying no, breaking up for the first time.
You have to do scary things in life, like let yourself be known.
My writing is my soul, beauty I cannot see in myself but that I feel. I am blind to myself.
Anybody who has let me rehearse my readings to them, who has given me feedback on what I have written and not yet read onstage has given that feeling in my soul something that I can see with my eyes. That something is beyond fear, beyond the scared young writer I started out as.
Everybody who has nurtured that dream… has a piece of my heart. That same thing that sends shocks through my chest, that same thing that serves as the molten core of a Phoenix… the very thing I lie and lie and lie to myself about in an attempt to guard against pain.
You have to do scary things to live.
I never wanted to drive on an icy road, I did. I almost died. Part of me did die.
Part of me, in the scream of metal and glass, expired. Part of me died and I, as I am before you, was born.
I did not want to open my eyes after the impact… but you have to do scary things.
I did not want to try to move my hands for fear they would be still, for fear that I would never again write, but I did and I do.
Scary things… if you don't do them, they will happen. Before this the only scary thing had been tame, controlled, the blood donation.
I do the scary things now. I don't let them happen, I make them happen.
Do scary things.
Perhaps the greatest words of inspiration at this stage of my life.

Any Sane Way

I don't think there is any sane way for people to understand me, so I opt toward insane and put my heart to paper. I write to explain and explore myself, I write for me as much as I write for the people I may not even know yet. I write to do things over, to take things back.
I write to do the things I can't, to cherish the people I  lost, to cherish the people I am afraid to pull in close lest I be rejected.
I write because for just a minute at a time I can live and breathe a dream, I can share that dream and let new eyes see it.
I write because I am finite and afraid; words are the closest we have to immortality. So I will admit my bare humanity through this, because my mind would live on in ink to inspire in spirit as others have done for me, and in the tapestry of literature, I will have my thread.

This is Not (A Suicide Note)

This is the letter I daily want to write, the bullet I won't bite. The bullet that years ago never fired, the .44 magnum that filled me for a time with endless ire.
This is the letter I'll never send, because your heart in this way I refuse to rend.
This is me, alive and unliving; me, present and forgotten.
Me, feeling redundant and replaced in every aspect of life.
Me reaching out to the ones who said they'd be there... to be slapped away.
I hope you never understand how it is that the people you see daily are the first to forget you; the first to make you feel that you're mundane and plain.
I hope you never understand what I mean when I say it sometimes feels like you're less burden dead than alive... that the single thing keeping you alive is that which makes you ache, makes you wish you'd die.

I hope you never understand seeing the signs in yourself, only to realize you're the only one that does...

I hope you never feel the ache in your heart that resides, heartbeat to heartbeat, in mine.
The ache that says, in a thousand bitter tongues,  "Everyone has something more important than me," or perhaps denial is more serene, "I don't want to die, I just want something to happen to me."
This is the letter I never sent.
This is the letter you will never read, because I am stubborn, I am me, and I refuse to let the demons win this fight.
I stand before you, not as someone meek, not as someone whose name will be read with a weep in an obituary.
I stand before you to speak, I am here to read, because I refuse to again make myself bleed. I refuse to give my destructive demons that lead, I refuse.
I will say it again, again, again, and again... because that is the only way to keep the demon out and let the weak seed of hope win.

I refuse to dim my light.
I refuse to let my self destruction win this fight.
I refuse to be a statistic, a tragedy, anything but me!

I.
Refuse.

Because I have come this far.
I've written this much.

I cannot count on my hands and feet the lives I have touched.
My tears do not make me weak, they make me human... because this is the letter I never sent.
This is the letter you will never read, because I know there are a lot like me. There, in this fetid world, will always be.
They are the ones I want to reach; they're the ones I see. They're the ones who need to know they're important to me.
This is a letter I hope you never need to read.

In The Ink

A writer is a dangerous thing  to be when you grow up in a nowhere town, but a beautiful thing to be when you've lived as a nobody in that very nowhere.

A writer lives and breathes a dream, a writer learns and burns, lives and dies, goes up and comes at last crashing down from the fantastical sky to the dull and dispassionate world in which we,  by birth, reside.
A writer can crack against the glare of the world and fall into The Ink, and many sink. The weird, however, we swim.
The Ink is to the weird, not a fluid, it's not a void. The Ink is a mania, grasping caffeine to build a world of steam and dreams, the Ink is Art, the Ink is in me and I am knee deep in the Ink.
I'm weird, I'm queer, and I will not be shamed for it.
I am deep in the ink.
I'm well into 60 thousand words already and I'll confess...
I am in the Ink too deep to sleep, only write for fear the ideas slip away, for fear the haphazard pin I put in my plot will fall loose and the whole of 60 or so thousand words in pieces all over will scatter again.
I am adrift and content to fish my tale from the dark waters of my mind. I am, for once with my writings, at peace.
The Ink is my obsession, the Ink is my salvation where the world spins wildly beyond my control. The Ink is my communion with the creativity I set aside, a chance to breathe again.
The Ink does not judge the writers... that we do  ourselves.

Abhorred

Long festered in my soul are words dark and deep, words that for years now have haunted me in my sleep. Words dark and stark against my heart.
Words I here at last release, words... that echo a time in my life I refuse to repeat.

I am abhorred by my own  existence; where once I found that fight to be something I adored. I now implore death open that gauzy door, if just to hear familiar voices once more.
More abhorred though than me, the sheer inconvenience I would be, to the people I would leave.
I will not force on thee that tragedy, the travesty, the agony of asking oneself "Was it me?"
I refuse to be another young funeral, to waste these precious organs.
Yet for the lingering light, I lost my fight... something insidious sapped my might.
I do not wish to die, but by this life I cannot abide.
I am tired, I've been tried, it feels like everything in my heart has died.
It feels like in my own life I am not the center, but a side. I am not the first choice or second best, no lucky third, just another among the rest.
Yet in the logic of my mind, knowledge does reside. I know that I am a Phoenix, my fire is like the tide, always to recede, but destined to rise.

That does not ease the fight, that does not stifle the pain, because it's hard to burn when again you've been left out in the rain.
Yet burn I must, burn because the carnage lusts for me to be among it and I refuse.
Burn because I will thrive through the abuse, burn because from those who have left me in the rain, the betrayal is old news.
Burn because I am abhorred for the honesty, because I am praised for the lies.

Burn because I feel like I destroy everyone my heart dare touch if they don't destroy me first, and burn because this heart pines with the worst for the best.
I am abhorred; for I am loyal to myself and the true,  a select few.

Sticks and Stones

Sticks and stones may break my bones; but words are forever.
Words come back to bite you, words come back and fight you.
You can crush stone, down to rubble, burn sticks to ash, but words... words cannot be undone.
I have done nothing here but be me and bleed ink...
Ink because I know the power of the word, because no matter how big the stick, no matter how heavy the stone; they're temporary.
Stone cracks and becomes rubble.
Sticks burn and crumble to ash.
Words cannot be undone.
Words cannot be paralleled by any machine in their power, words cannot be beaten in their sway, words cannot be  taken away.
I have, in my life, wasted a lot of words on anger and hate... I'm only human after all.
I have thrown my shares of sticks and stones, I have broken a share of bones, but remains the same is that the gain and pain were temporary, and it's the words that remained.
I was right in screaming, I was right in dreaming, but my words died oft unheard and alone... because words take two; one to listen and one to speak.

If I Had The Words

I wish I had the words to reach him, to bring him back to me, but...
One knot.
Two knots..
Three...
He's another person that  depression has stolen from me.
I wish I had the words to explain, but there's no true direction to life; there are barely even lanes.
There is only our perception, and maybe mine is skewed, because there are people around me that drank in the hope, that drank in the light, just to end up screwed.
I drank in the dark, and only there I found what I regard as dark, as sacred, as true.
In the dark you cannot see,  you must feel your way through.
Feel your grief, in all the ragged, jagged edges of your heart; the stranger's kindness, warm, safe, and soft; the infernal thing that is love, the double-edged blade of hawk and dove.
I wish I had the words to bring you to the dark; so I can learn again the shape of a soul.
I wish I had the words to reach up from the dark; to scale the ramparts, delve into the towers of love and light to bring to the beasts of hope and fear to fight.
...But I don't know that I have those words; at least, not that anyone has heard.
My voice is a soft thing, a meek being where my needs lie bleeding.
I need gentle things, kindness, contact, hugs... gentle things of trust. Every hug I gave him, that I'm alive to give, to get, a piece of me I found and a broken bone reset. Every hug I take a chance and ask for, spoken for or not, it means I trust you. More than likely I'd even dare say I love you, were that my lot, as I do not believe in love.
I believe in people; I believe in actions, they say what words will not.
Yet still every word of praise gives me a reason, keeps me above the ground.
If I found the words to bring everyone back, I don't know that I would. What's done is done and done... it is the past, and this life is present.
If I found the words to bring him back, it would not be to ask him why; I would break into his arms and cry. The loss was five hand-fast years and a lifetime's tears, and in their place is left a thousand unsettled fears.
I would look up into his honey soft eyes, just for one last time. I would drink in every pale lash, every last ounce of his wit and sass.
I wouldn't have the words. I would barely have the heart... because it wasn't just my world he tore apart.

I Wish I Had The Words

I wish I had the words to bring everyone back, to put the grief in the pit.
The words to reach through the phone and cut the rope before you hit the end of it.  Words to reach you, to encompass my regret.
For all my teaching and my preaching, in the dark moments my empathy was fleeting.

I still wake up weeping, wake up knowing you are forever sleeping, wake up knowing you took with you a piece of my heart.
I wake up knowing your family is whole again and it hurts; wake knowing my son is in your arms, when he was not a moment in my hand... and I still reach for yours in the dark, feel your voice in my heart.
I wish I had the words to go back to that day, the very last, you would know the one; the day after freedom, the day we won.
I wish I had had the words for that timid 3 AM dance, that crazy, insane chance... the last we ever had.

I wish I had a better story, but here's the catch, life is deplored.
One shot, two shots, three shots, four, one drunk driver and bad news knocks on your door.
One cell, two cell, four; well... it wasn't cancer, but I still weep, because my son would almost be four.
A one knot, two knot, three knot noose... and more tears on the loose.
Love and loss are not far apart, two letters and one heart.
Don't mock me if I take my pain and turn it into art, don't scoff at me if I fall apart, don't scream at me just because these words slid into your heart with a whisper to gut you with a scream.
I wish I had the words to make it go away; to make this life a dream.
But I don't have those words, I don't have the lies, and the pain of loss reminds me  I'm alive.
They remind me that I still have to fight, that I refuse to be a young funeral, that I refuse to let this world break me.
Even with my hands a-shaking, feet aching, bone pushed to the point near breaking, it will be progress that I am making.
I will be art, even if I must deconstruct, completely tear myself apart.

I wish I had the words to make believe in myself... but I don't.
Instead I have the junk drawer memories, things from here and there; they're not always pretty, not always fair.

Why Am I Alive

I tire often, of my broken inner diatribe, the simple, painful four word question of "why am I alive?"
Every lung of oxygen taken is just the body's obligation, and every kindness I give is one that was, from me, once taken; now twice returned.
See, at work I'm a machine, I am maintained, contained, restrained. I have a purpose, I have a plan, I do not stand idly by; i stand and fan the flames ans the motivation and that drive my team like a train.
Yet I get home, and feel like I'm a scam. I'm lifeless, bland... I breathe here the same stale air, fulfill the oxygen obligation.
So why then, am I alive, a shell?
I'm alive because wings found me on the way down. I'm alive because something in me died.
I'm alive because I have places to go, people to meet, sunsets and sunrises to see.
I'm alive because I want to kiss beneath the moon.
I'm alive because somewhere there is always going to be somebody who needs me.
I'm alive because my nephew needs to see me be.
I'm alive because my son couldn't be.
I'm alive because my Aunt Jean would want me to be.
I have to be alive, because so many want me to be.
I need to stay alive, they want me to be.
I want to stay alive... just not always for me.
I need to stay alive to repay the people who have been kind.

I'm alive to be kind, I have to stay alive to be kind.
I'm alive because someone spoke to me kind... and I don't know how to thank that someone for keeping me alive.
I am alive because someone was kind when I needed it most, someone was kind enough to say they loved the words I wrote.
So be kind and speak kind... otherwise the space before you could be... would be, blank.

How Dare You

Creep into my life like Autumn; run the greenery through with vibrance in the foreshadow of spring.

You slip between my ribs, sink into my heart with the familiarity of a ghost.

You feel like everyone I’ve lost; too old to be good enough to die young and too young to be a villain, too kind to stifle your heart.

Make me want to hear your voice, to feel your heart race against mine in her dark glory.

How dare you wake that demon.

The sleeping beast that haunts my past, that stains my present as I ache to rush into the kindness.

Ache for the kindness to wash away the cruelty, rush against your lips like water in the desert, an oasis of the skin.

I Collect Voices

The human face is an unreliable thing to count on. So many so alike after a hundred, after a thousand, indistinguishable after a million.

I do not remember you by your face, not often, for I remember people by the sound of their voice. The trained notes of a musician, the rise and fall of a singer, individual whispers and laughs in a crowd. The stifled smile of an introvert draped over a velveteen laugh, gentle sass and wit. The fervor of writers speaking of what they’ve hauled from the blissful ink.

I collect the voices I hear and cherish the voices that speak to me kindly. The voices that inspire me, the voices I admire. A face is familiar, but a voice is forever; the voice is the sound of the soul as much as the eyes are the windows in.

I do what I can to avoid the voices I shy away from, the harsh and angry notes that make what is small in my soul cower and cry. The curse of me is the surly tone of my expression will forever belie the gentler side.

I collect the voices that I miss when they’re gone, voices that make my heart skip, voices that breathe life into my ideas and give them sound. I collect voices while I can, I drink in every word, reasonable to absurd.

It is when I begin to forget these voices that I weep. It is when I can’t remember the sound of those who have moved on that I break, when my own voice shakes. The quirks and tones of the old voices I loved taken when I was younger, Gramps, Grandma Great, Aunt Bugs…

I long to hear those voices, and I cry when I hear their recordings, because close is not the same. It just brings more pain.

I cry when a voice makes my heart skip, because those are the ones I fear losing most. My best friend, my sister, my mother, my overseas brother, a waning grandmother, my father, the people who hold my heart unknowing.

My voice holds my heart, so please don’t speak over me; of that I have lived enough. My heart is a temperamental thing, unruly and loud. She can call you out and tear you down, she lashes out in my veins and escapes late at night, early in the day. It looks like frustration and rage, she’s afraid and circling a long-gone boxing ring, waiting for the bell to escape her cage.

A Letter to My Teenage Self

To my teenage self, in the early years, 15,16, 17; it's going to be okay, you're going to survive. You'll be battered and bruised, and I wish I could say it would be the end of the abuse, that you would get the chance to reclaim your youth. I wish I could say it will get easier, but I think you know better. The Heathen will get to you, will get away. The dinner table criminal will come tumbling down, but her enabler will continue. You will get stronger. You will learn to stand alone.
To my teenage self, in the later times, 18, 19, there's a lot still to come. Your purpose is not done. You were born to lead, you were born to heal, to inspire.
To my teenage self, through all the hard days; you will pull people back from the brink.
You will be a leader, you will be a confidante.
You will be the one someone comes to, the day of his attempted suicide.
You will be the one that he talks to.
You will. Be. There.
You have to be there.
He will not be the only one.
There will be so many who come to you.
You will see so much hurt, you will see so much pain, you will lose your son.
It will hurt, but you will survive.
You will lose people, you will miss goodbyes, you will miss their presences and advice, you will inspire.
You're going to survive, because people will hold you close and cry. You will be their rock, you will be the mountain, firm beneath their feet.
To my teenage self, you're going to beat this.
You will save so many people, you just have to be there.

Action

Words are easy, fleeting, hearts beating and breath bleeding from our lungs.
Words have become how we connect, disconnect, reconnect, reject, perfect, project; protect.
In ink and screens, words upon words and we think we know what it all means.
Words upon words upon worlds; create the things for which our hearts are afraid to relax and unfurl.
Words to soothe the damage the world does. Words to curb the pain.
Words... because action hurts. Words because action is hard. Words because action has so often lost its worth, paired badly with the empty words. Promised action losing worth like something left to die and decay deep within the earth. Words because wonder oh wonder the very word sounds woefully weird now, words. Already, word has lost meaning here.
Words, the ink children, are my life; I live for and I am alive by words, woe the weird sound of words whispered amidst the screaming silence.

The woes of a woman who lost her best friend to suicide, crying against my side, weeping alcohol in the moonlight.

Too many growls of anger, so many crows in the manger; they push me down and rip the happiness from me like a coat hanger, leave my fractured heart bleeding, in danger.

I'm alive by ink that kept the rusted metal in my veins, by ink so kind to remind that loyalty is seen, ink that kept me from flying. Alive by ink others have bled, Ink etched into the arm of a man who once encouraged me to look ahead.
Ink in the heart of the man who lives on in the dark corners of my head. Ink like the letters he wrote me, saying I'd be better off just dead.

Alive because the scared human creature in my heart wished long to jump but she's here instead, not Andi as you first met her; with "Squalor" fresh from the pen and hate in her heart. Not Andi aching for suicide,  frayed from her hesitations and drowning without medication.

This is the writing of Andi at the late night, 2 AM half- asleep meditations, in daylight refined.

Andi of the midnight oil, the truest form of her toil.

Andi unfiltered, unclear, the closest she can get to Andrea again.

I'm tired of hurt, tired of anger; so let me try out this strange, hopeful new flavor.
I'm done waiting until the sky's clear, so if the rain falls I'll just throw my hands up and I'll dance here.
Embrace my inner demon, because from her I cannot run, with fighting her I am done.
She is me and we weep, we bleed, we let the guilt undo us, let the guilt crush us; to that heathen of guilt I bid adieu.

A brilliant mind, a star among peers, reminded me lately, of my life's first rule.
Reminded me, with words refined that have dwelt, un-uttered, unwritten,  within me, that life is more than words, verbs. Life is action; and mine has been inactive.
I have been despicable, utterly  passive.
I who admonish and demand action... laugh.

Because wonder of wonders, again words reach through the decay I have allowed to crust the vault to my soul shut and pry open the great and long immobile gate.
Again, my dysfunction shows, I cannot with action connect, but connection through word alone is but a recipe for hurt.

Yet here I write, speechless, because it is with words I connect, because action had often left me with something physical in a state of disconnect.

I know that is the past, rejected and left with hope projected, heart protected, but it's a ghost of the earth, my face pressed into the hearth, try to swallow all the hurt, but I'm left back in that wretched place, his bruises on my face, his hands down my skirt.

But I'm not here to talk again about the hurt. I'm here to look ahead, I'm here to learn, to heal, I'm here again to open up and feel. I'm here to leave the actor I lived as up onstage where she belongs.

I'm here because someone in my present was right and the man in my past was wrong.
I'm here because the sound of my voice is in my ears is again the sweetest song. Maybe it's a little vain but I cherish that I now know the strength in my voice in a sound outside of pain.

So excuse me while my lips and my lungs bleed words, that is my action.
This is that which I want seen, one of the countless sides to me.
I know this isn't the best me; the best self is what we all strive to be.
But I wasn't born to be my best self; I was born to just be me.

In Silence; In Hiding

I find myself more and more pouring into my fiction, more and more into what I recognize as my mildly problematic addiction.
When I write what's in my mind at least it's out and it's known. 
When I write the non-fiction I can clarify and I can understand... but more and more it hurts.
More and more the old worries ride up in rebellion, more and more they swell like waves in an ocean storm; more and more until the dam breaks under a raindrop... and I follow suit.
I was Queen for a day, and then failure for a week, then a month, a year... life.
Oh life... a, if not THE, defining feature of my sex, is the finite thing I cannot create. 
Life; the thing given just to take itself away, life that could pass through a buttonhole, gone.

Life, only once I held it in me... life escaped me, life expired. 
Life; I can remember where it began, I can remember where I discovered it, I can remember when and where it ended. 
I remember the pain of that life.
I remember that life, but I am shunned when I speak of it. 
I am shamed when I seek solace. 
I am disgraced in the fact that I did not share what I would have then been shamed for.
I would have been shamed; and here she is revered, venerated, celebrated.
For I am shame. I feel this shame in silence, in the primal ache, craving violence.
I feel this ache in my heart for a heart that never beat.
I hear this cry in my ear, of a child who never drew a breath.
I feel the kicks of a child that never moved, that never got to have legs.
I carry in my heart a name... that I never got to call. A name I never go to share, a name I never had the chance to give.
I feel these things in silence, I feel these things in hiding because I am not allowed to feel these things out loud.

On Moth Wings

I have never been a mother in this life, perhaps long ago in another I was, but in this life I am not... in this life I cannot. In this life my body will not allow it.
In this life I am a mother robbed, because someone I almost loved for a day was never born. My body is a temple of pain and betrayal, my body is hollow, a vessel broken. My body is an urn; no life lie within.
I never got to consider, I never got to deliberate, I never got to grieve out loud. I was ashamed of my body, for myself, of my naivete.
I cannot shake that shame, and I can't shake the pain.
I cannot speak out because it's seen as uncouth, the "price" for my foolish and "sinful" youth.
I cannot speak because I have been shamed and it burns me.
It burns in me like coal, colorless and ink dark in the depth of the Phoenix and her core.
"It was probably better that way."
Maybe it was but that doesn't negate the pain, that doesn't stop this ever-present rain that chokes my flame.
"You said you never wanted kids anyway."
That doesn't mean someone else didn't want what I wasn't ready to hold. That doesn't mean I can't change, or maybe it does.
"Maybe it means you weren't ready."
What it means to me is that my "disgrace" could have been the saving to another.
I spent three years holding the words in. I spent three years hiding from the light, hiding a hidden shame. I spent 3 years confiding in the familiar strangers and not my strange familiars.
I spent 3 years hollow, two of those I lived alone. Alone and more alone than I have ever felt... empty and dead.
Years I broke down, years I built myself back up. Years I made someone of myself that the broken woman I was could cling to in the flood of her emotions.
Years I had to hold up this mask, this pretense.
In those few panicked days I found more of myself than the months of therapy. In the sickening days after, I was unsteady in the face of a winter that looked as barren as I felt.

Three years I fought to bury the truth, but that's the beautiful curse of the truth isn't it; the truth will always come out.
When it came out of the closet, it was one small skeleton with the weight of my shattered world. A skeleton without a single bone, a ghost in every sense; a ghost on small wings.
A ghost on moth wings, craving the light only to perish in the unsteady flame, my flame.

So excuse me when I scream; I finally allowed myself to grieve out loud. Allow me a second to breathe between the unsteady screams in my throat and the stream pouring down my face from my heart.

Manage This

I came into management with aspirations and inspiration, not an ounce of trepidation, no hesitation.
I threw myself into the fire, put myself up for auction, work was the buyer, promise after promise to take me higher.
Yet here I stand a year and  two later, again my biggest hater, on thin ice, a skater.
Down I go; in the water cold, soul sold.
I'm supposed to lead and believe but all I've done is bleed.
Tell me please, what is left to be seen if all people do is deceive.

I've forgotten bliss
Because
I have
To manage
This.

Long forgotten is life and her warm kiss, lost again in in a world dark and brisk.
I'm reaching and screaming, begging and pleading, but nobody lifts a finger to stop the bleeding.

Rejected, left dejected, heart ejected from my chest and a tombstone erected when I decide to protect it. I had my chance and I wrecked it, my fire died because nobody checked it, so forgive me if in this life I'm a skeptic.

I go home, take a drink, sit down and think; if I'm so far from the brink, why does the line always have a kink?
It's never smooth, it's never easy, because my heart freezes whenever someone sees me.
I'm scared; it's unfair, there are things I want to do that I won't even dare.
I'm torn between doing what I want and doing what I know.
There were words running through my head even when I was shoveling snow, slogging along slow.
There is a narrative, lives being lived in my head, stories being told, a plan unravels, a heart unfolds.
There's a heartache and betrayal, two revolutions and a wedding, but the plot is still so frail.
If I step back from it, take my finger off her pulse, she vanishes, withers, dies. The ideas bleed out into nothing when I'm unable to write, thoughts never to be had again.
So I'm nervous and scared that a year of my finite life is typed, still incomplete.
I'm scared of the very thing I like, that which makes me get up to fight. The one thing that keeps me going, the fact that I write.
I do the scary things, each and every day. I'm getting bolder, I'm getting braver in the fact I have accepted that I can't be everyone's savior.

Because
I have
to manage
this.

My life, my time, my heart, you can argue that management is an art. One I personally see myself lacking.
Work is work is work. Work I manage, work is damage control, work is a coworker texting me on her lunch break with the updates, our store speed and goals. At work, to manage is my job.
Why?
Because by profession, I'm a bloody manager.
That's why.
But that's work, it starts there and it usually ends there. My heart is in my crew, my brain is in the office, my soul is in my writing.

I've never been at one, I've never had it together, because
I have
to manage
this.

There was a looming remodel, hours to be cut, the lobby to gut, new team to instruct, and hopefully and new me to construct. This was the easy part, now I have to fight. Now I have to work on myself, now I have to remind myself who I am, I have to remind myself that I damn well can.
That I can do better, that I've been doing better, that I can be my best.
Remind myself that I damn well better... because I will have a nephew.
I will have two new eyes looking up to me, and I will prove to him that who you have been isn't who you will be.
That lesson is a double edged blade, I've known the best to fall and the worst to rise better. I've been both, I've been there, I'll be there again in this life, its all i can do with this time I have, this mark I have to leave on the world.
I'll be there again because
I have
to manage
this.

Enabled (and the history of the peice)

This was originally not supposed to be something for the blog, but it feeds the fire in me where the matter of dinner table criminals are involved. I'm from a place with a wretched double standard; and in my mind, those who enable abuse knowingly are just as bad as the abusers.

"Enabled"

I think I'll throw this out with the trash, because Flashbacks are a thing, and there is no greater displeasure than waking to a morning full of them.
They never tell you that they can be almost anything. For me, today, it was just seven words.

So maybe I'm a bit angry, and perhaps I'm harsh, but what remains is the fact that the people I haven't cut from my life yet are mostly still connected to me here.

After doing some deep meditation, I have come to the conclusion that I really do not care who you are.
If you know, or suspect, that something is wrong, and then do nothing about it? You are truly the worst kind of person I can imagine, and I will walk you to the gates of hell myself. I say this from a place where I can acknowledge that I have been this person as well and I loathe it, but I've grown.
Overgrown, perhaps, to the point where I am comfortable with my thorns, my scars, comfortable with my truth and trauma. There was a time where I would wallow, where I would set myself aflame in the kerosene self pity... but I've grown.
I've grown and matured into someone who pours her rage into Molotov cocktails, enraged messages she never sends, left to burn out. Left to wither, die.

I have grown into someone who confronted an enabler of one of her sickest abusers... and was asked "Did she touch you?"
As if the suspicion had laid in their mind.
As if they had been okay with the potential of my molestation as a Child.

As if it was lesser because "she" was not "he".

As if. It was. Okay.

90% of sexual abuse cases involving children are family or guardians.

Throw in the fact local judges don't give a damn,  and it's a wonder that our society functions as well as it does.
Survivors, I speak with undiluted ire from my own experience, are talked down at often, so I might just be the salty one here.
It's also worth note that in many cases, especially in cases involving family members, some members of the family will defend the offender and enable bad behavior.
Those who speak out are made into villains, and the ones enabling bad behavior will just whine and point the  blame somewhere, and often at someone, else.

Because God forbid I have my own opinion, be my own person, have my own life.

If just one thing in my situation had been inverse, maybe the perverse would at last take their last ride in a hearse... but as things lie, I'll just wait, and I will dance the day they die.

I'll just end with a quote from a conversation that still stirs fire and ire in my soul, because it's the line I woke up to, ringing in my head. It's the line that leaves me eagerly awaiting the day someone is dead.

I leave you, with those seven words.

"It's not like she touched you... right?"

Again of Truth and Trauma

You cannot hold the truth down, and trauma will always remain and return.
The truth is people change. Sometimes it's temporary, others it's not.
It does not change that they've changed, that you're allowed to be repulsed when they become another familiar stranger.
The people you love the most can forget you exist entirely the moment something that fulfills them more comes along. Trust me, I've been replaced enough to know the feeling.
What's worse, you cannot say a word on it.
You are not allowed to ask for help.
You are not allowed to grieve what you never processed.
You are not allowed to be honest.
You just have to go through the motions expected of you and hope nobody wants the truth. Hope nobody pulls the truth from the hot and murky waters of hurt that they caused.
Hope nobody sees that you're away in your head.
You are not allowed to exist freely. Not allowed to speak.
No, you just have to sit and watch the mania unfold, sit and watch the people you love bend and warp under the weight of their own delusions.
Watch them hurl blame at situations arising from their actions. Watch them hurt the people you agree with, watch your family fall apart.
You have to watch yourself become an outsider... and you're expected to embrace it.
You're not allowed to be angry or bitter, you are expected to drink the Kool-aid, you are expected to change yourself to a fundamental level and throw away your real passion for the sake of a simpering person you once revered. You are expected to change for the worse to fit in.

You are expected to look the reason in the eyes and love it when your core screams in hate.

You are not allowed to be human and you are explicitly forbidden to just avoid the whole mess.

So forgive me if I'm done and tired and the tears are nowhere near done drying.
Forgive me if I hate who you have become.
Forgive me if I have failed your happiness.

Or don't.

That works too.

The Tchotchke

Now for some art, namely of the Tchotchke. The pronunciation is as weird as the name, Cha-ch-ka.
The Tchotchke are a creature from my science fiction novel in progress. They're large, the size of stags but capable of being far larger if enough resources are available to them, and no two are alike in their horror. The masks pry apart and off, exposing sinew and muscle. They make a variety of sounds, but are most known for their ability to use high frequencies to shatter glass. Larger Tchotchke can even warp steel this way. Little is known about them by most sentient races, with the exception of an elusive and secretive elder race, the Lixir.
These creatures are in part inspired by my own night terrors, naming and drawing them being a way to take some of their power away.

The first Tchotchke Sketch, circa 2013

First Colored Tchotcke Sketch

A Tchotchke of Legend, Ymirnth, Mother of All. Acrylic multimedia

Breathe; Autumn

Let me stop a moment here, in the drizzle of the  autumn rain, to relish the chill, let it soothe the Summer's pains.
I'm blind a sense, but the smell I know; Autumn.
Fall to run the summer greenery through with harvest and gold; Fall, oh my love.
To take a season as a lover, I would choose thee.
It is the fall in which I rise.
For irony and ire, fall IS my time.
I, as the trees, will lose all but return again, lush, despite it. I return and leave death appalled. It marks a year, in the late days of September, that I remember again the temptation to put out my embers, to enjoy that surrender... but, oh irony, one drunk was my salvation where another  my devastation.
Breathe fall over achieving, overshadowing sibling to the weeping Spring and her cottonwood tears. Rise Fall, in gold and ghoulish red tones.
Fall, rise of the harvest, rise of the mirth, harbinger to the season of myrrh.
Breathe, oh Autumn, your life into my lungs where the knife of spring against my mouth is cold. The thrill of fall courses through my tree leaf veins, warm.
Autumn is comfort, Autumn is my joy.
Autumn is the pick me up when I'm down, Autumn through the harvest, deer, wheat, elk, and corn alike.
Autumn let me hold thee for a moment in your long night arms, your wood smoke voice and the crackle of fire against the early chills.
Like the last stand of lush green Spring before the frigid winter, her polar gold sibling stands among the fields of harvest.
Autumn serene, let me breathe the October scent I remember so clearly.
Breathe Autumn, and I am intoxicated in my falls, warmed by the people I meet, by the kindness the season brings, sweeter than any mead.
I await the starlight, I embrace the dark, for this season... this season taught me the beauty in it.
Empty branches against a harvest red moon, the bugles of elk making hunters swoon, but maybe I am biased. It is Autumn in which I emerged from the womb. Autumn in which I've been reborn.
Autumn let me breathe against your golden lips and recall the scents before my memory slips.
Firewood of cedar, birch, and pine, the hours I spent chopping it, back when my body had firmer lines.
Apples upon apples upon apples, mountains of Zucchini, squash and gourds, vegetables, vegetables by the hoard.
Carving pumpkins, alongside mom and dad, one of the messiest, funnest traditions we have.
Baking pumpkin seeds, sharing them, though no one seemed to eat them... but I had to try, even if they were almost always bad.
Candy corn meant Elk season, at least according to dad. Just one of the many bits of fall wisdom to bestow upon me he has.
Hunting, I was learning the wind with the leaves.
Tracking, we, through the thickets, weaved.
Target practice, gun smoke in the breeze, lead embedded in the trees.
Breathe Autumn, let me see your breath on the breeze before the rivers freeze.

Weep, Spring

I am dead to the smell of spring, I remember only an echo of it from the murk of childhood's end; yet I know her taste.
The taste of spring in my mouth is a knife, cold; against my tongue, it is nature, and she is angry. She weeps with the cottonwood, with me as I mourn another ghost, another perfect tragedy committed on her soil. Spring brings the renewal, change, brings me full circle to a bittersweet and barren young womb, spring brings the jealous greenery frothing forth from snow-fed soil.
Winter gave me firm  resolve, and I mourn the snow as it melts from the mountain; I weep with the  snow melt running down her sheer face as tears pour down the curve of mine. I weep as that will crumbles, tumbles, down ravines and waterfalls, to nourish the valley, shaping the mountain through time as things flourish and die.
I weep a fervent mix of sorrow and joy, because my soul is unsettled. I cannot settle in joy, the sweetness fetid against my tongue, nor can I lie and wallow in the fetor of sorrow.
Nature weeps her gentle cottonwood tears against crisp morning grass, slick with dew in the sweat of her effort; and I weep ink into the sea for a ghost in my heart, a single perfect sin committed against the heart of the cottonwood mistress.
I am dead to the smell of spring, but take me where the lilacs grow. Take me to the pungent and tiny bloom, take too my sight so I can feel spring against my fingertips, immersed blind in fragrance I cannot savor. I can feel her against my tongue and in the roof of my mouth, soil and soul fetid with life. Rank and wet, the green clay is dark with decay as things flourish and die, fed by the will of winter to be fed to the rest.
Winter, the frigid martyr, surrendering herself to spring, just for Summer to ravage her in the end like wildfire with the careless hand of man.
Yet the seasons fall and change; Autumn calms Summer's rage with  healing and bruised tones. Autumn, the blind twin to spring, to love and never meet. Autumn the butcher, autumn the usher to the iron will of Winter. Autumn and the cottonwood mistress of spring has long stopped weeping, reaching for Winter and the snow to heal her wounds.
So weep, Spring, for you are fleeting and alive. Weep as you nurse the melting will of winter, your snow melt mother.
Weep when Summer sinks the sun in like fangs to dry your tears and drain your life away until Autumn steps in with Winter close behind.
Weep in the fetor of life and drink in the dark dead things of your soil.

Can't Wash Away, Elijah Wade

I cannot wash the sea from my mind nor the ink from my skin; let me surrender to the mania in ink. Let me live where I don’t have to think about the looming eternal blink. I live my life on that eternal brink, on the edge of the forgotten, leaning over with weary arms to drag my overboard heart up from the depths where it has swam alongside my demons.
I can’t help if this ship is destined to sink, I can’t help that the sirens singing to me from the abyssal sea are sometimes of more appeal to me than the air I breathe. I cannot help the way my demons linger against my skin like my sinking lovers lost at sea.
Lovers like gentle Nicotine with her voice of addiction, a husky smoke-low lull in the shame of my mind whispering “breathe me, breathe me” with the call of a siren plucked fresh from the sea.
Anxiety and her passionate claws against my back, chest to breast, her breath stealing mine, a toxic lover I never wanted but nonetheless get; another siren dragging me out to sea.
Depression and heavy hands running down my legs to weigh like a shackle and chain I cannot escape, salt water pouring down my face while my hands shake.

Forget not, my greatest demon, the lord to the rest; Self-Destruction and the relentless mutiny of me against me.
I down the mast, I slash the sail, I pull the hull apart by the nails.
I live, a dull and battered shell, within this infinitely  personalized hell. I live with these die hard bastard lovers unseen with silent marks against my skin, stark white scars, little pox marks with a thousand lies to them on my arms, my legs, my chest... I sail this Skeleton of a ship that feels more like the ghost of me. Bring me the sea, if just so these lovers are drawn away, bring the Kraken to drag me down to the realm of the Mer; bring me down to the crushing depth so I may fade away like ink spilt in the sea.
Bring me a storm woven of my frayed heartstrings on the loom made from the broken handle on my life. Give me a storm spun with the bitterness in my empty chest as the spindle, bring me the tattered lace of my finer sensibilities and weave it in at the end of my rope with the last threads of my hope. Bring me the storm so I can drown the haunting thought of my four years gone Elijah Wade on his little moth wings; with his big blue eyes and tousled auburn curls, small grabbing hands and round little cheeks.
Let this storm of ire and lividity again carry away this painful memory; my beloved button son. Of the waves I beg, wash away the spent life so small and grey. Sand scrub me clean of the tainted dream; the child that never grew.
Scrub from my eyes the tears long unshed for the lies, scrub away the phantom pains, scrape from my skin the sensation of kicks I never felt.
I need the coast to wash the sea from my mind, to wash away my Elijah Wade. He was due in July 2016, little Leo never to be.
Wash away these intruding thoughts of first words and birthdays to the first and second degree; cleanse my heart of the fact he would be nearing already a fourth.
Bring me the sea, because I’d rather feel that salt in my fresh wound over the fact my choices would have been mine, mine alone. Wash away this cherubic visage behind my eyes, banish the ghost of his small hands in mine that I never held proper, wash away the boyish smile with my father’s name to it. Ocean please roll in and batter me, break me, make me feel beyond the barren chill in my heart. It’s sad and I know, I've known, too keenly, how much he hasn't grown; how little of a chance he had to.
I just want for a second to escape the memory, but it remains through the tears, the rain, the waves... many I've loved now belong to the sea.
No amount of sand can scrub from my soul the name, nor can all the water in the ocean wash away my Elijah Wade.

In the World I Exist

I exist outside of work, in ink and words.
I exist outside of work and inside this world; and sometimes the world is cruel. You look in the mirror and it's a stranger looking back, you look at your family and it's strangers in their skin, you look for your friends and they are there but still you feel so... alone.
You forget who you are, from time to time. You forget the places and the people that know you, you change, not always for the better.
Sometimes you see a coworker's scars, and your heart breaks because you know; I know.
You change and you break your bones to fit a mold you weren't born to fill, you change and break your bones again to do a better job, you change and break your bones to lift someone who won't lift themselves.
You learn a dance sitting still, alone and trapped in your head when you forget who you are; breaking yourself and losing that makes you unique because it doesn't get you anywhere.

You work, you work and work some more, work when someone doesn't want to, work when the bills need paid, work to live and in the end you cease to live because there is only work and never life.
Working with anxiety is working with a mountain in your chest. You're trying to breathe but there is dirt and stone and too much going on for the air to get in, so you choke.
Working with depression is working lost deep in a ravine, people asking why you aren't climbing on your own instead of if you need rope.
Work with both and you can't gain any headway, because the mountain in your lungs tells you you can't move, the ravine keeps you from the sun, and the dirt on that mountain stays barren, festers, fouls. They fight their silent war and I am left empty. Neutral, maybe lukewarm on a good day.
I am a phoenix sputtering, my pyre in the pouring rain fighting; the song on my lips dying.
I get home and I will cry or I will sit and feel empty.
I will get home and I will write until my hands ache, will type until my fingers are sore, will bleed ink until the pen runs dry... and still I can't feel alive.
It's numbers, inventory, how fast we get the orders in, out, how much product we sell, upsell, how many hours we work, save, how long we take, how much money we make, how much product we waste...

They ask you what you need to do your job better, they ask you why you don't do the job better, they ask you to do better; you do better and they ask if you can do better. If you can do more.
Hoping but choking on the ravine, the mountain in you  bursts and nobody can see that you're just a natural disaster; that they can't tear you down to rebuild you because you're already in ruins.

Sometimes you can crack jokes faster than you blink, and sometimes you're choking so hard on the disaster inside that you can't think.

Get deep in late night talks, find that your words aren't the ones you need to communicate, and the point you want to make is just there in your mind, but you can't grasp it in any of those words. Find shallow early morning talks, cry because nobody remembered a thing, because again you're forgotten, again you're ignored, again because you've been starved of anything kind... because your life is work. Work becomes your life.

Sometimes I want to scream and sometimes I want to quit talking, but I can't let on because that's for the weak, right?

Sometimes I feel and sometimes I don't, others I feel too much or not enough.

I put my life on hold and this is my return? Is this my return?
No homecoming, no welcome parade, no cheer or joy... work.
Work, work hard, work more, work when you're not sick, work yourself sick, work through the sick, work into the sick, work sick, get sick of work, sick at work, be afraid to call out of work sick.
Be afraid to tell work when you are sick, be afraid when your body is betraying you and work demands you in  sickness and in health, an arranged marriage you never wanted, an arranged marriage where you take the dowry, but they take you. Your time, your life, health, sanity, patience, they take you and break you to fit a mold they tell you is great. They break you and put you in a square mold and tell you to do a round job. You move, you learn, you can do a round job in a square mold. They break you again. Round mold, square job, told to do another good job.

They keep breaking, same round mold, square job.
Round mold, Triangle job. Round mold, hexagon job. Close, not good enough.
You break the mold and try, you try so hard... to make yourself; you can't remember who that is.

You look in the mirror, body aching, body betraying, nose bleeding, sick; not good enough.
Sick; demonized if you take time and heal.
Sick; demonized when it spreads.

Empty talks at full tables, no changes.

Full talks, empty tables; no changes.

No talk, no tables; change for the worse.

More full tables, more empty talks, and the foul  mountain lost in your soul's ravine is pain in your chest because it's always going to be your fault, isn't it?
I don't have enough backbone, or I use too much force.
I have no compassion or I am too soft.
I am a complete doormat or a brick wall.
I'm a slave driver or I'm a  slave to their needs.
I have my expectations too high or I have none set.
Just always a fault to place.

Step out of work, day off, you don't recognize anybody.
Who's this in the mirror? What is under those layers of makeup to make itook like she's slept, like her eyes aren't dying?
What is under the makeup to make it look like the pills are maybe working? To make it look like she is stable.
Day off, more news, bad news, drink.
Cry because you can't recognize someone anymore.
Cry because they changed.
Cry because you can't find them when they're right there.
Cry until the tears stop and the ink dries.
Cry. It's all you can do, it's all you remember of you.
Cry because things changed, cry when things change again... if things change again.
Cry because you've lost on your way to being you again, cry because the people who made you into you have changed.
Cry because the best of them never changed.
Cry because the closest changed, because they're not even the same.
Cry when they lie, cry when they're honest, cry when you realize work is calling, cry when work is tomorrow, cry when you get ready for work.
Cry over the fact you went from wanting to work to working to want something again.
Cry in the parking lot at work but don't let them see.
Cry when you can't remember the shape of who you were.
Cry when you don't recognize your own eyes anymore.
Cry when you don't remember what it feels like to smile against the sun.
Cry when you shy away from kindness.

And then, one day, you run dry... and you can't even do that, cry.
You stare up with sandy eyes, unable to cry, face bone dry, and that's when it twists you inside and you truly lose who you are.
You cannot un-break that part of you and you have to relearn yourself and start the cycle again...

The ravine grows, the mountain climbs. You can see over the edge of the ravine, but people don't grasp that it's a long way to them, they see only as the crow flies. They don't see falling back down to the darkness, all the way down just to climb up the sheer edges up again. They don't see the demons within, they don't see SHIT.

They just want you to work, and the world doesn't care, because the world is cruel.

Fossils; Trauma

Like truth, trauma is a fossil. A long dead thing that will not stay buried, hurried to the surface as we try to wash away the dirt of our lives, but stone remains. Stone remains and truth prevails to bring you down.
Trauma and Truth, the two great fossils in life, once flesh and blood, fighting against your roots only to be reclaimed. Trauma, the long dead beast, once able to rip you apart now merely an obstacle while you try to dig your new garden.
Truth risen and exposed, ugly before the sun, even blasted clean. Truth was never pretty in the flesh, it's only later where the beauty of it is seen. Trauma was never pretty, was never soft, never gentle.
Trauma was a great beast that would swallow you whole, trauma is still an ugly beast down to bone, broken and healed over.
Trauma is spent life in shaking hands, screams raw in your throat.
Trauma is the towel thrown out instead of in, trauma is truth buried to forget in the valley…
I would know.
I am stronger, I rose, I reclaimed those stone bones and made them mine. I reclaimed my grief, but the truth… the truth…
I'll dig up others before I bring the towel in.
To speak that truth is harder than my trauma… that trauma, you could argue it to be truth unspoilt.
Truth is hard, truth is painful, truth is a phantom, returning to haunt your night with wails and screams. Truth is in everyday life, truth is bubbling to the surface… and I'm never going to be ready for it.
Trauma is vowing to buy your childhood home, to reclaim your roots and build on the trauma exposed and make it yours. To keep hidden that ugly truth, keep the towel out.
Trauma is your mother asking hard questions, and a tight voice begging her not to make you answer.
Trauma is a piece of yourself given away to a temporary friend two years ago to the day. Trauma starts with connection, disconnection. Trauma starts with two and leaves one.
Trauma is a fight, waking up like Macbeth to scrub your hands clean of what's no longer there. Trauma is a new ring on your hand, trauma is no ring at all.
Trauma will not stay buried. Trauma is beaten by acceptance, by the fight you put up.
I am not my trauma. I am the fight I put up.
I am not the fight that knocked me down, I am how fast I get up, how hard I swing back, I am the one that survives and I am the one that walks away.

Fossils; Truth

You can't bury the truth.
You can't keep it down.
You can hold the truth under until the bubbles stop, you can sink it in the river, but truth, truth never dies.
The truth will never stay hidden.
You can take truth to the grave, but in time you will surface, and spoken or not, that truth will rise with you.
Fossils, long dead truth buried millennia, thousands, billions of years, and still, still they surface, fossils; pure testaments to truth and time.
I am no fossil, I am angry, I am here, I am alive!
I will not go quietly. I will scream my truth, oh heathen, oh whore, to the sky, to the world, the crowd, the universe, I will bleed you dry of sin and leave you an ambulatory corpse.
I am here, I'm not hiding, I am the phoenix, I am burning and the truth will find you. Deny me til your dying breath oh Pisces Heathen but I will drown you in the air.
Bring me, Virgo, to a fistfight, go ahead. Come to me coward and fight, lest I bring it to you.
You who chose to tempt and twist me, oh the cold frigid bitch I have become, I will speak the truth of it; you're going down.
You’re broken; a broken, foul mind has slithered down my skin the
Last
Time.

Echoes

Her ears were still ringing. She was too aware, trapped in that finite space with an infinite number of consequences before her. She was playing with fire, she knew it by the way hazel eyes turned to ice, losing their focus. Her breathing stuttered as she retreated; she had hesitated a moment too long trying to understand.

"Were you even listening?" She must have held her breath a moment too long. His voice was harsh against her ears, still ringing from the last blow; his words were gravel and salt against raw skin, thin skin. Her tongue ran off with her temperance in a hot spur of anger.
"I would have been if I could hear you. I have better things to do," she stood. The world wavered, her face throbbed, her jaw ached in the shape of his fist, her lips bruised in the shape of his.
"No, you don't, you're nothing," he stood, trying to cage her in atop the bleachers as his hulking body blotted the sun out.
"So you've been doing nothing," she smirked at him, beyond caring how many punches he threw as the spurred anger caught on in the kindling of her soul. She slipped back, out of his choking reach, long legs taking her up two rows of the old wooden bleachers, up to the area of the railing he had broken last week against her ribs. The throb of cracked bone that hadn't healed was nothing new. The fire, this was new to her, the desire of retaliation.
"You know, I could have had any girl in the academy, but I chose you," he reminded harshly.
"And who's fault is that? Theirs for having standards?" A meaty fist swung at her head and she dodged, dancing up the steps to the cracked rail. She doubted he remembered it; she doubted he registered how high up they were.
"Don't make me hurt you," he warned.
"You never needed me to make you, you just did it you bastard," there it was, the trigger word, the thorn in his side, the blinding rage. She danced up the last steps, into the cracked corner.
"You'll regret that," he warned. When she said nothing, merely smirking at him, his anger bloomed, "Speak bitch!"
She was too aware, trapped in that finite space with an infinite number of consequences before her. He barreled up the stairs, chasing her along the top row. His legs were longer, stronger, carrying 300 pounds of caged rage. She feigned a weak block, only to throw herself down against the bench seat at the last moment as he threw his punch. His anger changed as the cracked rail gave, and his momentum betrayed.

She glanced up in that moment; he was, for the first time, the one afraid. One foot in and one foot over the grave, his arms an unsteady windmill failing without a breeze. She became the wind, threw herself against the rail, shaking the rickety stands, panicked as his hands caught hold.

No! She was so close to free!

He must have mistaken her movement, her stand for a hand up, as her hand was out.
He grabbed, even as she shoved him away, failing to deflect his grasp, her muscles straining as she ended up suspending him over the edge where nobody cared to look. Frantic and human, he looked up at her like she was salvation.
She realized that indeed, in a moment of foolish altruism, that she had grabbed him; the act leaving her to wonder… why?
His hand slid down her arm as her shoulder screamed in the socket, and she looked him in the eyes.
"I don't think there's room for regrets now, is there?" Dread filled his gaze, her hand falling slack. Her leg had hooked firm under the seat, and for a moment she saw hope in his eyes as she brought her other hand around. The look drowned, swirling into dread when she held the very knife he had given her. He held on though, vain and perhaps praying until she leaned down. Where his arm screamed, soon too did he, the blade cutting and slow down against the bone, "You always said you tried to avoid the tendons for a quicker suicide," she felt his grip waver, his hand slick with sweat, her head throbbing as the blood rushed to it, "What a shame it is then, that you tried again," she brought the blade up to where his strength betrayed, the tendons there strained. From the base of his thumb, she slashed down and soon the tendons frayed at the lightest brush; there was a red gush, his weight vanishing, and then a wet, delayed crunch.
Her breath shuddered as she retreated from the edge, then found herself racing down, scrubbing the handle of his knife in his shirt, in the dirt, putting it in his limp hand.
Weak eyes, dying, flitted to her, neck at an angle absurd. She could see his skull against the pavement, part had flown off in the crash. She saw his truest colors; pale pinks and fresh reds.
"Were you ever listening?” she knelt beside him, “No, because you are nothing," she whispered in his ear, her words harsh on broken skin and shattered bone, "I could have had any girl in the academy, but I chose you. I'm going to make you regret that," she sat back, she could see bone beneath the fabric of his jeans, the pulsing throb of red in the tattered and torn spaces of them. She could hear death rattling in the air, in his lungs sucking air through his ribs with a watery sound as tears welled weakly in his eyes, and she leaned again over his ear, "Speak bitch," she mocked, sitting back. His mouth wavered, making a gargled sound as his head fell slack to the side, red trailing from twitching lips, "I have better things to do," she stood; the world wavered, her face throbbed, her jaw ached.  She took in the sight, gravel and salt against raw skin, thin skin. His breath shuddered, and a red bubble burst on his lips like a split. She thought of her own, still bruised in the dying shape of his as she held her breath a moment too long, "I don't think there's room for regret now, is there?"

Her ears were still ringing. She was too aware, trapped in that finite space with an infinite number of consequences before her. She was playing with fire, she knew it by the way hazel eyes turned to ice, losing their focus. Her breathing stuttered as she retreated; she had hesitated a moment too long trying to understand.