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.

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.