Huh

I'm doing a bit more here, around the office. I feel useful, so, here's a start. I'm drinking more water, eating less. Enjoying the warmth of the sun. Trying not to be so one-track-minded. Thinking about different things. Concentrating on the immediate future. I think about the pool, lying next to it, swimming in it. So here’s a start.

~

Margo tells me not to smoke. I just love that name. "Smoking is bad," the 12-year-old sing-songs. I tell her that when she's older and I catch her smoking, I'm gonna smack that shit right out of her mouth. "You won't," she means catch her, not smack her.  That's what I like to hear, I say. "I took D.A.R.E.," she says. So did I, I say after a light chuckle, so did I. I think shouldn't have said shit.

~

I'm more useful at the office. I can answer questions. I know without having to search for answers. 'Cause this is how I see it: growing up means finding something to cope. Food, sex, alcohol, drugs, religion, exercise, career, anything... Loosing your innocence means losing the wild blind hope in a future you couldn't quite comprehend in youth. But the world was yours. Now you realize, no, I can't do whatever I want. I can't play in the WNBA, no amount of hard work could get me there (though that metaphor in no way reflects the author's personal opinion.) Damn, wasn't it so much easier when my family came to student of the month ceremony and I wasn't “allowed" to have a “boyfriend” or wear make-up and I rode my scooter up the street to my friends' homes and I came home when the streetlights came on? But damn. 

~

Last night in my sleep I was raped in my dream. Which is terrifying, because I concocted that image, the feelings, and I couldn’t escape them because they were in my mind. I’m stuck in my head all day at work, and I’m stuck in my head all night asleep, and I can’t run away from the creep with glasses because the creep in the glasses, my rapist, is me, isn’t he? For fuck’s sake, I’m my own offender. Damn. But I’m more useful at the office, and I know the answers to most questions.

~ 

This is what I do: I write, I eat, I don't cry, I sleep. I watch Netflix and waste gas and time 'til someone distracts me. So here's a start. I work inside my head all day, I post on social media because I'm exploding, but can’t read anyone else's posts, can't scroll for more than 5.6 seconds before data overload sends me further back into my scull, this buzzing shell of pointlessness. I talk and talk and I shouldn’t have said shit. How does it end? Lying next to it? Swimming in it? Leaving it? Damn. 

It's Always Prose and Cons

Long dark mane dances into knots,

the window down, sun sparkling bliss

yet Underneath her crown all reason quavers.

The static loop that used to play

when cable clicked over to VCR

her Contemplations, always anesthetized.

She aches to fight unvarying, shake dolor,

to no avail, piles dirt over guilt  

for loving some too much and some too little.

Her Cadence ruptures casually 

reveling in chaos, changes the channel

and the show on which she settles, Nothing. 

Nothing considerable as matter of usual practice,

wonders, “what is Truth?” and how

one can be certain truth can be trusted.

And Underneath long dark shadows

dance into Nots and she slips backward 

focus into cable swapped for VCR.

But Someone forgot to be kind, Rewind,

Outside a young boy's voice exclaims,

"I'm going where the wind takes me, mom!"

Then nothing is the same.

Detachment

It's been sunny for a while, and finally the shadow looms back over, but unlike Peter Pan, I'd never try to sew it on; I'm looking for a seam tearer through wetted eyes, choked up cries. Stoic. I've got to shake it without crying.

I imagine really crying to my best friend, how she'd react: "Don't cry," she'd waveringly offer in a high-pitched tone, most sympathetically, though, as if my wails might set off her own water-works. And I'd try to explain that I always feel like I'm crying when I talk to her about what she already knows, that shadow that's glued to her heels, too.

So I wonder if when I'm upset and express that without crying, if people understand the gravity of the situation. Because its over 6-foot depth is filled with clay-laced dirt, suffocating, weighing in at around triple my own fluctuating mass. So when I talk about the source, or rather, "triggers" of my shadow's presence, it's taken god-awfully lightly. I'm expressing my emotion, but not crying. Which is why it pisses me off when people call me "emotional," or "soft." I'm allowed to feel, and I'm trying to explain that, without crying, so how am I soft? 

I'm not returning phone calls, playing it safe, so no one hears the shake in my voice. I'm writing through it, because if not, I'll crack. Nothing a phone call couldn't fix, yet I can't let people know. They think I'll take a razor to my wrist, so best not to induce worry. I just want to take a razor to the seam at my heels, just to shake the darkness that follows, but it's no use. Nothing can stop it, and it's stopping me from crowing.