You Are Here

Those nights, they glitter. Shiver, and shake. 

It's so easy to stay silent. Woe is the person who believes they can fix their life. We are given what we are given. 

I was once an Athena. I was once a constantly revolving globe. I was instant, I was alive, mostly, I was whole. Then I was an Atlas-- a proud one, a generous one. I wore that weight like a god damn medal of honor. A black and blue heart. And now I'm Dionysus. 

You ever say a name and after it leaves your jaw your teeth clink shut and your tongue feels like its scalded itself on hot coffee. Or you see a picture, and the darkness encloses around you--the mood doesn't change, but the sun sets outside your window and twilight sets in around the room, painting the walls hazy indigo until you don't feel alive anymore, and you have to get up and move to reclaim any semblance of your reality. 

I've installed my own tomb--it is red bricks and pink roses. It is that seaside breeze in March. It is white shutters and smoke. It's those books you left. It's those pictures you left. 

Carefully, arduously. The opposite of the Winged Victory. A dead prince. Cream thread round wound a pine bobbin. The rain, every night. I am relieved, I pulled those weeds from the soiled earth and I threw them at the sea and the sea caught them in its mighty maw and I screamed, I screamed into its barren ferocity to take me, take me, but it refused--things die in the ocean it said, it spits them back out dead, it said. It would do me no good to take me when the job is done already.

A white cat darted to the oceans edge as I lay buried in the sand. It ducked its head into a wave and pulled out a fat red salmon. I thought of life, I thought of death. I agreed with both. But I chose one and stood up.