Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Do No Soften.
Always Remain Hard.

Hard to understand. Hard to take. Hard to love. Hard to accept. Hard to hold. Hard to forget. Hard to embrace. Hard to keep up with. Hard to hurt. Hard to feel. Hardened emotions. Hardened heart. Hard head. Harder than before. Harder than ever. Harder than every voice that ever told you otherwise. Harder than the easiness with which you can be wasted. Harder than yourself.

Just Be Hard.
And forget softeness ever existed. 

For a Woman Impossible to Love

I do nothing in halves.

When I love, I love with every sinew of my body. I consume like a fire; burn up the room, the house and the trees around it. Intensity settles in on me. I do not fear the all or nothing. I love like a storm. A disaster. I see everything in your eyes and feel every little twitch of emotion that fills your face.

I love like this because I have lacked love in my life. I have been tortured to the point of near death. Hated. Reviled. Feared. And I struck out. I built walls so high that no one could scale them. I grew the thorniest vines up the sides. I stretched out badlands all around. And I drew away. I protected myself. I still do.

I do not love easily. To let someone in the glass fortress that is my heart is the biggest risk. It could shatter with the slightest prick. I am scabrous on my exterior; thorny, sharp but delicate as fading rose petals on the inside. I feel too much and to be broken desends on me like torture. To be left at the roadside staring at those tail lights as they fade into the distance relives that torment; that abandonment that brought me here in the first place.

If I love you, it is with everything. Very few can live under the weight of it and none have succeeded so far. I am a woman impossible to love so I retreat further into my caves. Block the light out. Shut the world off. I crawl further away and wrap my heart in layers of spit and tinfoil. Hide it in the back of my ribs; bury it under rock hoping no one will ever find it again.

Because when the light of minor pinpoints starts to pry it open and pain ultimately consumes it in the end, I become the monster I always thought I was and set to devouring the world one little death at a time. 

The Holy Wasted

I would stand at the cabin door watching the sun rise over the valley mountians. The tall golden grass stretching up the feilds to the tree line. There was coffee on the stove. Crickets jumping in the creeping sun, singing their 'come fuck me' song. The drowzy bees tumbling into the morning glories shading the windows. A fawn dog at my feet listening for approaching footsteps or rumbling motors. The creek rushed by with a constant white noise; the new sun filtering through the overhanging canopy of leaves to dapple down to the smooth peebles and darting fish.

I'm not there anymore. I'm here in this city and you are out there somewhere doing your best to ignore me. I see the night now like ink instead of pierced with a million trillion stars. It has its own wildness here. Bums in the alley, wild cats under the deck, broken bottles sparkling in the street lights. I feel you out there. Just tell me what you are thinking. I can feel it anyways but I need to know what it is.

Sometimes all this humanity is a little too much for me. All those emotions and thoughts beating against my brain. Sometimes I feel like a beetle trapped under the glass. I just want to go back. Maybe I stay here for you. Maybe you could come with me. See the reality of those places. Understand what made me this way. If you would just ask. Ask me where I came from. Ask who shaped me. Ask what they did to me. How I got here all those years ago. I want you to know but I feel like I talk too much when I get around you and you wish I would just shut up for a second. I have all these stories and no one to tell them to.

Floating

The rain comes rushing down. I stand in the dark and let it wash over my face and naked body. I feel clean but useless. All used up and tossed aside. I feel like an empty plastic bag caught in a storm drain or an old newspaper full of outdated knowledge.

My skin is prickling and sore. My heart is getting cold. I can feel it shivering in my chest. I would light a little fire behind my eyes but I can't reach far enough inside. I can't get these matches to strike in the rain and the piles of wood are all wet. Nothing will catch. Sparks fizzle out and rivlets run down my side.

There is nothing to hold me tonight. Only the rain soaking my skin. The mist settles around my shoulders like a gossamer shawl. The pools rise up to meet my ankles. Raindrops kiss my cheeks. The wind strokes my hair. My secret name is out there somewhere but I'm trapped right here as the water rises to cover my lips.

I drown for fun and profit. I drown for myself. I drown in myself. I watch for waves to come up over the hills. I watch for the rivers to take the land away. For the ocean to break from its shores and come for me. I was looking for a fire but found the bottom of a lake instead. The water up over my head and my vision all blurry.

My mouth opens to reveal a forest of seaweed and little fish. I am the drowning part of love. The world when the icecaps melt. Pearls are my eyes. Silver scales are my skin. My heart has turned to coral. I am home to spit bugs and fat trout. I am running through forests and between continents. I am little ponds of marsh weeds and massive bodies stretching over rushing rock.

I am the drowning sort. I do not look for absolution but only the drip dropping pattern of splitter splatters against the window to let me know I am real and my voice has not silenced in the thunderstorms of your heart.

To Be Unreal

No one will know what it's like to be out of phase with this plain of existence. To have stepped slightly to the left of reality and thus to feel unreal. It feels like an electrical cable driven into your guts constantly zapping you; rippling buzzy zip and zaps of nervous enegry through you. It's like having bees under your skin all the time. Like rivers of electrofied water in your veins. Nothing feels right. You're just not sure you are here. You feel like you might disappear any minute. Tune out like a fuzzy picture on an old TV.

I wake up like this.
I walk through life like this.
I pretend I'm fine.

But I'm just that little bit out of focus. Slipping between the slats in reality and something.... else.  Buzzing on the edge of electric waves trying to pull me to pieces. I feel unsteady. Unstable. Not quite here. Not sure I'm actually alive. Like I need an anchor. Like I need you to hold me down and tell me I'm really real. Make sure that I don't slip down those cracks to somewhere else. Make sure I don't just fade away.

Please hold me down before they pull me out of here.