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. 

Still Breathing

"Everybody hurts. Everybody yearns."

There are tears trembling at the edge of my eyes. They have drowned my cheeks, smudged my mascara, sent my green eyes glittering. I am lost under a wave of tears. I'm planning on living down here for awhile. I can't see where else to go. The way out has gotten blurry. Rippling under the water. I always found it easy to drown. Just breath in and let the water do the rest.

I didn't want this. I just wanted you. But the reality of me is heavy. Distant. Pregnant with need. Isolated. Violent. Difficult to understand. And even more difficult to live.

I will pray for you to come back. I started it and I ended it but I will never lose that love. It is a weight that lives with me forever. I never forget. I never have. Years later, I will take it out of the drawer I hid it in and look at it. Turn it over in my hand and miss it. Like I miss you already.

It is true. I am the monster. Ugly. Unlovable. Hated. Unwanted. Unneeded. Unmovable. Sickening.

I will never not be... wanting...
I am still breathing but sometimes I'd like to stop.

Suddenly Lyssa

I want to scream in your face but they taught me to be silent. Removed my tongue before I could even form the words. My love is so full of rage and hurt that I am consumed. Eaten away like the fire at the edge of the drapes. I have things I want to say to you but if I open my mouth only mud will fall out. I'm drowning in it. Gurgling and sputtering. Thrashing about like a black scaled fish on the shore.

Eat my flesh and know me. I am your green eyed whore. You'll thrust into me and then curse me as you trip out the door. I bend my will and have no idea why I grow submissive in your presence. I let you get away with that acrid taste. Stealing my candy. Ripping me up. Hanging me over the edge of some foreign mountain. I want to burn in your place. Drip blood down on your head. I want you to understand the effect you have on other people. I want you to understand your own malice.

Sometimes, I turn murderous. Quick. Hated. Angry. Alone. I stand here alone. On the edge of this fucking bleak world with nothing to hold me down. I rise up like a balloon full of hot air. I set my clothes on fire just to stay warm. I smolder. I sting. I cringe. I'm thinking of you and you barely notice. You are not to be trusted with such things as my fragile vessel. I am quick and I am dead. I feel  myself dieing ever second of every day. Slowly rotting from the inside out.

I am worth nothing and you should come here to end me.

This Failing Night

I want to feel nothing.

I want anything but this inertia. This statis. This hiding in plain sight. There's an eye I'm trying to catch. To pin under my gaze. I lit my hair on fire. Ripped the pages from my journal. Wrote a list outlining you less attractive traits. But still love worms into my already riddled heart. So full of holes. Like Swiss cheese. This love is all I have to give. I grew it myself. Planted the seeds in the mud and waited. Nothing took root but I tried. I'm just not very good at it.

I want to feel something.

I want your hand in mine. I want your lips on mine. I want your body against mine. I want your words tangled in my own. I want to feel you out there thinking of me. Why do I do this to myself? I hear you. I hear you. I hear you shrinking and thinking and darkening on the edge of a bright day. I can't even trust pain and violence. It gives me up to the authorities and rakes me back against sharp little blue pills. I can't trust my words. They keep failing me when I need them most.

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.

The Fighter's Reach

A spider-like hop. A lunging forward with a speed and violence I know you store up in your muscles with each movement. Breath coming quick. Fist flying forward reaching for a target. I see each muscle slide on your torso, down your arms, flexing in your powerful legs. The tension coiled like a spring, flung forward at an invisible enemy. Snap! and you are back in a flash.

I let my breath out slowly. My cells grow flushed and swell.

You don't realize it but your muscles flex in the same way, with the same speed and violence, when you are above me. Sliding in and out at a rapid shuddering pace. I have to catch my breath then as well. Awed at the beauty of your hardness and my softness meeting in a sweaty dance on the sheets. I am not blind to the juxtaposition.

In that moment, sex and violence shimmer as one beautiful star burning in a dead universe. We are that center of everything and close our eyes against the dying of the light.

Seeking the Skin

It feels like my nerve endings are dancing on fire. It rages out of control around the edges of my skin. It tingles, it pricks, it seers. I convulse involuntary like a marionette with the strings cut.

These days drain me down. It's like someone plucked my batteries out and I'm slowly coming to a stop. Like molasses on a cold day. Underwater and trying to run. The inertia stealing the strength from my limbs until I collapse in a heap.

I reach out in need of you and find you at the door. Running your hands over my legs makes the nerves finally settle and sleep. They have been creating a storm for days. I haven't lived without pain for decades. Living is pain. But you hands moving ever so gently lull me back into my skin which I have been trying to escape from all week. Your fingers tracing the edges of my face give me what I need to make it through the night.

I would tell you that I love you, but I don't want you to leave. Your hand on my hip as you gently breathe beside me all night keeps me here for one more day. I might not be enough, and I might be damaged beyond repair, but tonight with your hand in mine I feel like I've finally come home.

Sugar

I want to be loved like a mouthful of candy.