on

i don’t think you get that i’m not trying to be a bitch. i just am a bitch. it’s born from exhaustion & experience. my friend once said i love to lie down under busses. so easily plowed over & misused. but eventually i grow spike strips like a really cool dinosaur or a porcupine. press my thorns deep in your tires, your spine. see, i try very hard to keep the chaos contained & aimed internally but i’m sick of playing nice for the sake of peace when peace has never brought me any sense of relief, never brought me a lack of loneliness, never brought me flowers or honey & hot tea. in eighth grade i wrote a memoir called flapjacks in the pan i call life & i’m still spinning over the heat fifteen years later. learned then to minimize, to play dumb, to let my grades slip while festering over tetherball. it’s why i learned to play tennis & magic the gathering & to throw up before i digest. i can’t love myself when peering through the male gaze. & i’ve tried to see myself sapphically but the comparisons creep up maliciously & salaciously. i must be grandiose & opulent to be loved. must fit into literary theses & stage plays & sonnets to feel it. i am unwilling to settle for uncertainty, for rasputin’s reputation. just tell me what dance you’re leading even & maybe i can find some solace but you’re too unsure to even speak of your unsureness. the shift in vibration was anything but subtle, complete chernobyl, don’t pretend i’m crazy when you’re the one with the radiation. don’t pretend i am demanding when you spoke of fixation so early then avoided my fingertips so boldly. suddenly. but i am crazy & demanding & i want more than another human could ever give, be expected to give. i haven’t earned the kind of tenderness i fantasize about. he always wanted to see what porn i watched, but really i’m just playing a scene in my head where i am worthy of love to get off. it’s all fantasy. praying to a god who i’m not sure still believes in me but He’s the only one who has ever seen me. i used to pretend He held me gently while i cried at night. so much fantasizing, so much pretending. we wonder why i’m so good at playing the characters. i want to be on stage again where all the playing makes sense, has a time, its role. stage fright has its place but the larger the audience, the more power i possess, thriving on the energy. eye contact is enemy so when you cast it out on hundreds at once, the intimacy fades. it always fades. the fascination bleeds out into the rain & filters through the sewer leaving nothing but annoyance & confusion. i get it. no hard feelings. just exhaustion. i think i need to be by myself, at least for a while, maybe forever. i can’t seem to not cast high beams & shadows on everything in my path. i need to learn to not nightmare, to not take pushpins to my wrist like when i was nineteen. i convinced myself of love, internal & eternal, but really i’m just a master of outsourcing my self-harm to my lovers & tattoo artists & the treadmill. good little capitalist bitch. so obedient & obsolete. i don’t know how to give myself the love i desire from others because i look to them to reflect what i’m worth but i’m projecting an image of cockroach, malnourished mice, & dog shit. pathetic & wounded, lying in the litter box. i want to believe i’m worth loving, worth effort, worth patience & second chances. instead it’s all static water & mosquitoes with west nile & upchuck in my leggings, pooling & seeping like a band aid too small for the cut. & that’s how it’s been since i was nineteen, since i was twenty, since they tried me on like a coat three sizes too small & split me right in half. it was supposed to be more healed by now, all new cells & all new life & yet i close my eyes & they’re always right behind me & i’m rushing through buildings i’ve never entered & all of the doors are split in half too & i never feel safe inside or outside, it’s always frigid & boiling & empty. there’s never anyone coming to help & all i know how to do is run til i’m caught. the binoculars don’t help when they’re crusted over in dirt & stardust & used up coffee grounds. i use love as a distraction from rebuilding the bridges that fell down inside me. if i pour & pour & pour, someone will fill me back up. but instead it’s all negative space & rulers with the inch marks erased. i never learned the metric system or how to speak spanish or how to love myself enough someone else could actually see value in me. i wanted to believe it didn’t matter, that the external could find its way to the internal but my skin isn’t porous, it’s scaly & sharp & cold to the touch. to the taste. i am good at expressing how i feel until i have to actually use my vocal cords & then the vibration gets lost in the rubber. i am trying harder than anyone can see & i want that to count for something, anything. but it only counts to me & that should count to me but it doesn’t. so solitude seduces & it’s where i need to go, who i need to sleep with, until i can matter. i retract my spikes & crawl back to my burrow to hibernate, marinate, satiate myself. i will write my novel, prove to myself i am who i promised i was. & maybe then i’ll be able to make eye contact & not expect someone else to cherish me in ways i do not cherish myself. place myself on top of the christmas tree, strung up & lit up, & shine over my own birthday without feeling like i should have never been born to begin with.