These are words I wouldn't want to say to walls. These are words I'd rather swallow and have rot my organs than hear come out of my mouth, or out of my fingertips, but I suppose I'm not supposed to do that anymore. I'm not supposed to pretend to not feel. I'm not supposed to go back to numb.
But I could. I could pretend like it doesn’t still hurt. Like I don’t remember your face and hear your voice in that moment and clench my fists, digging my fingernails into my palms until I draw blood. Know that I could. Know that I'm so good at pretending like it doesn't hurt, you wouldn't know the difference.
I wish I could blame you for my needing to say this, but it’s not entirely your fault. Because what I said to you to make you say the things I'm now reacting to, the trigger to everything, wasn’t completely true. I answered a question in haste, in a nod of a head, ready to accept any answer you offered. Maybe you deserved more. Maybe you didn't, maybe you shouldn't have asked, but maybe you deserved more.
The truth is I have never told this truth before. I have told the full story in half truths or half the story in full truths but never all of it and true together.
I have it, though. I have it, emotions and all, if you want it. I think you’d like that part of it, that part of the truth. The truth I’ve never told. I don't. To me it's like a dirty secret, buried under a floorboard or tucked into the carved out pages of an old encyclopedia, because though I'm sure there's beauty in feeling what I felt, in the humanness of it all, feeling that kind of human was more shameful than beautiful. There's is no liberation in looking for meaning, only the feeling of being a receipt crushed into the tread of construction worker's boot as he braves the slushy sidewalk corners to avoid the crowd.
Showing posts with label dirty laundry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dirty laundry. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Crystal, Gold and Neon
I lie and say reality has become so troubling that I need a break from it, dipping my nights in poisons encased in crystal so they catch the light and make me think I've found gold. I lie and say I love the nights I spend forgetting the days I've spent failing to grow.
I wander back to a warm bed or a warm couch and find myself curled up in the arms of people I love, whispers in my ears of how they’ll never let me go, but the back of my mind has a digital countdown to the day they see my mess as nothing more mysterious than a sink full of dishes (the day they make me someone else's problem, the day they give up).
Because where I'm from we hide the mess. We rake the leaves into neat piles to be picked up by men with trucks and carried to somewhere with high fences, meticulously repainted as soon as weather starts to wear them down. We hide wire and cords behind plaster, laundry baskets behind doors and garbage bins in little wooden huts. We have rules about neon lights. We use fake grass, or truck it in from a farm upstate – purebred like our blood and our pets that cost more than your annual salary.
It's not so bad, to drive along and not see the dirty laundry, to walk among beautiful people with beautiful clothes and beautiful cars and consider myself among them. It's not so bad until nightfall leaves my room lit with starlight and I have to escape out the window to breathe because the voices in my head have taken up all the oxygen. It's no so bad until the idea of feeling beautiful has faded along with the green in the grass and the life in the trees. So here's my mess, my dirty laundry. Here are my wires and cords, my imperfections, my scars, my neon lights. I lie and say I'll never change.
I wander back to a warm bed or a warm couch and find myself curled up in the arms of people I love, whispers in my ears of how they’ll never let me go, but the back of my mind has a digital countdown to the day they see my mess as nothing more mysterious than a sink full of dishes (the day they make me someone else's problem, the day they give up).
Because where I'm from we hide the mess. We rake the leaves into neat piles to be picked up by men with trucks and carried to somewhere with high fences, meticulously repainted as soon as weather starts to wear them down. We hide wire and cords behind plaster, laundry baskets behind doors and garbage bins in little wooden huts. We have rules about neon lights. We use fake grass, or truck it in from a farm upstate – purebred like our blood and our pets that cost more than your annual salary.
It's not so bad, to drive along and not see the dirty laundry, to walk among beautiful people with beautiful clothes and beautiful cars and consider myself among them. It's not so bad until nightfall leaves my room lit with starlight and I have to escape out the window to breathe because the voices in my head have taken up all the oxygen. It's no so bad until the idea of feeling beautiful has faded along with the green in the grass and the life in the trees. So here's my mess, my dirty laundry. Here are my wires and cords, my imperfections, my scars, my neon lights. I lie and say I'll never change.
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