'I Loved A God'

'I loved a God'

I loved a God

Or some story book illusion that had enraptured the masses

Hypnotized by a certain faith

That took the form of ink-blank tentacles strangling my sense of autonomous thought 

He wore a mask 

Of a noble saint, of a vestel ghost, of an angelic statue

A sculpture crafted from idyllic marble

A utopian canvas devoid of defect as if it withstood the plague of sin from the hands of its coveters for over a hundred years

He was depicted as poised, bare and chiseled to define a celestial body

Eyes cast over the congregation, as it looked out into something they could only pray to comprehend

He bore the hands of a man such as the parish below him

The dirty hands of a gracious lover

And he had singled me out in the rays of June’s sunlight

Clouds parting as though it were at his command

And I drowned in his embrace the numerous nights he held me

With those hands made from spoken word and calloused living

And told me we were made for each other

That he had crafted my being for his righteous touch

That I was a wrongful castaway meant for the golden skies he resided within 

That my skin was far too delicate to live amongst the sin and torment of an unforgiving earth 

It’s strange, strange how I did not like myself until he touched me

How much his living in an idolized notion gave me purpose far greater than what I could manage within my own mortality

I would have built him cities and towns and roads

I would have slain the opposition and dominated wayward creatures

With blood stained hands and sweat in my eyes

All in his name

All in an effort to gain a glance that was not tainted in a painful undertone

As I craved to hear him say the coveted words of desire far beyond that of my wilting figure

That he needed me as much as I needed him

I waited around the phone like a lost dog awaiting its owner’s call at the door, hungry and still wet at the mouth.

I had only wanted the simplicity of another’s embrace

And when I finally got my fingers under that mask

That shield from my desire and my loyalty and my vengeful notions

I clawed through its many layers to discover he was nothing more than a man

A man who had been hurt

By another god before him

-lauren a.p

05.22.2024

A journal entry from 09/09/22 (aka an abrupt author's note)

Look, I just had to write this down while it's still fresh. Allowing yourself to feel is the most liberating experience you may ever endure. Angst and melancholy and selfishness and apathy and laughter. All of it. Solitarily and all at once and in random bursts of hot tears or ladened thoughts or clenched fists or smile lines. It's terrifying and awful yet scandalously enticing. A fragile hope for normalcy outside of dissociative thought.

My mind has yet to try to escape since I met him. It hasn't yearned for the stories that'd never be spoken due to their non-existence. It hasn't craved the spotlight of an unreliable narrator and a broken storyline with a happy never-ending. It's complacent. Unmovable. As though it has anchored itself to this very moment, like it has something it's dying to tell me, but its words can't be heard.

Happiness? It can't be. I have never been so stressed and confused and exhilarated and horny and immature and grown-up and feral and up-and-down and lost. Emotions that have been strangers to my thoughts have become involved with a tumultuous affair with my impulse control, hijacking the station and forgetting to switch to autopilot. Everything is in my hands: I've never felt so in control of a disorderly enigma.

I'm reveling in the skepticism.

I'm collecting bugs and reading memoirs and making detailed connections between Lolita and Nobokov and butterflies. I'm doing pilates and dancing and crying and spiraling, all with a smile upon my lips and tears in my eyes

I'm everything all at once.

Is this normalcy? A reality outside of my own fiction? A world exhibiting raw truths and vivid emotions?

I don't know, but i'm excited to find out. I think.

-lauren a.p

kinder than man, athea davis

to be seen, to be heard, is to be loved

The way in which he came and went was eerie, yet ineffably comforting. Like flickering prophecies or an aurora plagued by solitude, it was a captivation with an indescribable feeling only managed to be harbored by those whose chosen fate was to lose. Those with cursed fingerprints and skeletons that danced amongst near-empty closets and an ephemeral name that would never be theirs. Macabre was the weight of his lips upon bare skin, a premonition of an aching heart and empty bed in every stolen touch. A personified ardor that'd yet to be stoked by late January's biting attitude dripped from his embrace.

Maybe he was simply just a side-effect. A dissociation that leaked through the fabrics of reality and stained her present with a warming rouge. He was Norman Rockwell simplicity mixed with the oddities of the late sixties. Mismatched yet almost perfect, a thrift-store buy with a warehouse charm. Or had it been the other way around? Either way, she had an addiction to that ceaseless feeling of the blues he ignited within her.

And he could see her. And just for that, she loved him.

He saw every inch plagued by a fragile decay and baseless faith. Heard every syllable from that tired tongue. Understood all the angsts and desires and outdated apathy. Wrapped amongst her tear-stained, baby-pink sheets, he'd crack a smile that took her back to a youthful careless careful. A glimpse of meaning in a savior-less world unable to be purified by even the most innocent hands of a promised keeper.

"What's the point of getting everything you have every wanted anyway?"

He'd always whisper this as she would turn the news on and off and on and off and on to reveal the next city a higher power had engulfed into flames.

-lauren a.p

12.8.22

"a prophesy"

Those worn eyes sought it.

Craved it with biting teeth and a carnivorous appetite

Lusted for the illuminating show in back-alley lights

Like a sinful dweller hooked upon the next hit, inhale, high

Addicted to the climactic downfall

Prophesied to repeat itself

-lauren a.p

…….thinking about this………..always thinking about this…..