Ghost Writers In Eight Voices

ghost writers in eight voices

i. these words are not mine, and neither is that voice in your ear that sings them to you.

ii. I know how the ghost writers felt creating stories that were not their own, writing words that they did not say or feel or mean. it’s the struggle of the lyricist behind closed doors who pours their unfelt grief and heartache into someone else’s lies.

iii. no one tells the truth in this creative industry; depression and misery and sorrow and fear and death are not romantic in the slightest. death is not pretty, falling is not graceful, misery is not composed and fear is all-consuming, all-enveloping.

iv. can you imagine the ghost writers in a conference together, a room full of people so unused to speaking their own mind that their voices crack and lips tremble at the thought? it’d be the quietest room you’d ever been in because once you forgo your voice for someone else’s, you forget how to speak on your own. it takes a lifetime to remember the way you lilt and how you speak, the words you use and the ones you don’t and the familiar cadence of your mind.

v. all those ghost writers are in a room somewhere with the lyricists who write songs for other people, learning how to be their own again and lord, how it scares them.

vi. I’d be scared too if I had to wrap my mouth around the strange words, unfamiliar sounds of things that used to be yours but were no longer; like kissing someone you used to love on the mouth only they don’t taste the same.

vii. those words are the embodiment of j'aimais vous, the feeling you should know something but don’t like how a voice sounds familiar in all the wrong ways

viii. it’s the ghost hidden in the walls of the room, tossing and turning in its sleep as it remember what it feels like deep down buried inside to know something, and to claim it as your own.

for sharp-edged women, made of thorns, points and needles:

you have been broken, beaten and abused to become who you are.

your eyes are tired from always searching, never daring to stop looking for where the next attack will come from. you sleep with one eye open.

scars are your badges, medals of honour you wear to remind yourself not that you let someone do that to you but that you survived. there is no greater challenge than this-

to live in a world of softened, loving people and to be what you have made yourself. a creature of hard edges, claws, teeth biting and words cutting like knives.

you are difficult to love, and maybe, you do not want to be loved.

it is enough to stand on your own two feet in the shelter you have created, safe in the knowledge that no one and no thing can hurt you unless you let it.

and you won’t let it.

no one comes close enough to even touch your points and if they do once, they never do again. you are wild and free and self contained all in one; you are your cage, your door, and the key to open it.

if someone looked close enough they could see brambles weaving through your hair, claws like knives instead of fingernails, razors hidden behind your throat and the iron that runs through your body instead of bone.

you are fire and ice, clawing your way from underneath the dirt and falling from the skies.

everything you have, you have had to fight for, and everything you have you deserve.

you make and remake the world in your own image, shaping your daughters to be strong, hard, guarded and full of wit- something you wish someone had done for you.

no one told you that the world would break you, your heart and bones and mind, and no one ever warned you of the dangers of pretty green-eyed girls and dark haired boys who slit their wrists in the name of love. you have lost friends and love that way, and once, almost, yourself.

and you wish someone had told you that edges are not something to be scared of, that you could stand on a precipice and not fall off. brambles guard the castle holding everything you love (and when you love, you love fiercely, the sun chasing the moon and dying to give it breath) and needles are what you sew yourself back together with.

for the women who are strong- you understand.

self-proclaimed and diagnosed is just another way to say 'fucked up'

I am a self-proclaimed bitch, a know-it-all fucking jackass of a person that obnoxious motherfucker you wish would just go away. Any name you can think of to call me I’ve probably called myself. My friend walked up to me the other day and told me I was a bitch but ‘that was just my personality’ and I just smiled and laughed, said 'I warned you when you became friends with me, everyone knows I’m a bitch’ so I didn’t start crying.

Some girl tried to pick a fight with me because her friend was upset about something I did (how dare she be mad without knowing the full story, without knowing what her friend had done to me. How dare she come charging up like a knight in shining armour except in this story the dragon is secretly the princess who’s been trapped in an ugly body by society’s expectations; don’t kill the dragon we all shout except knights don’t listen so she killed the dragon anyway and was confused when there was no princess to save) and she tried to pick a fight by calling me a bitch and a terrible person and telling me I should just go die because I didn’t deserve to live and I just smiled and laughed and agreed with her with everything she said.

It’s hard to pick a fight with someone who agrees with what you’re saying. She called me a bitch and told me to die and I said I know but I didn’t say that I’d tried because telling people you want to die is the moral equivalent of kicking them while they’re down; it just makes them feel guilty so they halt and try to reverse the train with fake apologies.

Trains don’t go in reverse anyway so I let her words barrel over me and took all the blame that I didn’t deserve onto myself and said I’d let myself cry later, when everyone was out of sight.

Nobody likes to see a bitch cry. It reminds them of their humanity and the fact that yes we are all people and inside that person you say is less than a person, the one you call a bitch and terrible and say that 'I guess they can’t help it, some people are just natural mother fuckers who need to be put down and taught a lesson’ yeah the person you say that to is exactly that a person.

I’m a person but no one will believe me so instead I say I’m a self-proclaimed bitch. That way when people tell me things about myself they think they’re the first person to notice, I can smile and laugh and then I can destroy them for hurting me because that’s what bitches do.

This sword works two ways; when you tell someone they are less than a person they will believe you. You can demean them and unmercifully beat them down but you had better not turn your back, better keep one eye open when you sleep because less than human means I will have no qualms about destruction.

Your weapon is my humanity and you in your unwillingness to unlock my chains have given me the tools to render my cage obsolete.

pretty girls aren't so pretty

red lips, dark eyes, hair tied up into bows. pretty girls don’t wear skeleton tights, don’t make black eyes with eyeliner and bruises. pretty girls don’t get into fights, don’t voice their opinion and say what’s on their mind. quiet isn’t a state of being it’s a requirement of beauty because when you speak that angel’s bow gets all twisted out of shape. no one likes a snarl, honey, don’t do that don’t give me that look it’s for your own good. boys like girls who are pretty who act pretty who don’t fight back. don’t claw your hands and sharpen your nails, paint them pink pastel not red like blood. pretty girls don’t smile like that, teeth out to bite put your fangs back in and hide that darkness. at least until someone claims you and breaks you of that nasty habit, your idea that you are more than just a pretty face. no one cares what’s inside your head, darling don’t you understand what I’m trying to say? you’re just a pretty face and nobody likes their paintings to talk and think do they. pretty girls don’t fight like that honey pretty girls use words not their fists you should know how many pretty girls have tried to fight you? cat eyes and bloody lips, hair in knots like the the wind owns you. pretty girls don’t look like that. pretty girls don’t act like you why don’t you understand? you’ll never get anywhere in life unless you’re pretty and pretty doesn’t mean what you think it does, you’re only a pretty face. you can move the earth on your own but think about how many decimal places there are in that number it makes you less than significant, irrelevant. you can’t move the world and time won’t stop for you. pretty girls don’t write like that, pretty girls don’t have scars like that baby don’t you dare fuck this up you will be a pretty girl. pretty girls don’t paint their faces like a mask pretty girls wear their masks all the time. pretty girls is what the boys want their girls to be. pretty girls aren’t like you baby why can’t you be a pretty girl? pretty girls don’t dress like hookers, they dress for boys and for attention. not attention like you get, the strange stares in the hallways. that’s not pretty. believe me honey you’ll thank me when you’re older even if you say right now you hate me you’ll learn. pretty girls, pretty pretty girls. red lips like candy not like blood dark eyes like smoke not like bruises and hair tied up with pretty little bows. look in the mirror don’t you like what you’ve become? a pretty, pretty girl.

Until the Possible and the Actual meet at Infinity

until the possible the almost whatcould’vebeen whatshould’vebeen andstillwhatcanbe it is everything that has ever been a maybe or possibly almost and sometimes hypothetical because nothing is impossible. study that closely; look impossible im possible i’m possible we hide creativity, positivity and hope inside our impossibilities for we love a second chance and a redemption of something you cannot come back from and the actual reality of yesterday of today that which is certainly and absolutely positively true this is always and forever it is an axiom an idiom (absolute) but how do we distinguish our reality from dreams? they seem real and real enough it seems. For some they dream and it is real for some they live and it is a dream. in the end, it's all real for we cannot bear to think of what would happen if it wasn't. And when they meet the possible and the actual at infinity who can say? nothing is impossible when everything is real.

There is a holiness to exhaustion

I puke, doubled over in pain. Exhaustion runs through my veins like the iron that is supposed to be in my blood, the iron that I don’t have enough of and can’t get more of. It tastes like guilt. Thick and heavy on my tongue, coating everything in my mouth. If you were to kiss me you could taste it too. I stand, wipe my mouth and spit at the ground. Curse, kick, blame myself for being weak. Hug my arms to my sides then give up and wipe at the crusts frozen to the corner of my mouth and my eyes. Water can’t wash away the taste of shame, of guilt. I quit, change my mind, stop, change it again. I will not puke. I will not be that weak. ‘puking means you give it all you have.’ I sigh. Pick my lead-filled limbs and heavy heart back up. Keep running.