Eden For A Sinner

eden for a sinner

i have this / and it isn’t a name / mouth full of strange words and broken teeth / Latin for flowers that don’t smell sweet anyway

i don’t have this / and it is a name / Greek for strength / courage and solid ground beneath your feet

we planted this / and it could be a garden / golden apples / made of lies and deceit

you left this / and it broke my heart / saying i was inhospitable to love / with my secrets and my tired eyes

they cried over this / viewed it as recompense / for the seeds we stole / to make our own Eden

i have this / and it is no longer yours / my lovely words, broken arrows and lies / life, abandon me to my own devices

and i will burn this heaven down

Atlas

On my bad days: I feel like the atlas, crying out everywhere everywhere everywhere I feel like Atlas, holding apart what so desperately wants to come together All those people crying out that it hurts oh, it hurts the way my shoulders shake and quiver tremble beneath my hands the way pages do, letters pressed gently into paper making myth and legend Legend says that Atlas’ punishment was borne of his pride; That his hubris had been his undoing and now it trapped him with the weight of the world upon his shoulders. Atlas did not bear the weight of the world. Atlas held the sky upon his shoulders and the ground ached beneath his feet, they cried out to each other with a force that brought him to his knees. The sky wept with great, gasping sobs and it fell as rain, washing the earth clean her suffering cleansed those below and the earth shook. What had not been cleansed by rain was tested by fire and found wanting. Atlas bowed his head- who was he to stand in the way of a love so great that the tremblings of it shook the earth and flooded the plains? Somewhere, a woman held an atlas in her lap and cried. Somewhere, an atlas answered everywhere everywhere everywhere. And Atlas wept, for his pain was not enduring the weight of the world or the sky upon his shoulders; the world’s heart lay in his hands. (they shook- they trembled with the heaviness that comes with love) Everything hurt. He would bear the sky on his shoulders and the earth under his feet and he would take the suffering of the world in his hands and he would hold it and he would bear it because he had to. Atlas’ punishment was borne of his pride he was to bear the sky upon his shoulders. Later that night I cried, traced the constellations until I found one that looked like a man, held him close to my chest and whispered that the pain was not his own to bear he told me it hurt everywhere everywhere everywhere.

love her. love her. love her.

there was one time i stained the entire bathroom sink blue with ink.

my pen had broken. when I tried to pull off the cap the entire casing broke into pieces in my hands. i don’t know what compelled me to paint myself blue, and stain my hands, covering them. they were covering in aching, in longing and sorrow. blue ink.

it was hard to stop; at first it was just an accident, covering the end so it wouldn’t splash into the white tiled floor. then it was on purpose, tracing the lines of tiny bird-like bones veins as dark and blue as night itself. my hands were cold and so, my scars were purple that day. i do not wish to number them. there are so many, scars like stars and freckles dotting the edges of oblivion. i covered that too, held the ink in and of my hands shielded it from the oblivion as long as i could.

my bones were the blue of night, darkest lines like the edge of horizons my veins were deep like cuts, so beaten they were black and blue knuckles and scars and lines crossed my surface, my skin a never ending canvas better for ink than knives.

my entire hands were blue, smeared with desire and want and need. need of what, i could not say.

(my hands were tinted with the evidence of my wordless wonder; there was something freeing and wild, emptying and intoxicating about the loss of self that came with containing yourself in something that is not you)

the ink was my skin, was my soul until i poured it out, staining the sink blue as i washed away the words i could not say. the scars i could not erase. the longing i could not name or begin to feel.

the never ending ache of want and need for lack of a better word, the spread fingers of longing grasping after the edges of night dark like oblivion.

blue ink.

Some days I like to imagine that I am brave and strong and kind, and that if I tried hard enough maybe I could be what I want to and those are the days that I wear combat boots and paint my face like a mask so no one knows how I feel inside. I am wild and reckless youth on those days, purple lips and rainbow hair and I am not afraid of anything. I am not afraid I tell myself and some days I believe it. Those are the days when I can speak my mind and those are also the days that I hide it because bravery is foolishness when the line between them is smudged. I am too clear, too sharp and full of edges- my mind is not always my own on those days and I have to remember I am human. Human means that beautiful does not always mean pretty and brave does not mean courageous. On some days I am nothing and the wind is the only thing that can tell me where to go.

We Are Such Beautiful Creatures: about love

Love is the arbitrary combination of symbols representing sounds that is used to describe a chemical reaction inside of our brains in response to certain stimuli, which we call emotions. It causes pulses to quicken, often times nervous sweat and other effects when the object of affection is around, and many different responses like a "warm feeling inside" which is a result of hormones causing your body's core temperature to raise. Psychologically, we classify those sorts of responses with what we call the basic emotion of love. Love, in a scientific perspective, is simultaneously simple and complicated. There is the release of hormones and other chemicals within your brain that affect your functioning and reasoning capabilities and cause chemical reactions; these changes can be quantified and noted obviously. But, your brain is sometimes unpredictable and we have found no algorithm that can predict love. We have found genetic markers that humans search for in order to determine a good mate, but we are curious creatures and don't always follow our predetermined patterns. You cannot determine or predict or even try to guess at who will fall in love with whom and what love will make them do. Love, therefore, is simply love. We have no other way to describe it.

Apologies

I apologise in advance for all of the things I am going to say to you. I haven't said them yet, (haven't even thought them, actually) But I know how this goes. I know that one day soon I will scream at you, bitter, basic words falling from my mouth. I hate you. You make me sick. I can't stand you. After bitter comes sweet, because people put salt in their hot chocolate to make it taste sweeter. Words will drip, drip, drip out of my mouth black ink that runs through my veins. I cut them open and make myself bleed to let you know how I feel. Let it be said that I allowed you some form of happiness; you will think that I love you, while I know that I'm just slowly dying. We are all dying on the inside. Happiness is a bullet to the brain. I'm sorry for these words too, for I have a secret to tell you: I don't mean a single one of them. And finally, finally, finally I have to tell you that I'm sorry for the words like knives, thrown at you until you shatter; scars and wounds ragged open and weeping. I'm sorry that my words took your hands, your eyes, your mind, your heart. I mean to give them back. To never have taken them in the first place, to never have gotten myself into this mess and to never have let you see inside. The best I can do is warn you, to say I'm sorry now for all of my words, toxic and beautiful as they might be. I apologise in advance, because I have another secret: I have to tell you that I'm sorry now because I know that I won't be then.