ABNEGATION MEANS REFUSAL

ABNEGATION MEANS REFUSAL

i write a love letter to the way you refuse to make sense, defy everything. gravity, physics, that small thing you kept warm inside your hands, fighting death when it came calling. fighting the world when it refused to get out of your way. said, you can’t. says you: watch me, & you storm the barricade like a natural disaster to break everything apart. these doors stay open because you’re afraid of the dark, folded in on the couch, & even while you sleep your hands are curled into fists around roses, ravens that claw through the night. you unravel between slotted fingers to fall petals, ghosts, a chainlink fence & a body, stand defiant again in abnegation. your shattered ribs & shoulders hold feathers, drift soundlessly out to sea. i love you again every time you say no, each time you prove them wrong. you stand, you’re breaking, you are selfless because you give to hold on. one time you brought home anything you found that looked lonely. quantified this scales to a monstrosity, an unimaginable heart to make its resting place behind your sternum, heavy in its beat, steadily giving out. you don’t know how to give it up. you don’t know how to say it hurts without pushing past the collapse. you shudder & the thing within you trembles, that smallness tucked inside those hollow bones, how no one can make you do anything but how you are trying to make up for everything. i don’t understand how all of you can be contained, why you don’t burst apart at the seams, if you are sheer will keeping yourself inside. your hands hold tender still the world, shut doors with cautious keeping, fight on in spite of bloody apparitions. you, the brave. you, the selfless. you, refuse to stop loving with every inch of your body, refuse to make sense, refuse to give up anything that makes you what you are, & i write to pay homage to that godless magic. they say: bow down, give in, cave to something greater. leave that there to die, wither away, kill the hope blossoming, fly east in the winter, say yes three times and believe it say no and don’t mean it. drop the heavy heart inside your chest, so apathy can make a home. give us everything you are. & you: refuse.

only two things make me sad: one of them is life, and the other one is trying to live it. i am always afraid of regret. always afraid of the wrong thing. too many days spent in the closet, on the floor, throwing up with my head in a toilet. hands trembling like the wind and i’m still trying to live with this. that tremor won’t ever go away. how can i tell you to live when i don’t want to? and there’s nothing i won’t do to want to. all these admissions and omissions of how much time i really spend trying to function as a human being. isn’t that what we call life? this hell we’re in when we can’t call it hell? we keep on through the precarious existence of the balance between burning fast and flickering out. when it’s beautiful, hold it close. when it’s ugly, hold it the same. if it makes you sad, cry, and i have to cry too. when i see things that make me ache, all over, and want to curl up so i don’t have to face it, i do for a little while. but i still get up when the alarm goes off in the morning saying ‘cheer up. you’re not dead yet’ and when it says ‘one more day’, when it says 'be happy’ and when it says 'ní hên píao líang you are beautiful’ i have to get up. i have to get up for all those who can’t. yes, it hurts to breathe and exist and live but isn’t that what it means to be human? breathe. stand new-made in the shivering light. 
 if you still have a day. live it while you are shaking.

REMEMBER WHY YOU BREATHE :: o.m. 2017

i return howling

black ringed eyes of smudged morality / questionable practises of immortality.

after ten thousand years you’d think we’d start to lose the taste / of salt and skin, lips to face.

kiss me still when i am inhuman / a beast wandering through the night.

here we are in the forest, teeth and claws and all / here we are in this dark humanity, ready to fall.

even then when i am lonely / i dream in full moons, bruised skies turned holy

i still sleep quiet underneath the night / i return, howling, home to you.

creep

when i hear keys i start to flinch instinctively, hide my hands and whatever is in them. most often it’s nothing but heavy footsteps start me creeping towards the door and coffee smells like salt and dead earth. we buried bodies in the backyard and planted tomatoes over them, growing in red like blood. the pool floats in its own waste of chemical water and dead things. what a sore sight to see, such bruises building on a body. black-blue purple and the brown of a rotten fruit, sweet and we smash the pulp to smithereens. dig a hole with keys and scrape the ground for seeds: i hide in the leaves and bury myself among the bodies. plant this unrest or insomniac nights. i was born without a sense to feel. i can still feel you watching me.

aborted machinations

in the end i don’t regret this having such a body and these bones. 
they do me small kindnesses and in return i try to be more gentle. gentle is not easy. gentle: to hold with no intent to harm. to let go when it is needed. sometimes letting go is harder than holding on. you are brave for this. to recognise that in it all you may not be necessary. sometimes sitting down is harder than standing up, to say that you could both be wrong. sometimes we cannot truly see the right. i am trying to be more gentle but you say: what does it mean to be gentle anyway. what does it mean to be anything? i say: don’t confuse gentle with weak. this is not weakness. this is strength to say you can be happy without suffering for it. poetry does not lend itself well to happiness. a breath not caught, letting go without leaving a mark. we cannot stop clawing our way through reason in an effort for the undefinable this. every attempt is burned and we don’t know how to stop. how do you define happy? how do you know the difference between the words in cruelty and in gentle. stop everything before it’s over and abort these movements halfway through: happiness leaves everything half-done. this body deserves more than what i can give it, stopping a life unlived, unloved. this gentle that i show it; i am sorry for the motions that i put it through. for all of it in the end i don’t regret living with such kindnesses as a heart. a head. fingers that can play a piano, toes that can dance, lungs that fill unsteadily and wobble within a rib cage close to breaking. for the choice to give up gentle or to continue being draped across these bones: carry on. do not regret this, please, do not catch your breath. keep your lungs trembling in the new made light, one breath at a time. your heart will beat unbidden because of some small kindness in our making. that’s all i had to say. that’s all i ever had to say.

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.