The Wreck Of The Earth

the wreck of the earth

humans are in the same category
as natural disasters for things that cause destruction. we are worse than hurricanes, hollow planes above cities. a masterpiece of catastrophe.

we are well-intended, to a point. the point is this: there is something dying and we refuse to save it. to even look at the damage we have done.

i am no exception.

and this is how we wreck what we have learned to love: by trying to save it or loving it in the first place.

the only truth

that matters i am still breathing no matter how. to be here is a testimony in itself. yes, i’ve answered what you asked no, i did not lie in a single word. bearing myself open, this rib cage cracked in three places and my chest pulled apart from the scrutiny, a fist sized muscle beating itself like i do. to the point where it doesn’t know anything other than to keep going, keep going, your mind gives out long before your body will ever, keep going, keep going, until it hurts more to stop than it does to keep going. once there, you know the truth. the only truth that matters: say it. in words or broken letters. pictures. paintings. fists or cracking voices. the truth is- life is a terrible, awful thing and we are all trying to find the best way to live it. stop pretending it doesn’t terrify you.

foreign(or) god

god comes down to say hi sometimes, stepping out with the people of all race and ages. god has an accent no one can discern. god is an immigrant stumbling over the foreign languages of grief, emotion, not recognising the subtleties between happiness and happy-in-this. and even god suffers from cognitive dissonance, can’t say anything the same way we do. trying to find the right words and only coming up with something we won’t understand or will tend to misinterpret. half the time god doesn’t even know what he means, those misharmonised thoughts making less and less of a self when put together. god is a collection of parts we have assumed fit him without asking. god wears the twice worn pants of someone else and has to hem them by hand. god is tired of this. god was tired when he heard this. god speaks softly so as not to wake the demons we tell children about when they come here: loneliness and depression and never really belonging. there is something so sorrow-filled in the way he begins to recognise we cannot do not want to be saved. god walks away and we justify his actions to ourselves as if he had done the atrocity. god has a limit to forgiveness and it starts with desecrating kindness. god has all the accents of the people we have turned away.

such impermanence

what hungry animal is inside you starving, for love or some other strange affection. you beat it when it asks for too much. say: that’s enough. keep it ravenous and wanting, too weak to cause trouble. strong enough it doesn’t die to rattle your self-control once a month, year, however long you can put it off. don’t acknowledge the tears inside your linings, don’t ever need anything. that startling want breaks you, makes you long for such impermanence as love. there’s a reason i write about rib cages and women: you were made from the bones of a different breed. our ribs do not belong to us, and that ache always feels foreign even after centuries. a reminder you could not be contained just within yourself. you had to be made fleeting, imprisoned fading. had to be kept hungry so you could not be anything other than a mouth with which to swallow whole. from the wild you were made to want what could only be given. always that impermanent thought, taught to hold in and not take, take, take to appease your inner self. never having enough in the bones you were given, still trying to bite more. keep the beast and throw the body to the wolves- the insides will starve itself to death anyway. we were not meant to last forever. we were not even meant to live this long.

That strip of smoke coloured sky up there is the heaven of these people. -Jacob Riis and the heaven of these people is the heaven of those people from a different skyline. we look at the same gods with different eyes. that smoke-coloured, bare strip of sometimes light is beautiful when it is the only thing to look up to. when they dream, they dream of a sky painted like the sunset they know and the sunset they don’t, red-orange-blue with a grey haze on the horizon. when these people think of heaven they do not dream. they are tired. instead: heaven is the moment between breaths. heaven is the uninterrupted night of sleep. heaven is eight hours instead of twelve. heaven is all hands unhurt, all eyes not blind, a body on this earth that can contain their souls. heaven is their souls unbound in the closest thing they know to joy. joy is the little kindness, the way the light shines down. heaven is the light. that sky up there is not a strip it is the whole sky, it is the might of all the heavens all these heavenly bodies resting on the earth weighed down by all the dirt and fear they are the light trapped between the lines, they are looking at a different sky and seeing the same gods. they are learning heaven with their eyes open.

the whole truth

i should start here.

[a FAQ list of things people have said] (no, it didn’t always hurt)

when i was born, the doctor said i was a girl. yes, i am a girl. sometimes.

i learned to love with broken bones. heal the cracks in your heart with pavement, beat a rhythm in the pattern of your soles. bloody knuckles & split lips taste like home, like a kiss, like someone else’s body on mine in a way that isn’t suffocating.

i was fingered before i was kissed, & no i didn’t want it. that wasn’t affection. it wasn’t even a semblance of love.

my first tattoo was at fourteen, illegal & the night after homecoming a little drunk on being wild, we thought we were so cool god, who hasn’t been there, when you’re young & stupid. everybody did it once. in the hours after midnight that little fragile peace gray asked if i wanted something to remember i said yes so we carved a star on my hip & a semi-colon on sky. we were always dreaming. even then we were like this. even then.

bleach tastes awful but i won’t ever really tell you that unless you ask. because no, not everyone needs to know when you’re breaking.

those scars are mine.

do i lie pathologically? probably. it’s a habit of protection i gained from being told i was a bitch, i was too smart, i was too athletic, i wasn’t funny, i wasn’t pretty- i was five foot nothing & not even 120 pounds but i was fat, i wasn’t pretty, i was too much & not enough & cut up all at once.

i’m trusting you with this now because i’m telling the truth. the whole truth.

it did hurt.

i am broken but not irrevocably. i am shaped by the experiences that made me but not defined by those same conditions. i am the knife & the body & the air rushing through this, i’m lying through my teeth to tell you that i’m fine.

there’s a hole in my head and that’s the whole of it. it never never stops for sobriety & suicide but after all this time:

i think i’ll be alright in the end, truthfully.