Warped Lightning - 2023

warped lightning - леви 2023

a little something i'm proud of

“i like you,” revised. again.

“i like you.” i’m convincing myself i do. “i like you. i like you. i like you. can we hold hands? can we cuddle? i’m just joking, haha i’m so funny.” i’m so funny. its clear you see us as nothing more than friends. its clear you see what i doing. we’ve talked about attraction. sexuality. the rest of our lives. i’ve even dropped the big L word, yeah, the big L-O-V-E, i know. a feeling that goes away just as quick as it came on. shit, someday, i’ll probably find myself with a wife and kids, look around, and think, “god, what have i done?” i’ve told the neutral ai robot friend about this. and he remained neutral. i could never do anything about this, but let myself grow up, grow out, grow on.

“i like you,” but it hangs heavy in this god forsaken car. air is dense walls close in my mind goes blank i don’t know how to save this-

“i like you, but,” but? dipshit. “i wouldn’t drive you home if i wasn’t sober.” i really hope its the weed making me feel dumb. i’m sober enough to drive, right?

as he sits in the passenger seat, he almost leans in and i almost put my arms around him, but i follow his eyes to the backseat, he was just grabbing his backpack. i look away as he stands up to get out. he says his goodbyes, starts walking away, but quickly turns and comes back.

“i love you,” he says quickly. “no homo. because it wouldn’t be complete if i didn’t say no homo, right?”

right. cuz we totally needed to clarify that. we’re all just a bunch of mosaics from past lives/friends/lovers. he shuts the door again and walks off for real this time. running up that hill starts playing, and my god, that is just sad. this car knows too much about what my love life has been through. the previous scene feels awfully familiar, the upcoming scene feels awfully similar, but i can change that. i skip the song. if i’m going to drive home at midnight, at least its not something that reminds me of terrible times.

“why do i care?” is the only thing that gets my mind off you when i catch a glimpse of anything that may relate to you at all. i know you’ll never text me but sometimes i hope you do, so i can respond with, “who’s this?” to show you i’m stronger than i was when i was fourteen, but i suppose i’m really not, considering i still write about you. i can turn anything into a conversation about you.

“i don’t feel at all like i thought” i looked again. i told myself i wouldn’t, but i had to unfollow you. i always send myself into a panic attack when i do. shaking, shivering, jaw clenched, disorganized thoughts. we are fucked up pen pals. we always meet at the worst times. we are the perfect ingredients for a beautiful shit storm.

i deleted my three thousand word essay about everything wrong with me, you, and the combination of the two. i am better than that.

writer to writer, poet to poet, i feel like you of all people should understand not everything i write is what it seems.

sorry i didn’t like your friends, i just didn’t like feeling so completely and hopelessly alone in a room full of people. come on up to the third floor of eastman hall. or don’t. i don’t care.

yours truly

dear s,

i find it is so much easier to live when i “separate the art from the artist”. in this case, i imagine your kind loving words have taken the form of some anonymous, generic body, living in some anonymous, generic location, maybe with no face or anything like that. maybe you—

dear s,

don’t mind the blood stained seat, i slit my wrists so much the other night, i wanted to kill myself. i should donate this car to a forensics lab. cause of death: blood loss and chronic numbness. thank god leather is easy to clean. i told him about this. i don’t know why. i was dying to tell someone, like a sick victory. and he proceeded with caution, i could feel his concerned, almost disgusted look on his face, through the text. like maybe he could be angry.

“i’m sorry, i really shouldn’t have done this,”

“i would rather you talk to me and tell me the truth and make things a lil harder for me than for you to not say anything at all and i have no clue how you are”

how could someone genuinely care about me so much? i don’t trust this. feels like a joke, a game, something that will end in fighting and tears because that’s all i know how to do.

and dear s, the other day i cried in my car and i asked you to grab my stuff and bring it to me, and you did. and you stayed with me until you knew i was going to be okay. but i couldn’t stop hyperventilating, shaking, sobbing, it wasn’t a panic attack. i broke down crying in front of these three grown men. i don’t remember what any of them were saying, i don’t remember why everything ended the way it did, i just knew i was upset, and i don’t even remember being upset. but i felt pathetic collecting myself in front of them, so i made myself cry, but soon i couldn’t help it, and that’s maybe when i started panicking. when the shaking wasn’t voluntary, when the erratic breathing wasn’t a joke, something like that.

dear s,

i’ve recently started to realize my childhood wasn’t as golden as i originally thought. i didn’t think anything was wrong until my mother started to profusely apologize for being a terrible parental figure to me, for the awful things she did to me as a kid. and i didn’t get it until i tried to convince her otherwise, until she told me i hide my emotions, until i was on the verge of tears, screaming at her in a parking lot.

“you know the reason i hide my emotions? because when i was a kid, you’d scream at me and hit me if i cried! and you only got worse if i cried harder, and i’d cry harder because you kept hurting me. you know how many migraines i’ve had because you’d hit my head so much? you know half the scars on my arms are because of your own hands? so i cry silently, and i know how to zone out when you scream at me so i don’t cry, but sometimes you think i’m smirking, and you end up hurting me anyways. i walk on eggshells around you because i don’t want to get hurt”

quietly, she tells me, “see, i did mess you up.”

i don’t know what came over me but its all starting to make sense.

she tells me stories of how her father treated her as a kid, somewhat similar to my experiences as a kid. she tells me she was diagnosed with ptsd, but didn’t know why. and it wasn’t until i was in middle school that she started to understand it. by then it was too late to change the damage that was already done.

dear s,

i almost checked myself into a hospital. but what would they do? give me more meds, a slap on the wrist, and send me on my merry way?

“this has nothing to do with you,” you tell me, but i can’t help but feel that this is all my doing.

but hey, maybe we’ve changed so much we wouldn’t recognize each other if we saw each other again. nothing so special about “us”.

yours truly,

леви

double mastectomy

i don’t think i’d fight it. what’s the point. why prolong the inevitable?

i don’t think i’d fight it. the worst part is i feel jealousy. how does it feel to have a reason? a chance to feel at home in your dying body? why couldn’t it have been me? i’ve dreamt about this for years and someone who is unwelcoming, undeserving, beats me to it.

and the comedic timing, god, i’m rolling on the floor, hysterically laughing (out of my mind,) it only proves that this is a

Sick Fucking Game

they’re playing on me. couldn’t even make it four months. i’m not sad, i’m upset, i don’t give a shit about her. but there are people this affects. maybe it happened by complete random happenstance, things like this happen everyday. just happened to us again. sometimes i feel completely out of my body. i go to scratch my nose and i can’t feel my hands against my face. the ground under my face. the movements i make are not mine, the words i speak are not mine, my vision sits at the back of my head and i don’t remember anything at all,

do you think she remembers?

all eight minutes and forty one seconds pumped out in waves on a frequency, data transmissions indecipherable to me.

what do you think she’s told her kids? that this means certain death? what happened to aunt jenny is what’s going to happen to me? do you think she’s scared? terrified? what has her life been like? would she fight it?

a double mastectomy,

would she welcome it like i’ve been yearning for years?

she’s dying. and i’m selfish enough to wish it was me, even when i’ve seen arteries beating out of her neck, sickly yellow skin, incoherent strings of words, aging twenty years in a week. and another twenty in the next week. until she’s sixty years old, my final words are “see you tomorrow,” when i should know that tomorrow was never guaranteed.

but i never thought any of this would happen.

and now i’m hysterical(ly laughing) on the floor promising to never fight it.

caretaking and grief (i’m the victim, i’m the saint)

jumpy jittery like i have really bad anxiety, shaking and feeling weak like i have low blood sugar. i’m drinking milk tea, 268 calories. what a specific number. 55g carbs. can’t imagine i have low blood sugar. but maybe its something else, like the first three drags off a cigarette, the first three i’ve had in a few days. i’m not supposed to smoke on these meds, i wonder what high blood pressure feels like. i just wanna go for a walk and feel stupid dizzy, stupid head spins. but i’ve got to go to class. my lips bleed when i speak, they’re so chapped. and my kidneys are in agony, i don’t remember the last time i had more than a sip of water (just to down my pills).

but maybe its something else completely.

i woke up this morning to a winter wonderland snow globe scene outside my window. there’s a tv in front of my bed now. new old clothes in my closet. i will not remember how they got here until a few hours later. and my mother walks in, asks where the usb is. i will not remember why she needs it until a few hours later. she goes into her office, and i turn on this new old tv. i’m still figuring out how to connect my phone, or what i should even watch. but my mother comes back in with tears in her eyes and asks me to test the usb. i will not remember what i am supposed to be testing until few hours later. the snow isn’t letting up so i better get going. roads are slick, car is light, car starts slipping, i slow down. i make it to campus without crashing. i’m frigid on .4 of my walk, i cut through a building, make it to class. i’m so distracted, i barely take notes.

i walk down three flights of stairs. take a right, out the back door. my legs feel shaky, like i may buckle and fall down, down, down, two blocks until my next building, where i climb up another three flights of stairs. it's bright white in here, probably painted within the past year. the stairwell reeks of fresh paint. at the top of these stairs is a waiting room. no one hardly comes up here.  there’s three massive paned windows, and there’s my beautiful snow globe scene. its the shitty type of scene my grandmother would take a picture of and cherish. i start to grab my phone to send her a picture,

and my body goes cold.

she’s dead, remember?

its only been a few days and i’ve been,,,,, i’ve been gone. i don’t think i’ve had a single thought in my head since wednesday after 10:45am. and i’ve been running nonstop. i listened to you screaming for the last eight hours of your life. and i never got to say goodbye. i don’t think i ever would have. i would always tell you, “i’ll see you when i’m back tomorrow,” but this time there was no tomorrow. you were still breathing fine when i left you. sure it was slow, almost erratic, and in so much pain. i remember the last time i hugged you. you weren’t speaking anymore, but you had enough in you to gently squeeze me when i reached down to hug you. and the last thing you told me was that you loved me, but that was far before you hugged me. i miss you already. today i snapped a picture of that window scene and texted it to you, knowing fully well my mother had your phone. and i started to cry. people saw me, i know they did, but they must understand. everyone’s dealt with death. and if they haven't, they will. my god, i miss you already. god is a little bastard, the universe know exactly what it was doing to spark this chain reaction of events that ended in bittersweet memories of seventeenths and weekend trips to a clinical spare bedroom. its only been four days, is your body even cold yet? i’ve been told you don’t even look like you in the casket. they say you look good but its nothing like you. i want to see you again but i guess all we get is body that once possessed you. i wish this, i wish that.

today i watched them open the casket to reveal your deflated hands, sunken in eyes, skin i could (pull just like clay). gums sewn shut. body drained and pumped with chemicals. your once yellow skin turned “normal,” i don’t want to look, this isn’t you. i don't want your face in my memories to replaced with this lifeless thing in a rented casket. i don’t remember other bodies looking as dead as yours did. but now you’re being incinerated in some oven, mixing ashes with remnants of someone else’s loved ones and past pets. today it maybe started to feel final. it came over me for a second or two, tears started to well up, but the antidepressants kicked in and worked their magic. i don’t feel real, i don’t feel like this is really me. not really you.

i was never going to say goodbye. i expected you to live forever, that was the expectation everyone had in mind. and no one had time to grieve. there’s a difference between watching someone die over the course of six weeks, and watching someone slowly lose themselves over the course of twelve years. three years on hospice. my name is cathy, my name is ann, my name was everyone but who i am. i have four dogs in a world i do not live in. we’re at the park in a bedroom. there’s these really good orange towels in the laundry room. and now her apartment is collecting dust while we wait for the heartlessness of a judge to hear us out. like their first day on earth has never happened, yet they have eight years of law school programmed into their tiny little baby brains. but besides the point, i miss you but i don’t know if this is really happening or not. and it doesn’t hurt until i’m alone, or with people. so it really all hurt but doesn’t hurt. and no one knew what to expect.

today i watched them put your rented casket in a silver hearse. bells ring. it snows. i notice its a cadillac, with a leather exterior. where does one find things like this? and what happens if a hearse crashes into an ambulance? and what if they all die? what’s then? i try not to think of all things that could possibly go wrong, ever. the bells switch from the hourly tune, to background noise to send her off. who thinks of these things, and who controls it? the funeral director smiles and tells us to go inside, enjoy the catered meal my family put together and payed for.

none of this feels right, none of this feels real, but i doubt it ever will, unless i am in the industry of loss.

clusterfuck

this is the first time in a very long time that i’ve felt okay.*

you know how long i’ve been chasing after you and there was no better way to end this era than a note passed on a phone, a sick smile, missed eye contact, slip away into the night. to never be spoken to again. i thought i could never be happy without you, but i realize you were what was holding me back. i’m not happy, but i’m content. i’ve never felt this before, (i’ve never felt more grey) like i’m somehow lighter. things flow better. i’m still slipping into this year’s depression, but its not as bad as it used to be. i’m hoping it stays this way. i really don’t want to live the rest of my life the way its been going.

things i like: everything that reminds me there is life beyond you and this godforsaken high school.

i hate that you’re better at writing than me. no matter how many compliments are showered over me, i will always feel inferior to you. i hope that someday i forget about you. hope eventually all my pictures of you are washed down the drain. this is final. like maybe one of us is in the ground, six feet under. thats the kind of final i want / feel ?. its late, i’m tired, the white lines slip under my car, my speedometer learns what exponential growth is, and god, i find there’s high beams flashing at me but i just don’t care that i’m driving into oncoming traffic. i love how final death is. you thought i’d come running back to you, you were even counting on it. i feel that i’m a hamster running on the same godforsaken wheel in my head, maybe i’ve twisted the story up, i don’t know where i got lost, what’s remembered and what’s forgotten. i just don’t give a shit. i’fe never been happier.

i don’t know what’s come over me. tonight i’m filled with far too many emotions. i feel like a cracked up bucket that can’t even hold water any more and the shit of life is still being placed in it and ugly brown sludge shoots out from this ugly cracked home depot bucket. tonight, maybe not, maybe all day, my brain has been running at 90mph. no breaks. (or brakes.) no proper way to slow down. i can mute it with music, its not enough to mute it. god, i just want silence. peace. predictability. the space to lay down and take a deep breath. or two. or three. or however long it takes to calm down. i want to lay down in bed and never get up again. i want to be nothing but tv static for the rest of existence, or some lights on someone’s ghost tracker bullshit. let it be known that i am happier than i’ve ever been, let it be known that i feel like nothing more than a ghost. just floating though the motions of day to day life, and the moment i feel like i’m something sorta living, i’m—

*i just got back from slitting my wrists, after i punched the wall and realized what i really wanted was pain. didn't do enough to make a mess, just enough for me to regret it the next day with every wrong move of my shirt.

i’ve stopped giving a shit of how long its been since i last did it. its not a nightly occurrence anymore. just enough to,,,,, i don’t know. just enough. maybe to maintain the scars. i wish i could stop feeling like i didn’t do it good enough when the scars fade. like i didn’t hurt enough, even though my skin may never be even again.

its the ultimate distraction, notice how i’m not overstimulated anymore? just focused on the sting, finding the time to buy a black crewneck sweater before work tomorrow. i can’t stand the staring.