For Does The Devil Not Simply Give Us What We Ask For?

For does the devil not simply give us what we ask for?

For does the devil not find us all on our knees?

l o v e l a n g u a g e

language: the principal method of human communication or

a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings

~

93% of communication is non-verbal. and i tried to learn a new language for you.

it was not an easy one. there were no textbooks, or online review tests, or vocabulary sheets. there was only my hastily scrawled notes trying to understand. there was only me, practicing my pronunciation in the mirror, watching my mouth form around unfamiliar vowels, my hands trying to learn how to hold the consonants so you might be able to better understand my accent. there was only you, trying to teach me a language that had never been transcribed.

you lend me one of your earbuds on the bus and play a song i cannot understand because there are just chords. just brushstrokes of sound. just melody threading notes together. the music is trying to say something. but you are trying to say something too by giving me this rythem. i cannot understand. but i listen anyways. and these are the ways in which i try to learn. you memorize my coffee order but forget my birthday. you never say you miss me but you look back twice exactly when we part every time. your eyes are always closed when we touch. i do not understand what these things say, or what you are trying to tell me but i listen anyways. and these are the ways in which i try to learn.

once, we don't speak for too long and the first night you spend in my bed again, i ask you, before i turn the light off, what it means. you don't look at me. you say you don't know. so i flick off the light switch and curl around myself under the covers. your hands find my hair, find my waist, find the soft skin of a scar, find the place where the flesh is thinnest between the world and my heart. i ask you what that means. you say it means, "you still have me." and so i kiss every one of your finger tips and in this way i respond, "i am glad." i let my legs tangle with yours under the blankets and in this way i say, "you still have me, too." in this moment you have not learnt my language yet either. but we are both learning. and some things are hard to misinterpret.

you take me to the movies to watch the same film for the second time. i do not understand what this is trying to say or what you are trying to tell me but i listen anyways. on the drive home, we take the leftover silence of the theatre with us, and i ask you what you meant when you did this. you are still picking the quiet out from your teeth with your tounge and so i say, "in my language, this means, 'i would choose the silence over your voice.' in my language this means 'you are only worth the past, over again. there is no moving forward, only backwards. until we fall into the oblivion from which we came'. " you pull off the road. you shake your head. say, "in my language, this means, 'the quiet is hard sometimes but never with you.' in my language, this means 'i think we have time enough to reread stories twice'. this means, 'you are the familar and for this i am grateful'. this means, 'i do not need adventure to stay'. that I am content to sit with you and the dark and devour a peice of the world together."

and so i come to learn that your leg slipping over my hip when i am just on the cusp of sleep means: i forgive you. learn that a sandwich found in the fridge made the night before for me to take to work means: im sorry. learn that the hour long shower means: not now. learn the bitting of the nails means: now. now, please. i learn the sunday morning pancakes mean: i love you. but so do the forehead kisses and the 1:30 am texts about tomorrow and the you telling me about your day. i learn the offer to fix my car means "let me be something for you, please." i learn 2 dirty mugs in the sink mean a bad day unless one of them is the red one and it's thursday, because then that just means working late, and in this way i learn about the context of a phrase.

you learn things too. pick them up slowly. through daily conversation. murmmer things in passing. nonchalant and nervous. i don't correct you. i just smile. because I know what you are trying to say.

i wince sometimes at the misused vocab and poorly built sentences that crumble quickly, but i do not offer to teach you until you ask. because i know for certain what you are saying then. saying:

i want to know how to speak to you in the language you feel most at home in.

i want to be able to know you in the words there are no direct translations for.

i want to be able to find you in the dialect you retreat to when the day has gone on too long.

you are saying:

i want to be able interpt everything you think there are no words in my language to say, and so you don't say them.

i want you to be able to tell me everything

you are telling me:

i want you to know that i want to try and talk to you even when it is hard.

you offer to walk with me in the fall afternoon even though you hate the crunch of the leaves that you say sounds too much like endings and i ask you if this offer means "i love you" or "i don't want to be alone right now" and you are looking away from me when you explain that sometimes things can have more than one meaning.

i tackle you half screaming half laughing when you buy us the concert tickets for my birthday and you ask me if this means "thank you" or "i love you" and i am smiling when i explain sometimes things can have more than one meaning.

i come home late to find you sobbing on the bathroom floor and i hold you for hours. i show you videos of baby's laughing until the tears subside long enough for you to kiss me with salt sorrow stained lips and i ask against your mouth if this means "thank you" or "i love you" and you whisper of how different things can have the same meaning and in this way i learn of synonyms.

sometimes the learning of a new language is difficult.

is frustrating.

is silences that scream two things in dissonance.

for the hardest things to define are the absences.

for there are a million subtle ways the pronunciation of quiet differs depending on what you are trying to convey.

sometimes learning a new language is

mistakes.

is misunderstandings.

is apologies

for violating customs

and muddling unfamiliar proverbs.

i'm sorry,

this is not my native tounge.

but i am trying.

i am learning.

if you are willing to teach me.

sometimes a new language is something we become fluent it. the bilingualism comes easy. it rolls off our tounge like second nature. you realize now there are new ways to love in this language. but there are also new ways the hurt. and new ways to heal. and new ways to apologize. you realize there are new ways to know someone when they are not afraid to be misheard.

sometimes a new language is a patchwork quilt of simple words and poorly stitched grammer. sometimes i pull out a few words at the restaurant to impress you. you smile less at the phrase, more at the gesture. sometimes i stumble over the words and you help me up, help me along the sentence, because you know it means the world to me to try for you.

sometimes all we can do is learn to understand. the words never come out right so we stop trying. but we listen. we nod. we laugh. we hold them at all the right parts of the story.

sometimes the greatest gift you can give someone is to understand

what they are trying to say.

when she makes paper flowers and sends me photos of them. i know she is trying to tell me: "look. i got out of bed today and created something beautiful. i thought of you in the slow process of the cultivation of this miracle." and i don't know how to reply. not in her language atleast. and so i don't. but i know what she means.

sometimes it is enough to understand someone.

sometimes it isn't.

sometimes a new language is not for us. we tell ourselves we are too old to pick it up. we tell ourselves it is too difficult. too forgien. too complicated. we try for the sake of saying we tried. but we don't.

in the end, we know how to say hello and goodbye and thank you and a handful of curse words. sometimes we know how to say i love you. in the formal tounge. with textbook pronouns and rigid verbs.

sometimes learning a language is

things lost in translation

is

how was I supposed to know what that meant?

is

why didn't you just tell me?

is

i didn't know how.

is

being too tired to roll your r's and remember the right tense.

sometimes learning a language is screaming everything you cannot translate at the language barrier between you. hoping they understand. hoping they don't.

but there is something unmatched about being welcomed home in your mother tounge.

something about being forgiven in words you could never misinterpret.

about being called to bed by the familar.

t h e r e i s s o m e t h i n g u n p a r a l l e l e d a b o u t b e i n g l o v e d i n

y o u r o w n l a n g u a g e.

write bad poetry. 

wrap your mouth into a cliche. write about icarus, write about roses. write about the flowers in your ribs and the stain of your fingertips and the skin of your knees. write about cigarettes and getting high and kissing the wrong person. and space; write about space over and over in sixty iterations of it, write about star-blood and star-crossed and star-glowing, write about universes and galaxies and gladiators in constellations. write about the space between two people in a small room, write about the space that is too small no matter how big it is, write about the space that is too big no matter how small it is. write yourself a star and eat it, tinfoil-tasting, on the floor of your kitchen, while you regret missing your mother’s cooking. but write it.

write ugly. use too many undercase letters because you’re pretentious. USE ONLY CAPITAL LETTERS BECAUSE YOU’VE GOT A SCREAM TRAPPED UNDER YOUR FINGERNAILS. ,, cut & paste grammar (? who gives a shit ?) ,, r3inv3nt so much u come back 2 l33t speak, dial it down a bit. write in the language of flaubert, then dickens, then the language your father used before he learned english. then write the language of talking to your dog, then write the language of high school essays on books you never finished. utilize the word utilize where it don’t belong. fall in and out of love with contractions. accidentally become bukowski for a hot sec, grow out of it. 

write things you wish you hadn’t. write stuff so bad you can’t help groaning. write things that end in “a;sljflk jfg h” because they petered out while you were typing. write things that feel childish and use so much rhyme it throws you out of it. write things that feel grown-up and unfamiliar, too formal to function, up-their-own-asses. write things too enigmatic; forget what you wrote them about, but tell yourself it’s for the best. write things too obvious. go through a micro-poetry spell, go through a prose-poetry spell, fish the bottom of the box for x-ray goggles and write about how the cereal felt. write about your cat and the rug and un-deep fake-deep terrible stuff.

write things you really wish you hadn’t. stuff that hurts to read and hurts to look at later, stuff that makes your skin uncomfy and your body crawl. write stuff that looks better at the back of your closet. but stuff you can’t get rid of, really, not ever. stuff that, afterwards, makes you feel heavier. stuff that somehow, impossibly, kinda makes you lighter.

write about stuff you don’t really understand, write about social problems you barely experience, write about slam poetry. write about power outlets, write in the style of internet poets, write frost-length sonnets on how pink her lips are. 

write bad. write worse. write bottom-of-the-barrel, and then keep scraping it. keep digging in it. god, how many people are too scared of being bad that they just. never get around to it. that they never even start doing it. what if all they have to say is silly shit about lost love or greek myths or a good kiss. what if they’re bad at it.

be bad at it. do you know how fucking rebellious and wonderful that truly, i mean truly is? and that’s poetry, man. the act of being so vulnerable, you’re willing to completely suck at it. big ideas in small boxes. it takes a long time before you get the packaging to fit. 

go write bad poetry. i can’t wait to read it.

You have softened all my edges.

And I am afraid

That when you leave,

(As they all

Inevitably do)

I will be left

Defenseless

Against

The world.

~

I run my fingers over all the places my skin is pulled taunt.

"You don't have to, if you don't want to."

"I know."

But I want to want to.

For you.

There is not enough space

Between the lines

To hold

Everything

I failed to say.

~

I wonder often

If they will remember me

As anything other

Than what I helped them forget.

So I make promises

Knowing they will be broken,

In an attempt

To collect sins.

Hoping

In the end,

I might

Cash them in

To see you again.

~

I say

I forgive you

But you tell me

It means nothing

Because you do not

Forgive yourself.

Then what am I worth to you?

What am I worth to you?

For are you so staunch in your belief,

That you do not deserve

To be loved,

That you would shatter my heart

To prove yourself right?

~

I tell myself,

If I could not make you love me,

I will at least

Make you

Miss me.

But I do not hold it against you.

For if I left me

I would not

Long for my return

Either.

~

I title this chapter

Lessons on forgiving

Myself

When I deserve it

Least.

In it,

Sorry

Is not used

Once.

~another compilation of thoughts only beautiful out of context

I lost track of the wounds

In the end

The only one that mattered

Was the one you gave me

In the end

The only one that mattered

Was you

In the end

It was the betrayal that slaughtered me

Before the blood loss

When your eyes sliced into my soul

Puncturing the vital organ

I was dead before your blade parted flesh

Ghost before my body hit the ground

~

In the end

My final breath

An exhale of your name

That still tasted like home on the tounge

My blood forgetting to be afraid

In your familar palms

~

But if I am spirit

Why I am the one haunted?

By you

Or some part of you that perished

With me

Begging for mercy

I do not know how to grant you

~

And if you lived

Why did I find you

Haunting your own shell

When I returned to

Forgive you

~

~And Caeser Thinks: If Betrayal Is A Kiss, I am Glad I Tasted It Last From Your Lips

@reveriesofawriter KNOWS WHATS UP♡

Today I am thinking about Alex Claremont-Diaz with the classic bisexual inability to sit properly.