Excerpt From A Book I'm Writing - Tumblr Posts

All I ever want is to see your eyes light up again;

Even if it means breaking into million pieces.

-Katie, 12:30

Girl Talk

I told my sister

"He is so out of my league.

He could have any woman he wants, what in the hell is he doing with me?"

And sister said, with gleaming eyes-

"But don't you what to know what he said to me about you?"

I Digress

My son is nine, beautiful in the unconscious way only the young are. My son is creative and brilliant and clever and fierce; an unstoppable force of nature packaged in shorts and a tie dye shirt.

My son is nine, and voices live inside his head.

One is mean, and can speak with his mouth, the other can push a button to make him calm down.

They have names, these girls, these alien entities embedded in my son's psyche, they have names and personalities, individual characteristics and they Are. Not. Going. Away.

I always knew I would lose my son to another woman someday, I just never thought the woman would be inside his own head.

Conscious Stream

We can go for weeks being superficial and then one or the other lets something deeper slip and there it is the connection that transcends sex and jokes and simple platitudes and it touches that part that scares me yet at the same time it's the part I've been looking for seeking to reclaim and then I don't hear from him for hours afterward like he felt it and was scared away too and dear God why can't this be simple, it feels good so why does it have to be so complicated?

AM

At 0400 the light creeping through the windows is grey, matches his bedding and his hair; but waking in his arms everything is infused with colors I don't even have names for.

Sigh

I am drained from fighting these past few hours with my older son. Some of it is him, some of it is me, and all of it is exhausting day in day out until I cringe just walking through the door (brace for impact) wondering what fresh misery we get to inflict on one another.

He had long golden curls when he was two years old.

He has my mother's eyes.

He once rescued a lizard trapped in chicken wire.

I am both mother and father to him, and I wish I could do better, than this vitriolic reiteration, a dystopian relationship; nuclear fall out between mother and son.

Lithium

Sometimes the salt in my brain ebbs, leaving its grit on my tongue, my lips, my words;

and still he stays.

Inconsistencies

His mother doesn't know about me.

I realize this as we are at dinner, and she calls to ask what he is doing.

I feel slightly ashamed, as though I am a dirty secret, something he hides, I know in that moment what my only purpose is to him. And I know that without it, I have no other place in his life.

Two days later he brings me food for my pet turtle, and meets my children.

I feel like the ball in a ping pong match; first high, then low, but always being abruptly smacked into position.

Um

I let it slip tonight, not even thinking, tumbling tripping off my tongue, sliding right past his awareness, and surprising even myself that I had just said it; and oh dear Lord someone light a candle

because I done caught feelings.

Train Wreck

I hate knowing how bad this is going to hurt in the end.

Split Personality

His hand on my thigh and the wind in our hair, and I would drive a hundred miles to make this moment last in silence forever; pinned against a smokey sunset seasoned with the occasional dark crow.

I am rigid, impenetrable; I am Teflon, letting it all slide away. Come and go, I am unreachable unbreakable down to my molecular core.

You can't force words that don't want to come freely.

1K Kiss

With no hesitation he takes my hand and holds my waist and brushes my lips and here

now

in front of the milling crowd oblivious

now I finally believe that this is real.

No Poetry (Thursday 2137)

I wanted what we became, I ran headlong into it, I pursued it relentlessly with no regard for what the aftermath would be. I never considered that I would feel like damaged goods after, a worthless untrustworthy whore. I never thought I would have panic attacks every time I saw you, from all the words unsaid fighting to escape my mouth. I never once dreamed that my psyche would become a minefield of triggers that someone else would have to diffuse.

I never thought it would be over.

I know how you are flawed. I know your petty human side now, I know how you let me down over and over again. I know how you are not good for me, the ways you can never give me what I need. And I truly DO NOT want to go back. But I need closure. I am not going to heal without it, and by God you owe me this. For everything we were, and everything we never will be, YOU OWE this to me so I can finally let him in all the way.

God damn you, I thought I was done lying in bed crying over you, and yet here I am because you've crashed into my world once more, as always, with no regard to the damage you cause.

I need this to be over.

Evening

He is natural, unconscious as he begins to wrestle with his dog, and it seems the most logical thing in the world to grab my camera and begin to shoot them here in uncensored joy.

Battle Fatigue

Irritability chews it's way around the edges of my mind, I am snappish and brittle, awake far too deep into the night.

I need him. I need to curl against him with limbs entangled like strangling vines. I need to get high on the male scent of his neck, heady and rich and uniquely him. I need I need I need

I need the soft rumble he makes in his throat when he is happy, a human purr. I need.

I need him.

Dust

I farted in front of him tonight;

and he peed with the door open.

I can't imagine a better evening.

Resignation

A palmfull of pills I count them, pink first one two three four, then blue one two. A chemical cocktail choked down, what is smooth past my lips always sticks a bit in my throat; my nightly rosary one two three four one two.

I don't have to take them, no one makes me. Think of how much better it could be - I could cum again and wouldn't sleep so much. It would be so easy to just

Leave pink in the bottle flush blue down the toilet, miserable little beads and then I think

Of pressing skin to skin against his beauty, magnificent man beast and his smile that has me coming undone, the smile that I would do anything for and the tightness, the safety in his arms and his vibrance and lust for life itself and the nightmare that is destabilizing and the maelstrom of insanity lurking just the other side of chemical freedom and I

Swallow them one by one I count my prayer pink one two three four blue one two.

Haunted

I count his beers surreptitiously, always laughing always smiling until the third when I speak - and my voice is that of the drunk's wife; my voice is as light as an empty tin can.

"You gonna be ok to drive?"

The drunk's wife speaks in tongues, catches subtle cues others ignore. The drunk's wife flinches at the bitter foam on her boyfriend's lip, and watches relentlessly.

Tonight I have trouble remembering who I am.

Shattered

I dream of him every night, my stomach turned translucent, neoformed hands and face pressed against flesh made of latex

I change his diaper for the first time, an IV lodged in his scalp, the nurses have run out of veins

I stick my finger in his mouth and he bites showing me his first cut tooth

I cradle him in my arms, his breathing labored, matching him lungful for lungful, trying with all my heart to breath for him and

There are first words and first steps and first comprehensions and anger and pride and joy and fear and we are a team, a package deal, until we are not

And I give the ultimatum, and he takes it, ruthlessly, emotionlessly, because any outcome is better than living under my roof, where did I go so very wrong?

I drop him in front of the church. He does not look back as he walks away.