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| Well, I'll tell you what happened- it might not always make sense- but I’m just trying to be truthful. Truth is a funny word. Truth is fleeting, truth is debatable, truth is nonexistent. I’ll try my best to be comprehensible in my attempts, but the truth tends to migrate. I believe (I have to believe) it is achievable, however. It started on a night with skies full of stars. Which is hardly true. I started. I started then. I was on the path to enlightenment, or so I believe, so I hoped. I believed that night was exceptional, and it would be, but I hardly need to tell you it was completely unforeseen. I walked outside. There were no streetlights, it wasn’t far from dawn, and I was shrouded in a cloak of inky sky wrapped tight around my shoulders. The silence, the freedom: suffocating. I walked towards the field, unhurried, but with purpose. It was cool and dark and wide, so wide, the plain and life and sleep. The grass grew past by ankles, brushing my knees, and crickets sang to me, just me, and the night was mine, the dawn was mine, life was mine all mine. Quiet, quiet, and the hush of the spider webs whisperwhispered to join them, covered in dew. The grass was damp and cool and the taste in my mouth was honeycomb, dissolving sticky sweet. Shed every disguise and cover and underneath you will be free, you will be whole, don’t hide. Don’t hide. And nature is so inviting with cotton softness and thorns scratching softly, gently, red streaks on leaves, my blood, all mine. Knees stinging, grass swaying, one bird singing and I ran, ran past the trees and the spider webs and laughed because it was complete and whole and this was it, that was it, the secret truthful awful delight. Drop down, fall down, splay out and moss is touching every surface of me, giggling as ants incorporate my smooth, pale skin, into their path. I am integrated. I belong. Look up, and stars pierce the sky so sharp, demanding. I’m still laughing. Crying. There’s a moth on my hip and she looks so quiet, so peaceful, I could stay here forever, but I’m up and off again. The rocks pierce my sensitive sole, souls, but I’m laughing and crying the sky flushes pink in shame, but I am free and wild. The metal is cool, not like dew, like the blade of a knife, like frostbite, and yellow doesn’t match the green, green leaves. Sharp, but I’m up, and I’m hoisted, and sprawled and there’s dirt on my collarbone and rust biting sharply at my ankle, but they are my friends. Allied against the machine, we bite, dig, kick, do not claim to make a dent, but scratches add up and just one loose screw and down, down it topples, down. The sky blushes orange and red and the stars are retreating, rubbed smooth, the smile still warm on my face, my hair is tangled, my eyes are closed, are those raindrops on my eyelids? And early morning, (but not the embarrassment of dawn, not the raw pink newness you slept through, wouldn’t, couldn’t look at) here you were, and here I sit, and that’s my story. The moth and spider webs and pricking thorns, sure, yes, of course, you will destroy, that’s all you can do, this machine is a verb, there is no creation here. I’m sorry if my skin offends, but it speaks for all who do not hide, and are you hiding? But you must hide, you must hide, or how else could you topple this? |
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| Her smile is cold, but my bloodshot eyes deserve it. Sitting at this early morning café, the sun striping our table with rich streaks of pink and gold, we’re staring at each other across two cups of coffee. She must have said something earlier to warrant a smile like that; but I can’t seem to make my ears work. Actually, I haven’t been able to make any of my senses function property, not after last Saturday’s job. Every time I try to catch the smell of flowers, or anything else for that matter, my nostrils fill with the rusted copper scent of freshly spilled blood. I’ve taken to wearing sunglasses because everywhere I look there are walls splattered in atrociously bright red, the shades tend to dim the colors. If I’m touching cement I can feel flesh molding itself under my fingertips, not to mention the food that always tastes of metal and the screams that constantly fill my ears. I’m not supposed to be like this. After all, I do kill for a living. She’s letting me know that with that smile pasted on her face, carving my failure into the pink marble of her lips. Telling me that I should be sleeping normally; that I should stop fretting over yet another job. “For god’s sake, Nina, they were children, not one of them over twenty,” I tell her that, and even my voice is raspy. I must have smoked two cartons of cigarettes in the past five days; even now the ashtray between us is jammed with butts. But she just stares, adding a little venom to her smile before she speaks, “You shouldn’t feel anything about these kinds of things, Jay. You’ve become a liability.” Easy as pie. Now I’m a liability. These people never have any regrets; they don’t give a flying fuck that you’ve spent thirteen years doing their dirty work. One little glitch in the program they’ve created out of your mind and bang, bang, you’re dead. Easy as pie. Their system is unbreakable, unbeatable – the only way to leave is a road trip to the gates of hell. That’s where all of us, their hired guns, go anyway. Honestly, I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I have the money, a luxurious apartment, and all the toys I could ever want; but there is something missing. A something I thought I had found in one of those ‘children’ I had brutally slaughtered. I guess I was wrong. Truth is, we’re not supposed to have connections to the outside world, or even the inside world, because all of them change – you think you’re safe one day and the next you’re just some forgotten smear on the sidewalk without a fucking name. John Doe. Ha. In my world, love, family, happiness – none of them can exist. That is what Nina has been trying to tell me this morning. I guess my software is going haywire; after all, we weren’t created to feel. Nevertheless, I want out. And that is only one of the many things I can never have, not safely at least – I just have to remind myself that I started this cycle. I signed the fuck up for this psycho fucking job. She’s back to staring though, that cold smile still glued to her face. It screams danger, but I can’t make myself move. I can feel the gun pressed to my forehead and in my ears the screams are drowned in the white static buzz of fear and relief. I want out, I keep telling myself, and this is the only way to go – brains blasted all over some café where the staff are paid to keep things hush, hush and clean up the mess. “We don’t fix broken machines, Jay,” she tells me. “No, Nina, you don’t. You send them to the chop shop.” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my words – when the insomnia gets too bad I wish they could fix me. “Goodbye, Jay.” Those are the last words she says before she pulls the trigger. As the impact sends my body into the chair and the chair into the floor I tell myself I deserve this. I do, their machines do not break over things as insignificant as death, after all that’s what we’ve been built to serve. But even a machine deserves a chance at love. |
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| After all these years, I can't help but forgive... and forget. I'm so much older now. It's hard to remember a time when my hair wasn't white and my face wasn't lined with my emotions. In the corners of my eyes, spider webs of smiles. And around my mouth, my sadness. It seems so unfair that the memories of my feelings should be preserved in my own face. I find myself becoming forgetful in my old age, drifting away sometimes, distracted by the memories of better times. When silly problems seemed so full of meaning. When I'd ride my bike up the dusty track to meet you in the evenings. When I was young. There are moments I know I have forgotten. Moments I promised myself I would always remember- but you can't keep a promise like that. Your own mind turns against you, in the end. I am endlessly frustrated by the silly, small things that I do remember- like the bike on the path in the summer. Or ripples around your feet. Ivy climbing up the walls of the church, and though I remember the first time you kissed me, I cannot remember the first time you held my hand. I suppose it is the simple things that go first. You don't notice those memories floating away, at least not until you go to look for them. I hope that your time is not drawing to a close in the same way as mine- lonely and dull and cold in the afternoons. You do not deserve that, and anyway, I can't imagine you would ever be left alone. People loved you so deeply, so quickly. I loved you more than anyone else could have though, and I hope you knew that. I wish I could remember more. Sometimes I forget my anger, and my heart loves thinking about you. Those are the best days, when I can forget myself. But then, in the stillness of the night or the emptyness of mid-morning, I will remember that letter trembling in your hands. Or I'll be watching the sun glimmer on the lake, and remember how it danced in the same way, against the buckle on your belt. How proud and charming you looked in your uniform, when they came to take you away! And perhaps it is time for me to forgive you after all? After all, I am so old now. My bones creak and my mind is slower and sadder. It is a defeated sort of sadness- it knows there is nothing left to gladden my poor old heart. And it accepts it- we accept it. And we move on. I only wish you had said goodbye. I know you didn't do that. I would remember that! I only wish you might have written, or come to see me when everything was over. But something tells me that my own time may nearly be up. I'm steadily getting nearer to the dark water, like the long branches of the weeping willow. Ripples around your ankles. Oh, how I miss you. I suppose I must forgive you now. It was never really your fault. It was no-ones fault. It is just the way things must be. I am forgetting so fast- I can only just remember golden hair, a startling smile. I remember your wrists, your back. But should I see your eyes now, I may not recognise them. Maybe not. But you should know I loved you, more than anyone else ever could. And after all this time, I can't help but forgive.. |
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This is just the way things are - it's the way they always have been. Nothing is going to change. You say: ‘I can stop whenever I want.’ You say: ‘Tomorrow, I’ll quit tomorrow.’ But tomorrow comes and you wake up in the morning, stumble into the bathroom wearing nothing but last night’s bruises. Staring at yourself in the mirror you tell yourself this is the last day – seriously. And then you pop open that cabinet and grab for the pills: red, yellow, orange, white. The two little blue ones and the three round purple, and the big, clear one that looks like the drop of sap where you carved your initials in the old pine when you were a kid. Valium, Ritalin, Prozac, Adderall, Xanax, Vitamins B, B6, B12, and C, et cetera. And ‘C’ stands for ‘chocolate,’ those chews that are really sold for women – but by this point everything tastes the same. Everything tastes like your own private, household addiction and when you actually manage to draw a bath you can’t tell (or don’t care) whether the water is hot as hell or cold as ice. All you know is sinking underneath the surface and screaming, screaming, screaming, until you run out of breath. But still, sitting at the kitchen counter and drinking tasteless coffee, you tell yourself that tomorrow you really are going to quit – you are going to take a vacation and go someplace new. A virgin island, untouched by man, where names mean nothing and pills, made in every color of the rainbow, don’t exist. While in reality, you can’t remember a time before the orange/green cylinders cluttered your cabinet, Ambien and Lunesta have shared a space on your bedside table from the dawn of time and everywhere you look there are little capsules. You try to look, no feel, normal as you walk out the door; lower your eyes on the train and hope you don’t run into anybody you know. You want to be invisible, you want to fly; maybe that’s why you like the term ‘high’ so much – it separates you from the world, at least in its grounded state. Surreptitiously you pop a few more pills – and by this point you don’t even care what they are anymore – just that your hands stop shaking and the world stops rushing by so fast. You say: ‘Tomorrow, I’ll quit tomorrow.’ You say: ‘I can stop whenever I want.’ Nothing is going to change. This is just the way things are – it’s the way they always have been. ... And it’s the way they’ll stay. |