Latest Posts by jean-elle-writing - Page 3
Is the joy of wearing anyone’s face, dawning any voice on command worth more to you than possessing your own? Then by all means act your life away. Express yourself in characters, distilled emotions and memories of yours, collect awards, applause, whatever it is you think will fix you, make you happy. And when the curtain is called and the limelight dims and you sit with your viewer of one and struggle to communicate to other people in real life without the hug of a facade, I want you to remember that you wanted this. You wanted to be shucked and hollowed out to be filled with the adoration of millions. Don’t step down now. There’s nothing worth returning to anyway.
-Diary of an actress
You weren’t there on the mountain
when its last glacier melted,
You weren’t there in the river
when it’s water ran empty,
You weren’t there by the ocean
when it’s body rested over much of the land.
You didn’t watch the dying happen, but nonetheless, it happened. And one sunny day, when the skyscrapers stand hollow, and the cars don’t run, and the world’s heart has beat its last,
You won’t be there.
Spun silk from out my ear, divine ideation risen from a splintered mind.
Envelope your flesh with damnation and dance with me this night.
This isn’t me,
I don’t know who I’m pretending for.
Why is love not enough to keep someone here,
but enough to take them away?
In another world, I am strong. And withstanding, and sure of myself. I pray she’s well, for I certainly am not.
Splinter my dream into a web of cracks and gaps.
Take what little splash of anticipation I have pestering my rancorous mind and freeze it, immobilize me.
Take me where you want to go.
I’ve a pin with a ball end pinched between my index and thumb. Ego inflating like boils in me, I pop every idea that I am something good, worthwhile. I wonder if a harsh inner critic is a blessing or a curse as she darts pushpins in my spirit, and punches holes in my identity until I am paper thin and hollow. Light as a feather taken by the slightest idea of greener grass; convinced going anywhere is better than here.
The Girl who Cried Wolf
Was never met with hurried steps coming to her aid in the dead of night. The first night she watched for the beast, his golden eyes burned from a breath beyond the treeline. She shouted out for pitchforks, torches, and only felt wind and moonlight rushing to her side. Nobody believed her the first time.
Hands wrapped around my neck squeeze tighter. I wonder if this is how I will die. My eyes bulge but I see nothing but black splotches and bright stars. Night has followed me into day, just as I dreaded it would. Just as I dreaded it would.
Dirt bends into the maw of the mother’s wound, blood coldly trickling out of her, unhurried and luxuriant like vomiting molasses. She died by missile; its nose dove unflinching through her kitchen’s closed window and flung open the curtains and obliterated the walls like a dozen sledge hammers cracking concrete in cacophony. Dinner was not set to be served until 15 after 5 o clock; nobody waited at that table but her. Setting plates down on linen, forks and spoons down on napkins, face flat down on the broken checkered tile and a split where her ribs used to be. And so much dirt. She never would’ve allowed that, particular as she was about the dusting of the varnished oak wood and the shining of the tarnished silver, dying under such layers of soot would’ve killed her again if her eyes were ever to open. She must’ve died instantly, so instantly, that her body had time to give away its warmth as she lay bleeding slugs, for there was contentment on her face. Like she had just gotten the table setting the way she liked it, and she imagined the faces of her family sitting there none the wiser to the effort she put in to create their everyday fairy tale. But she knew. I’m glad that she knew just how wonderful she was, that particular anal persnickety woman whose home was mistaken for a terrorist’s.
More hours in the day ought to do it. Just four or five more, and my dreams don’t seem so far away.
Polymaths are rarer than single subject experts; lofty does not begin to describe my future. But who ever aimed low and went high? Better to do the opposite I say, and maybe I’ll warm up to medium.
Shadows cast under noses, in sullen cheeks and eye sockets galore.
Highlights on the rims of sharp roses, with thorns that grow ceiling to floor.
Nothing quite so soft and unforgiving, as the woman that waits at your door.
I just want to paint and forget a while;
Yes just a drop of wine, and a fan brush for blusher,
And my portrait will smile as wide as I do.
Taken by the wind’s sweet pressure on my face, I am swept to the little church on the hill. Sugar atomized in the air; footsteps bringing life to the silent cedar floorboards, nothing felt simpler than there. My eyes are sealed as I soak in the feeling, finding a smile in the blustery darkness.
How to Kill a Crooked Ward
Though nothing can haunt a crooked ward, her neck often cracks and turns rapidly as if she fears something coming. As if eyes leech onto her rigid and bark-like back, and their hunger for her image alarms her, or the echoes left of her fallen mind. Nothing can hurt a corrupted spirit, but perhaps the past. She fears not a hunter, but a walking memory, pulling her back to her former self. How wicked a deed to dredge a dead woman's mind back to her rotting body, to convince her only to die.
Though yellow grass grows
She wanders barefooted, on dry and cutting blades
Something has died here, in the glades of her old memories
Its terrain water-hungry, fertile with long-lost mistakes
Sweet aroma of morning dew has forsaken this place.
But she returns, like sunken ship to lighthouse unmanned,
though only yellow grass grows in her past.
Remembering him is like biting glass. I don’t know why I do it, why I keep hurting myself on the sharp details of his shattered memory. His eyes, such a pale blue, had a depth to them you wouldn’t expect like stagnant ocean water. My mouth bleeds as I masticate his face, the way words would leave his mouth; his voice is like rows of pins in my tongue. I can’t help myself but to recall him, over and over again, no matter the pain. I think that’s what draws me to recollection actually, feeling anything again. It’s the numbness that lets you drift into autopilot, living while asleep, that ruins you so much more deeply. Losing a loved one, and yourself along with them.
I thought life would be easier than this. That opportunities would fall in my lap, that I would never make mistakes. Typing it out now the ideas seem so foolish, but I truly believed them. The invincibility of youth waxes and wanes like the moon, beautiful, but an illusion. A display of only crescent truths and half-honesties. Once in the blue, darkness disrobes the white lies, and I am reminded of my poor decisions and silly aspirations in their naked blackness. Phases of judgment are all that is left of me, my future self peering backward at everything I have done and haven't done. I wait only for sunrise.
I thought if I could redeem something in him I could redeem something in me, too. But I failed us both. He is not a project, and I cannot be healed vicariously. The only path we can take here, is forward.
With glass in our soles, tearing us apart and revealing us at the same time. Forward.
I was his worry stone.
he couldn’t pick my face out of a crowd,
Or name a single interest of mine;
he couldn’t bother to wash his mug in the sink,
Or put the coffee on in the first place;
he couldn’t braid my hair while he spoke,
Or untangle the nest he made.
All he could do was rub his hands together,
And wonder where I’d gone,
after eroding me away.
Feel free to talk to me! I’m more than happy to answer any questions or chat about writing and or books :)
REBLOG IF ITS OKAY TO TALK TO YOU.
Please.
You killed my chicken.
Your digital chicken. It’s a game Heather.
You killed my chicken. And didn’t apologize.
It wasn’t on purpose.
You didn’t apologize.
It’s not a real chicken.
You didn’t apologize.
I’m not apologizing for killing a fake chicken in a fake world. It’s not real babe. It’s just a game, please stop acting crazy.
Don’t call me babe when you don’t care about my feelings. You killed my pet in the game and didn’t say sorry. Even when I’ve expressed it so openly that this matters to me.
It shouldn’t! That’s the whole point. This should not be a big deal it’s pixels on a screen!
You’re being disrespectful.
You’re being insane! Get over the bloody chicken!
I’m done.
Thank god.
With us. With this. You don’t take anything that I care about seriously. You’re so above it all.
You’re breaking up with me over a stupid fucking chicken?!?
I’m breaking up with you because you’re mean. If you killed it and said you were sorry, everything would be fine. You choose to act like a dickhead over so many little things like this and I’m tired of it. You try to convince me not to care about something instead of caring about it with me.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
This isn’t the first time you’ve done this. Remember the cat puzzle?
Oh how could I forget the stupid cat puzzle.
Even now you get so incredibly upset whenever I’m upset about something. You try to shut me down before I can express I’m unhappy. According to you, I’m not unhappy, I’m just crazy for no reason!
You said it, not me.
Oh, goodbye Dereck. Goodbye.
This won’t bring the chicken back! You’re such an idiot.
Right.
My skin prickles hot; I asked the old man a question and he answers with a story so far unrelated I had to turn around and see just who in the hell he was talking to, because it certainly wasn’t me! Yes or no will do just fine, I kept hearing myself say in my mind, my voice gentle like a kitten’s fighting tooth and nail to drown out his gravely droning on about airplanes and the war. Outwardly I must’ve been screeching fake niceties and not pulling off my polite half assed head nods because his eyes were wide, and albeit dull as ever but he seemed perturbed. And that’s saying something because men like Robert don’t seem anything, they’re simply half dead elderly men roaming the earth to challenge God. Look how long I’m living! Keep knocking Jesus, I’m not opening the door! I can’t imagine being a gold digger and accidentally marrying a Robert. Undying so much as they are unriveting. Later I looked in a mirror and saw my face, still plastered up fake happy from our little conversation if you could call it that. I understood instantly why he seemed so off-put by me, I looked clinically insane. This fake it til you make it crap has got to work for somebody but it is undoubtedly not me. Unfortunately God put me here to be as authentic as possible—to punish me of course.
My innocence was taken by hands no bigger than my own, another child who’s eyes swam blue with cold apathy. She couldn’t have known what she was doing was wrong, for I recognize now, the same things were being done to her. How can I raise my fists to the one who hurt me when she had no innocence to begin with, and I had something to lose. She was damned from the start.
Isn’t it cruel that true recognition demands separation? That we cannot have night and day without the horizon keeping them forever apart, that I cannot join souls with you without losing you and myself in the process.
She caressed her lover’s hair like a bird tending her nest; she saw only futures in the black tangles clinging to her fingers.
Is that why people write? Because no one will listen?
Hope lives in the eyes of children. I can see that now that it has left mine.