Latest Posts by jean-elle-writing - Page 4

It is between worlds that I sit, holding the hands of the future. Virtual realities spin before me as threads in a spindle endless, and I marvel at the fabric of us changing. Breathing life into our imaginations. It is here teetering on the tightrope above oblivion that we navigate ever forward. Lead by our ability to imagine something new, something better that what we have now.

I’ll figure it out, I always figure it out. Why not now? What’s wrong with me?

Nothing. Maybe this is a problem that can’t be solved. Not even by you.

Life is happening, life is happening all the time. I can’t seem to catch it in between my fingers, elusive as rays of light. I cannot keep it high in my lungs, it leaves me like a breath. I am a meager stone in a fast coursing river and I watch what erodes me away. Life is cold. Invigorating. I wish I could hold its hand and study its face before it escapes me again.

Building empires on falling sand, when we sink it is by design. Pinnacles dull, golden eras dust as they live on in old men’s memory and no where else.

What is left for me, impaled on the hills I’ve chosen to die on.

Time keeps passing, I fight hard for change. It does not yield to me, wind against a mountain. I carry on, I carry on, still. There is nothing left for me to do but die.

Let her down softly, I say. Let her down softly. The little girl that lives in me enduring this world confined by rancor deserves a gentle bed to die in.

Out of fear of being exposed, I crawl and grovel and claw at the shell of my old self, desperate for a morsel of comfort, of old. I find I’ve done nothing but destroy it’s memory and starve my newest iteration, in a form of betrayal only one as indecisive and stagnancy-drawn as I could pull off.

If I must abandon myself to earn their smiles, what are they worth to me anymore.

And I am content to keep hurting. I am content to keep pressing my soft body into the recesses of his absence, if it will only bring me closer to his place in nothing.

Depression is driving a car dry, no oil, no gas, just habit. Nothing slows, people die, jobs disappear, experiences pass. Everything is a miraculous colorful blur that illicits no feeling in you. You remember that it used to and this pricks your fingers with drops of sadness. It grinds you down, your body grows weary. What doesn’t kill you right away doesn’t make you stronger, it just takes it’s time. And that’s all you have, sitting in your hands like a steering wheel stuck straight, propelling you ever forward. Never caring to ask if you’re ready, if it hurts. Depression is driving a car dry because that’s all you know how to do. To keep going even though you’ve nothing left.

Facism rises, having not been put down. Like hot air in feverish men’s chests, pounding their rib cage with the old adage, me before all, me before all.

I am fickle with happiness. They say you don’t know a good memory is happening until it ends, but I do. I’m acutely aware of how precious the good times are—pair that with the odd feeling I get of being watched by my future self, having dealt with the deaths and tragedies that growing older brings, seeking refuge in the past. I feel anxious knowing it will be over, and that no matter how deeply and fully I cherish the strong legs beneath me, the wind on my face, my parents by my sides, it will end the same. All happinesses are doomed to be memories. And that bitters them for me; when I am at my happiest, and my smile is wide as it is earnest, I still taste the rancor in the back of my throat.

My sister drops her head underwater and I follow shortly after. I close my eyes as tight as I can and with cheeks full as balloons, I hold my breath. We both breach the ocean surface and look for each other. And we’re right where we left one another, of course. I miss that feeling of certainty, of knowing who I’m swimming with. Now we are grown and childhood is a twinkle in my eye. I see broken pieces of it if I look hard enough, disappointed at friends that don’t keep their pinky promises, at my husband for leaving the chores to me when she never would. She hated the dishes, the dirty refried beans dad would let soak in the sink and float into patches of dark pinkish slime. But she didn’t let me do them alone. I sit at the beach with my legs long and in the sun. I am warm but not complete. I look around at the flurry of faces, the assortment of multicolored swimsuits striped and polka dotted. It’s charming, but I don’t think I’d know where to look if I put my head under like I used to.

Lucky for you, there are people far more forgiving than your inner critic. May they find you and show you the softness you cannot show yourself.

Remembering him is like getting to know a shard of glass. I push my finger tip down gingerly into his jagged profile and draw tears; he is not whole anymore. He will never be whole again. I could sip tea at my window sill and watch the clouds roll on, but I prefer to live on the edges of his memory. I prefer to dwell in my scrapbooks and peak into his diaries, peeling back the brokenness of disappearance into the smoothness of understanding. Floating in the ether I am pricked again by the knowledge that no matter how deeply I learn of his soul, I cannot unplunge him from the river styx. And I am content to keep hurting, I am content to keep pressing my soft body into the recesses of his absence, if it will only bring me closer to his place in nothing. I am content in that.

Indecision, my worst enemy, my bedfellow, my self. I look in the mirror and am met with a series of incomplete paths, loose ends, commitments unfinished. I am torn each way and no way, my spirit has been drawn and quartered. I watch my friends walk the straight and narrow line. I envy their distance, as I sit in the stagnant waters that grow higher and higher. Instead of standing up and walking away from it all, I tread water. You can always stay in the same place, contemplate the same questions, mull over the same potential paths, but the comfort the old routine brings you will fade away. That is one certainty I hold in my bundle of uncertainties. This life I live will get worse.

Am I denying myself happiness because I do not deserve it? Or because I am afraid that if I do, it will end anyways.

I want to know peace for while, if that’s alright. If the world can spare it for someone like me.

It does not matter the school you come from but your passion for your subject. There are private school boys who have never lived life, slept through it as it is but a dream to them who will never know the endless strife of the girl from nowhere trying to make it in this world on grit and determination alone. No money in her pockets to cushion her falls and catch her when she is pushed back from the gates of academia. Only the belief that she will get back up; propelling her like north wind on a shanty sail.

Why can’t you let me have anything? Why can’t you let me have anything? I ask the mirror.

The girl in it is too busy weeping to answer.

I’ve had such wonderful times. I wish I could remember them easier. I wish the brain wasn’t programmed to cling to the worst things we’ve ever experienced, to keep us safe I know, but some things no matter how long you dwell on them you cannot protect yourself from. It’s torture.

I never knew nothing could be so heavy as it is now. Air rests in my hands like handlebars on a bike to nowhere. Chain links of silence drill their fingers into my ears, it is all I can hear now. My muscles weary from carrying do not rest now that he is gone. They anticipate the next departure. They cling to routine, clutching, clutching, unable to let go. All they’ve ever known is hanging on, just another day. What is there left for them now but emptiness, slopping down like wet concrete. Frozen in time.

I miss him. I see him out of the corner of my eye, walking into the living room like he’s done a hundred times before with his stark blue eyes and crisp white coat, a proud look on his face like he has the body of a panther and not a simple house cat. But he isn’t there. Only shadows cast by the wooden side tables he used to stretch himself on. A trick of the light, played on me by my aching heart. For the ornery flame tail Siamese to prance into view, and reject any and all affections, sitting elegantly with his tail tucked around his legs like a statue. Fine art, looked at, not touched. What I wouldn’t give to adore him from a distance again. Though even I was lucky enough at times to win his favor, and have the statue descend from his pedestal to rest at my feet, with his head on my ankle and the occasion lick of my fingers as I let him sniff me. His fur was soft as a rabbit’s, a forbidden fruit tempting me every time he strode through the kitchen to watch me cook. I respected his space, and in return he sat on the counter where he knew he wasn’t allowed, and perused the grocery bags curiously, often times sitting in the empty ones. I didn’t mind it, I cherished spending time with him, even if it meant washing the counters of paw prints. I miss him dearly. And I wish the tricks of the light would last just a little bit longer, so that maybe as I look at him, eager to absorb every detail of his little perfect face, he can look at me one last time and see me too.

I lost my boy today. He wasn’t overly fond of me, more so my mother was his favorite, but he had his moments. Moments when he’d remember the day I saved him, abandoned by his mother as a kitten only days old. Whatever happened to her, I don’t know. Maybe she knew he was sick. That one day his heart would fail, and she didn’t want to stick around for the ticking time bomb to finally go off. The one only of his litter to survive the cold of the night, finally joining his brothers and sisters on the other side. I loved him more than you can imagine. And I cherished his tender moments with me, every one. I do not care that his heart was enlarged and he would live to only 7. I would save him every time I found him in every universe that I did. He will always be worth the pain of loving him. Always.

Gorging herself, teeth once white steeped in hot and sticky redness, the siren suddenly felt wet coming from her eyes. She jolted backward.

What is this?

Tears. You really liked me didn’t you? The sailor lass muttered, blue eyes now hazed grey with blood loss.

What does that matter? You’re mine you know.

So I am. She said, head tilted back in the pooling sand like a mother’s lap. Something felt natural about this, an unbirth seemed gentler oddly enough, than plain death.

Do you always cry when you eat? She asked, her voice once proud and strong, tapering out

I, I don’t know. I normally do this underwater.

Am I special? To be eaten on the shore? She asked, eyes stuck upward toward a sky the sunset didn’t touch anymore. A cold rush of air carved through the coastline she reposed on, erasing her footprints.

Her heart stopped.

Yes, of course you were. The siren said to no one, her voice wavering for the first time. Of course you were. Tears dropped easier now, and she was certain no sea ever felt so warm, and so foreign to her as this one.

I am glad for my misspent youth, my contradictions, my stupid ideas and my fear of stepping out of line. I am glad something wild lived in me once and I did not hide it. I feel no shame, no regret. Only peace that all of me got to exist in this one short life.

Sometimes when I have a dream, I feel entirely refreshed of my old perspectives. I see everything brand new, as if I’m a different person. What relief. I know now why our minds wander in the fields of the twilight hours. To abandon the stagnant pond misery we wade in and remember possibility, endless as always.

I will make up for lost time.

I will make up for lost time.

I will make up for lost time.

I will make up for lost time.

I will make up for lost time.

I will make up for lost time.

I will make up for lost time.

I will be myself, and if the world rejects that then I will reject the world, and make my own place. I will not be lonely there, because I know there are others just like me, struggling to reconcile the desire to belong and the desire to be.