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.
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.
There are parts of me, like patches in a quilt, that don’t seem alike at all, that aren’t quite right sitting next to each other at first glance. But I promise they are. I promise my silliness does not contradict my seriousness, I promise that all of me is better together than ripped apart.
There is something so shameful in trying. In putting forth the effort out in the open where the onlookers look and dig their forks into my darlings. My creation dies in the end, regardless. Whether they relish every morsel or idly masticate while their eyes are drawn to the street walkers, just like all that came before her, my idea is eaten. And I am left alone to wonder if a piece of my soul had any flavor worth talking about.
If there is nothing worthwhile in me, how do I go forward from here? How do I live as a creature and not the woman I thought I was?
The girl I was and the woman I am reconcile in tides. Coursing warm waves and biting cold foam, dancing in circles. Becoming one another, and abandoning one’s self in permanence.
There is a kinder world within all of us, but we must agree to be as kind as it is to see it.
I wished every day was summer when I was a little girl. No school time, just bikes on the pavement. Sun chasing our shadows, never quite able to keep up. Sweat collected on my forehead like a tribe of parents watching me worried as I popped wheelies with no helmet on. The wind brushed my hair wild. I wished every day was summer when I was a little girl. But I’m a woman now, and the sun has caught up to me in the shape of fluorescent bulbs. It has taken my shadow. I swivel in my office chair and lean back to feel childhood’s wind-
I feel nothing.
I can’t have children, I’d have too much love for them. I’d bring them up scared of the world like I am. Scared of nothing and everything at the same time.
If nothing else, I will always have my misery. Like a child that does not grow old but cries and cries in her cradle, only silencing in my arms. She is mine, and I am hers.
I need a new wardrobe—I’m running out of time to be young and beautiful. For people to see me and not just look at me out of some mundane politeness. I need to be everything I am right now in these fleeting moments, or it’s like they’ve already gone.
The truth is I have nothing worth writing about in me. I don’t connect with other people and that’s where good writing happens. I’m often in other people’s arms, I’m enwrapped in their laughter, but I don’t let them anywhere near me. I want so desparately to be loved as the mangled creature that I am but I’m too ashamed to show anybody my real face. So I hide it. And I make people laugh, I make them laugh so hard their sides hurt. And I feel the closest thing to love that someone like me can have. And I hope it is enough, because I don’t know how to have more than that and still feel safe. Maybe there isn’t a way. Maybe truly being loved is supposed to be scary. And I’m just a coward.
It’s easier to make fun of something than to try it in earnest. How many non-artists laugh at novices, and fear to even look at their instrument, dull pencils neglected in their drawers yearning really for paper.
When you wear masks like you take breaths, you don’t notice that the act is killing you. You don’t see the bags under your eyes, the redness invading your scleras. The undying tug on the corners of your thin pursed lips. You see only the delighted faces of those so pleased to see not your face, but the faces you adorn for them. Catered to them. For some, the mask you wear is a mirror, for they want nothing more than to see themselves in you. For others, black as night to obscure anything akin to their likeness. But you are so enraptured with their happiness, you neglect your own. For there is a worse fate than being unloved.
It is being loved as something you’re not.
Sincerity is the blood held in by the knife in your chest. It feels too much like dying to be honest.
Living with my mother is like living in my office. She is my boss, my judge, my jury—my executioner. I hear her performance reviews of me in the living room, sat comfortably next to her easing into the armrests. I however can’t afford to be comfortable, I live on the clock and there is only a pinpoint for my big toe to precariously perch on as I teeter in and out of her good graces.
Why do the ones I love keep being taken from me? What have I done to deserve shards of their memory pricking my fingertips like spindles every time I scroll on my phone and see a face that has stolen a piece of them? Their eyes on someone else’s head, their smile creasing someone else’s cheeks, their ginger hair curling around someone else’s ears that don’t fucking look right! I hate that I see you everywhere. I hate more that it’s never you.
She was a moth that waited for the light to find her. And when she died it was dark as always.
Sweet thing didn’t bite me nearly hard enough to hurt me, though not for lack of trying. She thought I was dead, but she’d just woken me with her nibbling. My eyes dragged down to the source, a head full of spiked black hair, with droopey triangles flat on her forehead form being above water. Her eyes were black as well, I was transfixed by them, how her pupils devoured her face. The sharp point of her nose dug into my knuckle as her mouth inched it’s way up my finger. Our eyes met. She inhaled sharply and pushed herself away from me, her eyes warbled with shock, and then settled down to worry. I wasnt worried though. Not for a moment.
-Diary of a Siren
Fairies are a gentle sort, no bigger than pointer fingers. A little fire sprite burned the tip of mine once. She wasn’t sorry about it neither, she just snickered and gave me a thimble to wear over its ugly little boil. I sort of admired that unapologetic way she had about her. Her nature wasn’t wrong after all, she didn’t burn me out of hatred or malice. She burned because she was fire.
My cat didn’t like me much. I saved his life when he wasn’t more than two days old, but I never was his favorite person. He’d meow at me all angry like whenever I got near him, so I left him be. He’d let me pet him once in a blue moon and I treasured that. But he got sick. The sort of sick you don’t get better from. And even though he avoided me most of his life, and I respected his wishes, deep down he remembered what I did for him. His last days alive he came and sat with me. Maybe asking me again, save me. I know you can. You did it before. And with everything in me I wish I could have. I would have saved him a thousand times over even if it meant he stayed in rooms I wasn’t in, and preferred people other than me. I would give everything for him to dislike me a lifetime’s worth. But I only got four years.
I find comfort in rotten men, with nothing to their name but their love for me. They are corpses of their former ambitions, if they had any to begin with not that I’d care, and I rest my head on their bloated bellies and dig my nails in their cracked old skin until scabfulls of pride fall off. What sour smell fills my nose oh I can’t get enough of it. They adore me you see, and I never have to worry about them running off. Their legs don’t often work, stationary fellows don’t often stray. Good of them not to, for if they ever did I’d put them deeper in the ground than even the most desperate woman would be willing to dig. I can’t help but be the romantic that I am, and what is there not to love in an utterly rotted man. It is addicting the level of devotion they provide, the sort only an abandoned man can. How sweet is the love of a loveless one, untouched and untainted in wait for me.
Her cupids bow dips to her bottom lip, drawn constantly, words seldom loosed. I tease laughter from her with my foolishness, and every time her mouth opens another of love’s arrows is fired at me, and if I am a soldier, I am one who so longs to be struck down, I am one who would never raise a shield against her.
—Diary of a Siren
I thought I’d miss my pinky finger more dearly but I can’t seem to manage it. The way her eyes lit up as her teeth dug just beneath my knuckle, I’m tempted to let her eat something else.
—Diary of a Siren
Oh, I feel warm. I feel warm like the sun even in the darkest of rooms. I am me again.
Smaller hearts beat faster, ever faster. Run rabbit run ever faster, ever faster. I’ll cut your finger cut your thumb, wear a plaster, wear a plaster. I’ll tell your secrets to the room, such disaster, such disaster.
Forgive me gentle heart, I didn’t mean to be a bastard.