panic in the tunnels, we are all waiting for the end, something abrupt, something like a flash of lightening. none of us want cancer, none of us want to drown. make it quick, make it when i’m not looking, make it when i think i’m going to live forever.
stuck underneath tunnels, we dream each other a friend to hang onto, someone to give us comfort when we have no comfort to give. we look around, looking for that face, someone familiar in the crowd and all we get are crowded eyes looking past us.
i’d give anything for a wailing wall, just one sheer moment of rage and pain and sorrow and broken teeth and split lips and skin cracked over knuckles and a single breath of exhaustion flung against a pile of perfectly set stones to take us away.
i don’t always get along with the little one, she is tempestuous and ornery, has her mood swings, sticks her tongue out when i tell her what to do. but there are moments like this one, when she is suddenly frail, where even her frustration collapses her, when i get up to walk out of the room for some odd thing and she asks, where are you going? and i reply, do you want me to stay? and she nods her head and i stay and am overwhelmed with the sense that one day she will learn of all my sins, of all my crimes, and will want me to leave instead.
a breeze licks my limbs like warm water, i am boundless and endless, all roads begin from my sternum and find no home. my heart beats at the irregular intervals of your breath, haggard and tentative. i wipe sweat off your brow that clings to me like spit from a parched mouth. who would have thought i would still be here, raining whispers of shattered glass across your lips.
gristle stuck between my tooth and gum, a digging that brings about all sorts of damage to rattlesnakes on the mend. you were the dream i could not let go off, a haunting of whispers and tears and seared flesh that tasted bitter at first followed by a sweet aftertaste. i drank wine for water, a thirst i could never quench but only be thwarted by suspicions and the lack of glamor. we had two stories to tell, and neither had a plot worth mentioning, only the sites of graves too muddy to fill and i was entrenched. there are no real words for this, only imaginary ones for winged beasts and furry men without hearts, but it was very real your nails raked over my cheeks gouging my eyes for pearls and my mouth for forgiveness. i had promised you would never be forsaken, but here we were straddling camels on opposite sides of a desert rife with chasms, sun burnt and lacking.
he says, you’re a contradiction in terms, you’re happy and sad, passionate and sterile, terminally ill yet fitfully alive
i said, this is where madness makes its home
and its like the little one knows, she insists
that i sit with her, play
these games on the laptop,
puts an arm around me when I join in
to hold me still
and the roar comes back to me,
soft and gentle and strong, and
suddenly
for the first time
i realize what it is: it is mourning,
it is loss & it goes on
without stopping
i said, i made nothing of it.
he says, you make and make spindles of threads that we all choke on through our navels until we’re hung like christmas ornaments over fireplaces grown cold and blasted with soot.
i said, you’re making nothing out of this.
he says, you’ve made a mess of things, you’ve made a mess in your shorts, you’ve soiled our mouths, you’ve rubbed it in, you’ve rubbed our faces in it, you’re so full of shit.