outspoken

He’s interesting.

I know this because he has managed to interest me, which - if genuine -  is a hard thing to do.

When he looks at me, he really looks.  Like he can see straight through.  I should be scared…scared that he’ll see me when I’m vulnerable, but then again, there’s something very reassuring about that.  About acceptance.  

Sometimes, I can see the pain in his eyes, memories.  But when these moments pass, a grin stretches across his face, he lights up, he’s alive and real and not buried underneath his past. He’s strong. I like that.

His taste and touch leave little to desire.

I could fall asleep in his arms. That’s a first.

I put my mind in a jar and my heart through a sieve.  You can never be too safe with these things. I light a match, set it in an ashtray. It’s a seance, to conjure things old and dead, to burn letters from the devil.  To these roots I cling and to these ghosts, I’m bound.  I swallow yesterday’s humiliation, today’s regret. ‘I don’t have…regrets’  I remind myself. Shattering. Moments. Lost. Restless nights…nightmares. Forceful hands. And lonely little girls. What’s not to regret?

Even the self-worth of the strongest soul has a price.  It can be bought and manipulated, twisted, ruined. I sit on the dark soil and piece the jar, and my life, back together.

Hours feel like days, days weeks, weeks years.

Time drags, eternity is a curse when one’s mind obsesses, throbs with exhaustion.  Sanity slips. I’m either skipping like a child or stumbling like a drunk between the fine line of illusion and reality.

The smoke from the match rises. I swallow that too. It’s heavy and settles in a cavity in my soul.

A light cuts through. Suddenly, unexpected.  Strikes hard. Roots dry and snap easily. It fills me, my toes and fingertips, my heart, my mind.  I drop the letters, singed and flaking off in the wind.  The wall breaks.

Two eyes beaming through the dark, familiar and warm, climbing down from a cloudless sky.  

With a kiss, he steals the smoke. A good taste. A warm, surge of normalcy and I am pulled back to my center. 

Nine months ago, I looked under a microscope and found God. Or something like it.  The microscope wasn’t really a microscope, it was a shrink’s office, a ten week hiatus in Milwaukee to “figure things out.”  When you walk away from one life, you can’t go back.  I praised my indignation, took a personality test and tried to discover myself.   

Nine months passed and I’ve discovered very little.  I put my signature on a 12 month lease in a new city. I hate commitment. There is now an 100 mile long tether which stretches across the great state of Wisconsin and fastens to my gut, a contemporary umbilical cord, a harness to a rejected womb.

Nights are unsettling here. I cross my legs under the covers and flex the toes on my right foot.  Or is it my left? Staring at the neutral walls, far from offensive, I briefly consider the work I must do.  But that work seems unimportant, small.  It does not interest me nearly as much as these walls, little cracks and chips in the paint make pictures. I’ve nearly bitten my hand to oblivion trying to make out the other eye to a face in the ceiling.  I forget my feet are crossed.  Funny feeling. 

Noises in an empty house don’t fill spaces, they only remind.  Remind you of what you used to have, what you threw away, what was thrown away for you.  It’s not sad really, it’s just…different. I sit awake in bed listening to the heartbeat in my ear, breathing words to a forgotten lullaby.  The radiator clicks and sputters in the corner. This room is a sample from the Pier 1 Fall catalog, I think to myself as I stare at the tan wall. Empty spaces. A person could go crazy in a place like this.