April Madness 2022

@Stringbean @rida @ILUVBUNNIES08 @lliyah @mothbroth @QueenMadrose @Plume @Buranko @lehmanf @Phillauthet @looseleaf @ForeverYoung299 @AlmostImmortal @niteowl @Zenaida @SilverNight @Grimmwolf @Rook @InuYosha @Shady @shayspeare

to whom it may concern:

i'm writing you regarding your last letter. yes, you're right; we haven't talked in a while. somewhere along finding my way home, i let myself go, and i think i've gotten worse. i became the monster i told you i'd never awaken; the ghoul in the walls all on his lonesome, calling out to you familiar words. two familiar fists upon one familiar skeleton. two familiar fists upon two familiar ghosts. two familiar fists upon those same familiar four walls.

please find enclosed my ribcage, for it is not only mine anymore. i have dusted my bones in preparation for this. i've seen it coming for decades.

sincerely yours,
eternity.

it is unfortunate how we learn to fold ourselves infinitely smaller, to demand less space, and hope the world steps over our dreams disguised as ant hills, becoming less and less, as every rib, and lung, and laugh gets creased in half, thinned down and weighed carefully hoping our elbows don’t extend too far, or brush up against anyone who would mind our sheer existence.

one day might the memory of feathers demand we unfurl our hidden-selves, straighten out these crunched-in arms with wing stretches and attempt flight.

one day might you know, you are enough in all of yourself, and if you dared to fly, even the sky could not contain you.

persistence of memory / time moves on

your question goes like this:
“why do we even wish on stars?”

i don’t think you understood
how much i loved it when someone said the freckles on my face
looked like a smattering of constellations,
how in that moment i was a galaxy
stored in a web of neurons,
orbit paths twisting in the lines of my palms.

i don’t think i could’ve explained to you
that i wanted to be a miracle,
a confession whispered at two am
to the cracked window blinds,
a promise that someone is looking for through a telescope.

i don’t think i knew yet
that i’ve always been more of a black hole,
the thing i was terrified of as a kid.

come, for the riverbed
wants to feel your feet
once more. she misses
your toes on her smooth stones,
gravel sticking to your soles.
she wants you to splash
cool, silty water on your skin,
for the summer's air is dry and hot.

the ocean begs you
to stay away.
winter turns him ugly, choppy waves
smelling of salt and risk, of
frigidness and whispers.
sand cuts, and seashells mar;
scars form, and the ocean weeps,
for he does not want you to go.

4. "What if it all goes right?"

My therapist asks me this
as I get distracted by the oddity
of my face on the potato-quality Zoom call
(my jawline looks weirdly like my grandma's
and I may be old but not that old).

And I wonder, not for the first time,
how she has the audacity to ask this,
as if I haven't told her a thousand tales
of how I was young and optimistic
and believed I would find
a calling
a friendship
a true love
only to find reality
does not reward the naïve.

I may not have been born a cynic,
but I wrap it around me like that too-big coat
I bought because I figured I could only get fatter
and no one wants the shame
of struggling with zippers in the cold.

My mother thinks I look silly
in that coat, but my therapist says
that perhaps I am an adult now
and I don't need to live
by her rules of what looks best.

And in these fragile early days
of spring, I should not need that coat
as I go to meet people again
wearing only metaphorical masks,
but if I let it go, I'll get frozen again
by the echoes of
"what are you doing here?"
"nobody wants to be with you."
"there's someone else"
"unfortunately you are not the right fit for our organization".

And so I sit here,
looking dowdy and over-heated,
cracking jokes about how my face
is 100 percent effective birth control,
because self-insults may not be
the best insurance policy,
but they're the only one I can afford.

A rose, dead and decayed
Laid there in the abandoned balustrade.
The birds whispered the tragedy
Of which there was not a singe remedy.

The juvenile was not on earth
The fire of love was extinguished in the hearth.
The rose was torn into pieces of heart,
To be carried away by wind, putting a full stop to a start

He walked away, the birds still singing
As the bells of parting started ringing.