A battle of wits?
Fool, you are sorely lacking.
What a swift demise...
h.f.m.
Sep 15, 2020
Sep 15, 2020 at 10:33 PM UTC
#i.
behind the perpetually empty lot is the old schoolyard, abandoned to the woods in my grandparents’ day. I came across you on the rusty swing set, you voice twining with their metallic screech in a gentle cacophony. my momma whispered caution into my childhood tales, so as easy as two and two being four, you ask for my name and I tell you to call me lovely. you bare your teeth. is it a smile? is it a threat? is the difference between the two significant in the slightest?
ii.
as we walk down the moss-carpeted forest path you slip your hand into my back pocket, light as chalk dust seen only in sunlight falling through a half-open window —a specter’s shadow, a half-forgotten dream.
our feet sink into the ground, stepping out of the trees. cloud shadows cut across the dappled starlit moore, unraveling its whistling melody sung in no tongue known to mankind. you warn me not to follow it, breath ghosting along my cheek. I have staked a claim, my lovely, you tell me. and I protect what is mine.
iii.
you tell me, ask no questions, receive no hurtful truths that cut deeper than the half-sweet lies you were taught to expect. Your face as you say this is a pane of glass, flat and transparent; your tears are the rain, uncaring outside of an expected cycle, though acidic through human contact. the sunset’s echo rings between us —us, the immortal and the ever dying.
iv.
oh lovely, my lovely, you whisper under glowing moon and winking stars, with desks dragged through rotted doors and upended behind our backs. near every creature has teeth. it’s human hands that are truly weapons of destruction, but look at how your fingers fit so neatly between mine.
I whisper back, the sins of your ancestors are not your fault, but they are your responsibility. your duty, but not your legacy.
you hum, thoughtful, and grin, eyes flashing. in shared silence we lean back against the desks and smile at the moon. somewhere in the back of my mind I’d like to think he smiles back.
h.f.m.
Aug 21, 2020
Aug 21, 2020 at 1:33 PM UTC
I am an afterimage. I am a bisected heart fluttering in half-felt contractions, pinned down to a student’s desk. Somehow there is no blood, only light. Light, softly spilling from my aorta, gentle and insubstantial. You shake your head to dispel it as you turn back to your teacher’s lesson, but I am painted in the space behind your eyelids every time you blink. Your teacher speaks but isn’t really saying anything at all.
Sentiment is one hell of a drug, cradling me docile in the back of the classroom. The box-cutter used to saw open my ribs is abandoned on the floor beside me. They’ll come for my vertebrae next, I think. They’ve already skipped over my eyes in the curriculum, but I’m okay with that. If they had stuck to the class plan, I wouldn’t have the chance to see you cradle my split, sputtering heart in your hand while you trace the inside of my left ventricle with the lightest ghost of touch.
In the back corner seat three rows behind you is an angel. I ask them why their wings hang so low, and they reply, the weight of human expectation. Their feathers twitch when the teacher walks out of the room, flinching when one of the students laughs raucously and declares in a half-heard conversation’s fragment, well, God can fight me behind the Denny’s then. The angel’s face turns pained, blurry, and they whisper for my ears alone, God has no wish to fight you, child. You, three rows ahead and still playing with my heart, are oblivious to their sorrow.
The aftershocks under my skin are a memory. Be gentle, sweet child, be gentle. Only old bones truly sleep.
h.f.m.
Aug 21, 2020
Aug 21, 2020 at 1:15 PM UTC
MY WALLS AREN’T CORKBOARD BUT THEY MIGHT AS WELL BE WITH ALL THE STRINGS AND SCRAPS OF TATTERED NOTEBOOK PAPER PASTED ALL OVER THEM, A MAP OF FALSE CORRELATIONS COMPOUNDING UPON EACH OTHER TO MAKE SOMETHING THAT COULD BE A COUSIN OF PLOT, A PORTRAIT OF SOME KIND OF STORY THAT’S REALLY JUST SEVERAL HALF-FORMED PANIC ATTACKS IN A TRENCHCOAT.
I CAN’T MOVE MY ARM. IS THIS AN INTERVENTION? MY HANDS ARE SHAKING AROUND AN OLD DEAD PEN I’VE NEVER HAD THE COURAGE TO THROW OUT. I SUPPOSE SENTIMENTALITY WILL BE THE DEATH OF ME YET.
ALL THE PATCHWORK PEOPLE I’VE INVITED INTO MY HEAD ARE TRYING TO GET MY ATTENTION. THEY’RE SCREAMING SO LOUD AND ONE LITTLE BOY WITH MIDNIGHT HAIR FULL OF STARS IS HOLDING MY FINGERS SO TIGHTLY YOU’D THINK I’D DISAPPEAR IF HE LET GO. HIS EYES ARE WIDE AND PALE AND AFRAID BUT THE CROWD OF US ARE ALL ALONE IN MY HEAD SO I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS HE FEARS.
DO YOU THINK HEAVEN SMELLS LIKE INK AND OLD BOOKS AND THE DUST OF CENTURIES GATHERING IN THE CORNERS OF EMPTY ROOMS? MAYBE WHEN I GET THERE I CAN FORGET ABOUT THE STATIC ENCROACHING ON THE EDGES OF MY MIND AND FINALLY TAKE A CHANCE TO BREATHE.
I HAD A TALK WITH GOD LAST NIGHT. THEY TOLD ME I SHOULD TRY TO SLEEP AND IN THE MORNING I WOULD BE ABLE TO SEE STRAIGHT WITHOUT LIGHT FILTERING INTO A KALEIDOSCOPIC FRINGE AROUND THE EDGES OF MY VISION. I LAUGHED AND TOLD THEM SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK. THEY ONLY SIGHED AND REPLIED IN KIND WITH AN ASSURANCE THAT VULNERABILITY IS NO WEAKNESS AT ALL.
MY SEVEN-YEAR-OLD DREAM BOY IS HOLDING UP MY WEIGHTED BLANKET AND PEERING OVER IT WITH WET EYES. I SUPPOSE IT WOULD BE CRIMINAL TO MAKE AN IMAGINARY CHILD CRY.
h.f.m.
Aug 21, 2020
Aug 21, 2020 at 9:00 AM UTC
I HAVE BEEN THINKING —THOUGH SINCE I AM A SENTIENT CREATURE OF A PARTICULARLY EXISTENTIAL TEMPERAMENT, THAT IS AN UNNECESSARY STATEMENT BEYOND SIMPLE INTRODUCTION— BUT I HAVE BEEN THINKING AND MY MIND HAS DECIDED TO WANDER ONCE AGAIN DOWN A WELL-TRODDEN PATH OF DECAYED LEAVES AND LEANING TREES AND SHADOWED CREATURES GLIMPSED OUT OF THE CORNER OF AN EYE —A PATH THAT I CANNOT SEEM TO FENCE OFF. MY MIND’S A TRACEUR, AND MENTAL PARKOUR IS UNSURPRISINGLY EFFECTIVE AGAINST THE SIMPLE CHAIN-LINK FENCE ONE MAKES ON THEIR OWN WITH HOME-BAKED COPING MECHANISMS AND INSPIRATIONAL WORDS PASTED OVER OLD WALLPAPER.
I’VE TRIED MY BEST TO CONTAIN THE DAMAGE, BUT OFTEN I FIND MYSELF WRITING IT OFF AS COLLATERAL. I LOSE SEVERAL HOURS, ADRIFT IN MY HEAD DOWN TWISTING PATHS WORN INTO THE FOREST FLOOR BY ANIMALS ARMED WITH TEETH AND CLAWS AND BURNING EYES, AND ALL I CAN DO IS EXCUSE IT, BECAUSE WHO AM I WITHOUT MY OVERACTIVE THOUGHTS? WHAT AM I IF I AM NOT ALWAYS REACHING INWARDS AND OUTWARDS TO TRY AND MAKE SENSE OF THE UNKNOWABLE?
IF IT IS INSANITY, TO REACH FOR WHAT YOU CAN NEVER HAVE AND TO TRY AND KNOW WHAT YOU CAN NEVER UNDERSTAND, THEN I MIGHT VERY WELL BE INSANE. HONSELTY, THERE IS VERY LITTLE I CAN DO TO AVOID IT.
THE ONLY PROBLEM WITH THAT, REALLY, IS THAT I AM LONESOME LIKE THIS. MY TONGUE TRIPS ON THE TANTALIZING WITTICISMS THAT MIGHT OTHERWISE ENTICE COMPANIONSHIP, CAUGHT UP IN THE COBWEBS OF MY SKITTERING, BRANCHING THOUGHTS. WORDS STUMBLE OVER EACH OTHER IN A SWIFT WHITE-WATER RIVER OF SPEECH THAT HARDLY MAKE IT PAST MY LIPS BEFORE THE NEXT THOUGHT IS WORMING ITS WAY TO THE FOREFRONT.
TIME AND TIME AGAIN, I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO SLOW DOWN, TO TEMPER MYSELF, BUT HOW CAN I EVER SETTLE FOR BEING LESS THAN I AM? I AM LONELY, SURELY, BUT I THINK IT WOULD ONLY BE MORE ISOLATING TO KNOW THE PERSON NEXT TO ME AND KNOW THAT THEY WILL NEVER TRULY COMPREHEND ME IN TURN.
THAT IS OKAY, THOUGH. I WOULD NOT WANT THEM TO TRIP ON THE VINES OF PAST AND PAIN AND COMPOUNDING DEPRECATION THAT WEAVE THEMSELVES THROUGH THE SLIGHTEST GAPS IN MY PSYCHE WHENEVER THE OPPORTUNITY PRESENTS ITSELF. NO ONE DESERVES THAT. IT IS BETTER THAT I AM ALONE.
ALONE WITH MY THOUGHTS.
h.f.m.
Aug 20, 2020
Aug 20, 2020 at 3:29 PM UTC
#i.
i carry my battles on my sleeve like the heart everyone tells me i hold too bare to keep in one piece as if it is my choice to let everyone see my thoughts and gut-wrenching knowing as if i am some book for them to skim and speak of as if they understand even if they did not read the beginning. do i look like the kind of person who can be anything less than bursting at the seams with knowing and asking and hurting and feeling and wanting and wonder?
ii.
i have a paper due in four hours but instead i’m writing poetry as if that can stem my thoughts and pin my writhing mind down long enough to form something similar to coherence because i can hardly use i was having a bad day as an excuse to hand in fifteen percent of my grade late now can i?
iii.
there are people perched on the rail of my balcony who are snorting stardust as they try to convince me that their backs are ****** because they used to hold wings. they tell me that god loves me and i accept it, but when they tell me i can help save the world i can’t help but look for the lie.
iv.
i would like to believe that someday i could be brave that someday i could be more than scattered thoughts that don’t come out right unless they’re written down and shaking hands that sometimes can hardly hold a pen to paper.
h.f.m.
Aug 20, 2020
Aug 20, 2020 at 1:48 PM UTC
#i.
i look at you and how you look away out the window as if hoping for some change in the scenery outside of this land-bound valley town. the heat of the sun pounds us into the ground like nails, where our limbs refashion themselves into tree roots searching towards deep desert springs. wine runs like blood from the hilltop vineyards, seeping into the ground with the expectation that bacchus’s approval flows behind in the form of celebratory madness. outsiders travel minutes, hours, days to claim these dark rivers running towards the gemstone lake that is the central attraction (though the haunted legends of beasts and spirits and gods are twisted into cheap gimmicks to attract the gullible and the unrepentant as well).
ii.
your distaste is a palpable thing, tucked behind your pleasant smile like a second-rate bicycle behind a sign warning against trespassers. you say, the sun may be burning, like these old forests we swore up and down to protect, but we’re all cold and distant as those stars above that are smothered by smog in the night sky. i watch you and how you watch the city around you sew their suits out of dollar bills and paint their skin red with the vineyards’ glory that spills from their lips. i see you and how you see the world, and we both watch this city drown itself in desert sands.
iii.
the wine creeps up the grass stalks and laps at our ankles, singing in silent temptation of a more classy form of intoxication and pleasant (if temporary) forgetting. i tell you as much and you tell me that you would rather swim out to meet the serpent of the lake before you submit to this city’s games, would rather start walking and keep walking, barefoot across the tarmac until it turns to gravel and then to dirt at the city limits, and out into the forests and fields of the land that has nourished and raised us (with only our spite and fire in return). you call people a disease, concentrated like puss-filled sores of plague in cities and towns, and bitterly acknowledge your part in the problem. i ask what you think the solution is and in return you ask if i think the revolution will be silent or if it will take the whole of humanity down with it into the burning pitfalls of history and time.
iv.
you couldn’t care less if the world burns around you. your eyes, still staring out the window, tell a tale of a soul already so far from this world as to be beyond human comprehension. turning to me for the first time today, immediate in a way you haven’t been since i first met you in that empty grade-school classroom during those years of our innocence, you ask me what i would do if you woke me in the night to say goodbye. i told you that there was only ever one option, when it comes to leaving this dead-end town of lowercase gods and nomadic wanderers. when you leave (and i know it’s a ‘when,’ not an ‘if’) i will not hesitate to pack my own bags. the streets of this city pulse with power and legends and riches like the blood of some great creature sleeping under the mountain, but i will willingly leave that mystery buried when you reach the end of your rope and decide impermanence it better than staying.
v.
when you leave, i will follow you, watching as you blaze a trail ahead of me, to the end of the world (the end of our respective lives), and ever onward, beyond even the end of time. i will always choose you.
sometimes the end of suffering is just choosing not to live in the place of the pain
h.f.m.
Aug 20, 2020
Aug 20, 2020 at 1:45 PM UTC
#i.
the sparrow fits neatly in the palm of your hand, its tiny heartbeat pulse fluttering against your fingers. its life can be as short as closing your fist, as long as your mercy.
there are many small things like the sparrow, you know, many small things in the palm of your hand. do you choose mercy? do you choose a swift end?
ii.
the sun is dying.
you know, the one hiding in your concave chest? the one crying over the waxy feathers scattered across your bathroom floor?
the sun sinks into the horizon-sea and you wish you could follow, but your feet catch on brambles and the waves pull away away away...
you are cold. you do not know how one can feel such cold and survive. yet, here you are, alive.
iii.
sometimes when you look at me i wonder why you can smile with eyes so sad. sometimes i wonder why your lips can stretch over your teeth in a ****** snarl when all your eyes seem to scream is your desire to run.
sometimes i wonder if you know i love you. sometimes i wonder if you think it matters.
iv.
god brushes away your tears with just the tips of their fingers, holding you gently as if you are something precious. but then, maybe you are. what do you know?
but your dog doesn’t know why you are sad, only that your wet face tastes of salt and the sounds wrenching themselves from between your teeth are wounds. his tongue is like sandpaper on your cheek, smoothing out your harsh edges and softening you into something worn and warm.
your mother stands in your doorway, an old pain wearing cracks into her indifferent mask of freckled skin like yours, an ancestral grief painting fine red lines on the whites of her gunmetal eyes like yours. children of your line have always been tender warriors, but bullet casings are tangy on your tongue and angels’ song hums just within the shell of your ears.
your mother watches you, with god's hand in your hair and their gentle whispers in your ear and your dog’s nose pressed into the crook of your neck. her smile is tentative, tremulous, but then again, she always has been, even with knives in her hands and razors between her teeth.
v.
it is okay to cry when celestials make their nests behind your eyes. at least now your mind is one with the stars you have always strived to reach. at least now even with your thoughts you are never alone.
even if you are an old soul, the universe has existed for so long, your hundredth reincarnation is still a child against it.
vi.
when you dream, do you dream of the many-eyed creature twisted between the tree roots in your front yard, the being of bright eyes and ****** teeth and ocean-deep sorrow? do you lay in the grass and wonder what a tragedy that beast is, to be monstrous in form but as soft and small as the sparrow at heart?
it is one thing to polish your misfortune until it is a gleaming weapon. it is another thing entirely to let your cracked-stone heart crumble into the dust and dirt you’d use to sustain the flowers you’d weave into crowns when you were younger.
vii.
the butterfly knife in your pocket is cold. you haven’t touched it in a while.
viii.
it is raining. each drop falls, soaks your clothes, clings to your skin. it anchors you to the ground, and you breathe. the air is damp and electric and you are alive.
you will die someday, of course, but for now you sit as high in your tree as you can climb, face tilted up to the cloud-obscured stars. maybe one day you’ll join them. maybe one day your heart will burn in your chest again, a reignited fire.
ix.
you trip up the staircase after being away for so long, high on the realization that living is as simple as breathing and as difficult as touching the core of another human being, of what they are.
you don’t know who you are anymore, but that’s okay. there’s no such thing as a permanent state of self anyway.
x.
‘the end’ doesn’t always mean ‘game over.’ sometimes it means ‘it’s time to write yourself a new story, to begin anew.’
—just remember: i’m glad you exist
h.f.m.
Aug 18, 2020
Aug 18, 2020 at 11:36 PM UTC
#i.
heavy-layered blankets when i wake up as something sharp trying to remember how to breathe, and the darkness of the night to hide how i’m not a safe thing anymore, and how the stars watching me through the window anchors me more to my humanity than anything else i can remember in this lifetime
ii.
burnt-gold rust-stained leaves crackling beneath my boots like a campfire, like warmth in darkness among blurred faces and laughter settling around my shoulders like an embrace even in the crisp cold miles and years away from memories that still serve to comfort in the absence of company
iii.
stories of wild animals searching out humans for help as if we are some sort of fae willing to assist only as it amuses us or as whim guides us (but in the end only serving to remind us that we are no better than beasts looking up to the universe in hope that there is an equal equivalent somewhere, the timid-quivering desperate belief that we aren’t alone)
iv.
milkshakes at five am held high to toast the rising sun as we sit on your iced-over roof in our t-shirts with barbed-wire words misting in the air before us as a cacophony of dissent rising with the morning fog from between our teeth
v.
this burning terror in my chest akin to the winter sunset consuming the western sky because it tells me i’m afraid but that means i’m alive
h.f.m.
Aug 18, 2020
Aug 18, 2020 at 7:18 PM UTC
#i.
when I speak sometimes I wish I could catch the words in the air and hold their fluttering-stabbing-twisting in my cupped hands and reshape them into what I meant to say, into something that would brush the shell of your ear softly instead of slip through your fourth and fifth ribs.
ii.
I hope it isn’t too forward of me to say that I don’t think that things can be broken. that is to say, that I don’t think broken things cannot be their own whole. everything is pieces of other things, fitting together like a child first learning how to put a puzzle together and forcing the pieces to go where they want and be whatever they choose.
I don’t know if that metaphor makes any sense to you, but I hope you can understand what I’m getting at anyway.
hurt doesn’t define you. your past isn’t a rope around your neck. my love is not conditional upon some arbitrary state of “wholeness.”
there is such a thing as wellness, yes, and I want that for you, for us, but that does not always mean returning to the state of self you inhabited before your pain. the human being is an ephemeral, ever-changing creature, and I will not love you less if I have to meet you again.
if I have to rediscover you as you heal, then I will. if I have to show you how I have refused my splintered pieces into a new shape myself, then I will.
I will love you gladly, unconditionally, vulnerably.
iii.
do you understand me? I have a scar on the inside of my thigh, but I don’t remember where it’s from. I have tiny, scattered patches along the underside of my jaw from when I’d pick at uneven skin. I have accumulated all sorts of scratch-thin, white lines across the backs of my hands and my forearms. stretch marks dash in lightning patterns under my clothes. do you think less of me for them?
iv.
I can be harsh like a blunt-force weapon when my attention slips, my shoulders a bastion of defensive tension, all sharp lines and a diamond-hard glint in storm-grey eyes. do you think this makes me ungentle? do you think I cannot form myself into a shelter if I so desired?
despite my rough-hewn edges and whip-like tongue, I’d like to think I can provide some sort of comfort, some level of reliability.
you don’t have to be soft, my love, but I find that sometimes it pays to be kind.
v.
once I saw you sitting in the park, fingers buried so deep in the tangled grass it looked like you were trying to take root.
it takes a certain kind of perspective, I think, to listen to things like trees. individual pillars, yes, but connected at the roots. isn’t that like what we are supposed to be? bound at the core with enough self-governance to reach for the sky, the wind and sunlight tangled within our reach.
vi.
you don’t need to worry about being enough for me. you will always be enough.
h.f.m.
Aug 18, 2020
Aug 18, 2020 at 3:07 PM UTC