claire-mcculleyWhisper
20 / Cisgender Female
6 weeksi. the 1st week is the rapid hemostasis. the fabric of your body clutching itself together, rushing to staunch the bleeding. you breathe and oxygen settles in your chest like needles. you are so tired. you, in your continent of pain, will never be enough of anything for anyone. you burn softly as your cells scuttle to repair the damage. you burn in silence. / ii. the 2nd week is the inflammation. the itching and swelling of flesh. the fingers you move over your own body, holding your hips quiet. your gash is no longer a gash, but a rumpled and puffy city, a strange piece of art, a crime scene after the police have left where everyone is sweeping up shattered glass. someone’s murmuring a poem of soul and death over the radio. it might be you. everyone is shouting and the radio is getting louder and the crime scene is turning into an emergency room and the doctors are flying around in their yellow haste and there is no oasis, no peace, no open window, until the automatic hospital doors part with a groan and she is there, and you realize you are about to be saved. / iii. the 3rd week is the proliferation and migration. she tells you to remove the gravel from your body before you grow a new skin. so you do, you pull it out with black tweezers and it makes you scream until you are raw and humble. you watch as you mend yourself, sped up, like a tiger lily caught on long-form camera, bursting to life. someone says the words love and breaking and heal. someone says i will take you and i will carry you. is it you or her? does it matter? your skin is rearranging itself. you are pangea, splitting and reattaching to new places. it should be violent, but it isn’t. she’s calling you in from the cold and you go to her, scabbed up and scabbed over, unable to close your eyes. she takes up your whole field of vision. her lips, her nose. her irises, where you find god and every angel. the only sin here is the distance between the two of you. which you are closing. by the minute. by the second. by the breath.
losing you to you [why we enter the burning house]i. Like a building on fire, you appeared in my path. You were what all burning things are, hot and radiant, crackling with a force I cannot name. You were a comet speeding to earth, a malfunctioning two-stage rocket. I watched as you turned yourself inside out, as you were absorbed by the sky, as you detonated yourself in an act of destruction so powerful it created collateral art. I watched as you gave yourself up to ash. I was there. / ii. When a building is on fire, the first human instinct is to run away. But I ran toward you. I ran toward you, because I knew what things might be tucked within you. I ran toward you, because your heart deserved to pulled from the wreckage. I ran toward you, because I was not afraid, because I have been a burning building and I remember what it was like to be trapped inside myself, dissolving in the heat and the pain, toxic and dehumanized. I remember. So I ran toward you while everyone else ran in the opposite direction, and I put my hands on your windows, and I entered you. / iii. You were trembling in those flames, those flames I swept aside like curtains, looking for the salvageable. You were sad and raw and red and wonderful, surrounding me with your swollen hopes, bleeding words of venom and gentleness, a dichotomy of throbbing remorse. You blew out window panes and shook down doors. You shattered the roof, sent furniture tumbling. You howled at a moonless night, you agonized gloriously.
Present TenseThere is nothing but love, and now. Nothing but places that ring out memories, memories of learning to lose, memories of us. There is nothing but heartbeat and heartache. Nothing but night sky. Nothing but the gleam of our spirits, their sheer capacity to keep opening themselves against all odds. Nothing but soft eyes and warm hands. Nothing but breathless winter snatching our oxygen and making us taste of ice and courage. Nothing but risk. / There is nothing here but ecstasy and boredom and wonder, nothing but watching her watch the moon, nothing but light. Nothing but mistakes and forgiveness, tender uncertainty. Nothing but the accepting of what is. Nothing but stars falling overhead, and us lifting our hands to catch them. Nothing but resistance, war, the ache for justice; nothing but our poetry burning these walls down, nothing but chain link fences and snow. / Nothing but creation, nothing but sunrise, nothing but nervous first kisses shared in the back of a city bus, nothing but mouths moving together. Nothing but reverence, guns, a god we don’t believe in, the children making snow angels in the park. Nothing but breathing together, laughter and bare feet. Another day, another hour. Nothing but the revolving of Earth, the splitting of cells, these fears we nurse in the darkness, the loss we have chosen to accept.
The Chrysalis Breaksi. What I mean to say is, I’m sorry. I’m sorry everything’s changed. I’m sorry my bones are dark with mourning and need, sorry I don’t feel the way I used to, sorry the light doesn’t catch in my eyes. When I was 17, I’d lie in the grass near my house and watch the sky with such wonder, it’s astonishing I didn’t implode on the spot. I was so full. Where did she go; that marvel, that gleam? I miss her terribly. / ii. What I mean to say is, what am I doing? I’m split. A part of me is hanging on so hard to the past I think I’ll die if I let go, but a part of me wants to cut those years off like a rotten leg—pretend I only just came into being, that I have always been like this. I’ve carried so much shame with me all my life, but I’m just realizing it now. Or, maybe I’m finally realizing how not okay it is. How somewhere along the line I stopped believing it was alright to call myself Writer or Poet or Author or Warrior or Brave, just because I wasn’t doing those things well enough. I read great literature so I’d have something to aspire to, fueled by the hot, strange beauty, but in doing so, I burned myself. I began to feel like an imposter among my own words. I gave up Writer and Poet and Author and Warrior and Brave, because they just weren’t mine enough. I let them belong to others. I became a spectator to myself. / iii. What I mean to say is, it’s a hard world. There are beautiful things, yes, moments that catch me off guard and stun me with love, but they seem to grow further and further apart. Nothing is easy. What use are those once beloved flowery words and strung-out phrases of effulgence, which now make me squirm with embarrassment? I don’t write like a child anymore. I write like someone who’s worn out, someone who just wants to slip off her shoes and rest for a while. I am trying to be okay with that. I’m trying to accept the lostness. I’m trying to exist, somehow, in this jumble of souls. I’m trying to figure out my place in it all. I used to know everything, but I don’t know anything anymore.
