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98
Hannah Feb 2014
98
Morning light was harsh. A rough hand rubbed her profile with a swinging gesture as her legs swung similiarly over the edge of what was once her campsite. They touched the ground, alas, carpet instead of gravel- a disappointment she might never get over.
What would it be today, she wondered. What would the numbers tell her about how she was to feel? The heart in her "chest" had lost its privilage to decide what her feelings were to be, so the numbers delegated on their own these days. It wasn't that she wanted it, it wasn't that she'd chosen a path of depthless, formless feeling, but her body simply couldn't house the suggestions her brain had made lately. The numbers never lied to her.
With a step and a puff, she thought maybe the weight of the cigarette could sway the outcome, so she stared at its end, burning off of the side of the counter, waiting for it to ash on its own before she could work up the courge to crane her neck down to see. Patentiently, she waited. Brown and yellow tile lingered below her feet and grouped together in a heap that she swore she almost heard expell a collective screech when the black and white star hit.
Her eyes slid down. The numbers never lied to her.
Today it was an honesty with an ease of acceptance, as she knew it would be. Intake had been slim to none, if only due to the fact that it had slipped her mind to nourish. It could be said again that her mind had little control any longer, and she lived inwardly but was directed outwardly, and could not rely on much to tell her what to do when it needed to be done.
Her day was to be grateful to be apart from the days of discontent, in their huddled, blackened mass. The circles below her eyes had rested for a change, but emerged ever darker and all the more complete, as they always did after a night of difference.
A night of sleep, she realized with a small chuckle that caught her off guard. She'd slept while the sun was gone and awoke when it returned to her tiny home. It seemed to her that it had been decades since she'd last done that, and she'd barely been alive for two.
Sticky lives, she'd discovered, were terribly difficult to pry objects from. They were difficult to separate from habits and tendancies. Tendancy was a favorite word of hers, and it lived within her sticky life throughout every day of living it.
Intake abandoned slim to be in cahoots with none. Neither her eyes nor her common sense could tell her which dark, winter month it was or where she was to go at what time and with whom. So safely, she always decided it was away she was expected at, any time whatsoever, and alone. Safely, she always decided it was to be alone.
Oh ****, she's forgotten about the smoldering cigarette on the edge of her bathroom counter. And with a short dash, she lifted it to discover a spot of orangish permanence that would forever remind her of the morning she woke up alongside a number she thought she could co-exist with. She would be wrong, she was always wrong, she always knew she was wrong, so what the **** ever kept her from being right? And who are we kidding, those mornings were numerous and the only differing factor here was that on this morning it slipped her mind to bring her bedside ashtray into the bathroom.
Three digits wrapped themselves around her withered self, the withered thought that once was, "There is no God," and was suddenly, "What is letting me worship as if there is, what is allowing me loyalty like this when I hate all loyalty has ever brought, there is a God involved here but where the **** did she come from and why won't she loosen her fixed grip?"
This was a hazard, she woke up knowing all too well. There was poison in her every step, be they through the kitchen to the front door or from the front door straight to those brown and yellow tiles.
Today her cyanide stroll brought the sharpest points of her face into blistering cold without more than a slight bit of hydration and not even the slighest bit of energy. Exhaustion lifted her up and carried her on its back down a street she walked every day but housed no memories of, to a place where she sat in fervent distraction for hours.
She sunk into the chair she chose and felt pressure on parts of her body she knew shouldn't be accessible. Three digits, she recited like a trained professional, like a mindless scholar simply letting herself be taught as opposed to learning. Three digits, should be two. She was one away, just one, and she knew that by the time she let exhaustion carry her home in the night, the two she deserved would be hers.
How finally, she hoped. How momentous and breathtaking would it be to have my breath taken by a goal I have worked to achieve. How special to commit, (I mean, complete,) two goals at once. All day long, she was experiencing what other people called "day," but she felt it all with eery black fingers around her neck and hips. There, it seemed her bones congregated to show off. And those eery black fingers had had just about enough of the behavior of her bones, of her vision, of the laziness of her throat and overexertion of her dedication and self-control. It was just as well, she thought. The feathery touch of those black fingers felt dead-on. She herself, had had just about enough of self-control becoming totalitarian policies. Miscompliance brought severe, earthy punishment and she was simply too tired for it any longer. Those fingers seized and pushed, and when it was time to go she knew it would be those fingers directing her home tonight instead of her cathartic exhaustion.
In the door, to the tiles, on to judgement, true, true judgement, and there they are. There are the two numbers she wanted all along, validation for her behavior. But even in her relief, death could find no reason to let her survive. There was no note, nothing to explain to him that she loved him, nothing to explain to anyone that she'd loved at all.
She'd been consumed and she was found cold, with an eerily warm smile.
Hannah Feb 2014
Morning light was harsh. A rough hand rubbed her profile with a swinging gesture as her legs swung similiarly over the edge of what was once her campsite. They touched the ground, alas, carpet instead of gravel- a disappointment she might never get over.
What would it be today, she wondered. What would the numbers tell her about how she was to feel? The heart in her "chest" had lost its privilage to decide what her feelings were to be, so the numbers delegated on their own these days. It wasn't that she wanted it, it wasn't that she'd chosen a path of depthless, formless feeling, but her body simply couldn't house the suggestions her brain had made lately. The numbers never lied to her.
With a step and a puff, she thought maybe the weight of the cigarette could sway the outcome, so she stared at its end, burning off of the side of the counter, waiting for it to ash on its own before she could work up the courge to crane her neck down to see. Patentiently, she waited. Brown and yellow tile lingered below her feet and grouped together in a heap that she swore she almost heard expell a collective screech when the black and white star hit.
Her eyes slid down. The numbers never lied to her.
Today it was an honesty with an ease of acceptance, as she knew it would be. Intake had been slim to none, if only due to the fact that it had slipped her mind to nourish. It could be said again that her mind had little control any longer, and she lived inwardly but was directed outwardly, and could not rely on much to tell her what to do when it needed to be done.
Her day was to be grateful to be apart from the days of discontent, in their huddled, blackened mass. The circles below her eyes had rested for a change, but emerged ever darker and all the more complete, as they always did after a night of difference.
A night of sleep, she realized with a small chuckle that caught her off guard. She'd slept while the sun was gone and awoke when it returned to her tiny home. It seemed to her that it had been decades since she'd last done that, and she'd barely been alive for two.
Sticky lives, she'd discovered, were terribly difficult to pry objects from. They were difficult to separate from habits and tendancies. Tendancy was a favorite word of hers, and it lived within her sticky life throughout every day of living it.
Intake abandoned slim to be in cahoots with none. Neither her eyes nor her common sense could tell her which dark, winter month it was or where she was to go at what time and with whom. So safely, she always decided it was away she was expected at, any time whatsoever, and alone. Safely, she always decided it was to be alone.
Oh ****, she's forgotten about the smoldering cigarette on the edge of her bathroom counter. And with a short dash, she lifted it to discover a spot of orangish permanence that would forever remind her of the morning she woke up alongside a number she thought she could co-exist with. She would be wrong, she was always wrong, she always knew she was wrong, so what the **** ever kept her from being right? And who are we kidding, those mornings were numerous and the only differing factor here was that on this morning it slipped her mind to bring her bedside ashtray into the bathroom.
Three digits wrapped themselves around her withered self, the withered thought that once was, "There is no God," and was suddenly, "What is letting me worship as if there is, what is allowing me loyalty like this when I hate all loyalty has ever brought, there is a God involved here but where the **** did she come from and why won't she loosen her fixed grip?"
This was a hazard, she woke up knowing all too well. There was poison in her every step, be they through the kitchen to the front door or from the front door straight to those brown and yellow tiles.
Today her cyanide stroll brought the sharpest points of her face into blistering cold without more than a slight bit of hydration and not even the slighest bit of energy. Exhaustion lifted her up and carried her on its back down a street she walked every day but housed no memories of, to a place where she sat in fervent distraction for hours.
She sunk into the chair she chose and felt pressure on parts of her body she knew shouldn't be accessible. Three digits, she recited like a trained professional, like a mindless scholar simply letting herself be taught as opposed to learning. Three digits, should be two. She was one away, just one, and she knew that by the time she let exhaustion carry her home in the night, the two she deserved would be hers.
How finally, she hoped. How momentous and breathtaking would it be to have my breath taken by a goal I have worked to achieve. How special to commit, (I mean, complete,) two goals at once. All day long, she was experiencing what other people called "day," but she felt it all with eery black fingers around her neck and hips. There, it seemed her bones congregated to show off. And those eery black fingers had had just about enough of the behavior of her bones, of her vision, of the laziness of her throat and overexertion of her dedication and self-control. It was just as well, she thought. The feathery touch of those black fingers felt dead-on. She herself, had had just about enough of self-control becoming totalitarian policies. Miscompliance brought severe, earthy punishment and she was simply too tired for it any longer. Those fingers seized and pushed, and when it was time to go she knew it would be those fingers directing her home tonight instead of her cathartic exhaustion.
In the door, to the tiles, on to judgement, true, true judgement, and there they are. There are the two numbers she wanted all along, validation for her behavior. But even in her relief, death could find no reason to let her survive. There was no note, nothing to explain to him that she loved him, nothing to explain to anyone that she'd loved at all.
She'd been consumed and she was found cold, with an eerily warm smile.
Hannah Mar 2014
There is no fantastical world in which civility between us can exist. Civility, of course, being perceived in the sense that we can coexist pleasantly, without a romance topped with jaded raspberries and peppermint liqueur.
After a generous amount of sneezing and crawling and crying in the moonlight with half embered cigarettes hanging from our dripping mouths, I saw this. A grievous vision of Hank Stamper clawing at my back end, a still-life embedded someplace dark and dank, a cradle so forgotten and filthy that only a mother woven from dirt-covered cloth could love it. We built some ridiculous, disgusting house and made love in it. Day in, day out.
In the end our urinary tract infections infected our kidneys and became fatal when paired with the dysentery. I will always remember your name paired with dysentery, my love.
I promised myself endlessly that I was laying in such a softer settlement without you. Your reckless lifestyle was grimier than mine and our paths collided and collapsed with validity, I was sure of that. I am sure of that. However, it seems my insistence that I recover from you, brings with it some kind of ****** up honor to be dealt your way. Should I write a song about you? No, I'd soon hear it in your trapeze act. Should I make a film about you? No, the lead would be sinfully attractive and further engorge your rather large head. Should I write a book about you? Should I? Have I? Can I? I doubt you would see the honor here. In fact, if you were to look for anything other than consistent misuses of punctuation in my writing, I feel sure you would find solace and comfort and silence would soon follow.
Hannah Feb 2014
I'm barefoot in 46 degrees and I must remember that my perception of things must not encapsulate how I truly perceive. Soldered commentary  is bleak but is all I've left, all my years have given me and my years have been few.
To be constantly bombarded with the question, "what is it that I really want?" is fervently exhausting and consistently hypocritical and I'm a hack. The conclusion is always that I'm a hack without a win to present or a failure to fall back upon. As a hack, I've left myself with very few plans to alter or hungry mindsets to feed.
After glistening the only thing that remains is to burn out and the thought of extinguishing so prematurely provokes a physical falter and frequent respiratory failure.
Ask your brother if he lingers at times. Ask your sister if sometimes, she means what she says and she should always say no. Ask your friends why you should be anyone's friend and whether or not the chance to swing into hyperbolic criticism ever affects how they make their choices, hoof their steps.
Their answer should always be no and their input should always be invaluable.
Ask yourself if brain power should always be set to alter mind power and ask yourself is alteration is ever even possible. The answer should always be no.
The conclusion to draw should always be his. The choices you make, always expert and ground out by consistent respiratory failure. Ask yourself if you'll always be an animal and when will that stop. Ask yourself if time will determine whether or not this "thing" is worth doing or this "thing" is worth composing. Ask yourself why you're not the young girl who sings soul on the street, whose tremble sets off car alarms and inner requisitioning. The answer will never be the same.
Hannah Feb 2014
There are words I'd like to use. Sixty tracks of my mind follow through to, "Yes, those are the adjectives of choice, of reason," and the nine other tracks are riddled with stains of the catatonic ***** I've been purging for months now. They insist that no, no those are the words you are supposed to say, not the words that count.


Infested, drunk, disheveled and belief is too far gone.

Horrified imprisoned cultivated from mud and grease and whatever was unearthed from these curtained walls.



No, these have never been the proper words. But never have you had the proper focus, Hannah. Never before have these same eyes glistened toward the voices that sound so plainly like the one you wish could beckon you once more. Never before have you even possessed eyes that glistened. But we see them now, incandescent and descending.



My honesty has committed crimes against my body and my passions, but here is where my honesty has taken hold. In every honesty, as far back as honesty has existed, (let's say a couple of months, a couple of fortnights, a couple of howls of 'oh god is this morning no ******* it, the sky is still dark and this is not the bed I Belong in,') here is the blatant foolishness of it: Emotion has gone and all that is left are symptoms of emotion.


Symptoms. Knowing I will barely speak tomorrow if sleep doesn't come soon and standing in the dark with my back to the mattress, desperately clinging to words I can't bring myself to put anywhere. Words I would rather not see living forever in the context in which they appeared. There is no destruction, no violence, no pain or torture or infestations and certainly no belief, certainly no sobriety. This tongue cannot for the life of it, (a life it doesn't own,) recall the last time it tasted tears. It begs the question, "What defined my emotions before?"

It could have been the groggy, drowsy, half-hearted feelings of self loathing, or the chest convulsions of loneliness. It could have been this thing or that thing, but nothing that has ever been representative of my emotions is still around. Not one single frame. Not the smallest second, the tiniest glimmer, the ******* the ******* the *******.

Nothing.

It begs the question, "What could have done this to me?"

Never evident until investigated. Never obvious until I lay my left hand on the sheet by my face and trace the patterns of my veins with my vision. I no longer allow myself to be alone with my brain for longer than a moment.



My domain is cold and you are the one remaining prisoner, and please god evacuate now before your spell takes hold with that physical strength.

Who am I ******* kidding?

I've been under for years and this **** is deadly. True, tried, tired.



In the pacific northwest you left a shell. Filed, filled and defined, now. Something rose from the ashes of my imagination burning my Belong ings. Tangible things that force my brain to recall that morning our kitchen smelled of swedish pancakes and that evening the black and white movie sent us walking hand in hand, cold and blissfully content to be cold, debating and spouting trickery as we always did. Tangible things my fingers simply can't bear. That pair of mugs was ours not mine, our lips hugged their edges so many mornings afternoons evenings and now I've locked them away under 's' for 'Somewhere that isn't here'.



This man I'm singing to doesn't want to hear it but he knows it must be said. If it stays within me for one more hour, through one more mythical sideways glance at the man who wishes he could right-click-cut me away, my soul will have to be found, dug up and exhumed before I could ever explore it again. This man I'm singing to hates that I have to express what I must express but god ******* **** I must express it and he needs to know that my feet feel lined with concrete and my heart never left that golden ground. Cannot define beg, never will again.



She won't play games or play with struggle. God all she wants is those arms wrapped around her. She isn't cold. She isn't alone. She isn't common or messy or underground indefinitely. These arms are up and she is praying that what is in them is going to soar far enough to reach him on the other side. But she doesn't pray.



You have my devotion now you Must have my madness; do with it what you will but please god let me sacrifice it to you.

I thought of you today all day and yesterday every solid second of yesterday and if I prayed I would pray to wake up tomorrow having forgotten(maintained) your name, face, touch and that ******* radio voice.
Hannah Feb 2014
You smell like ether songs and steak knives.
You taste like complex strokes of convex, skeletal anomalies.
Struggle to grasp that your life is now an attempt to grasp some skeletal anomaly.
You tied it off 5 seconds in, attached a ring of twine around my suffering little finger when you expected me to be creeped out without really expecting that at all.
Hannah Feb 2014
Suddenly there’s this harmless exchange of fluids. Autochthonous, it revels in what it brings my body to each day. My bones **** within me and pray that my skin will burst so they can see what I see, and touch what I touch, without barrier. They long for the silk that I run my fingers through, the roll of delicate fibres that shakes against my cardboard figure until light comes through the window in the morning.
His laughter bruises my stomach just below the cage that controls my depth and fluidity of motion. Not so suddenly, he’s become a peignoir to lay within forever, a kind of disease-filled sleep I’d never want to leave. It’s longing for fire while longing for ice, standing atop chilled coals that glow with crimson heat. His flesh against my teeth glows with crimson heat.
These words are nothing, less than autobiographical, when his neck cradles me wholly, and I come to find every word I’ve tried to search for in solitude. When vague scents of a yesterday I can never quite recall, and a tomorrow I’ll likely never see, find my third sense, I gain the eloquence my scents never give.
The shape of a face is different at all angles and fragrant bends, but the crying out all sounds the same. Red because my toes clung softly to his sheets until they clung hard, the white space at their peaks became florid at release. Red because of that. It smells like *** which smells like controlled strain, loving composure while gaining cover. Our leaps, our bounds were contorted today. I’ve every desire to live among them.
Logic throws nothing at me these days, bouts of greetings, nary a goodbye in sight until we look closer. Ah, there it is. I see it now. Far is, ten centuries, close is an hour or a jar filled with days. A penny for every day until he leaves me. More copper in a single colony than want could ever want.

— The End —