I left the table feeling gross,
nauseous and swollen
and altogether overwhelmed.
My ring finger traced the curves
of my arms, twisted into the
light hairs running over like
infinite eddies of shallow streams.
The world reeled around me,
nightmarish carousels careening
through the dark,
spinning around and throughout
my head, my mind,
every single sentient thought.
Life had gotten too much
for me to handle, though,
suicide never quite worked.
Feet dragged across the ground,
rubbing the wooden surfaces
and creating friction,
creating heat.
I felt hot and
restrained there,
like too much of me-
far too much of me to hold in-
was cramped into that tiny corner.
I needed a way out,
an escape route
from the fire burning all around me,
carousel on fire and
carnival flaming
to the ground.
There was no panic in
the destruction, though
it lacked the methodical touch.
There was no reason to
panic or to worry about it
as all had come to go
as it pleased and had planned
without any great
forethought of my own.
I wanted to burn down my temple,
turn the offerings to ash
and destroy all my gods and idols
that I had collected.
I itched and scratched
at a sensation unable to be traced,
of a small hovering
caught within the air
trapped within the hairs
upon my goose prickled arms.
I took my pillars in my hands
and smashed them to the ground,
satisfied at the crumbled
limestone and pretense
that lay scattered around me.
"This is what I need,"
I told myself calmly,
"total destruction.
Revolution."
And so as I had
revolted myself at the table
my mind revolted against
my body as my soul
revolted against my mind,
making the itch to scratch
a greater prickling feeling
than before.
Needles, hot and heavy,
traced the outlines of my arms,
felt the ridged contours
of my spine.
There were eyes on me
as materiality caused my body
to revolt against my soul,
making me disgusted
and fat in my indulgence.
I was bloated and needed
to be punctured,
to release the pressure.
I felt stabs all across me,
causing screams to erupt
from my mouth in almost-pleasure
and surely pain.
Pricking against me
were knives and daggers
where needles had been.
I felt the pressure recede,
the great angry mass
of rotting fluids within
spilling out of the holes poked
within my body,
mind,
and soul.
They had broken through,
broken me down,
revealed the decomposed
and near-dead individual within.
Suicide hadn't worked
and neither had ignoring it.
"Total desctruction,"
I repeated,
"total destruction."
And so I jumped
on his back, clawing at his face,
his chest,
kicking his stomach
as he punched my top.
My finger bent
in a happy sort of violence,
and I was all too pleased
with my feigned surprise.
He fled, retreated
to his cave of
lonely, musky isolation
and delusional regret
as I ran,
up the stairs and past the curves,
flying into what
was once my bedroom
and grabbing for my coat,
the one without my last name.
Putting it on,
I walked slowly to
the back door,
unlocking it gingerly,
as though the key might ignite
into millions of different colored fireworks
at any second wasted.
I descended the steps
in the way a monarch does
in his last hours,
the way a priest might as he
watches his house-
no,
his whole religion
crash to his feet.
Calm.
Demure
with the knowledge that
this world was not meant
to support it this long.
And so
the spirits of frustration,
the roasted spine and
too-afraid shadow flew out of
the debris before me,
to be caught in the
forever kinking and
knotting curls upon my head,
an infinite mess of
paradoxical equations
to be fully examined
by no one but themselves.
These ghosts of myself
hastened my flight,
spirited me off
on a mad run down the street,
ring finger throbbing from the scars of war,
I soon discarded this itch as I had
the last one,
as my ring finger was meant to be ****,
unadorned and
free of any promises
that it knew it could never keep.
A car stopped and picked me up,
drove off to a familiar place
full of smoke and magic,
friends that felt
about as sick as I had.
We partook in the
mystic rituals, knowing
they meant very little,
anymore.
We drove around,
watching the steam before the headlights
dance in the dark like
overjoyed spirits making love.
The road seemed endless
as the lines rolled into
then out of view,
forever reeling in
infinite streams of shallow
yellow on black.
Finally, our priestess departed
and I was given a new place to sleep
and not made to sit at
a table like before.
My ring finger smiled in agreement
as we figured our new place
in a world without religion,
bodies,
minds,
or souls,
carousels to mock us,
or flames to ******.
No threat of anger and destruction
boiling over within myself
to erupt on everyone around.
Just
stark sheets,
clean walls,
the drumming
in my legs,
and the throbbing
freedom held within
my ring finger
as it traced the curves
of my arms.
I left consciousness feeling clean,
refreshed and renewed
and altogether reborn.