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For as long as I can remember, I've heard the whispers. The silent 'but's, the sidelong sighs, and the backhanded compliments that go in smooth and rip out ragged.
         I believe everyone has undeniable self-truths. One of my truths is that I am fat. It took me twenty years to come to the conclusion that this truth was not something to be ashamed or afraid of. Unfortunately, my mother doesn't agree.
         It's not wholly her fault; she was raised to be ashamed of her body and the bodies of women in general. We were taught that tolerance equals love but not necessarily acceptance. My body was something to tolerate. I loved my body in the way I loved my pesky little brother, mostly because I was told I must.
         My mother's body language whispered to my pre-teen insecurities, "You're beautiful...but", or "I'm not saying you have to lose weight...but", or "You're perfect the way God made you, I just wish that...". She taught me to be ashamed and afraid of the way my body was developing, "I wish you hadn't filled out so fast, that you wouldn't wear that shirt because it brings attention to the fact that you have the chest of a twenty something at thirteen." "That skirt shows too much skin and that shirt was cut too low, don't wear a tank top because the boys will think of you as **** first and intelligent second."
         There's nothing wrong with being the fat smart girl, although I have noticed that it's never 'smart fat girl' because being fat is evidently more important than intelligence. Being fat isn't bad. Being smart is a super good thing. The problem arises when the fat smart girl is taught that she must whisper. When you don't tell that girl that being beautiful has nothing to do with what others think of you and that she is absolutely allowed to have an opinion of her own, she won't find her voice until she can't hear yours anymore.
         I have whispered all my life. I don't wear brightly colored nail polish so that you won't notice that my hands stutter. I whisper with my body language. I whispered "no" when he went too far. I whispered when I wanted to scream.
         And I wondered why no one ever heard me.
This is not poetry
These are not words
This is life, a perspective of constant strife
Keys to understanding
A conscience without remanding
A paradox of 'comprehanding'
I speak, as though commanding
You're undoubted understanding
Of syntax, reason and rhyme
Taxed as though we're all sublime
Thoughts mesh, create a melting ***
Flesh upon flesh
Mind upon mind
As though we all feel the same grind
This is a song
For those with soul
Could we even contemplate
What it takes to become whole
I speak not of me, myself and I
But ask if you could wonder why
We try, we cry, we lie
We let the sun die
I have seen the sun rise
Watched a friend as he dies
We cannot change the past
and while nothing is meant to last
I wonder, in perfect contrast
If truly this is my last task.
Through the years of transparent existence, a void of illusion becomes apparent and slowly becomes nothing more than a side-show. The dribbling glimpses of truth fade like the bones of old. No man can create such an indentation in the mold of space and time that the observers at the end of eternity will render their imprint upon the infinite gaian consciousness and body of universal proportions of any significance. Even the earth laughs at such ridiculousness. The ego is a strong bind - it can create maya and attachment to such fantasies easier than a bear can find it's ideal location for a winter hibernation. It's a world of craziness, where nobody knows whats going on.
The man woke up from his deep slumber. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Squinting, he looked around, studying his surroundings and taking mental notes. His thoughts are ***** scribblings on a subway wall. His heart is beating, searching for a band to play in rhythm with. His soul is aching from loneliness and desire. His feet lifelessly surrender their position up on the couch and find the floor, shrieking from the cold of the linoleum. His presence is that of a bird with a broken wing still attempting to fly. He stands up and stares at the ceiling.
The room is small. Four walls of white, one window and one door. The window looks out over the grey city. The door leads into another room - the room most would call a kitchen. In the small room before the kitchen, there is only a couch and a blanket. No lamp. No television. No electricity. No electricity in the entire apartment. The kitchen holds no refrigerator, no oven, no toaster, no pantry. It's called a kitchen because that's what it would be if somebody else was living in the apartment. There are two bananas on the floor along with a box of wheat flake cereal. No milk, no bowl, no spoon. The bananas are almost entirely rotten. The box of cereal is on its side, leaking bits of wheat flake, resembling a dying soldier on a battlefield who's losing all his blood through the wound on his neck rather than a box of the West's favorite morning go-to breakfast.
The man is observing the cracks on the ceiling, along with various stains with no known origin to him. His eyes dart from one corner of the room to another to another to another and back to the first. Spiderwebs. Dust. Decay. A perfect example of life's ability to take care of itself. Biodecomposition. When no one is around to look after a house, over time, Nature will take over it. Vines will grow and overcome the walls. Rain will fall and wear away the roof and general structure. Winds will blow, taking blindshots at the weakened building, eventually cause it to fall. Nothing lasts forever. Everything goes back to where it came from.
The man now steps into the "kitchen", where he begins to study the stains on the ceiling in this room as well. His mind is electric, with no thoughts in the usual sense, but rather just a vague presence of void to help the ceiling stains feel important. He is the space through which everything around him can exist to their fullest potential. After a measureless amount of time, the man walks over to the sad bits of food on the far side of the small room. He picks up one of he bananas and studies it. He feels where it came from. The tropical skies and smells and earth of Costa Rica. There's a little sticker on the banana that says so. Each bit of fruit in the markets nowadays are individually stickered...for prosperity, one can only assume. Though it's best to never assume anything, and instead be open to everything - afterall, anything is possible, at any time. Likelihood and probability are also important factors in the universal constitution of existence. What was the likelihood that this man, when he was a little child, figured he'd be holding a rotten banana from Costa Rica in his hand inside of a kitchenless kitchen? Who knows? The man wouldn't be able to recall his thoughts from early childhood - he barely remembers waking up and experiencing the chilling sensation of early morning linoleum. In any case, everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be, for it wouldn't be if it wasn't meant to be.
He slowly peels open the banana peel to reveal this brown, soft mush of tropical fruit. Just the way he likes it - soft enough to chew with his toothless mouth. He takes his time consuming the fruit, savoring every particle. After a good bit of time, the fruit is gone and all the man is left with is the peel. He takes another good look at the peel, once again imagining where this particular banana came from. Then, in two swift bites, he devours the entire peel - sticker included. He figures the sticker came from Costa Rica as well, and thus must carry that Costa Rican tropical vibe of health and longevity. His eyes then focus on the wheat flake cereal lying next to the other rotting banana. He bends down and picks up the box. The box is upside down when he picks it up and so the cereal spills out all over the area of the "kitchen" floor that seems to be dedicated to eating food. The remaining banana is now covered in wheat cereal.
The man drops the box back onto the floor and takes a seat alongside of it. His fingers hold his face from drooping onto his knees. His knees are keeping his torso from melting onto the floor. He screams with no sound. The pains of existence seep through his hollow eyes and into the receptors of his soul. He screams with no sound. He’s as empty as the American Dream.
The cobwebs are spreading from the corners of the room and are aimed for the human form sitting in the “kitchen” screaming silence with all his might. The cobwebs grow. The commuters of the city highway are commuting. A thousand birthday celebrations are being had. A thousand people sexually uninhibited, joyously seizing the moment in disgusting miraculous unity of mortal physical desire. Junkies are roaming the street for their morning fix. Teaching are teaching their students absolute lies. Governments are stealing the lives of billions and counting. And the cobwebs are growing, encompassing entire walls. The the ceiling. Then the floor. Then they crawl up the lifeless legs of the man who sits screaming in silence and the spiders overtake his body. They stitch his mouth shut and close his eyes with their spun proteinaceous spider silk. The man withers into the wind of time and vanishes from the world without a single soul taking notice. Leaving nothing behind except an empty apartment, overdue rent, and a number in the system of Western Society. His spirit cries sorrowfully as it flees the clutches of molecular existence into the realm of eternity and space. Heaven. He made it. He looks down at the people of the world he just left and sings a pitiful song for them. He’ll see them again. Afterall, they are Him. And He is Them. His Heart, the Sun, burns as the world he left turns. The lessons He left are slowly being learned. One by one. But still, there’s a space between the atoms, between the cells. And that space can never disappear. Without it, there would be no point to the story. All would be one, as it is, and there’s be nothing to overcome. No triumph. Just an endless loop of bizarre beautiful experience and pattern.
So musical notes fall upon my heart like raindrops
I can only breath again when the music finally stops.
It moves my very being like a sunset on a summer night
but yet it leaves me frozen at a sudden dreamlike sight.
I feel each note as it patters gently on my heart
 I hardly notice when it stops and when it will start.
It rips a scar across my weary soul but heals as it goes,
 the energy I gather from the notes is easy to show.
  I can climb a frightening mountain in the rain,
  as long as I have the warming music to ease my pain.
  We should all have notes that fall unto us in time
   like words that always fall into sweet and dazzling rhyme.
      
      WHC/2013
      copyright
Now we're just
Friends in passing

You'd say "hi"
And I'd say "hello"

That's it

No more
Midnight conversations
No more
Inside jokes
No more
Secret knowing glances
No more
Heartfelt confessions
No more
Tender moments

No more
Us
Best friends

Now we're just
Strangers
Who once held each other's hearts
In their palms
I miss us.
What if the thing that brought you the most joy
Was also the monster in your life
That with every glimmer of desperate happiness
Something else decided to slide it's devious knifes into your side
Is the good part of the deed that is done
worth sacrificing the little bits of your heart that are left
It's always been this way with you
deviating between the good and the bad
Always going with the delightful and enchanting look first
then changing to a different hue, that we all know so much better
This always could be so much longer
not today, today was a day spent bleeding
Don't you wish today was just like the day at the beach
instead today was just like the day after the beach
No longer enjoying the rays and the waves
instead metaphorical blisters represent realistic screaming pain between us
Hope for tomorrow
and pray for the next day after.
Since tomorrow is a good day for us to talk, your voice will bring me joy
I'll break the cycle here, to see if it'll fix our lives as well.
Everyday is a battle some worse than others.  Definitely not something most people will understand.
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