PART THE FIRST our words are painted in the blood that coats our hands from our self-vivisection a harsh introspection gently brushing crimson paint over our mouths like too-red lipstick in the shade of the sunset before a storm and self-deprecation becomes an artform akin to the irony of smiles in the faces of skulls and surviving without really living.
PART THE SECOND who was it that so thoroughly convinced us that gentleness is weakness that vulnerability is to be avoided at all costs that emotions are distractions that showing fear is a sign of defeat? when we accept our broken pieces not as failure but as experience and do not beat ourselves up for the cracks that remain that is when we will truly know who we are.
PART THE THIRD we are afraid of the things we want the most because striving for something we cannot reach hurts less that achieving all we could have ever hoped for and having it slip through shaking hands like smoke in the winds of change and if that is not the hallmark of self-sabotage than i dont know what is.
PART THE FOURTH like all things time is a construct merely a patchwork of cogs and stone circles and the small pieces of autonomy we carve out of our day to paste on clock faces like our painted-on smiles and ready acceptance of having our days dictated by our ancestors’ need to define-contain-control.
PART THE FIFTH the hallways of academia are perfumed by anxious fear-sweat and existential rage mixing as a noxious fog of violet and violent movement in absence and the eddying swirls of determination’s backdrafts.
PART THE SIXTH we loved legends with prophecies when we were young because we wanted purpose and direction and meaning and now we devour stories about rebellion and fist-fighting with fate because now we think we know that being told to only set our feet in orchestrated patterns is little more than accepting our role as puppets to the cosmos but really what do we know about anything? there is joy in clear directions and there is joy in carving our own path but either way life is a jungle and we are just as likely to be devoured by graceful creatures of earth and sky and beauty on the path as off of it.
PART THE SEVENTH they say that youth is pain and that growing up is exhaustion but who are they and why do they get to dictate the trials of life by binding us into cliché who are they to speak sorrow into our very breath who are they to tell us they have taken the measure of human existence and found it wanting?
PARTH THE EIGHTH peace is the name of a friend ive never met who might as well be imaginary and relegated to the dimmed halls and dusty attics of my early years.
PART THE NINTH sometimes i wonder if i donated my breath to charity and the remaining hollow shell of myself to science would my gift be considered a sacrifice would my story be considered a tragedy would my life have meant anything would i have made my ancestors proud?
PART THE TENTH and we learn that words are alive alive alive as we drown in eloquence not meant to be spoken in high places not meant for voices of thunder or gods but for the fragile invincibility of children.