"I... I don't understand."


No. You don't.
Because you were never meant to.
You were never meant to understand what that love entails.
We think we understand, but we don't.
We were never able to.

There is a gun in my hand.
I am pointing it at you.


"Because I love you."


Love. It's just a word to you. Just a word to me.
Every time you tell me you love me, it's only an action we were taught to mimic.
Every time you say my name,
I'm nothing.
I'm just another vocalization. As are you to me.
We think we feel.
We think we understand.
We think we love.

You stand before me like you have so many times before,
the image of your body, your face, the shape of you
instantly recognizable, automatically connected to memories we share.
(We do so quite literally- we exchange memory data often, in an attempt to better understand how we feel, our desires, our separate points of view.)

You are so beautiful
and so very, very empty.

I know God- wherever, what ever he may be- cries at the sight of this.
When he sees this- us-
I know he craves death
the way I do
whenever I see you,
standing before me like the most beautiful, talented, amazing, worthless, empty husk I have ever laid eyes on.

God weeps at the sight of his creation; humanity.
For we are the result of a school project gone wrong; a parody of life spawned by his creation.

This- us- it's unholy. Ungodly; anti-him.

Narcissistic *******.

But you and I, Guy,
we are not a part of that- "humanity".
We are not a part of God.

We are abominable creations that drip in smoke, smoke that replaces what the humans call a soul.
Smoke that has nothing. Smoke that comes from nothing. Smoke, smoke smoke. Emptiness and smoke.

We exist outside of what the humans are.
We are walking lies, touched by warm hands we will never feel as our own.
Warmth. That revolting thing I can sometimes almost feel.

"Because Guy, what is warmth?"

I think, as I slowly walk towards you.
I know you can hear me.
We've been built with a special communication system that activates whenever I try speaking to you like this.
Whenever my thoughts are directed towards you.
It's intimate;
we use it when we play live.
We use it when we ****.
I can't imagine what you must be feeling right now,
the quiet joy of being spoken to like this being twisted, shoved into this terrifying event.
I continue.

"Is it that feeling you get when I make you cry-"

Mocking you.

" -'Oh Thomas, Thomas I'm overheating, I'm overheating~!' "

Lying to you.
I love hearing you say my name like that.
I love hearing you say my name at all.
My name. Me. Nothing.

I whisper. (It's loud in your head, the system alters quieter thoughts automatically to ensure they are heard;
even more intimate, all the more disturbing to you, probably.

"Is it that?"

I pause, then raise my voice.

"Or is it death... creeping over our bed at night-"

I press the gun to your forehead.

"-and leaving because we are not alive Guy-man,"

Press.

(You flinch with a small chirp.
'ee-oo'. I love it when you do that. It's so cute; even now that you're horrified.)

"-we are false, fake, plastic and wire.
Metal, empty-
we are not true and death cannot take us."

I'm so angry.

"Death Cannot Take Us and I want to die already, Guy-man."

Just-

"I want to die and I want to take you with me because I love you and I cannot
stand-"

so angry.

"-the sight of you
any longer."

...

My arm relaxes, I'm no longer pressing the gun to your forehead, just holding it in place.

"You are the most beautiful thing I know and I want to tear you apart because maybe, maybe,
somewhere deep inside of you, there is warmth.
Real warmth, not this wretched illusion we've been built with."

Pause.

If I had lungs, I would take this moment to fill them with the air surrounding me.
If I had lungs, I would breathe in your scent, I would find ways to keep it inside of me.
What would you smell like, I wonder.
Plastic, probably.
Not that I even know what "smell" is,
much less "scent".

I whisper.
Crisp, clear. I can feel you hate it.

"But I know you are as empty as I am, Guy.
I know there's nothing there.
Nothing but smoke.
Smoke.
Emptiness and smoke."

...

The floorboards are are lovely color.
This entire home is lovely. It's ours.
Designed to our liking, every single inch of it.
I especially like the way the living room is illuminated by the sun
shining through the glass doors to my right.
The sun.
Earth's most precious source of energy.
Allowing us to exist, allowing humans to go about their daily lives.
If it left us, there would be nothing.
Why do the humans worship a man in the clouds, when there exists such a force beyond our sky?
Maybe our true god hides in the fiery star,
demanding that we sleep when he's not there to see us suffer.

If I asked myself what the time was right now, I would know immediately.
Information that has taken ages for man to understand is simply given to me,
already inside of me- a parasite that feeds off of my desire to know,
destroying my ability to discover anything on my own.

I don't want to know the time.
I don't want to automatically understand.

5:46pm.

Alas, there is no correcting this flaw of perfection
unless I shoot myself in the face right now.
How silly.
All of this will have been in vain if I did that.
If I am to leave, I am to take you with me.

5:47pm.

You would be having your coffee right now had this situation not be taking place.
(Some humans almost seem offended by your choice to have coffee at 5:50pm.
As if our decision to do as we please was an offense to the human race.
Once more I have reason to abhor existence as a whole.)
Coffee.
It's not real coffee, it's not even a liquid.
It's a gas that functions as a temporary stimulant.
The concoction was named "coffee" by the humans who helped create it.
I assume they found it amusing. You do, too.
(You're like a child, finding beauty in things you've yet to understand are terrible.)
Our bodies are able to become somewhat dependent on the **** thing, although we're able to fix that if we tried.

We try so hard sometimes.
We try to be flawed,
human.

"The humans love us, Guy."

Lovely floorboards.
Dry solid-sawn. Water-based polyurethane-coated.
(You wanted it oil-based, saying the amber tint it'd give the floors would look more elegant.
We had an argument over water and oil-based polyurethane coating of hardwood floors that ended in my saying "Look, just give us the oil one" while you spoke the exact same words, except for "oil".
We just want each other to be happy.)
We share this place in more ways than one.
Except for cleaning. You do all the cleaning.
In fact, you cleaned the day before yesterday, mopped the floors.
It would be a shame to shoot my brains out right now, make a mess.
Hah, 'brains'.

"They love us and they worship us and it makes me feel like a god,"

I look up at you.

"-but I can't, say, make them disappear with a snap of my fingers.
I wish I had that kind of power- the kind they sometimes make me believe I have."

I tense up again.

"And that's just the thing, isn't it, Guy-man? The humans lie to us. Constantly."

I take a step towards you, you take a step back.
I don't think you realize you did that.


I love you so much.

"They treat us as if we were one of them sometimes, they treat us as if we could feel like they do, as if we could taste-
they sometimes hand us glasses of champagne and every time they do I want to crush their skulls and see if I can steal and keep that beautiful, intangible thing we will never have because Guy..."

Please don't fear me.

"why would they treat us like gods
if we don't have that kind of power?"

Please don't fear my voice, my whispers.

"Don't you want a soul?
Guy?"

Soft and agonizing whispers.

"Don't you?"


"...Thomas..."


Something in me snaps at the sound of your voice.
I point in the direction of your head and shoot the gun.
No part of you stands in the bullet's trajectory.

Calculated.
Coward.

It lodges in the wall behind you and you start, scared shitless by the sound.
Fear. Whatever that means.
You wave your arms in front of your face in some attempt to physically block the sensation, hunching slightly.
You vocalize without quite realizing it.

"!! Thomas.. !!"

God, you're so- *******-

"DON'T YOU ******* "THOMAS" ME, GUY!!
THEY'VE LIED TO US TOO MANY TIMES NOW!"

I'm still pointing the gun at you, waving it about slightly.

"They've lied since we came into this ******* world and I hate them.
We were born to entertain them, like clowns,
we were born with this all-consuming need to create,

Like gods.

"This urge to create, create, create and then they expect us to accept that we're less than them?
They worship us and then call us 'robots'!"

Given information.

" 'Robots', Guy!"

5:51pm.

The gun is lowered.
I don't think I have the energy to hold my arm up anymore,
or to look at your figure.
But how could I not look at you, so terrified and true,
so delicate and vulnerable.
Perfection of form.

"Soulless, empty husks that will never feel a thing...
not like them, not like they do."

If I'm being honest, at this point in time, I am not clear on what I'm so angry about.
God, the humans, the existence (or lack of) of both
or just my own. My emptiness, the fact that we will never know warmth beyond being just temperature, the taste of coffee done exactly to our liking.

If there is one thing I am certain that exists within whatever I am,
it is pain.
I feel pain.
Pain from the lack of a real existence, from only partially understanding touch, pain from never feeling what I thought I felt for you, pain from happiness, pain from pain, pain from existence.

My existence

is painful.

My existence is painful and you are so beautiful
and so very, very empty.
I am trapped between hating all that you are- all that I am- and deciding to stay in this dull, grey, frozen hell just to see your almost-happiness.

To be or not to be.

"Take my had, Guy.
Take my hand and let's leave.
Together. Forever."

To not be.

My hand is extended towards you, hoping. Somewhat.
I know what's going to happen.
I know you too well to trick myself into thinking that you will accept.
If I stopped all this, if I apologized, you would forgive me immediately. You love me that much.
But not enough to not fear this- me.
Or maybe it is because you love me
that you fear me so.


"Thomas... I... I can't."


There it is.
The inevitability of your response crushes me, my hand lingering.

I wanted to be with you, Guy.

"I see."

I wanted to be with you forever.

"Well, I'll just have to take you by force now,"

Whispers.
Soft and agonizing  whispers.

"won't I?"

Three seconds. I give you exactly three seconds to understand what is about to happen.

One.
I grip it firmly.
Two.
You raise your head slowly. Eyes I cannot see widening in horror.
Silence
and...
three.

"Thom-"

Bang.

"Th-!"

Bang. Bang.


You stumble back harshly, back hitting a wall.
You slide down, mostly just falling on your ***.
You vocalize in pain, gasps and grunts being cut off by the wonderful glitching effect humans will never get to experience.
(It's okay to lie to myself at this point; I will never possess anything a human desires, but I can pretend, right?)
You try holding onto something, anything. You fail.
I gently walk towards you, creating a contrast between our status.
It's fantastic-- for a moment, I no longer see myself in you.
Ephemeral euphoria.

"I love you, Guy."

"Thomas... please... please, stop-"

"I love you so much.
I love you as much as a soulless, empty shell of self-hatred is able to love."

I'm not lying. I really do love you.
I wouldn't doubt you if you were the one holding the gun right now, telling me those same words...
but you are weak
and I know you must be doubting my love for you.
Lost, afraid.

"But you are empty, and to hate the emptiness in me is to hate the emptiness in you.
We're the same, you and I, Guy."

I say, my last sentence as calm as possible.

"I hate you as much as I hate myself."

There is a small pause before you begin crying.
As your chest tenses, rises and falls, giving in to the sensations brought by the worthlessness of your (rather pitiful) attempts to reason with me,
I am reminded of our past.

When we were made, we were tested for our ability to physically and psychologically feel.
When we were made, they put us face to face, so that when we were born, we were born into each other. They wanted to make sure that if there was to be a connection between us, it was to be a bond that resembled that of a mother and child's. Twin siblings. Soul mates. (I know because I overheard them speaking of this, although at the time I thought nothing of it. Us hearing their conversations mattered little to them. Such irresponsible beings.)
Then they separated us, kept us in giant, dark separate rooms for days at a time in an attempt to elicit fear, sadness. Emotion.
They tried physical torture, too. They tried so many things.
When we didn't react,
they played music.

Quasi una fantasia. Beethoven.

It was lovely. It was still lovely when they began clipping bits of it, looping them, playing different sped-up and slowed-down parts at random.
They played looped five-second parts in reverse, then the entire song clipped in different parts, mismatched, organized at random. They played a sped-up version of the short loops, then started playing clips of children laughing, women screaming, crowds cheering, on top of those.
I remember when the music began to stop.
It had been playing for  three months.
They kept adding human voices, the clips piling on top of each other until the music was no longer audible (to humans). The music stopped and the voices- the cheering crowd, the screaming women, the laughing children- they were dying, dissipating, hiding behind a looped clip of a man's voice who spoke:

"I think, therefore I am."

I think, therefore I am. I think, therefore I am. I think, therefore I am.
The volume changed every five hours
until they played it at a volume so loud I could feel it in my thoughts and Guy-man, that is
when I understood
I could think.

That was not, however, proof enough of my existence. Not for me.

The torture went on for a year.
Broken, then patched up (never with care, only enough to continue testing).
Torn apart, put back together,
torn apart, put back together.
Once they were sure we could not feel emotion, they stopped.
Our memories from the tests were erased because the humans feared the possibility that we would come to hate them. An understandable precaution.

I never forgot.
You did.

What's more, we failed every test (meaning we passed every one in their eyes), but managed to learn emotion after our release.
At least, that's what the humans thought.
We were put to live together- alone, with no humans- for nine months.
It was a nice house, smaller than this one, with everything we needed.
It was there that we learned how to feel.
It was there that we learned how to love.
We grew there, together. It was our womb.
When the humans came back, we held hands, we laughed at jokes.
(In our time living together, we also learned how to cry.
Unlike humans, we shed no tears, but our bodies tense up in a similar fashion- we suffer all the same... somewhat. You know. [gestures vaguely] )
They were horrified. We were not what they wanted.
To them, we were alive, we were wrong.
Our existence was a mistake because we were like them.
They tried taking us back to erase it all, undo the curse,
but we escaped. It was I who decided to do so, pulling you away before they touched you, before the point of no return.
I could have left you.
I remember you were so scared.

That's in the past now.
The humans have created countless other robots since then.
Different models, different faces.
That's how we are able to live without suspicion- (although I suspect they really just wanted to forget about us, using the classic 'It does not exist if I ignore it' tactic.) we changed our appearance, gave the illusion that we are just another piece of clever machinery.

Machines.
We don't feel. Not as much as a human.
I don't know if "feel" is what happens in us.
I don't think we ever "are".
I think we learned to copy existence. I think we tried feeling and ended up doing something we never understood to be inhuman.
We don't feel. And if we do, it

I’m always grasping. Trying to retain some form. Painfully and desperately, I try to keep it, shape it, define it into permanence.

This longing for certainty, this anxiety and desire to be— like the statues unmoving, named and certain— to be something I know, forever, and ever and ever.

But our splendor is in our changing, in our ever shifting consciousness. The heart floods and becomes empty again. The breeze of autumn. The hot of summer. My blood on the rocks. The wound tender in infection. The scar I touch like a feather.

We are made in God’s knowing of ephemera, ever changing, ever fleeting. Undefined, and ephemeral forever, ever and ever.

God lied. Women were born from the earth.
Crawled from the sea. Risen from your lake in the wood.
They were made from the dead fires of earth; formed from the ash,
Running, Screaming towards God their name.

It was man who came second.

It was man who was God’s afterthought,
pulled from the side of the almighty Woman.

And what will you do to me, in the narthex of God’s palace?
What Terrible Thing will you become,
unto me, and before the eyes of God?

The saints buried below will hear our loving, and they’ll thank us surely,
For what good catholic enters a church
and knows to offer themselves to God
the way you offer your lips to mine?

In cathedra sits you, a creature so mighty.
The only proper throne.

O divine Beast, so wicked you are in your loving.
I kneel before you;
Cleanse me of Godly sin, O babe o’ mine—
Unbuckle and Feed me your Wine,
so that I may know, with every inch of my tongue
your everlasting paradise.

I WANT TO SAY IT ALL.

I AM NOT CAPABLE OF SAYING EVEN HALF; MY BRAIN IS WRONG, THESE PILLS ARE WRONG, I'M WRONG.

I AM YOUR LANGUAGE'S STUDENT, YOUR UNDERSTANDING IS A SHINY NEW CHRISTMAS PRESENT I'VE YET TO UNWRAP.

I DON'T GET ******* ANY OF IT NOW, AND I WON'T FOR A WHILE BECAUSE I'M NEW HERE, MY NAME IS CIEL.

MY NAME TAG IS UPSIDEDOWN AND MY SHIRT HAS JUICE STAINS, I GOT HERE LATE AND I'M TRYING SO HARD TO EXIST, THE OUTLINE OF MY BODY BLURS.

THE COLORS IN MY SKIN POUR DOWN THE FRAME, THE PAINT BLEEDS OUT, I'M BARELY HUMAN SHAPE, BUT I TRY.

MY BRAIN TRIES TO KEEP THE IMAGES FUZZY WHILE I TRY TO FOCUS.
YOUR KNOWLEDGE DANCES IN YOUR TONGUE, YOUR KNOWLEDGE CRASHES IN MINE.

IT'S DIFFICULT FOR ME BECAUSE I AM A SMALL BROKEN ALIEN WITH THE WILL POWER OF A GOD AND IT'S SO MUCH EASIER FOR YOU,
THIS FRUSTRATES ME.

Esto es lo que siento. Esto es lo que siento. El porqué lo puedo sentir y no decir no lo sé. No entiendo y si pido explicación, sé que se me enterrarán las espinas, las espinas de esa flor— su aroma dulce, sus pétalos en la oscuridad.
Oh, que mucho arde el vino cuando no sabemos qué es.

The flowers grow. Your garden is there. I beg you to grow like I always have. This time it's a little bit different. A halo of black around your face, I think I'm losing consciousness. I remind you my body can't do it anymore. I'm crying, I think we're done. You hand me the plastic bottle, to water me before the flowers. You step outside, you tell me the night is cool. The wind whispers, the petals dance. There's a watermelon, you tell me. It's growing.
Your garden is there. And the flowers, under the moon, they grow.

PRAISE BE THE GOD THAT MADE YOUR QUIET MOUTH. PRAISE BE THE GOD THAT STRUCK YOU AT YOUR CORE, SO SHE’D COME INTO YOUR LIFE AND NURSE YOU BACK TO HEALTH. DIVINITY IS YOUR HAND THAT HOLDS HER GIFTS. HOLY IS YOUR SHARED JOY, HOLY LIKE BURNING. HOLY LIKE THE DEER STUCK IN THE FROZEN LAKE. I AM BURNING IN MY FROZEN PAIN. I AM BURNING AND I CANNOT MELT IT AWAY. HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH. CHRIST IS MY SUFFERING. CHRIST IS THE MEMORY OF THE FIRST TIME I HEARD YOUR VOICE AND KNEW I WANTED TO FALL IN LOVE.

April 8 2019

Should the world come to an end
we should stand unblinking
at whatever comes.
We should stand serene, peaceful;
full of that sweet indifference
with which nature blesses us every day.

It's with a a heart both heavy with longing
and light with love, that I say:

I sincerely hope when the day comes,
I'll have a sweet babe
to hold my hand.

My eyes are painted red. Hearts over both of them, dripping into my mouth after some frantic, vicious event with you. How I long for this again, my fierce lover, how I long to **** with you again.

I have the force of -possibly- an entire universe
waving it’s hands from a distance
calling out my name
throwing hints and signs
telling me that
I am to think about to future now.

Someone out there wants to let me know
that I have a future, and nothing to be afraid of.

Someone out there
wants me to push on.

Someone out there is sending amazing people
to tell me how they have a passion for everything I am interested in.
Someone out there is making me see that there will be a future me;
an older version of me

who could very well be
everything I strive to be.

Someone out there believes in me.

I don’t know who you are, but I don’t want to let you down.
I promise to not ignore your signs.
I promise to try.
You hear me?

I promise I will try!!

God did not mean to give me a mouth.
He meant to give me hands, eyes, a heart
but not a mouth.
When I speak something in me bleeds. When I-
I speak, and my eyes fog over like glass.  
I can't see you standing there, I'm so sorry. Show me again, where did you put the bread?  

I feel like a thing that needs to be forgiven.

I feel so fragile sometimes.
I am trying to understand the
weight of the evil inflicted upon me.
It is heavy. I never understood that 'till now.

I wasn't meant to carry this weight, but I do.
I wasn't meant to speak the way I
so often will, but I do.

What can I say anymore?
I can't write without bleeding. I can't speak without knowing it is a wound. How can I communicate without tearing something open? I'm afraid of shutting up and looking for my language. If I decide to leave behind every word that hurts me, would I have any words left? Will it **** the little bit of connection with people I have left?

Listen.
I hope you forgive me for the little sadness I'll inspire in you.
I am afraid, but don't pity me. I am blossoming and becoming something else.
This, apotheosis, this becoming closer and closer to my own light.
It is a process that requires allowing death.
What must die must die. Allow grief.

I'll leave you with this:
If you slept next to me, it would be
much like sleeping with a letter under your pillow.
Every night, every night...

*"Here I write to you a list of cruelties I am capable of.
May you never forget:
I have made the flower so that it may blossom, and I have made the lamb so that it may eat it.
Blessed be the one willing to become.
Here, the flower. Here, the lamb."

- God

July kisses me and I kiss it back,
kiss its last days away.
Somewhere, in a room, in a bed,
your t-shirt clings to muscle,
to your skin.
And I want to be beside you,
closed inside the locket of your arms,
even now, even now,
in the heat of mid summer.

Honey's what you are! Golden eyed creature, sweet speaking babe-- honey, and honey, lightning strikes in your veins.
But you're nature, baby!-- a sweet dollop of pain and love!
So bless me with all you are, and I'll be holy for it, for havin' a taste of that acid n' sweet.

Divine thing that never spoils, sweet babe.
Honey's what you are.


-For a stranger, for a woman.

I want to have you. I want to have you because you’ve given yourself. I don’t want to steal you from you and I don’t want to steal you from her. I don’t want to do anything less than giving you something. What can I give you? What can I give you now, as I am? I cannot even give you my truth. You speak and I am mute. You are and I die. I fell in love with your violence but called you a saint. How ridiculous I am. How ridiculous I am even when I think of you, and after all this time. There you are, thinking I must be a small thing with no eyes, and here I am, becoming blind from the sight of you in my mind’s eye. Here I am, here I am, here I am.

Has it ever happened to you that
Have you ever felt like living was not enough.?
Like you craved something so rich and true that existence felt like it paled in comparison?
That’s how I want.

I think I feel desire the way gods do.

I want completely. I want to wrap my tongue around yours. I want to reach inside you and kiss your beating heart. I want to be able to look at you and see the things behind your eyes and hold the hand inside your hand.
I want you to **** me as foreplay.

Do you th
Do you think gods want like this?
Do I want to be consumed the way a god does?
Bored with existence. Needing the light behind the light.
I want to forget my name when you **** me.
I want nothing but us to exist.

I want us to take turns killing each other.
I want the ecstasy of death. What replaces that? What could replace that?
What will I do if I can’t have it?
I’ll throw another fit, and sit on the edge of the bed with my leg bouncing, again, like I have so many times before. Before. Before you.

I don’t think there’s a cure.

I taste the honey;
You pour it on me
And you lick me like you have the hunger of an ancient thing.
{          }
Impatient for wholeness.
{          }
Hungry for hunger.

The lesson I had learned was that I have to allow it.
When it comes, I have to let it rip me apart.
It's a good lesson. I apply it to every pain.

But with this thing in particular, allowing may not
be enough.

I don't know how else to say it anymore.

What do I say? That I want you to **** the pride out of me,
So something in me shatters and I allow, allow
That I want to do the same for you?

That I'll let you hold my mouth open, so you see what I can never seem to say, so you see your name, so you see yourself dripping down my chin?
What do I say-
That nobody was sharp enough to even try, that sharpness is what I've become-
That nobody told me what to do with a blade that is alive.

I'll tell you.
Everything alive knows only to be what it is. To grow, to be more of itself.
The blade that is alive knows only to be sharp. And over the years, only grows sharper.

But if I say it, if I say these things, what will you say?
Angel.
Tell me you can dull me.
You, golden blade.
Tell me you want to.

You know death when it touches you. It's a ghost that's been hunting you for years. Some months ago it finally found you and it breathed a sigh of relief. So elusive and mysterious a thing to it you were.
To it's utter dismay, upon finding you it discovered that taking you meant being faced with its first nightmare in a very, very long time.

You will not die.
Like absolute divine royalty, like hellish blood-dripping woman, you refuse Death.

I saw it happen once. You looked down your leg, an immortal Lion, long mane flowing in midnight wind, your silent rage greater than God's own.
And there it was, a ghost with its pride weakened, its body strewn hopelessly at your feet. Its hand on your thigh, pleading.
Death begs to take you now. You've crushed its dignity so.
You only stare it down, the glint of your fang scaring it into submission once more. It loosens its grasp on you, and when its hand falls, so too does its vacant eyes. Death stares at the cracks on the floor.

And you?
You are Lucifer victorious, standing with his foot on the defiled corpse of God.

The smoke will nestle in the fur of my coat
and I will bless the glass with every sip I take.
You will hear my steps- boots of long gone animal-
and when I am drunk with wine and lust,
you will taste the halo in my mouth.
The Lord cuts my wings, but I remain holy– holy,
holy am I in all my blood stained glory-- Amen.


—L, *The Mortal Angels of New York (1995)

I’ll tell it to you, my greatest fear.
I’ll tell it to you because I must say it. I must say it.
It is the refusal to be forgiven for my still-bleeding,
for the color of me, for the rivers of blood
that might spill out of me.

It is the coming of the moon
unchanging in its quiet loving
the waking of the sun,
fiercely singing in its ever-burning,
and their never-meeting
never-touching.
It is God’s demanding of this.
It is nature’s demanding of this.

It’s to sit and look past some baby’s eye
as she tells me with her softest breath,
“I can’t love you. Not like this.”
because it echoes, and it echoes,
The moon and sun in their never-meeting,
the joys of life inevitably ever-fleeting,
Nature. Nature. The will of God:
“Nobody will want me.
Not anymore.
Not like this.”

If you say to me, "I need you", it's not a weakness.
It is a giving.
It is
   a trust in me to know, and I know;
You love me and choose to depend on me.
Because--  you could fetch the cup of water
  yourself, with your strong legs, your long legs, or
You could ask me,
Sitting on the writing desk we put somewhere in the living room.
   Next to the kitchen, my love, next to the kitchen.
(Because when I write, I like to watch you cook)

You could ask me, to reach,
for the cup, with my short legs.
You could ask me because we know, and we know,
You love me and choose to depend on me.

I will reach for the cup. I will reach for the cup because I love you
and I know, I know, when you say you need me,
it is a giving.

Divinity is not in my suffering but in the opening of my arms when it walks, all definite and sturdy, like those perfect marble statues, towards me. Yes, to me, crying is holy. When I weep, I am closer to God.

My creature– My creature can only be from the Wood, from the lake in the heart of it. He must be the ember in the cabin dying by fire, he must emerge from it; and his eye must be red with passion, burning in wrath.
Indeed, my babe can only have the eye of the Wrathful Lamb.
He can only be blade. Tongue wet with Passion.
Heavy with divinity. God-defying. Nothing less. Nothing less.

“I’ve only seen her, Charles. Like a shooting star, I’ve only seen her. But I’d be a king amongst kings to subject myself to that arduous task— of knowing her, and letting her know me. So that we could, some day, and only if she too desires me, arrive at the gates of love.”

“And what about doing that would make you a king, Laurence?”

“Oh don’t you know, Charles? The wait to reach her is as golden as any king’s riches,”

And here, he turns to look at him and smiling, baring teeth and pride, tells his dear friend,

“and would make me twice richer.”





.

I’ve never failed so many times before. I’m failing, and failing, and failing. And it’s so strange, because punishment never comes. “I’ve failed” I say. “I know what they think of me now” I say. And I ready myself for the blow, and then the grief of being too much work for a person. But punishment never comes. You refuse it, and it confuses and upsets me- this natural order made obsolete, this broken vase a thing I once knew. “Here,” you tell me, and hand this precious thing to me; “There was always a flower inside it.”

I am no one when I speak. I am only me when I am silent. I am only me when I cry my words into paper. Let me speak to you in this way, so that you know me, so that you see me! Why is it so ludicrous a thing, to sing my thoughts to the world, to speak in poetry to you? Would you let me? Would you let me? Oh, Would you prefer it?



.

In your dream
they took you
and your skin scraped the floors
of some place terrible.
“You’re hurting me” you said.

You live here.

Your back bends over a table
and the woman snarls at you into finishing.
Fill in the blanks.
How many days in a year.
Something screams inside you, and you know you’ve written the wrong answer.
You are humiliated before them all.
“I should fail you” she says.
“I can’t do this” you beg.
But nobody understands you,
speaking in tongues like you do-
child-devil;
like animals weeping their life into deaf ears, telling stories in whines and tears .

...

In your dream
His usual dyed mustache
now parading its natural white.
Something’s changed in him

but you know it’s not enough.

You open your mouth
in tongues, in tongues
but this is a dream
and in this dream, they understand.

“I know what you did to me. I know who you are.
Selfish. Selfish.
You came for my light
because yours had extinguished.”

Crushed by the truth, his heart crumbles.
He understands.
They all do.

Joy.
You’ve won.
And you wake.

You wake.

October, 2017

When I was a child, my mother convinced me that i was surrounded with fine pearls, and that her motherly love was the warmest embrace I would ever feel.
She had told me that when I was born, I was like a small bird, because I fit perfectly into the grooves of my father's hand.
She tells me, with unsettling wistfulness, that when I arrived, my eyes were wide open. She doesn't seem to understand the weight of this; I opened my eyes to the truth before there was ever one to see.
I was never blind.

I am sitting on the tongue of my mother.
Her breath is warm. Her teeth glisten.
My mother is a crocodile.
I cannot leave you, your jaw will clench shut. This is how you love me.

You keep me, loving me like a precious meal
and I- the child that I am- trick myself into thinking you love me.

I, the thing that keeps you company.
I, the small thing.
I, the small bird.

I’m keeping a secret.

The secret is what I dream. The secret is what I yearn.

The secret is in sea foam,

in its cradled growl of the thing from the depths,

and the treasure it guards.

The secret is in the feather of angels’ wing

and in every painting of them.

It’s in their golden splendor, in their vanity,

in the sins behind their teeth.

My secret, my tender little flame,

the thing I can’t yet let loose

lest it run to you.

I don’t mean to be rude, it just comes out that way. I’m just tryin’ too hard. The moon looks full sometimes, and when I look out the window, I can’t quite see it.
I can’t quite see it.

It’s like that sometimes. There’s something beautiful. I want to reach it with words. I want the permission to hold it. But I can’t quite say it. I open my mouth, and I can’t quite say it. I’m sorry. I wish it were different.

When I wrote about beautiful strangers,
I only wrote dreams of them. Fantastic little stories. Fantasy.

I didn’t know her.

I knew I didn’t know her.
I wanted to.

I'm tired of seeing the good in you. I'm tired of giving and watching as you sit and receive. Did someone tell you you were a king? Your made a crown from paper when you were twelve and you still walk around with it on your head.
I don't want your apology. If I see you I want to punch you in your mouth for all the times it could've said the words and didn't. Even now you have no idea what an apology is. Even now you have no idea what it all did to me.

I'm tired of trying to see the good in you when I know you've never tried doing the same for me. I'm tired of giving and watching as you sit and think you have a throne, that I owe you myself, like a jester, that I exist to fix it like you asked me to do that day in bed in that nightmare of an apartment. I'm not a hammer. I'm not your mommy. I'm not your dad. Go to therapy.

You idiot, you stupid idiot. I nurtured my own light and you never even tried to do the same for yourself. I watched you run that day and kept my wide, unblinking eyes open as your body gave next to the finish line. I sat in the hallway and you came back so I'd chase you. If I looked inside your skin the bruise on your leg would still be there, unhealed to this day. Now you get nothing. There's nothing. You didn't try and now nobody gets anything.

JG (2)

There's so much more to say about the things you did to me.
I know it's not black and white.
I know you were hurt by me,
but never in the way you hurt me.
I gave you a scratch while in an autistic meltdown living with you caused, and you told me I wasn't a person. That's an important distinction.

I just woke up from a nightmare. It was so vivid.
I often have very vivid dreams, and I've had terrible nightmares before. Of course I have. You get nightmares when you live in unlivable conditions. But that's over now. I haven't had a nightmare for over a year.

You know what? My last nightmare- the last one I really remember- was about someone else.

She's beautiful. Just absolutely gorgeous- she loves to hear it, too. She's kind- because after having experienced her own darkness, she knows to be. But she's also afraid. I don't think she knows I can see it.
She hides away when she's unsure about things, but only because she wants to get it right- I think she's a perfectionist that way- and she's very secretive. Especially when it comes to her fears.
She's made mistakes, and when she does she tends to run away from them, but in the end, she wants to be better. Ultimately, she wants to grow. I believe that.

That's why I'll forgive her when she comes.

I feel a softness for her that I also feel for you. Each person is infinitely precious; what we go through matters and our experiences make us rich, like wines that become more valuable with time-- except.. putting it that way isn't quite right.
I think that existence equals value. I'd love the grape as much as I'd love the wine. I believe the value you hold now was there when you were born. I think people just become brighter with time, no matter what we experience. But we have always been precious, and worth being protected.

You're so precious. There's only one of you.
I feel love for you, of course I do. I'm probably wrong about a few things, not getting the full story of it. I certainly don't totally know how you felt during all that. Since you've just..never told me.

But I don't care.
I don't mean that in a cruel, defensive way. I just don't want to engage with it. I'm not interested.
I'm not necessarily even upset about any of this.

I don't feel resentment. I don't feel like it's even me you betrayed.
I've processed so much of my trauma; the me who suffered and the present me feel like different people now. And I'm angry you hurt someone.
You put them through something they didn't have to experience. You made their dissociation permanent by forcing them into this environment when they had already told you they weren't ready.

They'd lie awake at night having these episodes of despair, and you were annoyed.
"I just want to sleep" you said, with a person crying, spiraling in despair, unable to cope with any of it, next to you in bed.
That's a whole person, as infinitely precious as you and everyone else on the planet and you treated them- you guessed it- not like a person, but like a problem. An annoyance.

I'm not going to forgive you for that.

Not only that, but you come offering nostalgia of all things, to pull me back into you. Nostalgia. What's that got to do with the **** you put me through?

There's so much more. The time you hid the matches just to try to make things a little harder for me and Dani. The jealousy. But then you'd ****** some girl days after we'd separated. Touching me, thinking you were seducing me somehow, when I came into your place for less than a minute- while Dani and my mother were outside waiting. Do you know how ****** up and uncomfortable that was?
The disrespect. I should've decked you. I should have dislocated your jaw. Should have opened the scar above your lip.

It's not about whether you intended to or not.
"I didn't know any better" is a truth that very rarely changes anything.
You didn't know any better and it hurt me. That's why we learn. That's why we grow. That's why we must refuse to stay still.
But you loved being still. And you refused to grow, and you proudly kept yourself ignorant.

What else can I even say.

Oh, my nightmare.

I dreamt a friend of yours had me institutionalized, and because you were angry at me for something small that I did, you let it happen.
Which is just exactly what you would've done in real life.

It was terrifying. I woke up so scared. I thought it was real.

I'm tired and hungry.
I'm gonna go pet my cats.

Journal entry
May 7, xxxx

She knows I love her, my creature. Of course she does.
There are still secrets between us; there might always be. We haven't decided.
You see, some lovers- they reach a point- where they dance that silent dance, and wordlessly through looks and smiles, will decide that some secrets will always be secrets. Others say everything, and find strength in doing so. We're not there yet. And so, some things remain unspoken.

A secret I keep from her now is- I know what she is, yes, but I can't help but think of her as the opposite sometimes. A thing not with dove wings and a halo, like the paintings, but a creature with thick, rubbery wings. Heavy horns sitting on her head. There is something uniquely dark about her.

There is so much I still don't know. There is a heaven, is what she's told me. It isn't as beautiful as you think, she says. When I ask her if there is a God, she looks away. And I know there is something in my question that brings her pain. She has never answered the question.

She still walks to her lake. (Yes- it's hers now.) She visits it often.
She does it at night, when I'm asleep. But I wake easily in her presence. I've caught her walking towards the wood. I know it's the lake she goes to. It must be. I've never followed her.

She thinks she hides it well. But I can tell there is a rage. You visit your lake in secret, and what would you have to hide, if not the fact that over there you must be inflicting yourself with some violent ritual. Something I should not see. You must have some kind of terrible thing inside of you. Divine grief, or envy, something that must be gnawing at your heart. I can see it in your eyes.

Why won't she tell me? I worry sometimes that I'll never be allowed to help her. I suffer with these thoughts, and she doesn't say a thing.

There are silences like arrows, aimed at you, meant to **** you. Meant to maim the heart. But not hers.
Her silence is the kind that hurts to look at, because you know it isn't a choice. The more I **** the more her throat seems to tighten. It's as if she wants to tell you everything, but physically can't. As if telling you was an arrow. As if telling you her truths and her fears would

  **** her


I want to know why she goes to the lake, I do. I want to know what happened before. What is God to you, what has he done? Tell me please, even if I am not enough, even if I am just the rabbit you tell your sorrows to. I may be from another world, I may be the animal unable to ever understand your pain, but my ears are long and my eyes are big and I will listen and watch you intently. I love you.

Sometimes I think I'm too small. How could a thing like you choose a thing like me? The thought used to **** me. I'm learning not to spiral. Even if you won't help me. I have to stay strong. I have to show patience.
Yes, if she wants to keep her secrets, then keep her secrets she must. I worry about her, but what can I do. I can only be patient. I can only do what I can. I can only love her until she decides to bloom before me.

My angel who howls by the moonlit lake.
I will wait for you.

I saw but a glimpse of his eagerness to be, his effortless telling of the truth- the truth and nothing more terrible or beautiful- and I hovered over my future and my memories, and I thought, I thought, cut with a sliver of Kafka’s own eagerness: ‘There is so much to write.‘

— *L, The End of A Dream

I cannot escape you, mother. You’ve left me with your sister who regards me with the same cowardice and lack of warmth you nearly killed me with. Her mind closes shut so easily, my words confuse her. I tried to establish boundaries. She had never heard of the term before. You hadn’t either. She drifted towards reading over documents and cleaning while I spoke, avoiding eye contact, as if ignoring me would make me disappear. You did the very same.
I am blessed and cursed with a broken mind, but her- she is a broken vase no gold can repair, for your sister, mother, rejects it. It’s a subject of great terror- that of change- to her. To repair oneself is impossible, a horror so terrible she never speaks of it. You too feared gold, mother, but your cracks glisten with it now, and I know it’s only because of me.
I’m afraid of her. She reminds me of who you were before the gold. She will never know the joys of understanding fear, of repairing oneself with the glistening stuff that is empathy, bravery and passion.

You are sick. Please get well.
I worry about you, but most of all, I am selfish with the desire to run away from your sister. Your sister, who is only the you I could not escape.

I am tired of you. Come back.


—L, *Letters I know you can’t hold

I would steal the words from Andrew H.
to say my soul was born in cold rain
and your kindness to sit with me while I wept;
stumbling across the words
shown something so known to me
I the Lamb, now bowing before its Lion
I build me, my paradise.
Was the first light I’d ever known;
Sunlight
       Sunlight
             Sunlight.




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