love is pain and pain and light.

it takes and takes and takes, takes seeing so little to see everything again.

jumbled together, twilight blue hard to discern from pitch black.

this, this is love, not for one or the other, not for her or them and yet every single one. but most importantly, of this.

of life, of this moment, of me.

———————————————————

all my life, i’ve been told, “this is love” like it’s something identifiable, an example in a science project.

never thought to question, never thought to ask why because it didn’t matter if the question was loaded, what mattered was if i answered correctly. you don’t survive by standing up, you make it by playing the system. problem is, it takes so many years of disguised service that it becomes muddy, difficult to see where fingertips end and reflection starts.

i did not know what love was until i got the chance to do it freely, without conditions, without an ultimatum, without guilt attached like anthrax. i didn’t know what it was like to be loved until i was taught it’s okay to not love. i didn’t know what my own love looked like until somebody asked, til someone wanted it.

truthfully, i still do not know what love is. i know my mom is scared of me. i know she isn’t good for me. i know love can hurt, but it shouldn’t, shouldn’t want to hurt.

because love is pain and pain
but most blindingly,  it’s light.

the cumulonimbus clouds rise above the blue garage, the pale chimney, the quiet life blossoming like a flag placed atop a hill to signify progress, movement towards the future. a sign of hope, of continued life even when the clock ahead cruelly reads “time spent with family is time well spent” and it burns like the unused fireplace below it, nonexistent embers just as real as cherished memories with a family that doesn’t try. the windows here are big, bigger than at grange street and the clouds shine brighter than the sun, but it doesn’t dissuade me from trying to discern every single detail in them, where the shadows end and the blue blue sky starts. even when the mountains crumble into dust, old ground replaced by fresher dirt pushed up by the core, the space above remains. as above, so below; this is what triumph looks like.

anti-electricity crawls through my veins, slow as molasses and just as suffocating. push the worms for fingers under scalding water or force them to feel something with crushing pressure, as long as the only sensation you feel is your pounding heartbeat and not whatever that sickly zing in your blue twizzlers are.

funny how, after all this time, the proof that you’re alive is comforting. if only the gaggle of muscles could push a lil harder, keep my fingers functional with oxygen and warmth but i guess that’s asking for too much.

for someone who always used to give and only got more taken away, it should be no surprise that my body learned those tricks to play as soon as i refused to bend to outsiders.

it is alarming, but not enough to do much about, that my head is heavy to hold up and that my fingers beg to stop moving, beg to stop holding up the phone. it seems that every aspect of me was created to betray me, as if even the cells making up my organs have it out to get me, even the atoms making up my existence know i’m unlovable and need to show it, to me at the very least; we all know i have no problem carrying that action along whether i want to or not, what with it being an integral unavoidable part of my nature and everything.

ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
born a baby, dying a child.

entering the world loudly and leaving oh so quietly, in silent suffering, body frothing
from the assortment of miscellaneous pills
scrounged together, but mind empty as always.

this time, though, it’s an okay empty;
it’s the blue sky with open possibilities
and feverish sights kind of empty.
an accepting empty.

the childhood i can’t remember,
you’d think i’d want to forget honestly,
but i want those screams and slams so badly.
the pain would give me more to think about
and what i hate more than anything is
having nothing to do at all.

more than that, i’d have golden daffodils.
there is no before for me, i don’t think.
this world has never been all friendly,
always has been tainted by uncanny love.
yet, maybe in those untouchable moments
my brain has locked away,
they have to be there
it’s cruel that they’d just be gone altogether,
maybe there are moments that are more spring
than winter, more innocent than hurt, more safe than scared, more free than hidden.

it’s not like it matters, in these last moments,
but i do know i want my last ones to reflect it.
if my first weren’t emerging from the ground
in naive fervor, then my last
would softly lay down
in the shimmering fields like a young doe.

maybe, in another life, maybe.
maybes have never worked for me,
far too redundant for someone so practical,
but maybe i could pretend to be
that other person in another life
in my last moments.

if i’m not who i am
at the end, in the end,
did i really die?

if i’m someone else
for a moment
dreaming of another
sweeter, gentler
life, not mine,
yet mine, theirs,
did i not live it?
was i not born again?

coming to terms with my life
is frankly unachievable.

but perhaps, through this method,
i can make peace somewhere else;
so that by the time my brain catches on,
it’ll be too late. it’s past bedtime, dear,
so let’s head to bed and chase sheep.

ah, is this what reincarnation is meant to be?

reaching for, stretching my arm out,
                      tendons stressed and muscles pushed past limits,
just for a grasp, a chance at
at what?

     i’m sitting atop these gangly branches
           unaware, no, uncaring of whether it
even cares to bear fruit or not.

    and what if not?
                         do i just remain, scratched by bark
and questioned by irritated leaves.

   even if i did want to jump down
to the soft and warm green below,
             my hands are shaky
and i fear the inevitable crunch
     of my ankles, that i do not move.

    as forlorn as i am to admit,
               my lives do not extend past 1
   and neither does my ability to land safely.

    is that why i can never catch what i’m chasing?
because there is no mouse without the cat.

“you do not listen the way you’re meant to, you only accept things you are okay with giving up, but you would never accept something you have not already examined and understood,” i say in a flurry of bitter love to my mother.

she scrambles, and parts of me, the apple seeds she buried in my chest when my bones were still too soft, ache with guilt, blossom with poison apples, but i leave them to rot while ignoring my grumbling stomach.

this is not love, i think, because an offer of nutrition shouldn’t **** you before the food can give you life to begin with. ah, eve, i get it now, the temptation of belonging.

“she won’t change her mind, but i argue anyway because it’s all i can do,” my sister recounts, and it loops through my head at that moment. i realize this argument is selfish, it’s only for me, payment, because if i cannot have love, then at least i have this proof that i tried, that i came close to changing her, tried to make her love me.

yet, that’s what makes it sting the most. the fact that i tried and tried, kept eating apple after apple, hoping, praying that the next wouldn’t be bitter, and never tasted sweetness. what burns in my throat, the acid coating my esophagus is this: how i will always be almost there, so close, criminally near to winning her over, but it will never be enough. in another life, i comfort, but that’s the thing, not in another life, because i will always be so close and yet not. almost almost. yet never enough.

in math, .999... is considered 1 because it continues on, and since it never stops, there is no space between, no number you can get if you subtract from one another.

like this, so goes my attempts to be loved. as long as i do not stop, do not look back, do not look down, then i will be almost there, almost 1, almost enough, so why stop? as soon as i do though, as soon as i realize the truth, realize my chasing, my ellipses, are not me, are not me she’s loving, i become .999 and not 1. it is a curse in and of itself because nobody will ever be able to prove how close i am to changing her mind, but they will be able to see i wasn’t enough when i walk away. don’t you see, sister, that this is why we do not stop arguing, for our two choices are defeat or death, you decide.

our stubborn pride claws at my tongue, bids me not to speak, hates the taste of such a near-victory, with the knowledge that i’ll never experience the real thing.

oh it burns, burns like alcohol on a freshly poisoned throat, to resign yourself to the fate that your mother will never love you, not all of you, not the you that matters, that laughs and loves, not unconditionally, not universally.

sister, this is not pity nor contempt. most days i do not give chase, but even i, invulnerable and real, rush to slip my shoes on and fly out the front door, leaving it open, almost closed, because i know i’ll come back worn and tired, alone, never satisfied, only ever in pain.

we talk about our worst fears: hip displacement, ****** degloving, broken jaws, and the reddit list goes on. our family has bad genes with bones, i concur, and my brother pops my statement back into place, “our family has bad genes in everything.” it is not a bitter correction, a true one, a tradition to claim at least once a week for us, one i used to bark in scorn, one i now laugh at hearing from others’ mouths because really, what else can i do? it is spoken in all it’s neutral beauty, a holy psalm, as the shepherd does watch over his flock, so does bad luck with our family.

seemingly, it is a new tradition, brought upon by me and moved into by the youngsters behind me, a christmas memory, a vacation, a spring break that the older adults have accepted, stopped fighting, because when have they done anything useful like patch us up? i do not scold the kids for their harsh words; how could i, when i was the first to do such things? if anything, this is the one area of complacency i refuse to bow to. i may not be able to silence those who take away their voice, but i will always be a person they can scream at.

“what do you want me to do?” my mom breaks. the miserable child in me pleads, “i don’t know, just fix it!” but i say, “it doesn’t matter.” because it doesn’t, not now, not really, there’s something, someone, multiple people in fact, to fix, but it’s too late. too late to repair the trust, the trust you never tried to build and didn’t care to grieve, not until the obituary caught your eye in a scrapbook three years down the line. it grates on my heart, but i do not break, do not shatter like the child she wants me to be, the child she wants to manipulate and twist to her delight, the child she didn’t want to properly raise. instead, i quietly rage, how dare she try to play the victim, as if she has room at all to play hurt when i’m the one who was left to rot. left to pick up the pieces and protect the others with my bullet-ridden body, a child soldier at its core. it does not matter, i repeat, because it does but it can’t. there’s no fixing it, so there’s no way it could’ve been fixed.

i’m an adult now anyways, old enough to recognize that there are none of the angels i wanted to come rescue me, no adults like that, none of the ones i always knew never really existed, but it’s always easy to act like they’re not with you rather than not here at all, so i’ll do all i can to be one for others, be something for others. i’m not much for war, but i’m good for a human shield and sabotaging plans behind enemy lines, so use me like this: as an advantage, a defense, a way to keep living, a way to get through to the next trench, an informant to learn from, a person to train with until you’re ready, until you’re healed enough for the next battle. i cannot stop this war, but *******, i can fight in it.