That Is What They Don’t Understand. They Think Some External Pressure Is Destroying Me But It Has Always

I will be myself, and if the world rejects that then I will reject the world, and make my own place. I will not be lonely there, because I know there are others just like me, struggling to reconcile the desire to belong and the desire to be.

I watch the climate crisis march to my doorstep, and

invite itself into my living room.

The blaze is outrageous, but not nearly as much as his friend, the politician.

He insists the fire isn’t here, that my brown felt couches have always been black and crackling,

That the water from my kitchen faucet has always been boiling from its spout.

I watch my world turn to ashes, and the fire take its leave, and the politician smiles with heavy pockets.

Insisting he wasn’t paid to let him in in the first place.

I want to know peace for while, if that’s alright. If the world can spare it for someone like me.

I adored living as a shell of myself. I held echoes in my chest where my heart used to be, and laughed in tickles as the words of others caroused my rib bones. Nothing at all was serious, nothing mattered the littlest bit to me. Until someone I knew recognized me. A girl I went to elementary school with, with sharp blue eyes and now dyed brown hair; she used to be blonde. I used to be too. Everything feather heavy caught weight on me, my skin was saddlebags, my heart beat for the first time in eight long years. It was a rapid hurried thing my heartbeat, like it had just woken up from a bad dream. The girl, well, a woman now, ogled at me with a sort of cold consternation—she looked sorry for me. My hair sort of tangled, my outfit worn since last night must’ve been so starkly different from the neat hand-raised-in-the-air-eager-to-answer-a-question girl that used to sit next to her in Mrs. Jones class. It hit me then that something did still matter to me, not present me, but to my childhood self. Little me was still alive, she still cared about what Jasmine thought of us. She used to cheat off of our math quizzes for god’s sake and she’s sorry for me? How could I ever be something I’m not in peace when there are lingering living memories trooping about, forcing me to remember who I was, and acknowledge what I’ve become. I adored living as a shell of myself. Nothing hurt so badly as it does now that I don’t anymore.

The truth is I have nothing worth writing about in me. I don’t connect with other people and that’s where good writing happens. I’m often in other people’s arms, I’m enwrapped in their laughter, but I don’t let them anywhere near me. I want so desparately to be loved as the mangled creature that I am but I’m too ashamed to show anybody my real face. So I hide it. And I make people laugh, I make them laugh so hard their sides hurt. And I feel the closest thing to love that someone like me can have. And I hope it is enough, because I don’t know how to have more than that and still feel safe. Maybe there isn’t a way. Maybe truly being loved is supposed to be scary. And I’m just a coward.

I cling to the anchor because I think the ship will drown me.

I crave the familiarity of the salt water over the cold whipping of the air.

Because I would rather drown than change, I would rather stay stuck in the same place for the rest of my life than breath the air of tomorrow.

My skin prickles hot; I asked the old man a question and he answers with a story so far unrelated I had to turn around and see just who in the hell he was talking to, because it certainly wasn’t me! Yes or no will do just fine, I kept hearing myself say in my mind, my voice gentle like a kitten’s fighting tooth and nail to drown out his gravely droning on about airplanes and the war. Outwardly I must’ve been screeching fake niceties and not pulling off my polite half assed head nods because his eyes were wide, and albeit dull as ever but he seemed perturbed. And that’s saying something because men like Robert don’t seem anything, they’re simply half dead elderly men roaming the earth to challenge God. Look how long I’m living! Keep knocking Jesus, I’m not opening the door! I can’t imagine being a gold digger and accidentally marrying a Robert. Undying so much as they are unriveting. Later I looked in a mirror and saw my face, still plastered up fake happy from our little conversation if you could call it that. I understood instantly why he seemed so off-put by me, I looked clinically insane. This fake it til you make it crap has got to work for somebody but it is undoubtedly not me. Unfortunately God put me here to be as authentic as possible—to punish me of course.

If I must abandon myself to earn their smiles, what are they worth to me anymore.

Ode to the Red Boy

I see a red boy winking, perpetually still. His right eye is closed, his left open, unmoving. He wears pajamas, the Spiderman kind my brother used to wear when he was small. The red boy is on the floor of a hospital in Gaza, his blood caked on his face with soot and ash. His chest does not rise and fall, his eyes do not blink, but he holds his wink. One eye shut, the other open. A playful gesture, as if he's playing a trick on me. As if soon he would awaken and wash the red from his face like strawberry jam, and go play with his spider-man figurine in the sunlight. But he does not move, the red boy. The fluorescent light holds him still. His swollen eyelid does not so much as twitch. He is determined to fool me, and I am happy to be fooled. If it means he will one day wake up, I am happy to be fooled.