Persephone Plummeting

I wonder what he thought when he looked at his two little girls and left.
When their tuition and Christmas presents disappeared up his nose and down his throat,
What was he thinking about?
Whose fate was he tempting when he was driving home so drunk he couldn’t be bothered to pull over so he just puked out the window?
I wonder why we weren’t enough to keep him seeing straight,
Why we weren’t enough to have him slow his heart to normal and stay.
All those dark bars and brightly painted women, why were they better?
We probably couldn’t have understood it,
But I think you owed it to us to look at us and tell us you chose something else instead.

I wonder what she thought when she looked at scared eyes and hit.
When all they could do after all that was hug her and beg her to stop,
Was it supposed to be enough to make us clean up and never talk about it again?
I’m curious why men who made my skin crawl were enough to scream at us and send us early to bed, hurting, and mad.
Who was she winning over by giving all her time to men who didn’t care, who didn’t even like us all that much?
Why weren’t we enough to stop the suicide threats and rages?
What was so bad about us that you had to tell us all the time?
We’ll probably never understand it,
But I know you owed it to us to be better; to put someone besides yourself first.

And now do they wonder?
When both their daughters were gone by eighteen, one married and married again by twenty two.  
Mother to several children and more to come;
Maybe trying to redo what you never did right the first time.
One who never talks and only hates herself.
More than half a life spent disfiguring her own skin,
The latter part of that spent running until her heart gave up and said no.
Why couldn’t we have been more like them and pretended that everything was just alright?
They’ll never understand it,
But we owe it to the world and the other people we love to not be like them; ever.

I wonder why I keep trying to fix what I never broke in the first place.
Why am I always begging everyone not to leave me when anyone who should have stayed was never there in the first place?
I wonder why being gifted wasn’t enough to make you proud,
Why being angry wasn’t enough to make you pay attention,
And why all those times I tried to die no one ever asked me to live.
Who was I trying to hurt with all those careless situations and escapades?
Why is it so hard for anyone to start being a parent?
Why do I even want you to try?
Maybe I’ll just never understand it.

I only have nightmares
And only when I am trying not to.
I wake up and call you in the middle of the middle of the night, you never answer,
I don’t actually know what I would do if you did, but its good to know you didn’t change your number and forget to tell me.  Again.
By the way, I grew up.  I just forgot to do it in time.
And I forgot to learn how to show you,
And how to forget and never forget.
Harder.
Faster.
Farther.
I still end up somewhere trying to make it go away with caffeine and nicotine and alcohol.
They seem to cancel each other out and leave me sick and sicker than I was before.
As if that were possible.
I stopped running and pushing myself to be beyond healthy,
I just found new and more acceptable ways to kill myself slowly.
I hope that I don’t find a reason to regret this after the effects have already kicked in.
I wonder what it would take to disappear into a bottle like daddy and not care that nothing is right anymore.
I wonder what it would take to make someone notice that I still care.
It’s the same thing with everyone.
“I’m fine.  I’m fine.  I’m fine.  Please stop trying to fuck me.”
The energy I put into anyone never comes back,
The breaking of this bottle doesn’t make me feel full,
And by the way I miss you.

Sometimes I find it hard to breathe because of you.
Because you are smiling for someone else, and I did nothing.
And I’m sure that you didn’t think of me once while you were out.
You remind me of how average and unremarkable I am.
All I ever had to offer was my body, and that wasn’t enough in the end.

You never asked about the things I love, besides yourself. 
Of course.
I never could hide the fact that some days you were the only thing that got be out of bed.
The anticipation of your fingers dancing across my skin,
And your breath against my face when the only thing between us was friction. 
I didn’t want to.
But I hid the terror, and the neediness that you evoked in me.
I never told you that you were the last thing I wanted to see at night, and that in the morning I wanted to feel you and hear you before I even saw you.
I wanted to be wanted.

You fed me just enough lines;
Made me shiver and shudder just the right amount of times;
You worked it just right that in my head you were my prince.
In the future I saw, we were each other’s knights, and nothing was ever so terrible.
Those arms of yours were safe and thrilling, all at once,
And my silver tongue talked you to sleep in your most turbulent moments.

But that never happened because life isn’t a fairy tale.
Sometimes it’s a nightmare instead.
Once in awhile, despite anyone’s best intentions,
Everyone gets hurt eventually.
You’d never want to hear it, and even if you did, you wouldn’t believe it, but—
I am not a bad person, I am a scared person.

I am just as scared of being alone as you are of missing out on something,
Or someone.
You are a vision of perfection, and I am not.
It comes down to that, because
I could never imagine that I have an effect on you.
Not the way you have on me. 

So by doing nothing, by waiting for a sign,
Despite your asking,
Ignoring your sacrifice,
I chose. 
I made a decision through inertia.

And I am so, so sorry.
Just so you know.
Not that it makes a difference now.

There was a time I would have apologized for loving you.
I would have let it slip at some point and spent weeks pretending I was kidding.
I would deny the fact that I loved you to everyone;
Told my self that I was needy and defective.
What kind of person would put themselves in that position?
Not me; not in public.

I would have told you how sorry I am,
Tried to cut you off like a dying limb. 
That would fail miserably, it always does because phantom pains and withdrawal can kill you.
You don’t need someone trailing you around,
Trying to build up your self esteem (because I assume everyone’s is as low as mine)
And telling you how everyone else would be crazy not to want you.
Then next move is to act like I didn’t care,
Be your wingman even. 
You should be happy, and if I can make it happen, then at least you owe me something out of the deal.

I am not even remotely kidding,
Not too long ago I would have been mortified at letting myself love another human being.
I would have felt that my emotions are a burden and you didn’t deserve them heaped on you. 

I am not apologizing now.
I owe that to you— kind of.
You are wonderful, and you are better with me.
If you are embarrassed by how I feel then you should have run when I told you to.
Gotten the hell out of dodge.
How stupid of you to assume that I wouldn’t approach you with the same intensity and passion I tackle the rest of my life with.
So naïve of you,
So condescending to me.

I love you,
I don’t want to smother you,
I don’t even need to be with you,
But I do need to admit it,
It would be a bonus if you could stop being embarrassed by it,
Maybe even kind about it,
Kind to me.

You will love someone this much one day.
It might kill you,
It will bend you in half more than once,
You’ll develop cracks and fissures.
Frame them,
Point them out to people,
Show everyone how human you are,
How deeply you love.
Say to them.
“I love you.  Please let me.”

I am not apologizing again,
I am asking, however,
Will you let me love you?

We exist in a web of moments,
Snap shots in time stitched in place by feelings and things beyond description. 
There is not a clean place to begin with our story. 
It was written in a library of cigarette smoke and foggy windows.
Edited through the pulse of a dance floor and the haze of vodka and whatever the special was that night. 
I always drink vodka.
You are still figuring out what you can tolerate without getting sick. 
Moderation is something we haven’t experimented with yet.
Unfortunately, that is not exclusive to alcohol.

The first time we kissed it was like two people who didn’t know they were drowning gulping air for the first time in minutes;
It was clear we wanted to breath each other dry.

What was it like the first time you saw me in daylight?
You were no less brilliant than you looked every time I saw you. 
You were always radiant, baby.
Like a warm day in the Sun in the middle of a weekend;
Even when we were huddled in the cold with only the dashboard light to see by.

Damn if I didn’t want to bask in your glow even if it meant getting burned.
And I to you?
Was I your cloudy day? 
Or was I your moon, just reflecting your light right back?
I’ll drop the analogies and get to the point:

Somewhere in there I feel in love with you. 
The kind of love that produces opiates in the brain;
Love that never really goes away, only stands to serve as scale for those to follow.
We were not in that together.

When you saw the scars you just kissed them and moved on,
Tender was an instinct for you.
Humans are so good at ignoring their instincts after awhile.
I am more of a creature of habit,
And I have an addictive personality. 

Craving you is my habit. 
I wrapped myself up in it like a safety blanket and made it a second skin.
Of course I loved the sex, the rough, the sweet, the funny, the random, and always the wonderful.
But oh, that breath right before our lips met.
When you’d grab me by the hips and pull me in;
That’s a high only you can give me.
The silent minutes after, when we were trembling and the air was so fragile with our moans and things we should have said when we had the chance,
The looks across the room,
The stolen kisses,
The fervor you displayed in mastering me,
The silent understanding,
The deepest parts of me ache for that.
One more time, at least.

I am not okay
Because you are dying.
To be clear, in a day you will be dead.
This is not supposed to happen because the last time we talked,
It was about suicide.
You told me you would kick my ass if I ever gave up the fight and lost sight of what was important.
You were important,
And I lost you.
The world lost you.
No one lost sight, except the person that killed you.
But maybe they never saw,
They didn’t see the sense of humor, the laugher and smile that were so contagious.
No one knew that you called me Elektra because you thought I would save people
I couldn’t save you though.
I would trade places in a second if I could, because I don’t have daughters that adore me.
I do not have lives that I have saved who owe me.
You do.
You have, and had, so much. 

I wish my heart was broken.
If it was broken I could glue it,
It would go back on the shelf and I could keep it safe with extra care.
My heart is pulverized;
It is a bloody puddle that cannot be scraped together and put back in place.
There is no therapy that can fix this and make it tolerable.
You saved me from myself twice, and I can do nothing for you
Except cry and bleed all over my faith in God.

Who is the monster that took you?
How in the world did we end up here?
Is it possible to go on from this?
We owe you that much,
But God owed you a long, long, happy life.
What of his end of the bargain?
Where is Justice in this?
I never thought she was really blind, just looking at the important things.
Now I know that she in numb, and incredibly dumb.
Fuck that bitch. 
Fuck the people that put you here.
Fuck the people that aren’t breaking in half over what has happened to you.
Fuck all this.

I hope you are at peace. 
I hope you are unaware of the devastation your loss is bringing.
And I hope that you are with us always
With a higher purpose.
I hope that one day, some day,
I will see that smile again and hear that laugh,
Then I will know that all is right, and it will all be okay.

May angels lead you in.

I said I wanted to speak everything,
Fluent in every language of the world.
But I forgot that love and heartbreak can be conjugated and translated.
The basics were mastered long ago,
Colorful colloquialisms came later
When new information was available,
After years of practice and exposure.
I cannot deny the fun I had wrapping my tongue around the syllables,
Later sentences, sometimes just familiar phrases.
The calligraphy of your veins, your scars, and the curve of your body could only be read by a few,
And I was one of the chosen who picked the cuneiform up with ease, and studied meticulously. 
But you are the dictionary,
Constantly redefining the language and what it means.
You are the thesaurus, finding new syllables for me to associate with the space where you used to be.
It would seem there are countless territories where this is the native language;
I stumble into them by accident all the time.
Except the dialects vary, so I can never seem to say what I really mean,
Not with any precision anyways.

I will gladly cede my expertise to the next wave of experts that you create.
Perhaps you’ll inspire a topographer who can better diagram the cities built just to house this fluid language. 
The places and ruins where people hoped to keep it, to stop it from slipping onto the tongues of others.
Some were more, some less, but all deserving according to the founder of this awkward prose.
I wished you’d loved and devastated a psychic before me.
I would befriend her and make her anticipate how long this venture would last,
Tell me when time would eventually erode my efficiency with these words.

Maybe though, one day,
Someone will manage to master every word, inflection, and cadence of your elocution.
They will write you down in the pages of dead languages among Aramaic, Coptic, and Latin.
Centuries later people will find it, and spend hours trying to understand it.
But no Rosetta Stone exists for this.
Even if they recognize it, they will never truly understand it.
Evolutions of this language will echo forever,
There will be vague memories of it told across the generations, and the naïve will always think it a fairy tale, a sign of senility for the jaded and worn.
Until it’s them, and they think they found the new Dead Sea Scrolls.
Though us weary bilinguals know that everyone thinks they are the first.
Everyone speaks it eventually.

The problem is that I commit.
I feel everything so deeply that I cannot help but make it a part of who I am.
I radiate it back unto the world.
I live so wholly in the moment that I forget what it is to
Suffer consequence,
To wake up and want to take it all back,
Erase the words from my lips and the actions from memory.
I go so fully into the rage,
I cannot see more than what is right there,
Right now.
I have to tear the flesh, this very second.
I don’t care about the scabs and scars because tomorrow doesn’t even register. 
But overall, this is a long term love affair.

Never you worry.

I commit so completely that I idolize my skeleton.
Every rib that is ever perceptible through fabric is such a victory.
Every bruise from bone grating on bone is a feat so small, painful, and private
That I only celebrate when I poke at it to magnify the pain.
This mania of denial is what drives me for one more day.
I will stay awake just to prove that Insomnia is a choice; that
I am better than the people who sleep so peacefully and aren’t raped and beaten in their dreams.
I embrace the rage and the hate straight to the heart,
But more often to the tongue, and usually the physicality of it all.
I happily drown in my ardent piety so deeply that everything around me is nothing but meaningless black and blue.

And the problem is that I am consumed.
I give myself over so willingly to catastrophe and affliction;
The lines aren’t even visible from where I stand.
It’s impossible to tell where I end and the disease begins. 
So I postulate this identity,
This withering thing that cannot be tamed or told.
I crusade against logic and sanity.

And I commit the whole way to demise.

I have all these words,
For you.
All these beautiful things I want to say to you.
I want to fill your head and your heart with my gift.
I need so badly for you to know that you are the constant dialogue running through my head.
That a conversation needs to be had between us,
About you.
I have to speak to you in prose because
Everything else just sounds so awful and plain. 
Because if I don’t practice it,
Everything just falls apart when I open my mouth. 
The problem I’m having is that you never listen.
I could talk myself into and out of love with you in a single sitting, and
You would never notice.
You read some things of mine about you once, and said they made you tear up,
I didn’t see it for myself and I’m almost positive you were just drunk and
At a loss as to what to do with all my emotions put to font, just staring you in the face.
You’re not much of a reader anyways, for all I know you just skipped to the end to get it over with.

We’re always skipping things though, aren’t we?
We skipped the courting, now the courtesies, and always the words.
These things unspoken are piling up around us,
The less I can breathe the more I want to speak.
The less you listen the more I want to yell, and
The more you close your eyes to me the more ink I have for empty pages.

So to you what I have to offer is nil,
There’s nothing here of value in your life, but it’s what I have.
You said you wanted all of me.
Obviously not, because you would have known where to look, what to read, and how to hear.
You have my entire vocabulary at your disposal,
And there is just so much more I want to say. 

If I could get you alone with some trust and a marker,
I’d like to cover you in my thoughts and adjectives.
My favorite parts of your body would be inked with praise.
Words don’t exist for the exquisite sculpt of your shoulders, so I would trace them with my kisses instead.
I can’t color my adoration on your eyes,
Though I would stare into them in appreciation of a color that only God could replicate.
On your hands though,
I would speak of tenderness; of caresses weighted with care.
I want to write a sonnet on each of your arms,
And rhyme about all the times you broke my fall and kept me warm, and close.
I would trace my hand over your heart, because that’s how I like to sleep,
Then I’d fill it with “love”
Over and over again.
On your abdomen I would tell of the taste of sweat,
The scent of your sex pulling me in.
I would roll you over and write my deepest secrets and all the things I am so afraid to tell you on your back,
So you’d never see them, only feel them.
I would prop your legs on my shoulder to scribble all about a
Sinewy vigor that gives way to quivers when you lose yourself in me.
For the bottom of your feet,
I have a permanent maker and two words— 
“Come Back”
Then I would simply pray that they always remember. 

I am a constant catastrophe,
But I’ve flown under the radar because
In times of crisis, I am calm.
Mom is suicidal,
Daddy’s in a coma,
Sister is engaged but can’t buy cigarettes on her own.
I am starving,
But Boyfriend is yelling and swinging for the fences, so
Hunger takes a back seat.
Besides, maybe my bones will advertise my frailty for me so
I won’t have to say it.
Grandma is dying and Papa needs some time to tell her he loves her without
Everyone watching;
So I take the names and the grudges, but I cherish the “thank you.”
New boyfriend is unemployed and too sad to look, so
School can wait because I’m smart without books anyways. 
I’m sad too, but emotion doesn’t pay the bills,
So it’s two jobs for the next five years, and I sneak a degree in too.
But Boyfriend of the Same Name and Different Genetics is unstable and we cry after sex.
We never got a hold on how to deal with our self hatred, so it’s back to on my own.
Suicidal doesn’t feed the cats or keep the lights on,
So I cut the way that keeps me alive and
I look for outlets in the usual suspects.
Then Grandma is dying again,
Daddy’s still drunk,
Mom is on Sister’s side,
So no one is really speaking.
Future fiancé can’t stand to touch me, but
He holds me when I cry,
And he doesn’t ask questions,
So he gets to stay.
I have a tether in my storm,
The lightening strikes nearby, but never direct,
And though there is chaos,
Nothing is cataclysmic. 
Not yet.

You forgot that oxytocin makes it all sound sweeter.
It’s hard to remember that you probably aren’t the first to hear it
When it feels like the first time you’ve ever been touched like that.
When perfect shoulders are hovering above,
And soulful eyes are staring back, 
It’s not the time to remind yourself that you have been here before.
It’d be a good idea if you did though.
Because soon you will be trying to coax out the words that you crave,
You will saying things you wish you were hearing, and you know
You’re not going to hear them back, no matter how badly you want to.
He might kiss your scars and run his hands along your flaws,
But that doesn’t mean it’s love. 
It could just be good game.
You might catch him watching you, but that doesn’t mean the same
Torrid thoughts are crossings his mind as yours. 
He says he told his mom, and you’ve met his brother, his friends know too,
That still doesn’t make it love.
You will not get those words.
When he leaves, which he will, he will say that it’s because he is inept.
Believe him. 

You forgot that oxytocin makes it all sound sweeter.
It’s hard to remember that you probably aren’t the first to hear it
When it feels like the first time you’ve ever been touched like that.
When perfect shoulders are hovering above,
And soulful eyes are staring back, 
It’s not the time to remind yourself that you have been here before.
It’d be a good idea if you did though.
Because soon you will be trying to coax out the words that you crave,
You will saying things you wish you were hearing, and you know
You’re not going to hear them back, no matter how badly you want to.
He might kiss your scars and run his hands along your flaws,
But that doesn’t mean it’s love. 
It could just be good game.
You might catch him watching you, but that doesn’t mean the same
Torrid thoughts are crossings his mind as yours. 
He says he told his mom, and you’ve met his brother, his friends know too,
That still doesn’t make it love.
You will not get those words.
When he leaves, which he will, he will say that it’s because he is inept.
Believe him. 

You bought me a book once, full of blank pages and famous lovers’ quotes, to be filled with our own words of love to each other.
They screamed at first, shouting love from the filigree, then whispering hints from the print, and finally, just letting the truth show plainly in pages more blank than filled.
                Our story is in the silence.
                       And the absence.
The story of my loneliness is in the silence around me that only you would notice.
It’s the death of music in my life that surrounds me and speaks volumes
To what a happy humming could once answer to a besotted listener.  (That was you.)
Your absence is told on the nights I wake up after a nightmare, and there is no
‘Everything is okay’ to answer me and cuddle me to sleep.
The tale of our awkwardness is told is the weeks, days, and sometimes months between our talks, which are then marked with long pauses.
Filling up and punctuated with all the things we want to, and will never say.
There is a story to be read in all the pictures of us together,
But the novel is in the time between the pictures, the changes that were evident the next time the camera clicked, the smiles and other looks that were never captured.
I will be reminded of our silence on the day I drive myself home from surgery,
The absence of your ring tone and soothing voice, calling just to check.
Perhaps the silences speak something different to you.
Your time now is filled with long distance phone calls and giggles,
So perhaps you don’t even stop to consider the quiet;
But it sneaks up on me to tell me stories when I least expect it.
I stumble on our story when I don’t want to,
Or maybe I do, because I seem to be the stillest when I am missing you. 

At birth I was a miracle.
As tight as the umbilical cord was, I should have suffocated hours, if not days, before.
The little miracle baby, here with her creepy green eyes and mess of black hair,
Brought into the world to save something else that was already suffocating.  

At six I was a grown up.
The nights that mommy was crying
Daddy was drunk,
My sister was missing,
And I put myself to bed,
I couldn’t understand what was going on, but I knew that for once,
I was the stable one.

At seven I was broken,
Because if I fell and needed help,
They stopped fighting.
Lots of broken tail bones later they stopped helping and kept up the fighting.

By nine I was dying.
Not medically, but I was trying my best.
I didn’t want anyone to care anymore,
I just wanted them to go away and let me
Disappear.  

By thirteen I was fuming.
Nothing but hatred and anger came out of me.
At me.
I hated my life, so I hated myself because who else could I blame?

Sixteen was spent wasting away.
If I could move through this world lighter and prettier maybe it would be easier.
But it was never easier, it was a constant work out.
I never learned to stop fighting because it made it hurt so much less than to slow down and feel the pain;
To figure out where the pain was oozing from.

At eighteen I drove everyone crazy.
And I don’t even remember.
I look back now and I wonder when it was I stop trying to kill myself and get myself killed instead.
Nothing scared me because nothing hurt anymore.

By twenty three I quit.
After years spent feigning normalcy I couldn’t do it anymore.
I cross my legs and get bruises from it, because I think food is beneath me.
Or maybe I am beneath food.
I can’t tell where I stand anymore.
All I can tell is that I don’t want to be a miracle,
I don’t want to be an adult,
I don’t want to be broken, or dying, or fuming, or anything else.
I just don’t want to be, because the butterfly in reverse is me.