you offer me ointment in place of your hand
I cannot read today.
It seems like so insignificant a thing, glancing at words, knowing their beauty and how poetically they must work when all placed together as they are, but not being able to make them make sense, translate into language inside my head, mean something more than individual words placed in a line. Even as I write this, I cannot read it, the words are typed and then disappear from all comprehension or memory of having typed them.
I cannot read today, and it consumes me.
I am waiting on a phone call that has yet to come, some break from this feeling that my mind, for all its worth, has turned brittle and will any day now shiver once and then shatter. I fear losing my mind more than anything else; on days like this, however, it seems almost inevitable.
I want to be able to pick up the phone and say, "I love you, I miss you, and I wish that you were here because maybe you could read this to me, slowly, and maybe then I could appreciate these words." Maybe you could be that fractured part of me, or taking me in your arms, untangle this mess of rapidly firing neurons and frozen synapses, love me long enough and true enough that I would believe it safe to be something other than stoic.
"That's horrible," they say, and you say, and I greet this sympathy with a shrug, as though the action will brush the past off of me and remove it from the present. I am vaguely aware of life erupting forth from a silent place in my chest, and I wish your hand to staunch the flow of blood, even though I would never presume to have you heal the wound. Too many shrugs and I don't remember which weapon pierced there; too many dust-offs and I no longer remember where I fell. Truths cloistered and forgotten and slowly pressing against my organs like bits of cotton or lead, jammed into bodily cavities where room to breathe should be. This is why I am afraid of you, even though I love you. I fear the extraction, the incision, the touch of your hands warm on my too cool skin, a kiss to bring me back from cyanotic, this ghost of me returning from where it has long hidden, crouched, sliding forth into your hands. I am without name in spectre form, but you, I fear, will always know me, can whisper softly some secret birthright; mine or yours, possession nonetheless.
It seems like so insignificant a thing, glancing at words, knowing their beauty and how poetically they must work when all placed together as they are, but not being able to make them make sense, translate into language inside my head, mean something more than individual words placed in a line. Even as I write this, I cannot read it, the words are typed and then disappear from all comprehension or memory of having typed them.
I cannot read today, and it consumes me.
I am waiting on a phone call that has yet to come, some break from this feeling that my mind, for all its worth, has turned brittle and will any day now shiver once and then shatter. I fear losing my mind more than anything else; on days like this, however, it seems almost inevitable.
I want to be able to pick up the phone and say, "I love you, I miss you, and I wish that you were here because maybe you could read this to me, slowly, and maybe then I could appreciate these words." Maybe you could be that fractured part of me, or taking me in your arms, untangle this mess of rapidly firing neurons and frozen synapses, love me long enough and true enough that I would believe it safe to be something other than stoic.
"That's horrible," they say, and you say, and I greet this sympathy with a shrug, as though the action will brush the past off of me and remove it from the present. I am vaguely aware of life erupting forth from a silent place in my chest, and I wish your hand to staunch the flow of blood, even though I would never presume to have you heal the wound. Too many shrugs and I don't remember which weapon pierced there; too many dust-offs and I no longer remember where I fell. Truths cloistered and forgotten and slowly pressing against my organs like bits of cotton or lead, jammed into bodily cavities where room to breathe should be. This is why I am afraid of you, even though I love you. I fear the extraction, the incision, the touch of your hands warm on my too cool skin, a kiss to bring me back from cyanotic, this ghost of me returning from where it has long hidden, crouched, sliding forth into your hands. I am without name in spectre form, but you, I fear, will always know me, can whisper softly some secret birthright; mine or yours, possession nonetheless.
posted by overeducated, underpaid @ 4:16 PM
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