Duality Read online

  Pretty please

  Make your pain a pretty billboard for others to smile

  upon from afar

  Because they can’t see the cracked and moldy pain up

  close,

  And the smile that is actually a grimace.

  They just want the pretty version of pain,

  The version that does not exist.

  Stop checking up on them.

  They are not thinking about you

  And they do not deserve to take up your thoughts.

  Carved our initials into a tree trunk

  Then chopped it down and turned it into the paper

  That these poems are written on.

  Shades of sorrow aren’t just greys and blues.

  The saddest ones once burned

  Bright red.

  If I could add up all the days I’ve fallen victim to my

  own mind

  And been unable to pull myself from my own depths,

  It would certainly add up to at least a year.

  The lost year.

  Time I cannot get back because I spent it being sad,

  Then feeling guilty about being sad

  Then feeling frustrated that I was guilty about being

  sad.

  The lost year holds the what-ifs:

  What if I had been able to get out of bed that day?

  What if I didn’t do enough to make myself feel better?

  What if I will always feel like this year after year after

  year?

  The dead are lucky.

  They don’t have hearts that can break, ribs that can shatter.

  They’re only corpses waiting either for

  Resurrection

  Or release.

  Athena, help me.

  Send me divine aid in the form of your holy owl,

  The wisest bird,

  To make my decisions for me.

  Because I can’t trust my own mind to do so anymore.

  Pour everything you care about into a single teacup.

  Then give that cup to someone you love

  And watch them offer it to someone else.

  Now you’re left to pour from an empty,

  Cracked cup.

  When we see snakes, there is often a negative response.

  Fear, disgust, concern.

  From the beginning these animals have fought against

  their reputation

  Being the Biblical poster child for temptation,

  Loss of innocence,

  Evil.

  However,

  There is beauty in these strange creatures

  For when they grow uncomfortable in their form

  They shed their skin,

  Peel back the layers

  And become new.

  Some may think it gross,

  But change is never pretty,

  Especially when starting anew.

  What strange, strange creatures

  That are both

  Evil

  And

  Resurrected purity.

  In a world of workaholics,

  People think “rest’ means “lazy”

  And a break means you’ve gone stagnant.

  What a horrible way to live

  Where you think you must be productive

  To be worth anything.

  I always thought my heart would harden before it hollowed.

  But after it breaks so many times,

  Hollow starts to look much nicer

  Than a pieced-together hardened heartbreak.

  He traced Cassiopeia across the freckles on my back

  And I let myself think that he was the whole universe

  Even though I was the one made of stars.

  I’m not really lost in my thoughts as much as I am held captive in them.

  My head isn’t in the clouds as much as it’s circling the same film reel over and over.

  Daydream is a nice, gentle word that is completely inaccurate

  For the spiraling hurricane behind my eyes.

  So think twice about the idea that some people are distracted

  Because they may be fighting demons instead.

  I’m smarter than that.

  Better than that.

  That could never happen to me.

  I would never put myself in that situation,

  Never allow myself to drink that much,

  Be alone with someone like that,

  That would never happen to me.

  I don’t really understand why it takes

  So long for people to overcome pain.

  That doesn’t make sense to me.

  If I were in a bad situation

  I would be sad, of course,

  But I would power through it,

  Turn that pain into strength.

  The girl struggling and crying for years after pain?

  That would never happen to me.

  That would never happen to me.

  That happened to me.

  If it is wrong to be angry at God,

  Then I am so, intensely wrong

  Because I am so, so angry.

  Maybe he’ll strike me down for saying so.

  That pain would be better than the pain inside my bleeding heart.

  How can a holy father who claims to love me allow me to suffer such pain

  When he has the power to stop it?

  And even amidst my fury, my rage,

  The small child inside of me is quietly weeping,

  Asking God to hold her close

  Because below the anger, she’s just sad.

  And she can’t do it anymore.

  I keep trying to shut her up,

  but she always comes back with her quiet tears and open hands.

  Maybe,

  Maybe,

  Maybe,

  Maybe it’s time to follow her lead.

  Unfair

  Yesterday I painted my nails black,

  And when the polish dripped onto my wrist

  I thought about how my blood had turned black after

  what you did to me.

  It’s easy to wipe away unwanted varnish.

  It’s harder to restore something that is tarnished,

  especially when it’s a body

  But especially when it’s a soul,

  Something you did not have.

  And today I logged on to Facebook.

  You think I would have learned to stay the fuck away

  from Facebook

  Nothing good ever comes from Facebook.

  But for some reason I searched your name for the first

  time in years

  Because I’m still searching for some jagged pieces of

  myself

  That I think you swiped on your way out at six am that

  day.

  And at the top of your page, smiling and glowing, is you.

  And a girl who looks just like I did before you stole the

  shine from my eyes.

  There are comments applauding you for logging on to

  social media for once:

  "What a cute couple!"

  "About time you posted a photo!"

  And a sentence from the girl, saying how happy she is.

  And how happy you are.

  How. happy.

  And it is so unfair.

  That you get to be so happy.

  If karma is real, then you must have saved a burning

  orphanage in a past life

  Or karma herself must have a twisted sense of humor.

  Because for you to get any happiness

  After what you have done is like

  A corrupt, evil business man getting enough power to

  run a country.

  Wait.

  He did, after bragging about grabbing women by the

  pussy.

  So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised

  When a man tells me I’m a bitch for saying no because

  he bought me dinner.


  Did I miss some fine print on a contract I signed the day

  I was born

  Where I signed my body away to the highest bidder?

  They say, “So what? It’s not like things are as bad as

  they once were.”

  Sure,

  I guess this life in comparison to before is a fairytale

  Because in the old versions, all those women got raped,

  too.

  But they got to marry the prince, their perpetrator, so it

  all works out,

  Right, gentlemen?

  If it’s covered up in legality and money, the morality is

  unquestioned,

  Right, gentlemen?

  How do I tell this girl to run before she’s even laced up

  her shoes or unlaced her shirt?

  How do I tell her to go when I’m the stranger in the

  situation, the crazy girl who can’t let go?

  Does she know the things you have done in the dark

  that you would be too ashamed to admit in the light?

  Does she know I was the human sacrifice for your

  newfound morality?

  It is not my fault that there are claw marks on me.

  It is not my fault that he clawed his way inside of me.

  It is not my fault that trauma clawed its way out slowly

  Forcing me to pull my claws out at the sign of any

  vulnerability.

  And you

  You, you,

  You are the reason I spend my paycheck on therapy

  sessions

  Crying over the same thing week after week.

  You are the reason

  Why I can’t drink wine alone

  Because my body shakes in fear, in haunted memory

  Remembering things that I cannot.

  My body keeps the record that my mind could not

  record

  Because you filled it with wine and whispers.

  You have ruined my life.

  You have ruined my life.

  You have ruined whole life

  And I am not sorry that I’m angry.

  People want art to end on an uplifting note, a sign of

  hope.

  But there’s no sign of hope when you’re trying to look

  up to see the stars

  And can only see the dark ceiling from that night.

  What kind of monster steals the stars out of your sky?

  It is not fair.

  I am the one who deserves to be happy.

  He gets to live his life like it never happened.

  I have to fight for my life because it did.

  PART FOUR

  GREY

  I’ve always lived in the black and white.

  One extreme or another. Never in the middle.

  Never wavering between different points in time or space.

  I am always at the far end or the other.

  I am either bubblegum sunshine or existential angst.

  Completely overjoyed or in a dark, depressive hole.

  They say to find hues of grey, to walk the middle path.

  These things have been preached to me for years and years,

  But these stupid metaphors are so much prettier on paper than in practice.

  In the grey, there’s nothing to ground you when you’re spiraling downward.

  How can I live in the grey when half of my brain is dark

  And the other is light?

  They never want to meld because

  The melding is chaos.

  The melding is the fear.

  The melding is the unknown.

  Why does the unknown have to be so grey,

  So muddled,

  So, so terrifying.

  Feelings are valid but they are not truth.

  Repeat until you believe it.

  I’m traveling the road

  Between who I was

  And who I want to be.

  It is much, much longer

  And more perilous

  Than I had originally planned.

  If I’d know it would have taken this long,

  I would have packed a bag,

  Mapped the course,

  Planned for rest stops.

  But one morning I woke up and just knew.

  Knew it was time to go.

  Knew it was time to try.

  Knew it was time to stop making excuses

  And fearing the path to resurrection that I knew I’d journey one day.

  I’ll let you know when I arrive at my destination.

  I’d spent so long feeling sad

  That when anger finally arrived

  It felt good.

  And it felt right.

  And I began to burn away the parts of my pain

  That were no longer serving me.

  And I began to ignite the parts of my pain

  That created passion

  and poetry

  And purpose for staying alive.

  You can carry your pain with you through this life.

  Let it take up residence on your shoulders

  While you wait for the lesson that’s supposed to follow.

  And that may work one day.

  But you will be so, so tired.

  Instead…

  Take that pain and lay it out on the table.

  Pick through the good parts and the bad.

  The ones you were afraid to look at.

  The messy, embarrassing parts that make you cringe.

  Get your hands dirty in your own pain.

  Reclaim it.

  Rifle through its pockets, scream at its unfairness.

  Dig through the piles of who you thought you were

  And find out who you want to be.

  It’s gonna be messy.

  It’s gonna be tough.

  It’s gonna take a long time.

  But choose not to be a victim of your circumstances.

  Choose to be a conqueror of your pain.

  The sun cannot force the flower to bloom.

  If it tried, the petals would fade and the stems would scorch.

  You cannot force yourself to grow from your pain.

  It must happen naturally, with time and patience,

  Or you will fade and scorch in your attempt to thrive.

  Rage is the spark of revolution

  The flicker of fires that will burn their lies to ash.

  And honey, I’m drowning in the flames of resistance.

  But honesty is fireproof,

  And bullshit is not.

  And we're about to light you up.

  Intimate

  My hips fit perfectly against yours,

  And you smell like the woods and a comforting fire.

  Your bedroom looks like it could use a throw rug,

  And I think my shirt would do nicely.

  I want your hands to touch the parts of my body that

  I’ve cried over,

  And I want you to whisper nice things about my body

  And the bad things that you’ll do to it.

  And I want there to be no fear.

  It seems easy enough.

  But when fear permeates every part of your being,

  It’s only a matter of time until it shows up in sex, too.

  Shit.

  No matter how much you want him

  No matter how fast he makes your heart beat

  You’ll still have to beat down the voice in your head

  saying,

  “This is wrong.”

  “You are not pretty.”

  “He doesn’t really like you.”

  Funny how the insecurities we have with our clothes on

  Are louder than the ones when we take them off.

  When you lean in to kiss him, you’ll hear the harsh

  echoes of past pain.

  When your lips touch his neck, you’ll panic that he secretly hates you.

  He’s touching me in all the right places, in all
the right

  ways,

  So what the hell is wrong with me?

  How do I tell him: it’s not that I don’t like him, but I

  don’t like myself?

  How do I tell him: I go out of my way to avoid the

  mirror?

  How do I tell him: My body has kept a tally of the my

  soul’s traumatic past?

  I want him. I do.

  Why can’t I get out of my head even when there is a

  beautiful person who’s made it clear that they want me?

  Is it because I don’t want me?