picture taken Depaul University Lincoln Park Campus, 11/18/17
There are some women with no knowledge of their shells. The husks and hulls that make up their frame are not one with them, but live alongside them, drawn delicately at a parallel so slightly to the right. This may manifest itself in an awkwardness, an ardent dismay that pools at the brainstem while a potent, viscous shame gathers in the gut. So slightly above, so subtly below--and soon, she is not a woman, but a consciousness so precariously conjoined with an undeniably physical yet not palpable being. Tangible and intangible. Numinous due to a depression of an otherwise marvelous spirit, now transcendental in another sense. Adjacent to existence, adjacent to the earth.
This disillusionment is as common as it’s ever been. More common than one may believe, pervasive in our daily lives, we encounter these women all the time. A sigh, a smile… unless perceptive, one may never know they’ve been faced with a person like this. It is not that they are sneaky or in any way deceitful. We are simply existing, as any and all others do, in this world that welcomes and resents us. We are as any other passerby are--though I would not describe us as harmless.
Although it is not permanent, this state is enveloping. It is self-sufficient; it does not require permission, and it exposes itself to the outside observer in a variety of odd behavior.
Newfound habits and peculiarities appear--a tendency to pull at the hair framing the cheek, an itch at the point of the chin. Emotions axiomatic to an onlooker, but ambiguous to the individual--these, among so many other silent symptoms, are indicators of the syndrome both unbridled and isolating. Ultimately violent.
We can be found burning boxcars, setting streets ablaze, and bedazzling ourselves with booze. I find myself bellowing broadly to no audience or avail. I find myself bucking, I find myself...
I hope to one day breach as a whale does. Brim with brilliance, awaken with wonder. And overflow.
I am defeated I am unfulfilled I am typing when i should be carving; there is no relief from the weight of a lack of a something, I am beaten by my own brain and my own blood, I am lying in a puddle of chocolate milk and green tea and sour, molded juice of limes, chest unrising, slowly saturating, meekly marinating, in the
I fell up the stairs the other day, up concrete brinks with my hands in my pockets. I had no way to catch the fall. I landed like a pin, bowling or needlepoint, and the shame that settled in my stomach was poignant and more familiar than anything I’d sensed in months.
Blinking, burning, as time passes. A glance at the clock makes my face contort. A pucker, a grimace. Back to tomorrow, as yesterday is a liquid I’m trying to collect, to use it to prune my fingertips. It is an attempt to tinge tomorrow with the past.
I refuse to get a flu shot. I figure it is an opportunity to have a reason to identify as feeling weak, as feeling too hot or too cold.
Ultimately, I am disgusted. My apathy. Your lack of fire. Your lack of fire. Your lack of fire. The sweat on your brow. The spit stretching in your mouth and his and hers.
I was not meant to be anything but conceptual. I was not meant to be celibate or to wait for the train or to run for my life. I was never meant to be colloquial. I was meant to be a vicious energy. I was meant to be demanding and bloody and feared; not bold, but brutal. I am supposed to be merciless, instead I am at the mercy of other, of circumstance, of condition and situation and this nagging, wearisome body.
I am not God’s eyelash, but God’s tooth. I am supposed to be purled into God’s spine--and instead, somehow, I am here, falsely identified as her single breath.
I sing for so many reasons, known and unknown to me. Today (recently), I’d wanted a response. I got one--small and brief--but real. And it was relieving.