ataraxiaa

[ataraxiaa]

I don't want you.

I don't want you, but I wear the shirts you wear, the shoes, the socks, factory-made and shipped across the seas, piled into boxes, folded and held in strangers' hands.

I am pinching and squeezing with my fingertips to zoom in and zoom out of your image.

I eat what you eat, to taste what you might have tasted.

The wind is warm, goosebump flesh, and I wonder if it felt the same to you.

I want to inhabit the space you inhabit, the weight of it, the sound of it.

I am a mere outline of you, a silhouette, a hollow shell.

I don't want you. I don't even want me.

But your shadow is the brightest place to be.

[ataraxiaa]

My sinews are all gathered to hold me in place

but I can’t help but want to arch out of my skin—

the crow flashes across the cloudless sky and its wings

beat

beat

beat.

[ataraxiaa]

I claim that the sun is melting the glue between my feathers,

but I sit in the dark

and measure out the weight of each breath,

cradle each thought in my hands and watch them darken the lines of my palms.

I let each heartbeat swell, bubbling up in gleaming droplets

that fill me with lead.

[ataraxiaa]

I wish my heart were a stone

to bear me down;

the shimmer of sunlight across the waves

recede

and falling asleep has never been so easy.

[ataraxiaa]

Prompt

Got a prompt to start a piece with “Look what they made her do” that is less than 200 words. Definitely terribly cliche and I am rusty as HECK-A-DOODLE but:

Look what they made her do. She looked down at her hands, turned them over. They were steady. The wind came in through the open window and brought in the smell of fall – wet grass, mud, a slight sting from the compost box sitting in the yard. Her feet were sticky now, an oozing sensation gathering between her toes. She tried wriggling them – fine, fine. She was fine. She stepped gingerly over the body, headed to the sink. The birthday cake sat on the counter, the icing along the edges already wilting. It looked harsh in the putrid yellow kitchen light and red had splattered over the candles, across the colourful party tray. The tiles squeaked beneath her soles as she moved to the trash can and heaved the entire cake in. The Happy Birthday sign glittered gold, still, among the mashed up chocolate and half-crushed beers cans. She tsk-ed. What a waste of a perfect cake. What a waste. She shook her head. Look what they made her do.

[ataraxiaa]

Lonely and bored, you developed a secret language, that you consistently use to talk to yourself. One day, when you mutter something under your breath, a stranger replies with ease.

[ataraxiaa]

Your little brother has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. When the Make A Wish program asks him what he wants he simply responded with, “Kill my older brother before it’s too late.”

[ataraxiaa]

I thought we were talking about the weather

Would it be unreasonable to say I love you in response to How are you?

He watches her fingers curl around the coffee mug, seeking warmth in its faded colours. How are you, she asks. He thinks, I love you, and says, Okay, and accompanies it with a shrug.

It is the way she looks at him, so clearly, with a surety he exists, when he doesn't even understand whose eyes it is he sees through.

She asks this in a middle of the conversation, suddenly and firmly. She asks this in the space between the sentences they string together in mid-air, containing words that don't really mean anything.

Between one heartbeat and another, she asks this and he doesn't even remember what they were even talking about. All he ever said or did or thought is violently blown from his mind like a fuse had been lit a long long time ago and it had just reached its defiant end.

He hears her question and is filled with urgent desperation, this expanding coolness in his lungs and in the back of his throat, filling him until he is pushing against his ribs, hammering his fists bloody against the cage of his body.

Okay, he replies and shrugs. She takes a sip of her coffee and he wonders if she thinks his shrug is nonchalant. He shrugged because he did not know who he was, because he didn't understand why she could look at him with such clear eyes. He shrugged at the hopelessness of this emotion sloshing around in him, at the vast empty space stretching from the top of his head to the bottom of the lowest fullest cloud.

Okay, she parrots. And then smiles. He is glad he acted reasonably, furious that he was not unreasonable. He wonders if her coffee is already cold and wants to say, Is your coffee cold?, wants to stand up and scream, I love you, I love you, I love you!!!

Instead, he smiles back and looks down at his hands, white-knuckled, on his lap. He relaxes the clench of his fists. He notices that there is dirt under his fingernails.

[ataraxiaa]

somewhere, it is raining

Sometimes I do not recognize you. You walk in through the door and you're smiling, the rustle of takeout in your hands. I look up. Who are you?

You move in close and I widen my eyes, as if it'd clear my vision, bring this stranger into sharper focus.

You're saying something as you shrug the strap of your purse off your shoulder; somehow, I cannot hear you. The roar of the rain drowns out your voice; the angry thundering rain makes the ground shake, and I cannot hear you. Except it isn't raining and the sun is streaming in through the window, refracting into ribbons of colour across my cheeks. But the earth still pulses, somewhere, maybe out of sight, and I can feel it humming in my bones.

Who are you? I want to say to this smiling stranger. But with a jolt, I know who you are. It shocks me, this sudden realization - I am a completely different person between that breath in which you are a stranger, and the one I'm taking now, the one in which I know you.

Of course, I know you. Deeply and always, chasing the smell of you in the hazy morning fog as I wriggle my bare toes in the wet grass. I know you, chopsticks between your fingers and the upwelling of light that pours from your smile. I know you.

And your purse is on the counter now and an uncertain smile is flitting over my face because how could I not have ever known you but I didn't and I did, and I'm rising to my feet to greet you. My lips part, sticking a little in the dry air.

Another breath.

You come in that door and I do not know you. There is takeout dangling from your hands and it is the food that smells familiar and warm, while you, this stranger, comes in with the damp musk of rain and thunder clinging to your skin but the skies are blue overhead and the light is shining, refracting through tears creeping from the corners of my eyes because I have never known you and I will never know you, and there will never be this smile flitting over my face as I stand to say, Welcome home.

[ataraxiaa]

there it is again

The night air is sticky and hot on your cheeks and the irritating light overhead is buzzing; you can see the sluggish twitching shadows of insects on the inside of the bulb.

Beneath your feet, the city is so beautiful. There are all these little lights you didn’t think were there - a neon blur of dancing colours stretching out to the black horizon, just like the surface of the sea when the light hits it just so. Would it have been better if it were a bridge, with the river below instead of cars?

No.

There are regrets all piled up like laundry that should have been done yesterday but do they really matter? Regrets borne from decisions made lightly and taken too seriously far, far too late. They clank and chitter in the palms of your hands and roll like stones in the hollow between your ears.

Hope still beats in the stitch in your side that comes with shortness of breath. You can feel it and it is cool under the slick wet tears smeared over your lips. Everything inside you is so heavy but you are feather light.

The clouds are watching over you.

Don’t you dare walk away.

[ataraxiaa]

I would have written it all down

You taught me the courage of stars before you left How light carries on endlessly, even after death

With shortness of breath, you explained the infinite How rare and beautiful it is to even exist

- “Saturn”, Sleeping at Last

Spock steps into his chambers and motions away the dim red lights that start to flicker on at his presence. The room retreats back into shadow and eleven point seven easy strides take him to the window. He stands by the drawn curtains, hands clasped behind him. A muscle in his left leg twitches and a light spasm crawls up to his hip; he has spent most of the day standing and granted, he may not be old for a Vulcan (a voice teases) but such discomfort, however slight, can no longer be effectively ignored. He moves toward the chair by his desk but it is still dark so he turns back to the window when he could have just turned on the lights so he turns around again and stop your pacing (a voice soothes) and so he stills. A trickle of light seeps in from the edges of the curtains and Spock thinks that it must be a very clear night with a very bright moon.

“Computer.” His voice is hoarse and far too loud, echoing in the room and in the cavities of his lungs. “Replay saved message.”

And he listens. It is not the first time he has heard this message, nor is it the second or the third. He listens because it contains the facts and he needs to be reminded that this certain set of facts exist. He breathes shallowly, almost afraid to miss a single word, but then, he already knows every single word, every pause and every clipped buzz of static interference. The recording comes to an end and clicks off, leaving him with a ringing in his ears with the onslaught of the quiet of the room.

And here, what can he do now? When he had been certain no one would have come for him, that even he wouldn’t have tried to save himself, wasn’t worth any of it, he was proven wrong. Again and again, he was proven wrong, each smile and joke and laugh put in his hands and his fingers closed over them because here, what can he do now?

James Tiberius Kirk is dead. He was blown out the ruptured hull in saving his crew and his ship. Spock does not imagine Jim out there, floating between the shattered pieces of steel, the glare of the stars reflecting off frozen empty eyes because Vulcans do not have an imagination. Spock does not imagine how it must have felt when the pressure had begun to go, the popping in his ears and then in his head, and that wet trickle from his nostrils.

“Computer. Replay saved message.”

The message had come from the Federation, with its condolences and the dates of the service and the various commemoration ceremonies. It had rattled off awards and accomplishments, statuses of honor and medals of bravery.

Spock does not try to remember Jim, safe, in the mess hall or in his quarters, those laughing eyes over the chess board and that scowl when faced with a particularly frustrating problem. His wagging finger when he was trying to convince McCoy of doing something the good doctor didn’t want to.

Spock does not try to remember Jim on the Enterprise at the beginning of their career together, and then later, on Vulcan, when Jim had come for him, again, without fail, because he mattered, and of all the parallel universes and of all the alternate realities he had been to, Jim was so sure Spock always mattered.

Spock remembers sitting at his station and looking up from his scanner, looking to his left, and there, there, Jim was right there with that gleam in his eyes, alive and well and smiling, saying Spock (so that was what it was, his voice).

Spock pulls the curtains open and looks up, almost squinting against the light. The stars spin overhead, their moment indiscernible to him but, nevertheless, hurtling forward. Jim, pointing out the observatory window at all the constellations and all the planets, taking in their uncontainable brightness with a gesture and saying, Spock. To the future, to all those worlds beyond all of us and all our lives, to living on and on and on.

“Computer.”  Spock closes his eyes. “Delete saved message.”

What a very clear night and what a very bright moon.

[ataraxiaa]

point me where you would, and I will go

He wakes when the headlights of a passing car cut through the blinds and slice through the room in neat thin lines. It is cold; when he exhales, the frosty plume of his breath hovers briefly over his lips. He gets out of bed anyway.

He wriggles his toes against the uneven floor boards, fumbles for his glasses on the nightstand. He does not turn on the lights. The blinds click sharply as he yanks them open and outside, snow is falling in its perfect silence. He blinks down at the yard, yellow pools of light from the street staining the gleaming white swaths of snow.

He puts his forehead to the windowpane and the chill of it sends goose bumps prickling down the back of his neck.  A trail of indents in the snow scamper across the yard, prints left behind by a small intruder. He gazes up to the sky, squinting through the glass but of course, there is nothing to see. Rabbits, he thinks.

He remembers the cloistered warmth of the sun gliding through the wooden slats set up for the vines. Crouching between the rows of seedlings, he puts his hands to the moist earth and leaves behind a murky print. His aunt, some few feet away, bent over. A straw hat and a basket trailing from a hand; the crow’s feet marking the corner of her eyes. She clucks her tongue, fists a curling weed and heaves it out of the earth. He remembers the violence of the gesture, the dangling roots, clumps of soil clinging to battered leaves, her fingers curled tight. Life all around her and here, death, in her grip.

He remembers coming across the tomatoes and remarking that they look like balding old men; large chunks of leaves are missing and there are gaping holes amongst their bushy stems. His aunt leans over him, scowling. Her lips move – Rabbits, she says. She clucks her tongue again, claps the straw hat over his head. All at once, he is sheltered from the blinding brightness of the garden and his raw sunburned cheeks tinge with relief. The weight of her hand remains on his head for a moment longer, then it is gone. She is grumbling under her breath as she moves away, continuing her inspection down the garden like a drill sergeant. His vision has narrowed to the soft soil beneath his squatting thighs, the poor chewed-on tomato plant, the patches of dirt scuffed across the sides of his shoes. He thumbs up the brim of the hat, peers out between the rows of seedlings. The rich heady smell of growing all around him, the sun hot on his blistering knees. His aunt, some few feet away, bent over.

He pulls his forehead from the glass – it sticks, and then lifts away with a blaze of cold centered between his eyes. The snowflakes glitter against the night sky and when he looks down, the yard is as if it were never intruded upon; the surface of the snow is shimmering and smooth, and like the weight of a hand on the top of his head, all memory of the past is gone.

For @reversedough and her postcard prompt!  ♡ ♡ It was such a pleasant surprise~

[ataraxiaa]

I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it

I dreamt I was in a forest.

A creaking bridge hangs between the branches and the chitter of wildlife buzzes in my ears. I want to reach out and touch it but it is flat - a painting, then - but no, I inhale and the cool wet air swirls in my lungs with a touch of reality. I am sure that I am dreaming.

I move through the forest, an elephant, then a bird, then me, leaves crunching underfoot. I walk and walk and walk, dreaming and dreaming.

When I wake, a long corridor stretches on ahead; the heavy steel doors standing weary in their sun-bleached blue. The grey evening sky, streaked with pink clouds, yawns with an empty mouth.

Behind me, the forest is on fire.

[ataraxiaa]

The Fields to the South

It starts with the trees; the wavering solid line of the horizon rising up to the sky and sprouting branches, leaves, life.

I step away from the unrelenting clear blue that I have looked up at and drowned in.

There is shelter now. The ground is soft against the hissing ache of the soles of my feet; time does not exist and each breath drawn is sweet and thick of the moisture in the air and I am living and alive and dancing.

There is colour now. Greens and browns standing strong and sturdy all around. The fliting purples and blues of birds darting in the canopy. Sounds of everything inhaling and exhaling a breeze that trails a hand over my forehead.

When night comes in close, it sprays the shifting verdant hues into silver and gold and the moon is sweet in its smile. Water is cool against my cheeks, clinging to my eyelashes with love. The fire crackles soothingly and it almost feels like home.

If only for a while and only just a little.

There is rest now.

[ataraxiaa]

Can you change the speed at which yesterday passes?

Can you change the speed at which yesterday passes?

When you are in the moment, recording each catch of breath and the weight of your tongue in your mouth. But too late, oh, too late, it’s already gone and whatever you’re watching in the television screen of your mind is the past and the present has never existed.

When you are looking back at it, already knowing what you know and even more besides that. The colours of the leaves are different because you remember, autumn, and then the past no longer exists because you changed it and the truth of it is gone.

When you think about it from the eyes of another, staring at your own side profile at new angle – an imaginary angle because you’ve never looked at yourself that way;  it’s not like in a photograph or a mirror or the neatly strung words from another’s mouth. Who is this person, this stranger, this entity I know nothing and everything about? Then yesterday is gone because how can it stay the same when you’re seen it through the eyes of another?

 Yesterday goes and goes and goes and you’re trying to catch it, trying to hold on to it so you can polish it to a shine for the highest shelf of your mind, and in the future, you can take it down and say, look. But yesterday’s already gone, the light of it all gone, and today is passing and tomorrow you are taking the past down from the shelf and saying, look.

[ataraxiaa]

instead

In a different life, the sidewalk shines with rain instead of snow and the roar of waves comes, quietly, over the hum of passing cars. I look out a window, dirt-streaks reflecting off the glass in watery sunlight. The coffee mugs are forever stained with the rings of stale tea and the press of lips to the rim. There is someone behind me, moving about the room with steady purpose. Familiar footsteps that I’ve never heard before.

In a different life, I have failed. He sits in a kitchen chair, the ugly neon lights flickering over his wide-open eyes. His arms are relaxed, having fallen to his sides in surprise or in shock or in the utter horror of helplessness. The days and the years go by in this life and he stands beside me, always, faithful in his love or in his hatred. He watches over my shoulder and past a lover’s shoulder, on the cool surface of wine, in the way my nail clippings fall, and in the mirror, I see his wide-open eyes.

In a different life, the bottom of the car trunk is rough against my back and my head pounds with irritating persistence. The flash of streetlights is too bright but I cannot bring myself to shield my eyes from the glare. My limbs are too heavy and my mind lies, sodden, in the hollow of my skull. Someone is sitting by me, a cool hand holding a cloth to an open wound. A voice grumbles from the driver’s seat; the words are unknown to me but the ring of it is sweet. Someone came back for me, I think. I can close my eyes again. I am saved.

 The sidewalk is piled with snow and the muted silence of window buzzes in my ears. The shutters are drawn and it is already dark outside. A pristine mug sits before me, won in a lucky draw, unwrapped, brand new. From between the shutters, the street lights beam, too-bright slits of intruding silver. A car rumbles by. Next door, the murmur of distant foreign voices. There is someone behind me, moving about the room with steady purpose. I have never heard these footsteps, never known the weight of it against the flexing heft of my existence. My head throbs and my eyes are wide-open. I turn around and I turn around and I turn around – this time, this only time, I want to see.

[ataraxiaa]

go on in twilight

Go on in twilight.

The trees stand close, made of shadows and dark. You turn your ear to the sky for a whisper from the wind but the leaves are slient and no brook warbles.

Light creeps shyly along your skin, trailing gentle fingers in its retreat.

Your breath, the pounding of your pulse. The crunch of each step in the thick quiet.

Do you, then, find something that keeps you going? A lion’s courage, a heart in a tin. Where is homeward, lest you are struck blind?

Go on in twilight. Begin to sing.