creatureseason

[creatureseason]

i never knew that longing

could feel so scarily similar

to misplaced trust and the heavy ache

of burning lust and biting shame

the loss of a sense of belonging

and i know how it feels

to be discarded by a savior

or at least the metaphorical manifestation

of the guilt that they preach on sunday

through a scripture that’s wrongly translated

i know bruised knees and dry mouths,

confessions on bathroom floors

i’ve felt the tight grip in my hair

i learnt holiness between her legs

more than i ever did praising a god

that they said would rather see me dead

than losing a chance at going to heaven

[creatureseason]

*chanting quietly to myself*

“it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered t hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because it mattered it hurts because-”

[creatureseason]

i would say you made me sick in the head

but really, i’ve been ill since i was a child

they said they’ve never seen a case like mine

and it’s a miracle that i’ve had this much time

you touch me like i’m something deceitful

like these bones aren’t really my own

you’re an hard worker, an earner; i’m just a thief

is anything in this body really my own?

[creatureseason]

“you could have been so much more if you weren’t left to die by those you depended on to survive.”

“i know, i know, i know”

“so how is it your fault?”

“it has to be, it just has to be. guilt is easier than blame. i can deal with shame, i can deal with self-loathing. we’ve met before, the feeling and i.

i’ve walked hand in hand with it all my life. it’s grown familiar at this point. it’s another bone in my body, another means to an end. i’ve spent my whole life feeling wrong; it’s all i know.”

“that’s no way to live”

“it’s the only way i know.”

[creatureseason]

That summer, you were everywhere.

I felt you in my bed and in my shoes, when I put one foot in after the other. I felt you in the shower and under the kitchen lights. I felt you when i laid on the linoleum tiles and couldn’t move for hours.

You were the static on the attic TV and the wet sand between my toes. You were the bad taste in my mouth and the spilled juice on the countertops. I think you would have liked this; you once confessed that you were desperate to take up space.

[creatureseason]

don’t you see the tragedy in it all?

i would have grown a hundred more limbs, thrown myself on the alter and pleaded for forgiveness

i would have bled for you, i would have let you claim a vein

and i would have gotten down on my knees and cleaned up the mess, if you had only asked

meanwhile, you went for the kill and on my last breath, i apologized for forgetting to wash the dishes

[creatureseason]

your mother will slip sometimes

your mother confesses in the early morning light, with a chipped and worn mug resting in her aging hand, that all did not seem like it was when you were a child.

it’s the same one you gifted to her in elementary school; the mug.

tied with a loose bow, presenting it to her with small, grubby hands covered in hues of green and gold finger-paint. “happy mother’s day” clumsily scrawled across the bottom.

your mother speaks, as if it the easiest thing in the word to admit, how difficult it was to love your father when he was drinking. how difficult it is to love anyone who’s swept in the throes of addiction and misery.

for the mother, it is a fact of life, an alternative to breathing, to be accepting of this reality.

she grieves through quiet quips about the past and hopeful eyes for the future. she makes do the same way she did when you were a baby; she survives.

to you, it is a slit throat, a faulty pipe, a loose end that’s run out of string.

he’s better now. it’s been decades since his last drink. you are better now. you’ve been clean for 23 weeks.

and your mother sips coffee from her mug.

[creatureseason]

and you hold me like a stranger,

i need you like warm weather

i leave you like a lover;

you reply, “it’s my pleasure”

when we make our great return

it will take place in the bedroom

i’ll drift further in the winter

and you’ll ask me if i’m eating dinner

[creatureseason]

would my mother cry if she saw what you’ve left of my body?

would she weep for a child left to the wolves,

or perhaps clasp her hands in a prayer she has not recited in decades

you performed the autopsy yet had me dig my own grave, relentless in your carelessness

of maybe stubborn in your recklessness

would your mother cry if she witnessed my demise?

what would she say when the funeral invitations arrived?

would she don black and grey, like it’s a familiar game?

join the funeral brigade, fall in line to the anthem,

marching in tune with a distant look full of the features that she passed on to you

or choose to divert her eyes, and find comfort in the biting shame

i’ll never known how the rest of this story goes, i’ll remain stuck in limbo, drifting between the morning and midnight service.

and you’ll go on, living in delusion or denial, claiming it was an act of love, while the ghost of me haunts the church aisles.

[creatureseason]

you carved your name into my chest;

meticulous and with a steady, familiar hand.

sat back and watched with hunger in your eyes,

licking your lips, as all your love seeped into my ribs.

coating my insides, ruining me for any other.

as if you’ve wrapped me in yellow tape, baring your teeth at any passerby,

like a guard dog with a bone; you say it’s the only way you’ve ever known

you swear you only did it because i just look so damn pretty,

with a piece of you consuming my system and filling up my weakening body

with my bleeding heart on display

and the imprint of your fingers smudged into my spine.

but i heard your voice, a sort of blasé tone present in your speech:

i know you better than that.

i’ve walked with you through crumbling wastelands and kissed you for every greedy hand that’s ventured past my waistband

i know that this is easier for you; you won’t have to carry the weight all alone.

you’ve never been comfortable with the idea of growing old.

[creatureseason]

“maybe i’m wrong. maybe i was born sick, with illness in my blood and disease written into my veins, spelled out with the same letters as your name.”

[creatureseason]

thursdays are the hardest. we lose each other on the weekdays.

yet we exist in equilibrium as we both have inherited the excruciating condition of being alive, the painful and compelling experience of living in a body and being brave enough to wake up everyday in the same one.

and as judgement comes with being human, acceptance comes with feeling less than. a sentiment that is so overwhelming that it lines the kitchen walls and finds refuge in every pile of soot and speck of dust in the attic.

a feeling that captivates, that speaks and sings and bellows, as if to say,

“I cannot judge you as a monster anymore than you can judge me for being human.”

[creatureseason]

she’s always been more human than me. my love.

i don’t how she does it, how she welcomes them in so trustingly. i was raised with bared, bloody teeth and claws out, taught to live in fear of what’s in my mind.

i don’t know how to feel without getting lost in it; i only know bloodshed. it’s almost killed me before, how much they consume me, as if something within me is greedy and starving.

whenever tears prick at the edges of my eyes, i taste iron. i’ve never known anything else.

i’ve always been ill, since the beginning of time. i was born into sickness and baptized in roaring waters.

[creatureseason]

and so, in a house left for destruction and despair, filled only with the souls of daughters and sons left to wolves and men who bare the same pointed teeth, i remained. i never left.

when they came to collect me in the fall, my body went, but i stayed. i’m still there, in that house. it’s still August; i’m still seventeen.

[creatureseason]

“and recently?”

“most days have been ones of mourning. some days i prepare a burial in my mind. on Tuesday, i found myself humming a funeral march under my breath. on Thursday, I had dinner with my parents and wore all black. i think i’m swimming in the memories and all i can do is try to kill them.”

“then, what do you do?”

“very little.”

[creatureseason]

lover, are you the heroic knight that has come to gift soliloquies and patch my bleeding wounds? the kind to visit me every half, full, and in-between moon?

or are you the slithering creature that emerges from knotted and gnarled trees? abundantly wealthy with rusty keys, stolen from those who dared to traipse through forgotten valleys; foolish travelers with no regard for the lives that once flourished in a now untamed yard.

the one that leaves the blood to pool, not in an act of malice but in an act or devotion, as if to say “i can not stop your pain but i can lay here and cut my skin just the same.”

[creatureseason]

the forecast says it looks like rain on Thursday

some days i see it in her eyes; she’s so open with her eyes.

she can’t quite grasp why i go cold as the seasons shift or why my hands tremble over just a glass of chardonnay. why i go numb in August or why my long sleeves are frayed.

those are the days we bicker, that we fall into bed tense and unwilling to discuss what’s always been the same.

she asks if i will be getting better soon; i tell her it looks like rain on Thursday.