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[patchworkmonster]

Becoming – s.s.

[patchworkmonster]

I am standing at the precipice. I am not looking down. It would do no good – stillness has raised the water from the earth, nurtured it, scolded it, comforted it until it stood on its own, strong and inscrutable. I am standing at the precipice; rippling mists lick at my toes, and my heart beats. Once. Twice. My throat heaves around it.     There is fear. There is a cliff inside my stomach to match the one beneath my feet, and the earth unhinges its jaw, aching. Hungry.     There is fear. But my heart beats. Once. Twice. Again. And I can’t help it – I smile.     I smile. Because the planet yawns before me, rumbling, and I have been starved, my mind an unplugged television screen, my rib cage knotted with cobwebs. And now it’s knotted with something else, and my heart beats – it beats, and I have to – I can’t stop it – my laugh trips over the fog, spiraling madly down.     Will I be able to sate the world? Will the world sate me?     I have no fucking idea.     I step forward.

vertigo – s.s.

[patchworkmonster]

They say a version of you dies every time your life changes. This, I know to be true. But they don’t talk about the thing that survives – that beats back the odds, weathers the storm, and emerges, gasping, on the other side.    They say a version of you dies every time your life changes, and I thought – but no. I should have known. Storm clouds sail away on monsoon winds; the leaves grow back in the spring. A version of me dies each time – once more, again – but this, I should have known. I should have known.

oh, foul-weather friend – s.s. (via vulcansmirk)

[patchworkmonster]

She wears her heart on her wrists and shoulders, confidence draped like a cowl across her frame. Her body, buried beneath, shudders in the callous grip of winter, rickety and cavernous and howling.     She’s carved the words in the rusty acres of her skin: bravery on her forearms, hope in her hands, trust along her spine, where she can’t see. But it’s trepidation beating a tattoo on the backs of her eyelids, building bars around her while she sleeps. When she wakes, it’s in a cage— the shadow of her fingers over her eyes.     She has no conception of what others see— courage? Kindness? Weakness? Hubris? She knows only that ink bleeds: the colors of her breach the skin, breaking free, straining to stain the first hand to venture close. She wonders about the permeability of her walls; she hopes ink can bleed the other way, too, and covers her skin with characters she’d like to soak through.     Bravery on her forearms. Hope in her hands. Trust along her spine, where she can’t see.

ink – s.s.

[patchworkmonster]

Keeping my mouth clamped shut on words that dig like claws into my throat— bats and bloodbaths, just in time for Halloween. Kuleshov is failing me: each fragment is an alien with no balm of context; my hands are full of pulp and ichor and no skeleton to offer form. The world around me stutters, shambles through molasses, and I know the answer, but I could only express it in jagged chiaroscuro, so I keep the knife in its sheathe.     I used to know. I don’t remember.     I think there were soft lines once, soft lights once. I think there were warm winds, warm words once before. What words? What winds? What direction? Point me there. Push me away. Maybe the tide will bring me back someday, message in hand—words, clear: black ink, bold and new on old, sunkissed paper.     I used to know. I don’t remember.     A lesson in editing for coherence: replace the inconsequential with an ellipsis. It doesn’t matter—so cut, and cut, and cut, and what’s left? Hold it in your hands. Clamp your mouth shut. Flail in the dark for a skeleton.

dissociative editing – s.s.

[patchworkmonster]

You don’t complete me and I don’t mind. You don’t fill every crack and crevice in me left by wisdom’s none-too-gentle hands; we are not puzzle pieces, nor constellations bound together by megalomaniacal gods. Destiny has played no part here, and perfection is a word neither of us understands, and that’s fine. All I know is that I feel a little warmer and a little brighter, braver, better when we breathe the same air— and though no god would tie your hand to mine, I can hold it well enough.

the chosen one – s.s.

[patchworkmonster]

Would that I were a ghost. Would that I could shift through walls and leave no trace in rooms abandoned; would that I were a was, a past-tense with no bearing on the present. Would that I had no needs—no mouth to feed nor traumatic cavern to fill. Would that I could fade into shade and ask nothing at all.

phase – s.s.

[patchworkmonster]

Alone in the dark, I promise myself, ‘You will be kinder.’ In the light, the fault lines may glimmer; nonetheless, I face the dawn.

pact – s.s.

[patchworkmonster]

Here’s a secret: listen close enough, and you can hear the gentle hum of your bones, your heart rattling, soft, against its cage; listen close, and you can feel the rhythm of you echoed in the stars above and the ground below. And maybe it’s dark– maybe you’re lost, and there are clouds in the sky, and you can’t feel your feet beneath you. But listen close. Listen. For you are of the earth; you are the stars themselves, and all you ever needed was a beating heart to find your way home.

letters to a self in peril – s.s.

[patchworkmonster]

My heart feels like it’s beating through dirt– dirt packed tight, tighter, the pressure so much that my pulse is a feeble hiccup struggling against it. I am muffled; smothered by a Jenga tower of fears built on a cirrus foundation of things I can neither know nor control.     I want to administer CPR. I want to kneel over my own fetal form and push, and push, and push with my hands knotted together, strong, and I want to keep pushing until the bones crack beneath my weight.     CRACK. My sternum goes; my ribs will collapse, and when they do– when this cage has crumbled inward, and this rickety relic gives way like the ruins of a temple to some long-forgotten god–only then, with the elements howling through these ancient hollows, will I unearth all that lies below and remember.

Slash-and-Burn – s.s.

[patchworkmonster]

One day, I looked in the mirror.

I’ve been frozen ever since.

Call me Medusa. – s.s.

[patchworkmonster]

I forget sometimes how much violence there is here, in me, for you. In the eye of the hurricane, I forget what it’s like to fear myself— to fear my own power; to worry that I may be Eurydice, you my unwilling Orpheus, and that one careless look from me will end it all. So I relax. I laugh when you threaten to terrorize the noisy neighbors; I poke fun at you for thinking raspberries are too sour. I fall asleep feet away from you with barely a thought. But this morning I woke to you asleep, your bare chest brushed gray with dawn half-shadows, your hands folded clumsily at your throat. I caught another glimpse of the tattoo on your ribs, and it looked like a tantalizing constellation. I found you there, and your vulnerability was a bullet to the chest; I looked at you, there, like that, and all the violence came back.     I’m sorry, Orpheus. If it’s any consolation, I’m stuck in hell, too.

alucinor 5.17 (s.s.)

[patchworkmonster]

They asked about black holes. They asked for an explanation, so I gave them one, best I could, the room swathed in an inky dark, the one light pouring over us like honey. I explained how black holes are so massive, so dense, so full that the natural gravity of everything inside pulls the universe inexorably closer. I explained all this with you right beside me, feet away— too far, but close enough for me to be caught in your gravity and pulled inexorably. I don’t smoke cigarettes. I try not to drink when I’m sad. But I’m addicted to the smell of you, and to the feeling of your mind sharing oxygen with mine. I’m hooked on the sound of your voice telling me to walk on your right as we pass these strangers in the dark. (When did you start taking care of me?) When did I start needing it?) They asked about black holes. They asked for an explanation, so I gave them one, best I could. And all the while, gravity and irony pulled me inexorably toward you.     It hurts, you know? I’m caught in the well of your warmth, and the way your eyes light up when you’re thinking. I’ve long since passed the event horizon; there’s no hope now for me to flee. All I can do is laugh and shake and drown in your singularity.

alucinor 5.17 (s.s.)

[patchworkmonster]

We are trees, wild, green, growing side-by-side—growing together, and see? Our roots have met now, have tangled, enticed by the same cocktail of mineral and dirt. And see, you and me, we wind closer and closer all the time, and I’m so fucking scared, but I’m so warm, too. Never been warmer. And we’re okay somehow. How? With everything between us, we still speak the same, think the same, laugh the same. I know I will never tire of making you laugh.     I’m so fucking scared, but I’m so warm, too. Never been warmer.     It’s impossible, no? But I think you and me, we may someday grow so strong, together, our leaves will graze the sun.

alucinor 5.17 (s.s.)

[patchworkmonster]

I couldn’t stop staring at your hands, at your arms, at the stubble on your chin. I couldn’t stop laughing, and then I couldn’t shake the image of your smile. You smiled when you saw me. You sat with me all night and quietly let me into your mind. And the whole time, I watched the skin at your throat, the light in your eye; I could almost feel your hands on my thighs, your lips on mine already.     You felt it too, didn’t you? You were so quiet, and you laid there so lax, so vulnerable, so open, asking me. Daring me. Didn’t you? I couldn’t stop thinking about that thing you say sometimes— ‘I am not a strong man.’ If I finally snapped, if I gave up this fucking ghost and showed you my strength, would you let me?     I asked if I could go home with you, and you agreed. Easy. My heart was in my throat all night; I couldn’t stop thinking all night, about your hands, about your arms, about your eyes, about your lips, about you. I almost went for it. Half a hundred times, I almost went for it. We entered the apartment and you didn’t say a word, and neither did I—god, the tension was like carbon monoxide. I almost kissed you. Half a hundred times, I almost kissed you. I’d lay you down if I could; I’d pin you down and rip you to shreds with my teeth, with my tongue, if I could.     I thought about it all night. I thought about it all morning, too, with you sitting there, all packed up and ready to go, nothing to keep you here but me; you laid back again, fell open again, and I swear to god that was almost it.     I’d rip you to shreds with my teeth, with my tongue, if I could.     Here’s a secret: I think you want it, too. I think you’re trying to fight it— I think you’ll keep on denying every want, every need you’ll ever have for the sake of the work, because that’s what you believe. But I wonder, if I pushed you— if I pinned you down and picked you apart and showed you how strong I can be— I wonder, if I pushed you like that, just nudged you like that over the edge would you let me?     (You’re fighting for a world in which everyone is free and happy. In your mind, does that world not include you?)

alucinor 4.17 (s.s.)

[patchworkmonster]

You smiled when you saw me. You sat with me all night and quietly let me into your mind. I found out that you’re the youngest of three, that you worry you can’t support people like you should, and that there’s a chance I can be for you what you have fast become for me— a comfort. You’ve never asked for comfort. You never ask for help. You told me flat-out that you believe in taking care of yourself only insofar as it equips you to keep fighting. I understand that belief more than I can say, and I love you for it, but it makes me sad, too. You’re fighting for a world in which everyone is free and happy. In your mind, does that world not include you?     (My world, at least, would be a much grimmer place without you.)     You told me all your heroes are people who’ve been jailed and killed fighting for what they believe. You said it scares your parents because they think that’s the best they can hope for for you. Here’s a secret: it scares me, too. And I will do everything I can for you to make sure this fight doesn’t kill you.     (See, all my heroes are people who’ve been jailed and killed fighting for what they love. I think it should scare my parents, because it’s the best thing I hope for for me. You fight for the world. I fight for you. You are my best-case scenario.)

alucinor 4.17 (s.s.)

[patchworkmonster]

We let the sky fall. We ripped it down, and behind it was you—a shadow; a rumble in the dark, lit only by the cherry tip of your cigarette. I threw open the curtains, and behind them was you, asleep, the morning sun slipping over you like fingertips. I watch your chest rise and fall again, and my fingers follow. They itch; there are magnets beneath my skin. My ribs are creaking.     You breathe: slow, deep, true. I breathe, too.

alucinor 4.17 (s.s.)