Unfinished Notes App Entries

Self-Diagnosed-Hypochondriac

The internet tells me the pain piercing my skull is a tumor. That I will die. 

I go to see the doctor and the machine wraps around my head, encasing me with a bright white light, scanning. A beeping persists and a robotic, sad, lonely, horrible voice tells me when and when not to breathe. 

I am prescribed anxiety medication. Told the ache is panic. They say I live in a constant state of dread. I wake horrified, fearful. But the internet tells me it’s cancer and I believe it. 

Baptism

I was not baptized.

Sometimes I stare into the dark—at my open window where a street light flickers– and I am sad the sin never washed away. 

I lay on my back in the ocean. Pretend I am freshly made. I cleanse myself. The shower scalds as I scrub at my skin, rub it raw.

Peel and peel away at the parts of me that have seen the sun and felt its mark. 

Yet even daylight has not touched where you have, so I press down the bar of soap until it breaks off. 

I should have asked you if you were baptized. If we lived in exile together, born to this state we further. 

Myth

Girls when they read of women and all who rely on them deeply & generationally punished for eating (Eve’s fruit/ Persephone’s pomegranate). Boys when they read of men condemned to torture for disappointing who they look up to most/ a father figure with their selfishness/ gentleness (God and Adam/ Zeus and Sisyphus).

October

It’s October again, and all my healing has undone. Unraveled before me. 

I am the gentle before callous ruining. Done with such gore. 

I am the kind unbeknownst to greed, to desperation. 

I am still curious for him. Before I tired of what I learned. 

It’s October again. 

Water Floaties

Struggling in the deep end of a pool, holding your breath as hard, still water urges you up. Pushing against the cold, metal ladder until your lungs burn.

The pressure in your ears, silence in your head, fire in your chest. Going against the nature of the human body, breaking its limits.

I’m not allowed to swim anymore. They took away things like pressing my face into plastic bags, waiting, waiting, waiting– and then pulling away, free of harm. 

I enjoy life far too much. Lots of stuff keeps me here, I told them. Like my parents. We share a blood type (A Negative) and sedatives (Lexapro and Liquor). 

Teeth

I dream of teeth falling from my open mouth. 

I speak and One By One they drop to my hand, which stresses to catch them and shove them into place.

I am told it is because I talk too much.

Or lie too much. Or lie at all. 

And I wonder what the honest envision in sleep. If it’s within four walls they stand alone. 

Genesis

I read The Bible’s Genesis for the first time in a vampire-themed hotel in rural Washington state, wrapped in white sheets. 

If Eve hath made from Adam’s rib. If Eve hath born at his desperation for her, for partnership in her. 

Is this why I ache to love you so? Why I feel my bones shiver at the heavy weight of your sultry, needy, begging gaze? 

Is this why I hope to struggle for you? Why I accept raw devotion in your horrid, stained, gruesome, mean namesake? 

From thy rib I am expected to hold thee, to kiss and pray and revel. From thy rib I am told to carnalize my sanctioned hips and lay them down in debt to Adam and his asking. 

I cried in a vampire-themed hotel room. Questioned if we will ever repay you, why we are imprisoned to do so. 

Kiss Them Quiet

A time ticked and blew where I talked and talked and chattered until ears rang/ I spoke with a tongue quick to push and shove syllables together, a scramble/

They sat and listened– how kind, how sweet– while I drew stories with a paintbrush of hearty lungs so filled with air I never broke to swallow/ I watched their eyes glaze– how can you blame them, how can you anger– withdrawing, folding, irate/

Now I let air come and go in slow and shaky,  empty breaths/

I find their desire blooms from silence, roots in guessing/ They ask of my childhood and I kiss them in answer/ Kiss them quiet/

Run my hands along their shivers to run, too/

I have not been considered with good intentions in a long, long while

Conversations With Mom

1 . “I believe in love as I do Santa and the Easter Bunny,” I told my mother, head in hands. 

“Love is very real,” she said, “It’s just harder and angrier. More human.”

“What about that could possibly be worth it, then?”

She did not reply.

2 . Me: “At what age is it depressing when the relatives ask about my love life and I have no answer?”

Mom: “Just ask them right back.”

Me: “How are the wife and kids, Uncle Jon?”

Mom: “How often are you doing it a week? Blowjobs only on your birthday?”

Me: “And she gets tired halfway through?”

3 . In my daily asking for advice on heartbreak, she justified your cruelty by saying, “He is doing what he needs to survive this, too.”

And I hated it. Despised the idea of offering you understanding on behalf of a brutal defense.

Yet it sank and twisted and planted. I don’t think of you when I reach out, when I disturb you.

Only seeking to end my suffering. Never considering yours. How quickly I turned to beg.

You healed fatal wounds with a head unturned. This is what you need. Different instincts, different reactions– like a deer in headlights.

Where you ran, I bucked my head and charged— shattering glass and drawing blood. 

Rum & Coke

He’s a smoke I only crave with a rum and coke

I look at his heart, his eyes drop to my lips

And where I trace the freckle by his eye and memorize his closeness, he scales my body to study my outline

And where I warm at his conclusive smile, his ragged tire– he has never been so cold as its end

Trail Song

He leaves at dawn chasing fires

Whiskey breath only sets them wild

Death of oak, ash in piles

Corked bottles wash a cherished smile

Drywall caved where his curled fist found

Framework dusted at raging sound

I scream, scream to red eyes glazed

Beg a softening for my screeching name

Find early day rays flare mild

Call for rain in tears of his child

Bitter drops encased warps him a liar

On the rocks, he lights fields ablaze

My wailing cries never eased burning blades

ODE TO DAUGHTERS

My father hoped for a son/ One to throw around as he had been/ 

Given name masculine/ Harsh against bleach blonde curling at my chest/ Eyes kept to the floor/

Terror festers in him/ I see it/ Bones bruised in his youth quivering/ 

He saw his father and his father’s father– father father father– in the medicine cabinet/

Staring back/ Anger stretched deep and aged/ A daughter, he would be gentle for/

My mother hoped for nothing/ Prayed for barren/ Sighed in agreeance/ 

She planted cobwebs in her stomach/ Shrunk it, starved it small to leave no room/ 

Yet it grew and grew/ Two heartbeats pulsing/ 

Her mother and mother’s mother– mother mother mother– watched, smug/ From the car’s rearview mirror/

A daughter, you will look back to the same view ahead/ A road never turns

A Series of The Unmedicated 

1 . I apologize for the purple-blue-green bruises on your wrists where I never loosened my grip even when you begged me to and shook me off and I’m sorry your fingers are broken where I pulled you across roads traffic plowed through and did i mention how sorry I am for tugging on your stiff legs and locked knees like a clinging child– Do you forgive me yet? I said I’m sorry why won’t you forgive me? Can I hold you again yet? How hard will you let me squeeze? How far will I take it anyway 

2 . I let things rot. Let bugs find their way onto my dresser where plates pile up, feeding creatures who live with me— rely on me. I wonder if they call me Mother. If they know I am possessed by what the pills are for, that mold will harvest in glasses. That my cold, untouched breakfast makes me sick and they must devour. They need me. I cannot let them down. So I will bring them dinner of both the mess I am and the mess I leave behind. 

3 . White dress to my ankles, I sit and let the frayed rug burn my pink knees. My pigtails are tight, uncombed– Although the creases in my skin are deepening with each day. He bangs around upstairs, his footsteps harsh and heavy against ancient hardwood. I think of him, my husband, and I think only of my husband. All the time. I have not thought of my art in decades, not picked up a pen in centuries. What on God’s Earth would I write when I am a wife and always a wife and only a wife? The carpet chafes. I rock, huddled inward. Seizing, convulsing in horror. No longer human but something much more sinister. 

4. Summer– overconsumption, a dry death 

Winter– underconsumption, a cold decay 

Spring– gnawing, a rebirth 

Autumn– longing, a severance 

ODE TO MOTHERS

My dad said I enjoy engulfing myself in bodies of water, submerging myself in pools, because I miss my mother’s womb. 

I asked if it had not gone well the first time I was tucked in there, why would I yearn to be back? 

That was my answer. 

Dad caught her staring at the wall most nights, withdrawn. He’d wave a hand in front of her face just for her eyes to remain far away, unblinking. 

Dad says I remind him of her a lot. We haven't seen her since Christmas. He tells me I get the same expression sometimes– the one you see in someone with a pistol held between their brows. I always look like I want to run but am too frozen within myself to go anywhere. 

I fear two versions of motherhood in my future. One, I love my children so fervently that I further resent them not feeling this way for me. Or two, I am as detached, as unfit. And finally understand. 

Babble-On (Babylon)

I went to church today. I’m learning how to play the guitar. I crack my knuckles and don’t wear rings. I sleep better on the weekends. You no longer haunt me after 10 P.M. My grandma died in September. I don’t like the rain or want to move East. I’ve kissed since you and I regret it. I called one your name. I swallowed Prozac dry and left my bra at home and drove with my knee while on the freeway to put on lipstick and ate half a bagel for breakfast. I bled through layers of linen sheets and took Advil with wine and will not have dinner.