Disencumber

I rid that bag of broken things.

Their voices no longer echo through my kitchen.

You won’t force this silence on me anymore. You won’t choke the words out of me. Your presence makes me still. Movement a liability. Desperate to coax you into calm.

I’m so angry with you. I’m not crazy. You think I’m overzealous in my assessment of you. It’s generosity which has kept me, from naming you as you are. It’s belief you can change. Not for me. Not about me. You. Raw. Unearthed.

I felt wrong for so long. You lied to me. Told me I wouldn’t have to feel. Longing. Difference. Unknown.

You were selfish. So selfish. Arrogant, malicious, cold, childish. Incapable of care, and self absorbed. Indulgent. False. A fraud. Blackened soul like mica, glimmer halted. Empty. Vengeful. Alone.

Rage and raving. You lied. You are nothing and everything. Anything but love. Each moment an act in your play. Each moment acted. Greedy, you shuffle. Too impatient to follow through. You disgust me. You loved no-one – not even yourself.

You don’t deserve. But all your actions serve. Tightened coils. I had too much. Your words, mean nothing. You don’t get anything from me, anymore.

Recover when? Purge? Give you less, take more? Powerless? Render you…

Move

Even the hate you spit, won’t strip these naked walls of love.

You want me to feel helpless, unearthed, exposed. Curl like budding leaves in frost. Cower,  cold biting tongue dispossessing the green, the life. I will not wilt for you. Sun. Life Giving. Warmth envelops me. Wrap these vines around your feet. Move you. I’ll move you.

sinewy flesh dappled with dark ink                  allegory

tribal soft music didgereedoo,  hands rapt in damp earth

devour.

wide palms smooth and firm glide over supple soma, contours, luscious

lascivious

lithe body, curious eyes, visceral growl

tongue thick, velvety, wrapped plump

labios

the line is here

I am giving up wanting anything from you. You have pushed, and pushed and pushed and you have brought us here. I am generous and strong and loving, and I have given you everything I could. I draw the line here, in the sand, with this blade. The blade  you cut yourself with after I left you for the first time.  I wish I could say that I was truly the one to leave you, but we both know that’s not true. You’ve been leaving since you got here.

You have no respect for me. As I scolded myself today, I told you I’d have a hard time respecting myself too. I refuse to see myself the way you see me. I deserve respect. I am worthy of respect.  Ask me to speak. I ask you for silence – you can’t give me anything I couldn’t take from myself.

You’ll use this opportunity to get famous. You’ll work your way into more communities, make more empty promises, inspire more admiration. You still won’t be getting paid for your efforts but at least you’re doing what you do best. You’re the leading man in your own self indulgent autobiography. Make more excuses, plant blame all around you, fall in love with yourself, all over again. Keep lying, keep lying to yourself in that mirror you love so much.

You have absolutely nothing to give me. You can’ t have anything else.  My love for you extended far beyond this relationship, but I’m tired, and I’m angry, and I’m giving up being good enough for you. I’d rather be good enough for myself. I will be loved for all I’m worth, not all that you need.

Encore

She said never again. She begged me to stay. What she meant was, ‘don’t leave’. It was the first time I had been in love. It was the first time I had been with a woman. It was the first time I had been jarred, my footing loosed, pebbles falling like percussion, erratically making their way to rock bottom.

She is the re-enactment of not so Hollywood pictures. Film looping, lonely, without sound to summon reason. I am page 21 of Reclaiming Self : issues and resources for women abused by intimate partners. Not one of my College texts but it might as well be. I am the co-facilitator of a group for women who have experienced abuse. I am a graduate of a program dedicated to ending violence against women. My role is to extract the abusive narrative out of stories normally witnessed as mutually dysfunctional relationships. As I experience violence at the hands of my intimate partner, I encrypt the tale with empathy,  exonerate the theme of abuse in favour of a much less personal premise: violence.

Not me. Never me. The first time I uttered a warning, Next time there won’t be a next time. The second time my words played back to me. I didn’t have to drum my fingers to hear the echo of their vacant casing. The first time it took 11 tentative sentences to finally make space for the word abuse, taking care to remove any shred of accusation. It should have made me proud to utter the word abuse and give voice to the very real betrayal I had just been dealt. Instead I felt shame. One of the most potent functions of abuse, the infusion of shame into daily dealings with the self. As I was taking care to extricate the abusive circumstance in my new relationship, I inhaled every attempt to name past relationships as abusive. My silence in one area of my life became overzealous finger pointing in another.

The second time my mouth formed the word abuse with minimal effort, and major visceral response. Across from her on the couch, my lover’s anger began to rise like steam from a boiling pot. At the first sign of condensation, fight or flight response took hold. I trembled violently. My legs would not carry me. I finally realized the implication of my fear. The first tangible evidence, after bruise, before tear.

Blame, the significant other of shame. My education taunted me from the shadow. My feminist manifesto screamed, ‘It’s not worth losing your self!’. The power and control wheel was lost on me. I – so obsessed with control  -  began to distort the data just to give myself the upper hand.

Pain was accompanied by immeasurable pleasure. We woke up wrapped in each other, hermit crab shells stiff like porcupine quills, bond torn easily, places held steadfastly wonting for reunion. Organza origami. It seemed tragic to cast aside the depth of this love, all due to the superficiality of anger. Each wound scarred more than just the surface, the presence of newly proud flesh, thick with gates, bars, fences.

Act three involved more than your usual players. Their eyes, dark and observant, shed light on an otherwise darkened evening. I acted the scene with reluctant commitment, my loyalty with her character rather than mine. When everything told me to run, I was a pillar with arms to steady her feet. The standard I had set was one where never again meant nothing. I was too afraid that she might harm herself, to tend to my own injuries, bodily or otherwise. I inhabited stage left, while she lingered indulgently in the spotlight. I scolded intuition, and tore better judgement from the scene.  I was playing the martyr and deferred to the saint.

Encore, encore, encore. No more.

More bar room rantings

The world was encroaching, faster than you could run. Like a lumbering beast, whose heavy feet snapped life like twigs.

It could have been different, had you done things differently. You could have said no. You could have screamed. You could have used your power, held on to it, refused to let it go. You could have chosen differently. You didn’t. You were too afraid to speak. You didn’t have the strength to fight. You weren’t sure enough to say no. You didn’t trust yourself to run. You weren’t brave enough to cry.

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We were all seeking refuge from the cold, and life as we knew it. The snow outside laid itself to rest, demanding a grave to share. No-one ever says, here’s a space, take it up. Still you burden me with your selfishness. Watching this sad man fills me with anger. You and he are one in the same, your self pity and sadness violating everything around you.

You’re driving me insane. You think I’m a fallen angel. You push and push and push until there’s nowhere left to turn. You’d rather see my fall than stand in the same place. I’m with you on that one.

Because you carry the weight of a thousand broken promises, a thousand tiny deaths. I walk, heart heavy, and always will. I won’t collapse under you. You moved against me and my heart lurched backwards, straining against my ribs. Sometimes I feel like the only way I can touch you is through these bars. Have you ever felt truly touched? Have you ever really touched me? Can’t you fucking see. A thousand tiny deaths.

You’re so fucking certain. You’re so fucking sure you’ve got us all figured out. You think you deserve the Nobel Pussy Prize. Don’t tell me not to feel. Especially when it’s anger. I’m entitled to my anger. It took me years to realize this, and a few more to free it from the shallow grave I’d dug. I’m not going to toss it back simply because it’s hard to hear, simply because it’s not pretty or neat. I’m not pretty or neat. I’m not prim or proper. My thoughts are not linear and I don’t believe in night lights.  So make up your mind. Do you want me or what you think I should be?

drunken laptop in bar

Truth spoken softly
Louder than
Untruth, screamed from a roof top.

The feral kitten, finds refuge under the couch.

Recognizing your face
Truly for the first time.
Shaking hands, with a shadow.

A silent confession drew the space between us, to a close.
Grasping
Foreign language became mother tongue.

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Let’s make a list, where structure is forsaken
One written between the lines
Read by life in motion
Never slowing to press ink to paper
A storyline etched by action
Scroll makes a smoking recovery
From the speed at which we live (love)

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Writings from a dimly lit taphouse, trembling with laughter, emanating from a likely cast.
I felt like you’d known me from the moment I was conceived. Not in womb, but in world.

I know myself more with you – coincidental, or complimentary?

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Motivations as a symptom of psychology. A means to an end or beginning. They are often contradictory, seldom solitary, and almost always counterproductive.

I thought I knew myself, but I don‘t – not entirely. I’m not opposed to learning, I just have a habit of putting it off as for long as I can. Procrastination is one of my strengths. Inimical brawn which often leads to weak foundations, relationships, and products. You’re staring at me with that smug look of satisfaction. You’re the most attractive asshole I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. I digress because it’s easier for me to write about you, a comfortable distance between the subject and the self.

When I write about my pain I imagine myself in a closed room, cup to the drywall, drawing information through espionage rather than observation. It’s not to say it’s not my experience, just that I try always to feel from the outside rather than the inside. Looking for answers inspires a swell of anxiety, anticipation and fear. You know when you feel a lump in your chest, expanding until it’s hard to breathe. Your heart feels like beating fists against a cement wall. This is my state as I dissociate. I close the door, I shut you out, I shut down. I’m numb, with exception given to the tumour in my chest, nausea in my gut. It’s better than feeling too much. But what about the necessity of letting go? What about falling on your knees, unravelling, losing control, and feeling everything all at once and with such weight that rising from the earth seems like a an impossible feat.