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
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.
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.
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.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————-
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?
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.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————-
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)
——————————————————————————————————————————————————-
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?
——————————————————————————————————————————————————-
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.
There’s a bag of broken things in the cupboard. Sometimes I expect to walk by and hear the faint murmur of our voices coming from that bag. Just another broken thing.
You were in motion, like a shooting star – not caring what scars your tail would burninto the earth. I jumped at the chance of a free ride. I craved escape and your force told me it would take me as far as I wanted to go. Now I’m ready to dismount. I’m not made for this life. I’m ready to dig my roots in for a while. You’d feel trapped. When did I decide I wasn’t good enough to choose my fate. It was long, long ago. The thing about you is that you made me realize that I am. You forced me to recognize the space growing between myself and the earth. Remember the day I told you I felt like my feet were barely touching ground?
Every time I write I feel like I’m saying goodbye.
Hello again. Let me work this out, even though it’s hard to hear, and even though you don’t want to. Even though you’ll say that I’m not being fair, that there are too many reasons, that I’m a coward, that I don’t know myself. Take it or leave it.
You’ve abused me, and it started before you ever hurt me. It started when you bullied me, made me feel small, made me afraid. I shrank away from you when you lashed out at me, I told myself it wasn’t personal, and that I could stand it. The more you sought to control me the more weight you had in this. I knew exactly what you were doing. I thought I was outsmarting you. You attempted to tell me what I should feel . (yesterday you even told me what to write!) Where the hell did I get off letting you think that was your choice. Your choice was to be with me, and when you chose I hope you know that meant all of me. Everything else is me – I choose everything else. Remember when you wrote to me and told me you’d always back up so I could do me? I never got in your way. When did I stop feeling comfortable exercising my rights? I want you to know this is not about you. It’s not your responsibility that I gave something up. I chose to let it go because I thought the other thing I could grab for was more important.
I was wrong.
I had a dream you moved. Can I tell you that I cried? It’s a hard decision and you’re torn. Do what you need to do. Like you said – there’s a difference between need and want. I wish we had more time. I want more time. I want to smell the ocean with you, and drive around in a big deisel truck wearing cowboy hats. I want to spend time in the forest, appreciating the beauty of fungus and squealing at spiderwebs. I’m scared to tell you this for real cause it seems like a fairy tale – ‘cept I don’t need rescuing and my prince is you. This feeling, this immense feeling, only makes sense with you here.
You ask me to hide you, protect you, facilitate a CSIS class cover up. I’m complicit in your lies because the truth is too painful to speak: You abuse me, and I let you.
When you’ve reached an impasse in your physical abuse, you turn to a more freudian attack. You tell me that I refuse to accept responsibility. You call me a liar. You tell me I pushed you too far – I recall the moment of impact with the bed, following a particularly forceful shove. It strikes me in the face – at least, this time, you didn’t.
I was a passive victim. I surrendered. My tears egged you on and you found my weakness repugnant. Those tears were a result of grief; the end. You’d trained me well. Your tears brought me to my knees with shame. The hurt I felt was yours. It was all about you – though I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was merely a character in your play, behaving badly. I ran, but lamed, my feet took me nowhere. I collapsed onto nothing, in nothing, as nothing. Confronted by the knowledge that there was nowhere to go. You occupied everything. My mind, my heart, my lungs, my home, my sanctuary. I was powerless. I was orphaned.
I kept hoping you would write the antidote. Your beautiful words – personally meaningful – were empty. I kept thinking your heart would break open as mine had, and you would recognize me. I asked you to hold me, but I was grains of sand in palms agape. I scrutinized you with disbelief – I found nothing. I hated you. I forgot who I thought you were – I had too.
There was a moment, as I came too in your arms, lying on top of you, gently riding your breath. I felt a part of you. It was the only time I had felt truly safe with you. I clung to that moment with blanched knuckles. You moved and the illusion faded. I was alone again.
Even as I write this, you circle around you own want, need, hurt. You’re still blind. I’m still invisible. I have nothing to offer you. I have nothing left to give. You had nothing to begin with. You were selfish, negligent – an overbearing director. I was a hopeless romantic – a character in your play.
I feel alive and open and my skin feels radiant next to yours. Every molecule of my being is primed for sensation. As I’ m half roused out of conciousness my body is infiltrated by the warmth of your own. Your breath on my neck, your hand cupping my breast, your hips against the small of my back, your thigh pressed gently to the space between my own. I’m distracted from rest by the heat mingling between our drowsy bodies.
There’s something between us. It’s persistent and creative and changes shape over time. The presence of this thing is drifts inundates the breadth of our interactions. At times, tumescent hearts displace the trespasser to brush cheeks with one another. In other moments they strain against an invisible wall, unable to connect.
Sometimes I feel like you’re not fighting as hard as I. Tangled in the tenticles of a shape shifter, you’re less vigilant in your attempt to keep up.
I put you in an impossible situation.
I see myself in you. Having fallen madly in love for the first time, I find myself violating my partner, reaching for the rope she’s clinging to and searching to yank it from her flailing fingers, in order than her escape might be postponed, or prevented. I see you reaching for me, knowing that I’m leaving, and feeling desperate to keep me. I see you wanting what’s best for me and sincerely believing that was you. I feel your fear, because I sit with my own.
I thought I didn’t want anything to do with you. I couldn’t find a way to reconcile the life I lived with you and the life I’d lived before. They were inextricably linked and the only way to say goodbye to one was to say goodbye to the other. I know you. I knew you. My pain was about not knowing who you became, when you realized you didn’t know me. Part of the problem was that you didn’t know how to know me entirely, or truly, but you were content with what you had. You saw something in me. I believe you were in love with me – I know you were. The other half was that I was/am unknowable. I don’t blame you for failing, I was like a rigged game – designed to defeat, and you never had a chance.
Being with her has taught me that I’m not easy to be with. She told me the other day that it was difficult to touch me, because I refuse to be touched. That statement plagued me with it’s profound and resounding qualities. I never let you touch me. With her, I never had a choice. I heard something in your voice the other day that reminded me of you. Reminded me of the times you scooped me from the ground and laid me down to rest. The times your reflection of me gave me strength to look at myself. Your friendship was unconditional. You never judged me for my actions. Sadly, I can’t say the same. I resented you. I resented who I was and who I thought I would become beside you. I resented my cowering, toppling self.
It may have seemed that I had it together and was merely a chaperone on a date with yourself gone horrible wrong. This is a testament to how wrong you were for me, because you never saw the truth. If you did, you didn’t dare look – either are a poor match. You did see my sadness though, and it was too much for you to bear. You were 22 when I met you, barely a boy. We were knee deep in war with ourselves. We worried that it would end, we worried that we would end. We were meant to stand back to back, provide shelter when needed, and eventually set out in opposite directions.
I asked you to do something I knew you weren’t capable of. I expected you to stand with broken legs. I hurt you, I made your suffer, and I treated you unfairly. I also relied on you, and placed the burden of my happiness on you. My resentment forgot that you couldn’t breathe either. I held you accountable without facing myself. I believed that you had taken it too far. I couldn’t see the distance I’d travelled through the mist. I couldn’t see the bodies beneath the fog.
We both became people we didn’t recognize. I acted as a willing participant in the undoing of my self worth. I began the unravelling of myself and urged you to play along. You were like a clumsy child, eating glue while the rest of your classmates solved riddles. You were a child. You were as difficult to be with as I was, but your heart had no scruples and you loved like a labrador retriever, full of honesty and loyalty, but lacking in sophistication and intelligence. You were sweet. I wasn’t.
I’ve had many conflicting feelings about what it meant to leave you. I thought I deserted you and had broken you without care. I seethed with rage as I imagined how you had plotted my demise and sought to control me. You violated me just as I violated you. The difference is we had different words for it. It looked different, but the truth is it was the same. You were on a crash course with my vulnerabilities, wanting to capsize everything about me so at least you knew where to find me on the map. I wanted you to hurt as I hurt, even when it became clear that the pain had nothing to do with you. It became you. That was your choice. I let it become. That was my choice. Remember when I pushed you down the stairs? slapped you? called you names? Remember when I broke your trust? exploited you and took advantage of your patience? Your feelings were of little consequence to me. I was too busy grappling with how they made me feel, which was needed and loved and altogether too much for what I thought I was.
I watched you bruise under my blows and your expression turned sour. I abused you and you asaulted me right back. There are things I will never forgive you for, just as there are things you will never forgive me for. One of those things is trying to contain me. The other is drawing on my weakness to exhibit your power. Finally, for thinking you knew what was best for me.
There are also things I’ll never forget you for. Like the time you let me puke on you and carried me home without the slightest hesitation. That you took me in to your home in Ottawa, even though you could probably see that it was never about coming to you and always about running from something. You tried always to give me what I needed, though you were helpless to know what that was. I felt accepted by you, always. Even when you tried to spit me out, I knew that had I lowered my gun so would have you.You were thoughtful before my indifference to you became so apparent.
I loved you. You were a shelter from the storm – I was the storm.
I think I’d like to see you. I think I’d like to know you, all over again, for the first time. I’d invite you to witness my life, and watch yours with open eyes. We’d live in seperate towers, on the other side of the world, but take comfort in knowing the other was out there, back to back, heart open, souls set aflight.
