The city was flooded in a poisonous orange sunset and smog, as we drove through its skyline.
It made me think of Bladerunner. I dont know what Jr thought, but I know he was in unsettled awe.
.
Warm bulbs light up our conversations on the cozy roof deck of the beach front apartment.
Jr’s cold and hostile numbers, about what tragedies await us, hang in the air like orange smog.
After I turn of the fourth alarm of the morning- I’d set the other alarms long ago, in an attempt to wake up earlier- I notice that my body feels heavier than usual. Strange considering I’ve been loosing weight despite my desperate efforts to eat more.
I try to sit up, but my ever shrinking muscles can’t lift me so instead I check my phone. First my social media. That reminds me that I have some writing I need to do, writing I was exited about a couple of days ago, so why does my body feel even heavier? Thinking about it and knowing I probably won’t do it today makes my stomach hurt, so I close whichever sinkhole I’m mindlessly scrolling though and open a game I saw and add for a couple of weeks ago. It’s entirely pointless. I’ve been cycling thought the same 5ish mazes so often that the illusion of progress has long faded.
Beside me, my man starts to stir. He opens his eyes, gives my leg a squeeze and then picks up his own phone. After he’s had a chance to shake of sleep completely he asks me if I’m going to work on that thing I told him I’d do for him. As he does some invisible force wraps a long thick cord around my body, like a python wrapped around its pray, and ties me to the bed. I tell him I’m probably won’t.
A little more time passes when I check the time. In an instant I’m up. It’s an entire hour later then when I usually feed my dog. She must be getting hungry.
They all love me pretty quickly, the people i meet.
“It’s her eyes.” My mamma tells people. Apparently I have ‘sweet eyes’, whatever that means.
They always want to pet me and play with me and they talk to me much more than they do with Shifty- thats my sister, shes been here longer than I have.
I don’t think people love Shifty as much as they love me. They say her name and try to pet her, but when she doesn’t respond or looks at them funny they stop trying.
Only a few people really love Shifty, like my mamma and my friend Tequi’s mamma. But they don’t love her the way they love me- or Tequi.
They love Tequi and I by playing with us and cuddling us and teaching us how to be good so they won’t have to scold us so often. They give us toys and sometimes even play with those toys with us.
But with Shifty, They love her by saying sorry when they make her jump, or by leaving the couch so she can sit on it alone. They love her by letting her come to them for pets and slacking on her training.
My papa loves her too, but he’s not as good at it. He approaches Shifty too fast and scares her too often, but I think he doesn’t mean for it to happen .
And I know that Shifty loves papa too. She’s told me as much. Papa goes on longer walks and finds tastier food for us. Usually he forgets he’s a papa, but when he remembers he tries to make up for it.
Shift says mamma and papa fight sometimes. They don’t bite each other but sometimes mamma barks loudly at papa and then gets very sad while he gets very quiet- papa isn’t usually quiet. He loves to tell people things.
Shifty also says sometimes mamma leaves and she either goes with her or stays. And when this happens she never knows how long it will be before they are all back together again.
Personally, I only just found this little family and I really hope we can all stay together always. And that includes Tequi, Murphy, Panda and their mammas and papas too.
A friend of mine was sent to the guidance counselor’s office because his jokes where ‘too dark’ and ‘concerning’. I remember him and I laughed about it because we thought that whole situation was just as funny as declaring loudly that we where ‘waiting for the sweet release of death’.
Looking back now, is very possible that our laughter rang hollow. Still it sounded like music in comparison to the silence that might have occupied the space otherwise.
My father though my friends and I where bad for each other because we where encouraging each others depression. I fought him on this, but secretly feared he was right.
Then the ‘dark’ jokes went away for a while…..
Now that they’re back, and my friends are oceans away, they don’t get met with the laughter of solidarity, they don’t even get met with the concern or fathers or guidance counselors.
It’s bad when the dark ‘jokes’ get met with the explicit implication of ‘no time for this kinda thing.’
Its worse when they don’t get met at all.
I thought the whole thing was weird from the get go, but I was never upset about it. The fact that no one acknowledged the weirdness however….. Well I wouldn’t say I was ‘upset’ about it but it definitely didn’t help me feel comfortable. And it’s all emphasized by how completely different we are.
She thanked me once- I think it was the second time we’d met- she thanked me and asked me why I was being so nice to her. I explained that I didn’t have any reason not to be. ‘Weird’ isn’t a good enough reason to be anything less than nice. Still, I think I would have appreciated if our man in common hadn’t allowed me to become a spectacle in that moment: by myself, cornered by drunken girls who are all demanding me to ‘be meaner’ while he silently looked on with the others.
Another time he left us alone together. He asked me to hang out with them and then left me alone with her. And the fact that I wasn’t comfortable getting drunk with my man’s ex while he wasn’t there went entirely ignored.
It’s not that she makes me uncomfortable. Not at all. But the whole situation, having to be a part of each others lives while being each others opposites… well, it’s not without tension. And I guess it would be nice to have someone say ‘I know you didn’t ask for this, I know you weren’t given anything resembling a choice in the matter, so I want you to know that I appreciate how well you’re handling this and how easy you’re both making things for each other.’
I think the moment when my whole perspective on the situation changed was when we where out together and after 6 hours of being completely out of my comfort zone, I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. She didn’t hesitate take my side and come to my aid. She didn’t hesitate to do the things I always hope he will do… but never does. She had my back and didn’t care that I was ‘being emotional’ or ‘making a scene’. Instead she cared about the fact that I was in destress and that our relationship was being stressed. She cared about the things I wish he would care about.
It’s possible that she want us to work out because I’m her best case scenario in a ‘new girlfriend’ and that’s okay because as far as ‘the ex’ goes she’s mine.
The poets know
That words can flow
When strung together well.
.
But in all your
Silent touches
I read poetry as well
The flies buzz around the living room, landing on my laptop- on my skin. It’s almost too easy to ignore them. The early afternoon heat seeps into every muscle of my body, rendering me ‘useless’ for the day. It’s easier to sit around and contemplate my sadness, then to get up and do something- anything.
‘Sadness’ I guess isn’t quite right, but I don’t have the energy to try and find the words to properly describe it. Still, I can tell you what it looks like. It looks like a Tumblr dot com post from those melancholy high school days. It’s aesthetically acceptable eye bags and hauntingly hollowed out cheeks. It’s pointy elbows and prominent collar bones, dusty pink that peaks though all the monochrome. Just typing this up makes me want to put on Marina and the Diamonds- or the 1975.
Maybe if they hand’t taught me, my whole youth, that my particular brand of sadness was desirable- romantic somehow- a pre request for great art, maybe then I’d have a better chance of escaping it.
As we where walking along the sandy road I asked him to “tell me something nice.”
Instantly my mind conjured up this idea of a ‘Great American Novel’ in which the protagonist recalls how ‘towards the end’ his ex used to often say: “tell me something nice.” That experience would then go on to inspire the protagonists growth, around which the novel’s plot revolved.
Honestly, what a load of bull shit.
I refuse to be some cliché of a girl who’s tragic story is for some reason best told from the perspective of a man. I refuse to have my pain be the catalyst for growth, rather then my wellness. My story isn’t somebody else thinking about ‘what I could have been’. It’s me being.
When I told the therapist, I desperately hoped would work out, that I struggled with eco anxiety, she asked me to elaborate.
So I told the her, that I couldn’t stop thinking about climate change, and that that years exceptionally hot summer was a constant reminder that things where getting worse. When that very first session was over she gave me an assignment. To tackle the anxiety about the globe heating up, I should look into getting an air conditioning unit.
That therapist didn’t work out.
I never wanted to be the kind of poet that writes about being sad- or about being unlucky in love. I never wanted to be the kind of artist who helped to romanticise the things that are difficult enough, on their own, to escape.
Oh, the magic I used to chase only to be able to put in down on paper later. Glowing oceans and turbulent seas, healthy friendships and self love. Those where the things I sought too romanticise.
But now the magic has run out and all that’s left to do is keep writing.
Writing Things Better 