I am something that needs breaking.

not entirely sure what genre this would fall under (prose-poetry-prose)

I am something that needs breaking.

I am an afterthought identity, like the taste of something you can't quite remember swallowing, and I keep to myself in slow words, burying my bones in a place where all the other syllables went, a sepulchre, if you will, though I'd never consider myself an angel. He wouldn't either, and he knows me well, knows the contours of my words and my body, has held me for hours with his cold hands in the summer, always cold and dry, crackling parchment on my skin.

I watch him watch me. We'd go walking somewhere, anywhere we could, and he'd watch my feet pattern themselves onto the concrete, listen to the branches and leaves I might step on; I could see him thinking, and I knew that he was wondering how to change the rhythm of my pace, how far the sharp of my spine could bend, how hard he could press the heels of his palms into neglection until I shattered altogether. It was just the way he thought, and I loved him for it.

But, sometimes I can smell the loneliness: sour, but soft like a fig and full of seeds waiting to be planted under my tongue. I’ve named them fondly, with capital letters and a slow way of saying them: Bitterness, Insecurity, Sadness.  They keep me company when he’s away and I swirl my tongue around them because they sound awkward when I speak them aloud-- coarse like sand and dirty. My molars can never quite break them, but I never bit down hard; I don't think I want them to break. Eventually, they soak and steep into great trees like the ones we used to pass on our walks, thickly barked and foreboding on a suburban street, and I wonder whether they need watering.

He takes me apart with a dexterity I can never quite find in anyone else, shelling me like I were some exotic delicacy, patient fingers wet from peeling away my skeleton. I-- I can’t help but think it’s horrible when I kiss him because sometimes I swear I can taste myself, sinew and tendon and bone in his mouth, but he is him and I am me--there are no reasons or justifications, and I ignore the salt of my skin on his tongue. I can’t do anything else.

But, I pick and pull and pluck atmy teeth like the strings of a harp, bloody and rusty. The pain seeps and collects into roots that wrap their way around my skull, somewhere under concrete that I pattern with my crooked steps, and they grit my teeth, burn white spots between my eyes. The seeds burst from the name I gave them, burst from between my lips and leave me with nothing but the taste of sinew. In the mornings, he would carry finger scalpels to the brow of my bone and twist the plates of my head, grips me by the hand and seeps a knife to my skin, but he is simply carving me into an idolatrous model, something that I never wanted to be before, something that I've yearned for, for years now.

I know that any change is better, every cut an improvement, every slice a seeping victory.

I held surgeries to my scars for years and hoped that they would be enough, and he smiles and holds my hands while he told me that it was not, not even close. His words are libraries that my eyes strain for in the dark, carry between my ears like transcendental memories, things I've known longer than I've been able to speak.

Sometimes, when his voice drips across my neck, I wonder how his coarse hands could take it all. They held fruitless trees about my skull and he gathered labors into his arms like they were baskets, and he took care of me like no one else would.

Reviews

[Elijah Gleaves]

This is prose writing in my opinion but you def have a very poetical voice you could take a small section of this prose seperate it from the whole and it would be like it's own poem. Your words carry a lot more weight than a lot of other writers I've encountered in one description you tell a whole story. That's not easy to do you've certainly have my respect as a writer and artist.

[Dark Twain]

I think anyone who reads your writing wants to be your muse. :)

[Pax Analog]

Stunning work. Conjures Tolle reading Merwin via Eternal Feminine.

It echoes as one of the parables in Imperial Messages. Haunts from enigma of being.

It is certainly poetic prose, and is primarily parable via female strength in malleability.

"I am an afterthought identity, like the taste of something you can't quite remember swallowing, and I keep to myself in slow words, burying my bones in a place where all the other syllables went, a sepulchre, if you will, though I'd never consider myself an angel."

These amazing opening words suggest a closing refrain as well, an alpha-omega of the phantasmal quality of mortal being.

[Stammers]

Hmm I don't know about 'genre', I think this is definitely poetry, so as you suggested maybe prose-poetry, but let's be honest WHO CARES WITH SOMETHING AS AMAZING AS THIS! Your language was alive in my mouth the whole story played itself out not on the page but over my skin, amazing ideas and put together well.

I hate giving the 'yay I loved it' kind of feedback, but there's nothing else to say on my part in this instance :D I'd just be trying to sift through and pick things out that don't necessarily need to be changed in my view. I will RR this out, it deserves exposure and maybe you will get the feedback you're looking for.

[Jim]

Powerful and evocative. You do an amazing job of making the narrator both strong and fragile--such paradoxes make all great characters, don't you think? I also like how you make their interactions both sensual and disturbing: "I can’t help but think it’s horrible when I kiss him because sometimes I swear I can taste myself, sinew and tendon and bone in his mouth." Good stuff!