Arrogance

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arrogance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Mrs. Tyranski

 

 

 

“The true freedom wouldn’t be found underwater, giving in- that’s not in your spirit. The true freedom, Michelle, comes in not letting the bonds of your bad experiences hold you back anymore. Someday, I pray that you will be proud of your eyes, of yourself.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Kumbaya

2. Atrophy

3. Illustration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.

 

“When you think about things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?” �" Virginia Woolf

 

 

I.

The hours between us are divided by spaces

slash slash atrophy, at once,

or white illustration of your body as I am allowed to press myself into it.

It is always a choice

to get up and recognize that what is between us will not push us apart.

 

 

II.

For seventeen years, the boat rocked upon the waves of the thin lake.

You were in this boat beside me. 

Years before I was born, a small river had flown in and out of the lake- in from midnight until noon, and out from noon to midnight. Such regulations allowed a strange phenomenon: the lake was permanently calm. “Why am I why am I why am I so worried?” called a bird from the air. Shallow cold pools lie unbroken underneath its winged shadow. It never landed. When something changed, the river was broken, and I began to hear.

I was not my mother’s charm.

Come to me. Come inside a letter addressed only once. Come, withered darkened flower. I will put you in my pages and feel the tears just under my eyes.

The water is no longer still, and when it falls it is broken on itself. That is your sound, not mine.

 

After she told me to kill myself and then overdosed:

Screaming and swearing and sobbing and hysterically breaking every

                                    single

                                    nerve

stretched thinly across my mind. She fell down and it was silent.

            Hello? I feel angry. It means that I am numb. Cold sweat is dripping down my arms. Where does it come from? Feeling. My heart won’t stop swelling and I can’t decide what it feels. I said anger. I guess it was the heights because the building was so tall before it fell down and smoked and burned and crumbled… Blackness. I am sleeping and she might be dead.

 

Swelling:

            The same two people sit in the backside of the neighborhood. They hate each other but they are the only two who can understand what that feels like. Only they were both there at the beginning of time, because my father was busy with the things inside him.

            My mother wears a yellow shirt. “My, how I love you.” I am so small, but not at all insignificant. We are the same thing. It is confusing when my father comes back because he is not a part of me anywhere, and I do not know what to do for him. His hands break my spirit. We are too close for comfort. I am the same person as my mother. Does she know about his games? My mother and I will never be different people. She is supposed to love me more than anyone.

 

Cancer:

            I don’t know how your heart beats now that the cells have all destroyed themselves from the inside

            Kingdom and God

            Oh, the kingdom of God

            You could have died         You could have died

            Do you ever feel the same as then?

            Holy holy holy s**t

            Isn’t it just a dream when you fall beneath the sea? Worship him and he will be your king

            Kingdom and God

            Oh, the kingdom of God

            Fall into the sea of compazine and maybe he will fish you out again for me

 

The boat of painful crumpling:

             My memories float in the steam above water. Where can I put them? For seventeen years rocking, I have been here with them. You too were in this boat beside me.

             When the river broke, the memories began to appear, funneling out of the waves as they cracked and cracked upon each other. Spittle memories. The sound was not so horrible. It was your sound, not mine. Slow and beautiful and always nearly late. “Kum-ba-ya” Sometimes you hurt so much that it made no sense at all for such a pleasant sound to exist. Pain- waves. I felt them in my eyes and I became aware. The sound created a wonderful discontinuity for me and everyone else who rocked in boats. Rocked all over the world.

             But the world is not over. The river is simply broken and my heart is alright.

 

Peeing in cups:

             I am locked in my very warm room for three nights. The only cold time is at 2am when I move to my shelf. I eat a granola bar, but quietly because she will hurt me if I make her hear me. I have not eaten anything since the last cold time. My books are full of markings. I read them and they read me. I do not know why I deserve this, but if I get angry she will do worse things to me. Once I yelled back and she threw hot dogs in the bathtub and made me clean them up. I did not eat that night either.

             Soon she will become me again and I will be allowed to be her. I do not love her more than anyone. I am me and I am her so therefore I am not loved.

 

Alone:

             Simple morning dove upon the wire,

             my arrow flies screaming at your breast,

             and either falls to the ground and supposedly splits,

             or disappears into the muck of the soybeans.

             That was two years after I realized that my insides turn like they were built from the ideas of people who bought an unfinished house.

 

Feeling:

               I open my arms and you hug me. You come to me and I mean it tightly. It is a way of knowing that I can call you.

               Do you remember what it feels like? Rocking. I am rebelling- kicking and screaming against your hands.

               I have begun to feel and I don’t want to stop,

               You are not mine,

               But oh, my friend,

               I can feel what I remember.

 

I will not breathe for her:

               She has told me that fear is what I am supposed to feel. She is my only mother, and I threw up. Nothing is congruent. I cannot eat because she forced me to eat something terrible last night. I cannot eat again. I cannot swallow. I begin to tremble and the teacher asks me if I am okay when I go home. I do not know what happens at other homes, so I nod.

               The trees are very beautiful and I am ten years old and there are drugs all over the counter. My mother will fall tonight. The ambulance will not come inside the house so they will not see me sitting on the balcony, alone and trembling. I am not sure when I will start crying. It is quiet now and I can smile because I hear words in my head that sound very wise. I am very good at helping people with my words.

 

Fall:

                I do not want to remember her anymore. You say there are burns on my hand and I say so what and I hate you more than anyone for that. My mother is the only one who ever understood me and it makes my skin burn that way. I have scars because people touch me with no reverence for my concern.

                I wish my name were in capital letters. I wish I were a little more delicate.

 

 

Attitudes:

                You were in this boat beside me. Everyone feels the rocking, but they feel it differently from each other. We fall into the water but we cannot drown because we are far too necessary. Everything is like that- metaphorical but not absolute. It changes every time I think about it. I might forget the detail of the darkened flower floating withered next to a smooth rock. The water is never going to be still, but when it falls, it is kumbaya, kum-ba-ya.

 

2.

 

“Life is a dream- ‘tis waking that kills us.” �" Virginia Woolf

I.

How many times have I been here? 

Oh, how you’re trying for me,

but I’ve been weaker than I ought to be.

 

 

II.

I’m such a bright girl but I get caught on absolutes 

magic, 

what I feel when the window is covered in snow and all of the lights spin piano music at my chest, 

but that’s the worst part of it

mostly I just refuse to age

III.

If you wake up and confuse the sound of heels with my voice’s whaver,

I am with you in impossibility,

where the moon looks for you,

where there isn’t enough food to eat, 

where it all makes you sick regardless of medium,

where women and men and tall girls in huge coats come to tower over you because they’ve mistaken you for someone else,

where we are single and lonely or married and lonely.

IV.

I don’t remember

where to find the dedication to finish anything

when it all fits inside the word “meaning”,

busy cleaning my mother out of me,

weeping,

seventeen leaves shrouded in water shadow

and I don’t remember one bit.

Turmoil, internal�"

tell me what I need to know.

Dark soil, infernal�"

give me what I need to grow.

 

 

3.

 

“There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star, ‘Consume me.’” �" Virginia Woolf

 

I.

When I was five my mother loved me very much, but then she began to fade away. “Don’t want to lose you,” I told her in my small over-five-but-under-six-years-old vocabulary. I never told anyone what I saw. My father beat her with his bare hands and the butt of his over-polished gun, and her love became a twisted concept that I never understood until I turned eighteen. She hated me because she hated him and she hated herself, and that’s what I was: him and her. She built the wall that pushes against my thoughts­�"the wall that I cannot see but I can feel the emotion and emotion and emotion of, animated, like this:

 

Don’t want to lose you

But I am selfish in my pretending

I don’t want to lose you

but I am surrounded

and I tremor on.

 

            I let go of the blame when I jumped into the cycle of sin. Food turned into play-doh and I decided not to eat it for a year, and when people became concerned they told me it wasn’t my fault. The wall grew a hundred feet taller and their voices just dripped down it because I knew it was my mother’s fault that I had an eating disorder. I demanded it to be true and the sound of words leaving a page was loud enough for me. Dante’s sinners crawled through their burning circles of Hell and screamed, “I worshipped him! I worshipped him!” loud enough, the way sound leaves a room. The cycle of sin turned into someday I might be someplace more and I decided that I hurt myself because my mother hurt me, but my mother hurt me because my father hurt her, and my father hurt my mother because his father hurt him, etc. Blaming people was arbitrary and it felt like a waste of time, especially when I had faded so much that I became afraid of color.

            On the day I told the world, someone told me that they loved me and hugged me, and then told me that they could feel all of my bones. Telling. I remember their voice and I remember my voice. How can you let people close enough so that you’re not alone but still not let them hurt you? I hung onto their shoulders because they were fixed with real blood and humanity. Their heart beat and I felt the waves on shore�"the waves of my own gentle heart as it learned about the deafness of drowning. I was sinking, spinning, doing something more horrible. I could no longer speak so I slurred my speech across the minutes of their life.

 

Where have I been?

What if I die?

How much of your time have I wasted?

Where the f**k have I been?

 

            Beat beat beat against my hand against my collarbone against their skin. That is what it meant to be alone. I asked them if they understood loneliness. The feeling of uncontrollable feelings and the fact that the wall is not only between me and them but between me and myself and I. I could not tell them how tall I was or how much I weighed or how long it would be before I passed out from insomnia because I did not know. They said, “Michelle, you are creative and strong.”

            I looked up. Thoughts were too simple in my head to please me.

            Homelessness belongs in the gutter with the bunches of fish who are trying to learn how to breathe air. Atmosphere breathing is harder than breathing waves. However you look, the waves still exist in form. Water is harder to hide than oxygen. It all destroys itself in the end.

            Crying then, wetness upon my small face. Swimming through my tears until I knew I was on the bottom of the sea, but then it started over. The cycle of living, of closing your eyes and opening them again and calling it a blink.

          “Do you really hate her that much?”

          I hung onto them and said, “No, I don’t blame anyone anymore.”

II.

            The only solution to a paradox is peaceful, remote laughter.

III.

The arrogance is strong, and it pulls me out of the water. I am such a fool to get out of the water.

 

I step from the shower and embrace you. Water drips off of my hair and falls down your shoulders. It is a very warm day. There is a wind, but it is very very kind. The sky tortures it until its worn out breath finds rest on my cheek. It is a boneless fight, given here on this day, the day of all days. The good, warm day. We drive. Past familiar tendencies, past running running concrete, past the two awkward builders about to procreate, past my life my life my life. Down to the water, where you touch me with reverence, and I cut myself open for you as a gift. I owe you some truth in my truth. 

The noises in the hallway grew louder, urgent. Somewhere, a pop. My door brushed open and she crawled into the bed, whimpering. So animalistic was the crying, but not beautiful because it predicted something without credit. She curled into a v-shape behind me, her hands pushing against my back. When he too entered the room, he found me out on the altar- an offering of half of his chromosomes and shreds and shreds of his fitful desire and kaleidoscope hormones. No one said anything as I was taken from my bed and seen so intimately by my father. Nothing moved save for the arrogance growing crooked inside of me.

IV.

            Backwards and forwards, movement. I try to do the best I can. Do you carry me backwards or forwards? It hurts too much to laugh about it, Friend. I know it’s lonely but you’re right here. It’s not that I don’t choose progress. It just hurts too much to laugh. (Peaceful, remote, the world collapses and I lose my vision. Does she think of me as childish?) I would ask for help if all of this pain would stop.

            But you are quiet. I am nothing without noise. I will exist but I will not live. I am a metaphor. I am the excuse. (Her eyes turned grey on Friday. Turning, internal, I crawled inside of her and dyed her irises grey. Green flowers rushed into death.) My mother’s eyes are the same shade of peridot as my father’s.

            The only solution to the paradox is flawed by their cigarette ash pouring through my lungs, and I will not be ashamed to say that it hurts too much to laugh.