Enigma

Please forgive me for saying this, Daddy
Even though you have never given me your forgiveness nor your apology
But I want you to picture yourself dying young
Beer belly up in your casket
Wearing all white like the religion you denied said you should
Wearing all white like the halloween costume I made for myself when I was nine Cut out of old pillowcases hidden in the back of my closet
You know me, I have always been so creative
I came down the stairs bright and beaming
Dressed in white and happy to have made something from my own two hands
You refused to even look at me
You screamed and yelled and told me to go back upstairs to take that shit off
I think I looked too similar to something that had been haunting you
The ghost of that child haunts the staircase
I think of her when I skip my steps
You’ve never said too much about yourself
But I’ve heard you call yourself extra in this home too many times
The naive child that plays jump rope with my insides hopes that someday
I’ll get to know your inner workings too
They cannot be too different from mine
I have your eyes and your skin and your hair
I ask you what you did with your day
You tell me not to ask questions
You then cry about feeling like a slave to this household
Why nobody asks what's going on in your mind
And how we’d cry tears of blood if we knew anything about your struggle
I have already bled too much for you, Daddy
I sit with my hands under my thighs and wait for the next time you come home
With three brown bags full of god knows what
They’re full of things to feed me but I’m still hungry
So I’ll ask you how your day was
And you’ll tell me not to ask questions
The child who clambered up steps on all fours
Innocent primate, loved to create characters to fill the empty spaces where there should have been friends But creativity was never an option, was it, Daddy?
I was your pride and joy I was your example to set
My options to shake the sandy earth of the hot sahara desert and to fit myself in the marrow of your bones Have always been doctor or chemist or engineer
I have never been too good at math or technology or science
But somehow my fate was to develop
First thing to hold my shaking body in the hospital room where I was born
A roaring enigma
My fate was a machine that cranks through all hours of the night
In the hallway outside my bedroom shaking the door off its hinges
On the kitchen floor tearing off tiles to worship its god
Over the stove cooking mantras
On the loveseat fighting something even in its sleep
In the backyard chugging over rosemary, basil, and thyme
My body, my own holy machine, is tired
I am tired of feeling sad for somebody who should have been wiping my tears
Not sitting in front of me, age nine, sobbing about the childhood you lost
What about mine, Daddy?
Was my childhood purpose to heal yours?
You know me, I have always been so smart
Did you know that baby monkeys will always choose a soft cloth parent over one of wire that feeds them? Could you please be soft and hold me, Daddy?
Could you please stop being a machine, Daddy?
Could you bleed for me, Daddy?
I am tired of sitting in front of the enigma, punching in codes and connecting mysterious wires knowing I never had a chance at a normal life
My fate was sealed the moment cold air hit warm skin
Engineer
And this is why I wailed
I am tired of trying to crack the fucking code
But still, I grab two wires
“You need therapy” and “please see a doctor”
They blow up in my face
I push buttons
“Please get a hobby” and “please make some art”
The machine says it already knows these codes
I am frustrated and I bang my fists against old scarred metal
I scream and I cry
“Please get some help, you do not need to suffer alone.”
No response, not even negative
The enigma is silent and so am I
I wish to resign from my position as engineer and go create some art
I have been hoping wishing praying since I was a nine year old girl
Draped in old pillowcases curled up on her bedroom floor
Holding herself in the only arms that would always hold her
That you would consider your own mortality, just once
Just for me
Three trips to the hospital and you have dodged your fate every time
Death tries to stop the enigma yet he keeps on chugging
Why do you try to kill yourself but dodge death each time?
I wish to worship my own machine selfishly
Separate my functions from yours
Instead of thinking of you alone somewhere
Maybe with a dog or two who are both naive like I was
Nine years old wearing white
They’ll have nobody to run to when you snap at them
They’ll make mistakes you cannot stand
The enigma wants all the other machines to operate the way he operates The enigma cannot change god's creatures
The enigma speaks of god but god does not know him
The enigma believes he is god
The dogs can’t hold themselves when the fuse short circuits
But they’ll have no choice to run back to your feet when you feed them
I have empathy for the enigma that I wish I could detach
I have empathy that keeps me awake thinking of you
Dying alone somewhere when you have nobody to feed
Sooner or later every living thing will learn that they would rather starve than sit at your feet Even savage hounds and gods hungriest creatures
We are all so hungry for love
Even you, Daddy
Hungry for care
Hungry to feed the nine year old that picks at your ribs
Hungry for someone to hold you wearing white
But soon you’ll have nobody left to listen to your cogs howling at night Metal screeching into the dawn
Nobody to kill themselves over not closing the gate fast enough
Nobody to zone out as you spit in their face
Nobody to flinch at the knife
Nobody to fear the home you painted and decorated and filled with your sheet metal garbage Nobody to run out of the house barefoot and freezing fearing the enigma Please let yourself rest, Daddy
Please let your nine year old stop playing inside your barely beating heart, Daddy Please let my nine year old sleep soundly for once
Go get dressed in all white and go let your god judge you now, please
I am tired of trying to crack you.
A letter to a man who I do not know, and a boy who I used to love
I haven’t spoken to you in a while- before everything universally shifted and before we were adults. Before you were taller than me and before I started seeking higher powers. Many things have changed, many things stay the same. We’re adults now, no longer scrappy kids hiding under hand-me-down duvet covers from our father’s sleep walking late at night.
For starters, it has been over a decade since we first met. We’ve finished our undergraduate education. I know a lot about universal law and literary history and the psychology of love.
I loved studying philosophy, I doubt you know a thing about it. I care a great deal about the concrete way in which humans think, but I take a greater pleasure in what we do not know. For me, I have always been able to operate better when I wonder about what I do not know. For example, I do not know you, and still my soul pulls to you even after the universal shift of pandemic and war.
But I do know a great deal about psychology, do you? Or do you still care more about the tangible, the ropes and threads you can feel with calloused fingertips? I do not know your interests, what you studied in school, but I have a hunch that it is something that you are not passionate about. Money Chaser American Dream Make Your Daddy Proud. I am still hiding under the duvet, you know. Wild Dreamer Story Writer Hates Her Corporate Job.
When I sit here and write I think about rat psychology. I love rat psychology, it shows that you and I are not as great as we seem, that all of our behaviors can be explained by those of creatures widely considered vermin. We are not all that different from the beings that we call disgusting.
Psychologists performed an experiment that showed that rats who wore jackets during their first sexual experience refused sexual contact if they were not wearing their jackets.1 This shows that psychologically, our first sexual experience builds our standard for sex for The Rest Of Our Lives. You, as my first, are my straight jacket. What a horrible fate to be tied to. Fourteen.
Every man who I have ever shared my body with has your insufferable demeanor, every woman has your softness and milky white complexion. Everyone who has ever seen me starving hysterical naked sprawled out animalistic desire tangled up in hiding spot duvet covers has a part of you lingering in their fingertips, tongue and freckles. It’s a terrible fate I’ve been subjected to.
I haven’t spoken to you in five years, if not longer. There was one point where I had been counting the days since we last spoke, but I began to lose track as worse things began happening to me. I do not think that I am still in love with you, really. I do not think that I have the capability to love any man anymore. It isn’t entirely your fault, but all of your Cornerstone Doppelganger men who Gorilla Glued my misandrist puzzle together. There was a period of time where nobody else existed but you, but now I see beauty in everything, even those that do not resemble you on street corners or in passing in club bathrooms. I am trying to force myself to overcome my inner rat and take off my ▬ straight jacket.
Nevertheless, much like the rats, even when I strip myself naked of my Human Sized Rat Jacket, there is a part of me that still looks to the image of you for guidance. You are a Holy Psychological Omen that comes to me when I’m sleeping whenever a big change occurs in my life.
The first recent dream that I had about you started with me and you walking parallel in opposite directions down a busy street. I made eye contact with you, you looked back at me. Thick rimmed glasses caught the light of the sun, then without any action reaction or movement, you were decapitated. You were all blood and strawberry blonde tumbling to the floor and I screamed, I screamed, I screamed. I woke up in a cold sweat and googled your name looking for obituaries to make sure you hadn’t actually died. I take my Holy Visions of you as signs. You’re the Archangel and I will build the Mont-Saint-Michel. Or maybe it isn’t all that serious.
You didn’t actually die, and my dreams are not actually omens. That was just my brain's funny little way of reminding itself that you still exist, and despite it all, I still hold onto you. Do you ponder death too? Where is your head?
I have seen a lot of change this year- good and bad and indifferent, and thus I have seen a lot of visions of you. I just moved halfway across the country. At last! But despite this city having three million people it is oddly lonely.
My first night here, I dreamt that we were in a log cabin together, somewhere that wasn’t Illinois but perhaps ▬▬▬▬. We kissed, we shared each other's bodies, then I woke up. The pit in my stomach was familiar, I had this recurring dream every other night for a week. I feel ashamed that when I close my eyes you’re next to me. I don’t think that my conscience wants that, but there is still a sixteen year old girl in the back of my mind who just wants to feel the goosebumps and hair rising on your arms one last time. Your ribcage, your spine, the tangles in your hair on the back of your neck. I feel so fucking ashamed.
I have loved and lost many other souls since, and try not to chase your image but land upon it regardless. It isn’t always obvious at first, and then one of those souls laughs the same way that you do, and that sinking feeling strikes all over again.
Before I moved West, I lost love for somebody who I hope is the last person in the image of you. Unkempt Messy Unrealistic, that is the image I subconsciously chase. My straight jacket is a high and mighty white man who acts just like his self medicated father. Chipped front teeth callused fingertips, the painting of the fallen angel Lucifer gorgeous and furious with the cards that he was dealt. I chase that image. I fly too close to the sun. I am tired of believing that everyone who has a fragment of you in their hazel eyes and milk and honey soft face will somehow be better. I hope that I will not chase souls in the image of you, but I find myself sitting here, thousands of miles away from where I ran from, tied up in my straight jacket like a rat in a psych lab, forced to fuck in the only way I know how. I sacrifice a part of me and give it to whoever, I give it to whoever has a sliver of you.


monsters


I have filled this heart with things I couldn’t love
They say that when you break, the universe follows
That’s where the word empathy comes into play
A word that has never danced upon your lips
Won't you attempt to feel my pain?
I couldn't appreciate the tomorrow that wasn’t promised
So I put my faith into today and prayed the yesterday wouldn't take me away This is nothing new, nothing under the sun is, everything I write has been written before I am an actress in the same play
Primadonna
I haven’t known myself in years
I operate like a computer my intelligence is artificial
You can pump poetry into my brain but the poems will always read the same
I’ve run out of meaning to give this story
Under my tears I saw your reflection
Honey brown alabaster sunset
Although it wasn't clear and I am hollow
I still try to open up, I'm scared to be left alone, so I push people away I hate sleeping alone so I don’t sleep
I write about love but love doesn’t know me
I knew love would stop pressing those light butterflies deep inside my stomach After they were ripped straight out of me on Main Street
Lavender vanilla espresso all to myself
The only thing I hate in coffee is the sleep I won't be getting
The only time I sleep is when I’m completely empty
Sometimes, not even that
I wish I saw my perfection within my flaws
I mistake my regrets as lost happiness
I learned to self address and second guess
I am a golden fool still digging for buried treasure
I have been stranded at sea for a while now, won’t you bring me home? I am the walk, I am the plank
You are the ocean, we are more than such words
I am more than such pain
I have filled this soul with glass, won't you break it for me?
Maybe?
They say that I love differently
They say that I have a gift
I have a way of saying things
Look, you’ve never seen my lungs
When I scream empty is the sky and dark is the night I make stars hide
Barren is the coastline for this tempest
I am disaster and destruction and devastation I’m not coming home, am I?
Babe, we are all horrible people
This I know for certain.