Today they gave him a year, my grandfather who’s dying of cancer. And then I realized, after my mother told me this, this was the first time that my grandparents had forgotten my birthday. It was more than a week ago, but I didn’t notice until today. I thought about how they’re all disappearing, one by one. Half already blowin’ in the wind and now one more is sneaking past. I'm, at the moment, trying to convince myself that I don’t care because I can feel my eyes burning and the hand around my heart start to squeeze. I don’t like looking ahead and if I could let myself, I’d never want to see past the start of tomorrow. Everything after would be looking at the stars and beyond, full of empty possibility.
I have a backyard that happens to be covered with a pristine layer of snow. I thought about playing in it today. Making it less than perfect with my footprints and body, I’d manipulate it in any way that I pleased. I wanted to. I wanted to take the blank smoothness out of the snow, give it texture, and ruin it. It was screaming to be touched. One step. That was all it was going to take but I stood there on the edge and my feet wouldn’t move. They were stuck to the pavement. For one reason or another I couldn’t make myself take that step. I thought about just falling forward and letting gravity change my fate but instead of leaning forward my knees buckled and I sat down on the ground. I touched the white with my finger and traced a circle. I clenched my hand into a fist and punched it into the snow through my circle. Bullseye. I let my hand sit in it’s cavern and as I eased it out I caught some of the crystals and it was cold and wet and I saw that the color of my skin was turning a queer shade of pink that was becoming more and more red as time ticked by.
I walked back into the house and down the hall. I closed the door to my room and I lay down in my bed and I closed my eyes. I was back at the edge of my yard. It was brilliant. Have you ever seen it? When the light tickles very prism and the ground just glows? That’s what I saw. For some reason it made me angry and I lifted a foot and took a step and my foot sank and crunched into the layers of snow. I took another step. Another. Another. I waked around and around until I was running in a circle closing in. I stopped after a minute and found myself in the middle. In the summer months I would lay on my back in the grass at that spot staring up into the branches of the trees and watch the leaves dance. I laid down on the cold crystals right there. I was careful about my head. I set it down gently and tried to see if I could keep it from breeching the surface of the snow. The second I closed my eyes I heard a crack and thought it may have been part of me and not just the frozen white water beneath my red hair. I went with it. I put pressure down and let my head sink to be with my body and the snow came up to my ears. I felt encased. Secure. I never wanted to open my eyes again. I wanted to be frozen like these crystals, with these crystals, and when the sun came again I could melt into the earth and be gone. I felt stiff. The feeling changed. Keeping my eyes closed, my body, and my invisible breath creating rhythmic clouds above me, feeling secure snapped, like a switch flipped, into a feeling of oppression. It began to feel like something was holding me down. I felt tied down, pinned down, and held fast in my snow body mold. I let my eyes open. I saw the blue above and I leaned my head forward and looked at the windows. One of those windows was mine. In the pains of glass reflected other windows and me, lying there helpless in the snow. I was hoping for a hand, something to grasp, to help me pull out of this mold that I’ve forced myself into but there was no one. My neck collapsed back and a tear ran sideways across my temple and down. I closed my eyes again and was just then beginning to feel and understand cold.
The cravings for this, my poison, are growing and festering within me. There is a demon calling me, seducing me to his will, and I smile at him and let myself be taken. I like the pain, nails on flesh revealing the first signs of real life, my blood. It reminds me. They gave him a year. Happy Birthday.
I pull the evil sirens in past my lips and feel them dancing across my tongue and down my throat. They dive head first into my insides and with every tug from my heart strings I let them carry me farther and farther into the clouds above. I let myself defalate. For the first time, I feel. Every inch of myself, every organ, every vein, every molecule. I feel whole and alive and like me. My head swims, soaking and swelling in it's own pool of my life fluids. It's mechanical. It's musical. It's beautiful, knowing peace of mind.
I have a backyard that happens to be covered with a pristine layer of snow. I thought about playing in it today. Making it less than perfect with my footprints and body, I’d manipulate it in any way that I pleased. I wanted to. I wanted to take the blank smoothness out of the snow, give it texture, and ruin it. It was screaming to be touched. One step. That was all it was going to take but I stood there on the edge and my feet wouldn’t move. They were stuck to the pavement. For one reason or another I couldn’t make myself take that step. I thought about just falling forward and letting gravity change my fate but instead of leaning forward my knees buckled and I sat down on the ground. I touched the white with my finger and traced a circle. I clenched my hand into a fist and punched it into the snow through my circle. Bullseye. I let my hand sit in it’s cavern and as I eased it out I caught some of the crystals and it was cold and wet and I saw that the color of my skin was turning a queer shade of pink that was becoming more and more red as time ticked by.
I walked back into the house and down the hall. I closed the door to my room and I lay down in my bed and I closed my eyes. I was back at the edge of my yard. It was brilliant. Have you ever seen it? When the light tickles very prism and the ground just glows? That’s what I saw. For some reason it made me angry and I lifted a foot and took a step and my foot sank and crunched into the layers of snow. I took another step. Another. Another. I waked around and around until I was running in a circle closing in. I stopped after a minute and found myself in the middle. In the summer months I would lay on my back in the grass at that spot staring up into the branches of the trees and watch the leaves dance. I laid down on the cold crystals right there. I was careful about my head. I set it down gently and tried to see if I could keep it from breeching the surface of the snow. The second I closed my eyes I heard a crack and thought it may have been part of me and not just the frozen white water beneath my red hair. I went with it. I put pressure down and let my head sink to be with my body and the snow came up to my ears. I felt encased. Secure. I never wanted to open my eyes again. I wanted to be frozen like these crystals, with these crystals, and when the sun came again I could melt into the earth and be gone. I felt stiff. The feeling changed. Keeping my eyes closed, my body, and my invisible breath creating rhythmic clouds above me, feeling secure snapped, like a switch flipped, into a feeling of oppression. It began to feel like something was holding me down. I felt tied down, pinned down, and held fast in my snow body mold. I let my eyes open. I saw the blue above and I leaned my head forward and looked at the windows. One of those windows was mine. In the pains of glass reflected other windows and me, lying there helpless in the snow. I was hoping for a hand, something to grasp, to help me pull out of this mold that I’ve forced myself into but there was no one. My neck collapsed back and a tear ran sideways across my temple and down. I closed my eyes again and was just then beginning to feel and understand cold.
The cravings for this, my poison, are growing and festering within me. There is a demon calling me, seducing me to his will, and I smile at him and let myself be taken. I like the pain, nails on flesh revealing the first signs of real life, my blood. It reminds me. They gave him a year. Happy Birthday.
I pull the evil sirens in past my lips and feel them dancing across my tongue and down my throat. They dive head first into my insides and with every tug from my heart strings I let them carry me farther and farther into the clouds above. I let myself defalate. For the first time, I feel. Every inch of myself, every organ, every vein, every molecule. I feel whole and alive and like me. My head swims, soaking and swelling in it's own pool of my life fluids. It's mechanical. It's musical. It's beautiful, knowing peace of mind.
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