Esme Writes.

He always told me:

Avoid political gestures and coughed mock sentiment.

Avoid religious drudgery and spoken gritted tooth lies.

Avoid steel barrels and the nights where alleys are most dangerous.

Avoid flour, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, mascara and limp wrist handshakes.

Avoid simpering smiles and nights burned into oblivion.

Avoid sharpened shards of glass and the fingers they slip from.

We wrote the same lists over and over.

It was always the same the same the same, a residual haunting on fast forward, retracing the same steps and same path repeatedly.

The one two THREE four one two THREE four one two THREE four of quickened high heel pace.

She was always making music with him and I was standing behind a curtain watching through moth-eaten holes.

 

Then I would sit down and write.

 

PART TWO OF MY POEMME FATALES PERFORMANCE:

 

There is an aching that stems

from the lack of creation

The lack of movement

The stagnant air of a city

The blood not flowing through my veins

The sameness

The people

The sameness.

The ideas that swim in the same lukewarm water.

There needs to be a difference and it needs to happen soon. There needs to be something unbroken and re-broken and things need to bleed.

It needs to be more than just papercuts this time.

It needs to be bruises and black eyes and broken bones and it needs to happen swiftly before the concussion sets in and sleep is here.

The distraction the distraction the distraction the distraction the distraction

The words the noise the words

The prying the emptiness of interaction

The sulleness the fleeting moments of nothing and everything

The sadness crept in at night and I didn’t see it coming but I left my window open.

I did that.

I was sleepwalking again. I ended up standing in the street. I was staring south.

All the empty interactions and the years that have taught me what? Taught me to be angry or mostly just deeply dread and fear tomorrow and there are words to mask it but in the end it comes down to my heart beating at night before I go to sleep and the cold chilling fear that I will one day hear it stop.

And I’ve almost killed myself so many times and you would think that taught me to be fearless but it taught me to be more frightened and to treat myself so much more gently.

An illusion of fragility.

Scarves and the swaddling of lies.

He asks me about the scars on my legs and I smile and open my mouth in the same rehearsed monologue.

Something about snow and drunkenness and streets and falling and sleeping.

The sameness.

The sameness.

The scars are with me forever until I hear my heart stop but the lies. These lies don’t have to be my shadows.

These lies. These fucking shadows.

I lie about my numbers to seem more imposing. To seem more experienced.

I get frightened when I don’t talk to someone.

Matching stares.

The broken heartedness of it all scares me.

Once a man stood with me and told me a story of being unable to love.

I am him now.

There are walls around me.

I want to call him and question him because I still have his phone number.

We spoke a month or so ago.

I painted pretty fake horses with my words so thin he could see through them but did not comment on their lack of opacity.

The world keeps spinning.

The walls are still blank.

I haven’t written anything substantial in months and blame it on everything except that I am afraid.

I am afraid.

I don’t know where these words will take me.

I once thought that I could do anything with them.

One day I doubted that.

The next day I played with knives.

Then fire.

Then I got burned.

Then I got quiet.

Then it was silence.

Such silence.

The words stopped coming because I turned them off.

Like the department does when your bill goes red for too long.

When you ignore the red bills for too long.

When the zombies come to gnaw at your legs.

They leave teeth marks.

And you remember an afternoon in the rain. And skin touching skin and impossible conversations.

The moments where I was not there.

Where I can’t remember the things I want to.

Where I was so much more important than sharing

Where I couldn’t share

Where those walls were built and could not be knocked down

And then there was the day where I teased a man I thought was beautiful and it was perfect like a waltz.

Then the music stopped

and because he stopped leading I forgot the steps

and then got embarrassed and then got frustrated

Then got lost then got  angry

Then got lost then got angry

Then got lost then got angry

Then got lost then got angry

and the sullen faces still stare at me

I was building a stronger wall and a world behind that wall where I was precious sunny sunning everyone and they admired me for the simple bravery of providing light.

The bravery of being.

People wear sunglasses and complain that it is hot now.

And my head hurts right this moment.

We talked about napping and he is sleeping.

He is my best friend and my moodiness is sharp knives to him.

My selfishness makes me scared and makes me silent.

Makes the words stop.

Like kids playing with a garden hose, kinked between shining hands.

Nothing comes out the end.

Waiting for them to let go.

Waiting for them to let go or for me to let go because the act of just letting things slip through your fingers is not something I do well. The loss.

The never-come-back-adness of it all. The moment where you cannot control it anymore.

Control.

Ha.

Its just a concept. Everyone can fuck a concept up. And when something is based purely on perspective it is sure to get fucked up.

Then the swearing starts. I am sure I can hear my father cringe every time I let a fuck sail flying through the telephone lines to his ears. But at least I let that go.

Fuck.