On living with melancholy

They called it “potential” the way that your flesh and bones collapsed inwards when you saw the eyes of another person, and knew what dwelled there.

The way you couldn’t let go of the woman’s voice in the grocery store and how it caught when she said hello, like it was a lie,

the way you knew that all he wanted was to be the father that his father could not be,

that it meant the world to him to have his little boy call him “Daddy,” and mean it.

Oh. They applauded you. They encouraged you. They told you it was a gift, that you should embrace it, that your “perspective” was precious and it should be cherished

and you knew, even then,

that it would be a battle to stay alive knowing the things you knew, that you would struggle to make yourself survive the oppressive beauty in this world,

because it would haunt your chest like a thousand ghosts,
and it would haunt your lungs, and your breath and the way you couldn’t help but breathe in all of it at the same time—and that sometimes you would gasp for air and there would be nothing left to breathe.

And you would beg, and you would fall on your knees and they would be scraped and chafed, and you would ask to not feel the water with the tips of your fingers when you dragged them through the riverbeds and over the stones.

You would beg to not notice the ways people displayed their vulnerabilities because you knew,
that it would make your heart beat faster then it should,

and you would see stars at inopportune times, and
the music with words and melodies you could relate to would take you somewhere you shouldn’t go-

And you would be tired. You would be exhausted in recognition of how much there was to do, how much you would not be able to get done,

and you don’t know if it is clinical
if it is spiritual or just the way you are comprised, the puzzle pieces you were given in a velvet bag to
keep putting together

day in and day out,

and you know you can be powerful.

And you know you should be powerful.

That there is nothing stronger than the look and the promise you made to a face in a far away country,
and you know if you don’t honor it the purpose of your life may be compromised

and if you live with melancholy

you kiss your love and you feel her, you see her.
and the mountains make your body light,
but you are constantly overwhelmed with the depth of your privilege

the way you were only concerned about how your body moved and the way it took up space in a room when you wanted to press yourself against the wall and just be invisible, and the way your hair swayed, just so. The softness in the curls against your cheek.

the realization of the privilege in the type of insecurities you indulged in,

and then,

knowing that there are the children in rooms who beg for space, who only want to sit on dusty floors and spread themselves out and be present, and

their awareness of the kinds of depravity humanity has waiting for the ones cast away.

and
you know what it is to
be ashamed of your sadnesses because how could you deserve them when you have only had
soft cotton wrapping your body, and the food that you turned down because you didn’t like the shape it made your body into, and

you never,
considered who would eat—your sister (whom you love) or your son.

You never,
had to choose between walking through a desert with or without your youngest

and you never had to have your body be a weapon for men who were wielding feminity as a thing to break and beat over husbands and brothers as an act of war against an entire country-

sometimes you want to not get up out of your bed, and then you are ashamed because feel the softness beneath your head, how dare you,

when you have feathers cradling you.

and you want to not think of these things
because the beautiful things are there too, and you know
that in order to not collapse and writhe on the floor and to not
turn feverish, and let the infection of what the world is doing to those who are yours (do not be fooled, God damn it, they are you and yours)

you try
to control it so that when you smile at someone dear
and when you say hello,
it is not a lie.

You know you do not get to rest for a few years, perhaps.
Panic. how many years? how many hearts? how many days must I whisper
“Someday I will try harder--
and someday, I will do better. “

I didn't realize that my words were capable of making someone else feel
the same sad things in the way I felt them.

I need to watch this.

Sometimes, on a whim, I want to stop living. Not in a bad way. Not in a violent, or depressed, or sad way.

Just sometimes. I would be okay not waking up. Sometimes I think I could lock myself in the car with a sweater over the exhaust in a secluded park, and listen to music, and just sleep. But I don't.

I won't.

I know how selfish that action would be, and there are people I love and have responsibility to. As long as those people are here, I will be too. There are things that I am wildly excited about.

It is not constant. I don't cry myself to sleep. I don't wake up sad. I so enjoy being alive, most of the time.

But sometimes my heart is full and it is at capacity and I just want to not feel so much all of the time. Sometimes I feel numb in response to being so, so filled.

Sometimes I am tired and exhausted, and I expressed this for myself after a hard conversation with someone I love. And someone else (I love) found this and her heart looked broken, and I knew I had done that to her-- and I actually had a panic attack seeing how hurt she looked, how scared. Knowing I caused this.

It is a bad habit, being surprised when I affect people. It is scary to know that people care about me because I'm not really sure why they do. Pleasant surprise, but surprise none-the-less.

inhale, and particles of dust smash against the roof of your mouth and make their way coating your throat.

Breathe.
it sounds like such
an easy
command

if you commanded what your body was supposed to do
and

I am open to commanding you, and will
push your soul against the side of a wall
and hold you there while your body confines you to the pressure of stone and brick.
and you feel my hand tighten against your wrist and your
body will be pinned by what my body is

And I will hold open your mouth, and put my thumb on your lips. I will brush my finger over the smooth of your cheek, and pour you fine wines
and whiskeys
and rums

 And you will plead with me.
Please, please make me stop feeling.

(No). Firmly.
No, this isn't a request I will do for you.

And there you will be-- trapped between my eyes seeing you and you will not be able to turn away.

You will
not have anywhere to run because you asked to relinquish control,
and
now I have it,
and
it is mine to do with what I will.

Your body, and the curve of your breast up into your chest,
cannot believe you have made yourself vulnerable to the likes of me.

Inhale.
I press my hand, sweet, against those lips. Breathe me in. You wanted this. You will breathe until you gasp with the lightness in your chest that lifts you out of your body, and you
see us there,
 drunk on the wines and the fumes of what I am doing to you by making you,
be seen
by me.

I know that you were born in a room with hay instead of cotton blankets, and you envy with your tongue the way that I had silk and gold for the same reasons you had dust and debris

and even then, at 4 days, I should have known better than to let the pale softness of my skin sink into what you could have shared with me. I knew that

it could not possibly be an adequate design to have you waiting for so long
for me
to
remember that we had almost the same beginnings and
the truth is glaring.

There is the tingling breathless feeling of wanting and being
taken by surprise that this is even a thing you can do any longer.

The way your heart lightens and moves upwards and through the top of your chest and up pounding in your chest.

And you are nauseous but excited, and happy, and waiting waiting waiting until your bodies both can't stand it anymore.

Rock

If you can get to the top without
all of the breathing stopping,
and maybe one day you will be able to stop things like
gasping
for breath every time someone is separated from you.

If you can let the flesh of your knee sting when the rock cuts it as you wedge yourself into smaller and smaller places, and hope that whatever stones are above you don't come falling on your head
or on your arm
or on your pride.

There is always a way up, and you clamor up the fingertips attached to your fingers,
willing them to keep you stable and somehow hold all of the weight of a body.

And don't look down, because it is far,
and sometimes it is better to not know how far you will fall.

Sometimes it is better, to pretend that the distance is not capable of imposing splinters and cracks in the bones that will travel through like a bolt of lightening

across your body and through it.

The impact of your body on itself, the weight of it crushing you and you realizing that you have been turned against by it, as it impales itself on a log at the bottom of the pit.

Maybe sometimes we only look up and then
we cannot see the brush and pebbles,
the way there is nothing but emptiness to catch whatever fall you allow yourself.

(based upon the distance).

I can't get over the unsettling feeling that everything is an illusion.

bags hats gum comfort slippers this bed.

Your hand cascades up and down your throatline, and I feel your presence across the room and the statelines become irrelevant.

I feel you bubble like a liquid inside and outside of what I can consume.

Eyes burn when I close them, and the redish black shapes dance underneath my eyelids (street lights)

lamps

Air on this part of my skin teases me, and the thought of you makes me lighter until I gasp,
I need something to keep me on the floor.

I don't like being high above the city.

How many times have I told you, to give me music that has only a few notes and doesn't

erupt my thoughts with your thoughts,

you consume me, playing at carefree flutters of lightness but I've read your words through the language and tongues of others with the same bodies stuck in a life made for smiling.

I know you are on display for epochs and stripping down so the shadows cast light on your body, sway. "See? I have shadows." You need them to be observed.

The wood is smooth from the times you have spun around it to the music that they make you perform to.

I know the
ways you drown.

Yet, you beg me to lay with you in the sun, pretending the problem is the way the sun caresses your shoulder blades, lashing out and pinning your breastbone to the ground. "I am on the ground." We convince each other. Touch.

I can't stop watching you dance, and the other patrons have returned to flea-infested investments and the angry wails of tired wives with tired mouths. It is time to go, but you pull the chair up to the sun, and touch the same smooth surface, winding your body, casting shadows and begging me to suffer synesthesia. You perform, and the sounds that you have composed fill the room and I find myself drifting up over us, not able to hear your composition without my skin and flesh shaking in anticipation and confusion. You pin me to my own body but I cannot stay put, I am not able, you have filled every shiver with music, and my body never had a chance.

Twisting the knife

Twisting the knife, they say. We all nod, understanding. Obviously. We have had had knives twisted in our own guts, and so therefore ultimately can relate to this apparently quite common human experience.

You had almost gotten used to the way the blade brushes up uncomfortably against spleens and gall bladders and then the pancreas. The sputter of blood that erupts from your lungs and then your stomach, the rancid bitter taste of bile eating away at your gums feels like a neighbor that always seems to watch just a little too closely.

Eroding. The blade, sitting there, rusting and melding into the slender rib bones constructed of cement and rusting away, rusting away and thickening the protection that made up the things that supported and housed your organs.

You lived for such a long time, you thought to yourself. How does one live so long with such an injury? You have lived such awhile, and the shards have broken off of the blade and invaded your bloodstream. It hurts, and you cannot move without the sharpness biting into you, stabbing muscles and tendons, lodging themselves into veins and ultimately in the small fine tissues of your lungs. You've become accustomed to watching the way you breathe in and out and hoping this time blood doesn't drown you as you breathe; hoping this time the shards won't pierce an organ you thought was safe. Always you spit up the blood, and taste the metal, and your eyes turn red. Always, you wipe it away with the back of your hand and the underside of your favorite chair is now stained from wiping away the evidence of your body's breaking.

So long, you have formed a thick ropy scar tissue around and around the blade. Spongy and thick, it secures the blade in place, and only makes tears when you try to move. But if you do not move, and you stay completely still, the blade cannot do extra damage and is almost cordial in its attack. "I am still attacking you, you know" it mocks. But politely. With a handshake, and a head nod.

Twisting the blade is damaging the damaged, ripping the scars out in chunks, forcing raw beaten flesh to yet again reconstruct itself. New pain, bursting dying cells and gushing of liquified putrid skin and muscles, tendons splayed and shredded. Broken bone bits and snapped ribs, and a new wave of rusted metal shards rushing through the body. Agony is understated, and your heart faithfully beats wondering if it is assassinating itself, and you see little point in such savagery.

“I’m afraid that sometimes you’ll play lonely games too. Games you can’t win ’cause you’ll play against you.” – Dr. Seuss

Things they don't tell you about breaking your heart:

It is breaking my heart.

There is not a day that goes by where some part of me is not deeply saddened knowing life will end.

I think this is part of why change is so hard for me-- it is not only, "Look this new scary exciting thing!"-- but also a true and final ending to a way relationships are constructed.

I don't know why seeing this as a circus,
makes me sad,

but I know that gathering everyone in one room is not something I can have.

Watching our time literally drip away,

while we've paused and tried to freeze the cadaver in case someday,

someone learns how to revive a heart.

Love in the time of
you and me;

for one of the only instances
I know my mind is slowing, and I am only thinking of your smell and the way your skin is always so soft.

I am only feeling your body and none of the weighings and racings of all the days
I am present and here and very much with you.

You make me stop leaping forward and forward again, and for this I am grateful.
My mind admonishes me for pausing but
with you in this room

It is satisfied that you are what time waits for and I can
breathe and I can
sleep and I can just be here.

If I were somebody else

Maybe we could have

traveled to the far-away places together

and

every time they said this was once in a lifetime, we would smile at each other

A corner sad smile

knowing they might be right but we would make them wrong because we chose it.

Knowing that we must be so lucky, because

in the parallel path

of a life with a different bend

maybe some other us wanted what we had,

but the things they promised would never get in the way, somehow did.

Maybe we would meander and explore and relish in waters that were clear

and went on for miles. And we could just be.

And it would not be so hard to keep all the pieces together because we already would know the broken and fractured and vulnerable places, and there would be nothing left to be afraid of.

Maybe we would be spontaneous, and we would have been young for longer than we deserved to be.

You would have sparked me with ideas and convictions and I would be in awe of how you were so aware of who you were and who you should be and could be.

How this world should and could be. And you would burn with passion and vision and I would be inspired.

I could see it. How this could go. If I chose radical action and if you chose me.

We could live this life fast and with purpose and we could

be revolutionary.

Maybe eventually, we could have even grown old. And it would not hurt so much to let go of the possibilities any more, because we took every opportunity. Every risk. Every one. And we would read and write and remember not one part or piece, but all of it, and we would have two memories of one life, and we would not be afraid of losing it to the age because it would be ours and nothing or no one could take it from us.

And I think we could have been happy then.