unconsummated

I painted my nails the color of mica, the shade of gravestones. Eyes turn to sea foam, flesh to wax.

Don’t tell me space
Never tightened around you.

my grammar is so clumsy and my writing is rustier than anything you can think of thats really really rusty so forgive my sad little questions

So…this is it. 

This is all there is. 

Nothing is pure anymore. Everything in the world is done in the guise of something else. Interests of the wealthy in the guise of political propaganda and patriotism. Control and manipulation in the guise of piety and closeness to God. Emptiness and human monstrosity in the guise of art and self-expression. Prejudice behind a veil of acceptance, even love. High school teaches you to swallow everything. Whatever books say is right. Whatever science says is right. Digest it. Let it soak into your system, become your blood. That’s truth. Then college teaches you to question everything. Along comes life and tells you it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. 

Freud says most, if not all, our actions and emotions are driven, motivated by sex. Libido. So that’s it. We are all animals. Primal. Slaves to our carnal desires. But what’s so wrong about that? What is there to find when we deny ourselves the pleasures of the flesh? 

What is the meaning of all this? Do we live only because not breathing is difficult (trust me, I’ve tried), because we are animals, that though reason, logic, the complex wiring of the human mind tell you that there is nothing to live for, the animal instinct to self-preserve, to survive wins over? Or because it’s unorthodox to look for something beyond the physical realm through death? Orthodoxy is unconsciousness, Orwell says. Sometimes I wish I were unconscious. 

Everything is fleeting. Nothing lasts. Everyone will leave. Vanity. All is vanity. Vanity of vanities. But, then, what do you expect from an entire species born into sin? Genesis says we are all descendants of a curse. Of God’s wrath, of His malediction. Everything we do, all we are is tainted by sin. 

Orthodoxy is unconsciousness, Orwell says. So, hello, world. Let’s talk about the weather. The latest meme and that adorable blouse in Forever 21. Whether I should buy a Samsung Galaxy Tab or iPad 34 or what the hell. Love and monkeys and potato chips. This is my coma. I’ve been sleeping for sixteen years now. Fifty more isn’t gonna matter. 

I tried to write, but my pen was only rust and desert roses.

The walking dead. How ironic that this generation should be obsessed with zombies and the like. I am the walking dead. We are the walking dead. Breathing cadavers, mobile carcasses.  We are granite inside, hollow and alone. The walking dead. Look into a random seventeen-year-old’s eyes. Tell me what you see. Tell me if they are eternal. Tell me what you hear from lips that don’t move, clenched fists and trembling shoulders. Tell me there’s more to this generation—hell, this world—than gray, cumbersome vacancy.

There was black lace and fire. The walls have closed in on me. Boiling in lava, my seething flesh, living among these void carcasses. I can’t write about you the way  all these great people do, making poems about your clavicle and your blueberry breath on their necks. It’s much easier to tell of the macabre imagery I keep making up. But the truth is I cannot write of the pitch-black, the eternal cold, hollow, hollow, hollow. 

I’m reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, and discussing banks and national funds and politics with my mother and my sister, and I swore I would write politically and read literary criticism, and I am doing that, but I keep circling back here. I wish I could tell you what here is, describe it in eloquent poetry, make you understand somehow, but all I know is that this is who I am, and this is all I can do. 

I can’t write like I want to or be what I want to. There are erupting noses around the house. I don’t know what our neighbors are up to. It’s not a good day. I’m not feeling well and I cannot write. I vowed never to write in times like these, but my hands won’t freeze. 

Tell me, will I ever hold a hand in mine that will not slip from my butter fingers like sand? Will I ever know the scent of the sun or stand by the edge of a cliff and not feel a pressing need to jump? Will I ever love without —

I’m sorry.

It’s in my nature to ruin.

I dipped in a lake of afternoon stars.

“Honey, look! Did the sky peel off?”

A choir of mountains sang my empty inquiry. 

I’m scared. I’m so scared.

Dripping, I went to the kitchen for a towel and there the arrogant knives were. Silver eyes calling. 

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat.”

I want to treat an old lady to coffee and lemon pie and have her tell me fossil stories about the war and Nixon and her strong distaste for current crap music. Or visit a bare-breasted nymph by a river with an exotic name. She will sing as her master, a rainbow-colored fish who reads Tolstoy with his glassy eyes in slumber, tells me tales of water and survival. Life has been so dull lately. Stuck in the confines of a house of lethargy with a limited view of a gray street. 

Make me a dress out of leaf veins, will you? Bind a book with your arteries and sea tendrils. Help me believe in the new again. 

I should be able to wrap words up in beautiful dishonest language, but I can’t. I’ve tried telling the truth, like Hemingway says to, but it ends up caustic, bitter, dry as winter. My teeth chatter. I’m weak. Covering up has never been my strong suit. I always end up naked as when I was born. There’s nothing more to me than people see. I am. I AM.

Beautiful morning today. Will you still love me if I stripped down, all the irregular lines, all the eyesores on my torso? I am ugly and insecure, but I can hold on to your ankles and hit your Achilles’ heel with a hammer. Weak. Your eyes will turn into spirals and I will be your queen. 

I’m not insane. I haven’t been happy for three years. It’s difficult. Give two minutes and look inside me. Heal.