In the quiet before everyone wakes, when all the options are not yet selected and the day is empty fill-in-the-blanks, I taste time, a sip at a time from my mug, cream, the dregs reheated, the last sip has three granules in it and I can swallow past them, ignore the grit of my life, or I can bite down into the bitter.
I reheated it in the microwave and the cup didn't get too hot, nor did the coffee have swirls of too-cool. The day wasn't bright enough to call me to move yet. The keyboard made me want to clack clack. I didn't want to share the disgust of my nights, dreadful fits of near-strangers entering my dreams, trying to pry their way into today's storyline.
By night when I give up the blanks and fall to sleep, I'm occasionally stabby with self-destruction. It's not that I want to hurt myself, exactly, as much as I want the oily black guck of the day and all that has gotten on my soul by then out, off, drained, emptied. The muck= the story of a jogger attacked and murdered by racist, would-be vigilantes. The virus and the inability to know what is next for us, the inability to plan an escape route from a thing I can't quite make out. The way relationships get stale and I'm not sure when to toss them but there seems to be a cabinet full of bread that can't sustain me. The repeated failure to write and write well. The Grief, an undercurrent of failure throughout my day,. And why does this grief feel like failure at all? Her death was certainly not my fault-- a heart attack-- not something I had a thing to do with. Her death was months ago. What does it have to do with the failures of this day? The initial grief, it was an arresting stab awakening me lightning sharp from a deep sleep, panic pouring moonlight over me as though it were a fire left smoldering and my whole life was in flames upon waking. That panic lingers as a thread of grief and regret. So at night it festers, a poisonous body cavity.
When I go to try and sleep, I wonder if I set up the wrong form. I think of the ways I should have written a different day and the self-destruction is upon me. I sometimes fall asleep imagining stabbing myself, slashing daggers through my abdomen and chest, repeatedly stabbing the hatred and failure out of myself. Maybe destruction is a kind of instinct for self-purification. Maybe it is a drive to get rid of the bad and it accidentally cuts out the good, like a self-administered chemotherapy, designed to kill all but the best of us, but sometimes taking long trusses of golden hair and the healthy glow of our pallor, leaving us spent and pallid.
I didn't understand vampires when I was younger. I felt myself this whole big glorious self, so why would I turn my throat toward evil? Why would I let anyone suck out my life? Why would I serve some other evil, instead of my own whim? I knew my own pulse beat and planned to follow it.
But right at the onset of middle age now, when I understand regret better, not that I did not live as myself or do things worth doing, but that there are now paths not travelled that trail behind me, I understand the desire to destroy myself. To hand over my vulnerable neck, to lean back and offer my worst, here, you take it! No, really, please take it. I can't hold my head up anymore anyway. And perhaps in sucking all the life out of me, the chemotherapy self-destruction will work and I'll be left with a single blossom and a set of directions. I understand the desire to give in and let drugs take you, let evil have you.
What of serving a master? For the simple desire to think less and do more.
"What do you want me to do?"
I reheated it in the microwave and the cup didn't get too hot, nor did the coffee have swirls of too-cool. The day wasn't bright enough to call me to move yet. The keyboard made me want to clack clack. I didn't want to share the disgust of my nights, dreadful fits of near-strangers entering my dreams, trying to pry their way into today's storyline.
By night when I give up the blanks and fall to sleep, I'm occasionally stabby with self-destruction. It's not that I want to hurt myself, exactly, as much as I want the oily black guck of the day and all that has gotten on my soul by then out, off, drained, emptied. The muck= the story of a jogger attacked and murdered by racist, would-be vigilantes. The virus and the inability to know what is next for us, the inability to plan an escape route from a thing I can't quite make out. The way relationships get stale and I'm not sure when to toss them but there seems to be a cabinet full of bread that can't sustain me. The repeated failure to write and write well. The Grief, an undercurrent of failure throughout my day,. And why does this grief feel like failure at all? Her death was certainly not my fault-- a heart attack-- not something I had a thing to do with. Her death was months ago. What does it have to do with the failures of this day? The initial grief, it was an arresting stab awakening me lightning sharp from a deep sleep, panic pouring moonlight over me as though it were a fire left smoldering and my whole life was in flames upon waking. That panic lingers as a thread of grief and regret. So at night it festers, a poisonous body cavity.
When I go to try and sleep, I wonder if I set up the wrong form. I think of the ways I should have written a different day and the self-destruction is upon me. I sometimes fall asleep imagining stabbing myself, slashing daggers through my abdomen and chest, repeatedly stabbing the hatred and failure out of myself. Maybe destruction is a kind of instinct for self-purification. Maybe it is a drive to get rid of the bad and it accidentally cuts out the good, like a self-administered chemotherapy, designed to kill all but the best of us, but sometimes taking long trusses of golden hair and the healthy glow of our pallor, leaving us spent and pallid.
I didn't understand vampires when I was younger. I felt myself this whole big glorious self, so why would I turn my throat toward evil? Why would I let anyone suck out my life? Why would I serve some other evil, instead of my own whim? I knew my own pulse beat and planned to follow it.
But right at the onset of middle age now, when I understand regret better, not that I did not live as myself or do things worth doing, but that there are now paths not travelled that trail behind me, I understand the desire to destroy myself. To hand over my vulnerable neck, to lean back and offer my worst, here, you take it! No, really, please take it. I can't hold my head up anymore anyway. And perhaps in sucking all the life out of me, the chemotherapy self-destruction will work and I'll be left with a single blossom and a set of directions. I understand the desire to give in and let drugs take you, let evil have you.
What of serving a master? For the simple desire to think less and do more.
"What do you want me to do?"
Ok. I'm fast. It's done.
And here is my neck for the next round.
"Yes, what now?"
More of the same. Alright. Proceed. I did that too.
You write the form for me, choose my clothes, tell me what to do next time.
But night is a long way off. This is a morning and a cloudy one too. And I'm grateful for cloudy mornings, the way my sunshine thoughts that had darted around for too-excited long, begin to settle amid the dust and grime of real life and I slow and think and write.
I don't hate my ugly and the piercing rumination of night is a long way off.
This morning, I breathe clouds and my pulse beats. I bite into the most bitter of all granules. And you know what? The aftertaste is sweet.
And here is my neck for the next round.
"Yes, what now?"
More of the same. Alright. Proceed. I did that too.
You write the form for me, choose my clothes, tell me what to do next time.
But night is a long way off. This is a morning and a cloudy one too. And I'm grateful for cloudy mornings, the way my sunshine thoughts that had darted around for too-excited long, begin to settle amid the dust and grime of real life and I slow and think and write.
I don't hate my ugly and the piercing rumination of night is a long way off.
This morning, I breathe clouds and my pulse beats. I bite into the most bitter of all granules. And you know what? The aftertaste is sweet.
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