Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Low

Today i’m low
Oh, i’m so low
I can pretend i’m not, but can i not pretend?
Dear Ms. Therapist, i am trying
I thought i had it rough, but now i know i didn’t – not really
My brain can do this amazing thing where it takes me out of the shit and fills my face with someone else
I float
I float up here and watch some actressrobotclone do me for the masses
If it’s too much to watch, the door in my belly bids me come
It locks onto me like a tractor beam and pulls me in and slams behind me
I am nothingness
Was it all that bad if i wasn’t even there for it?
I inch my way slowly past the beckoning door, pressed flat against the far wall
I take the stairs down into my guts
It reeks down here. Like the smell of their fear that i could never scrub off me
Afraid of a little girl
The air tastes like salt and metal, like his hands when he pressed them over my nose and mouth
Shh, be quiet, shut up, stop fighting me!
Why do i have to come down here with these old ghosts?
I cleverly escaped their filthy clutches – why should i return?
They paw at me, and they stink
I don’t need anything down here
I look up and see my heart, beating blackly, shivering with pain
Reaching up, i place my hand firmly on it, the muscle quivers like a horse’s flank after a race
I pet my poor heart until it slows
It stops twitching and warms beneath my fingers
Stop running Dear One, i whisper
The race is done
We won a long time ago
I’m going back up the stairs now
Still tired and low, and this didn’t change me
There’s a light at the top that bids me come
Going carefully up over slime covered stone
I look down and say I’ll be back and that’s funny
The bilge water needs to be pumped out
My shoes are soaked and my feet, ice
I’ll bring salt when next i come, to dry up the fine, slick crust
I wave from the last step, and hope it doesn’t take me as long to clean the basement as it did the attic

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Stop

I don’t care if you label me, judge me and stare at me
Well, really i do but i’m working on that

I have men that enable me, gird me, encircle me
Hands under my arms so your whispers fall flat

I have women who speak to me words of encouragement
Their voice draws me to them away from the sirens

The girls in my life they look up at me, woman-sent
My beautiful daughter who heals my environs

I look at them all and i know that i’m okay
So your vicious slander doesn’t actually matter

My armour is simply i’m never alone

But what of the friendless that live all around you
That suffer in silence and never speak out

The hot acid sewage you carelessly spew
Seeps into their pores and it causes them doubt

They can’t hear a thing but your words of dismissal
Or look at the sun and be warmed by its rays

For you’ve built around them a wall of denial
That no one could love them for all of their days

Their invisibility angers and frightens me
Makes me want to shake you until the world breaks

No person should ever be left all alone

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

The Very Bearable Lightness of Being

There is no perfection only life
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of BeingWell then. I’m here today, and although i’m so self-focused that i can tell you how that is in a literal way –i mean, that’s kinda what my blog IS, isn’t it– i still find it a sign and a wonder. A sign and a wonder.

Yes, i’m very aware from whence those words come. I’m doing my own thing with ’em.

**********

I was cursed from birth by my own lifegiver, but here i am, and i am not who i was supposed to be.

Her blood in my veins was a poison, her breath in me was a pall.

I cut myself open, deep, sucked out the venom, and spat it on her grave.
I dragged my slow body outside to breathe fresh air and purge her pollution.

And i stand, not who she tried to make me.

A sign and a wonder to my descendants and all who know me and want to know.
Born a slave. Made to serve.

And yet i stand, free.

I chewed through my own bonds and escaped into the desert.
I drank the heat of the sun, my mouth full of sand.

Stumbling, often crawling through the shifting lands, sometimes blinded by the stinging grit. My skin baked, then burned and blistered, then sloughed.

And i stand, no concubine nor consort.

A sign and a wonder. A new being, birthed from my own death, a servant only to myself and my sweet abortion.

Glowing flesh, blood of gold, gossamer wings, crown of light.
My own Saviour.
Sandals by Adidas.

Chubby little fists held tight by hands but a little bigger, and on.
Spanning our hand-in-hand across our intended desolation, until

HERE I STAND

Promised Land.

I release my descendants from their destiny of servitude.
By my emancipation, so too are you freed.

Look upon me, for i am a sign and a wonder.

Not a warning, but a jubilant proclamation that all might stand and be free.

Walk with me a while, if you would, for my wings aren’t quite dry.

 

A single metaphor can give birth to love.
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

My Testimony

And now it spills forth like a fountain
Not pouring from some chubby baby angel
but from a foul-faced demon
Its stone phallus gouting filth
I cry tears of blood and semen
I burn my own ears with the acid words coming out of my mouth.
Shame and fury bubbling magma in my belly
Scorching my throat

I can still smell it
I could wash the stench off my hands, but no amount of brushing,
Scrubbing, gargling,
toothpaste, mouthwash, soap,
toothbrush, washcloth
could get the taste out of my mouth.
Breathing out the stink of
Fear and evil

I’ll fill this fountain with my bile,
Verbs that tear flesh and nouns that crush hearts
Brackish water from an ancient cistern
I’ll purge these rusty pipes and post a warning sign
It’s probably not necessary
Everyone knows the house is haunted.
Only children come here to dare each other
And they’re already dead

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 1 Comment

Cry

I was the child who cried all of the time
Sometimes it made them happy
Sometimes it made them hit me
Sometimes it made them stop
Sometimes i saved it for later
In my room when it was all over

I was the girl who never cried
Sometimes it gave them permission
Sometimes it intensified their aggression
Sometimes it bought me reprieve
Sometimes it incensed them
I wore it all as a badge of honour

I was the woman who couldn’t cry
Sometimes it made me seem cold
Sometimes it damaged my children
Sometimes it cost me dear friendships
Sometimes it kept life at a distance
I didn’t understand why i was so alone

I am the woman who is learning to cry
Sometimes it makes me feel afraid
Sometimes it makes me feel furious
Sometimes it makes me feel broken
Sometimes it makes me feel clean
But it always makes me feel

And i’m no longer alone

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Love, Mommy

Too much space
Too much waist
Too much taste
Know your place

Make less talk
Make less thoughts
Make less whats
Know you’re caught

Turn your head
Turn your heart
Turn your part
Know you’re dead

Kill that fact
Kill that face
Kill that case
Know your act

Take the time
Take the lyin’
Take the diein’
Know you’re mine

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

The Fly

I lie in a dry and quiet place
and think of those i’ve lost
I do not mourn them, instead
I wonder why anyone is still here
I writhe in my own chrysalis
i hope?
but i cannot fathom my accompaniment
The questions are too self-focused
The answer is, because they want to be
But i wonder if i’ve tricked them,
That i’m not a butterfly waiting to be freed,
i’m a spider and they’re caught in my web
Wrapped them in silver threads of things that i’m not
coated in the stickiness of pity
I am a thing
I was created to be a thing, and a thing i always shall be
When i emerge it will be from a shiny silver pod
I tried to merge myself with beauty,
But the result will be an abhorrence
I’ll be as filthy and futile as i’ve always been

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 8 Comments

Raggedy Ann

I am stuck in this place where the sunlight of tomorrow shines so bright upon my face, but the grey pall of yesterday is a weight that makes it hard to move, to breathe.

I want with my whole heart to be the person that people love: bouncy, ebullient, sweet, the flouncy sharing tree-hugging hippie goddess,
and i think i am her, or, i almost was…

But today today i am Eeyore and it is not a cute cartoon or story.
I am a little piece of cloth that could have been a quilt. But instead, i’m a dirty piece of fabric, that may have once been a dress worn by a queen.

I am now dirty and tattered and my pattern is barely marked.
There are no laundering skills that can make me clean enough for it not to be obvious.

What good is fabric that is too worn to even service as a patch?

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Refined

His porcine hands

and me, glass-eyed

Milky forearms, tracing the veins,

bluegreen rivers

trafficked downstream

Little nips from toothy fish

My bracketed head the only

bastion, neck outstretched 

purifying

My breastplate, my carapace, my outside ribs

A kiln for clay guts

This traitorous beacon for his treacherous mouth

silky meat

unctuous, and i’m

Understaffed

Slices of my bodylife on tables

Hungry, beckoning

the target comes to the arrow

He feasts

My salty cheeks

gooseflesh in broken pottery

distilled to dust

 

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 2 Comments

In The Middle Of The Wind

I hear a lot of grumbling about the wind. A former boyfriend said if there’s a Hell he’d be in a wind tunnel eating raw onions.

The bigger of our dogs is cowed by it. It whistles past the house and she either huddles at our feet, or retreats to the safety of her kennel.

When a sudden gust picks up in a parking lot, people’s curses are carried to my ears.
My son just headed out to get a new game controller. He opened the door, then quickly closed it again.
He gave me a baleful look and said,
“Great – it’s windy now.”

I myself have only ever loved the wind.

When i was a small child, i believed it was god making himself known.
When the wind had really kicked up, all the other children would go inside to play. Not me. I had the playground all to myself then, and that was not a small mercy.
Thank you, Wind-god. Free from the capriciousness of other children. No cruel words to assail my ears – only the wind whistling, hushing, soughing, sighing, even shrieking.
Earache better than heartache.
Windburn preferable to blush.

Sometimes, while leaning my bum against the slanted posts of a playground parking lot or sitting as primly as i could on the seat of the cleanest swing, the Wind-god would come and find me. He’d make the dust dance in a circle to make me smile, or he’d make music for me in the fresh, green leaves on the trees. Living castanets.
And sometimes, when a car would come to pick me up and i didn’t want to go, he’d swoop down and pick me up –WHOOSH– cradling me in his whispery, tendril arms, and he’d take me up, up, up…

I stopped breathing because he was all through me and around me.
I was a bird and i was flying and we looked down and saw the little girl get into the car and drive away.
She was pretty and i wanted her to come and fly with us, but she never looked up. Only down.

I always lived the furthest away from school of any student. Long walks, sometimes more than an hour or even 2.
Glad to be away from home, but not wanting to go to school.
Glad to be away from school, but not wanting to go home.
Poor. Dirty. Odd. Other.
Not many invitations ever came to hang out after school or come to supper, but when they came i never said No. No matter who asked. No matter what their intentions.

I mostly wandered home, daydreaming. Dawdling, Mother said.
No concept of time as i had adventures in my brain. Confrontations with bullies where i said the clever thing and everyone suddenly liked me. Saving a popular kid or even the whole school and becoming THE HERO.
I was always glad when the wind would accompany me. Even when the weather turned cold. It wrapped its cold embrace around my skin and settled itself into my bones.

Numbness has always been my preferred state of being.
I couldn’t feel her slaps.
The stinging words always flying around me simply bounced off my frozen flesh.
My friend the Wind-god. My companion and protector.

Now, so very many years later, i still love the wind. It comforts me and makes me feel safe. I love being outside in it, whether warm or cold.
When i hit the road to walk all those countless hours to get home (DAWDLING!) i’m heartened when the wind rises to meet me. To hold my hand and whip my hair and sting my skin along the road.
I ask my friend if he’ll pick me up and let me fly with him again.

He says i’ve become too heavy.

I’m sad and so is he, my Wind-god friend, and we cry together.

I will always live here.
I live in the middle of the wind.