I’LL NEVER GO TO CONFESSIONAL
“I was a revelation of a child. A dichotomous conundrum. Forced into the box of too sensitive, and too aggressive. I was not agreeable like my sister. I was a hunter, sitting in a blind, just waiting for the right fawn (don’t let it grow) to fall into my line of sight. My taste for violence dripped red onto white specks of fur. Venom spilled was only passed down to me, an heirloom unwanted. Everything, a knife held awkwardly in young, undeveloped hands.
I went for the throat every time.”
(Present - A diary entry of photographs and poetry)
I’m listening to the rain outside, praying to the waxing moon to save me from my sabotage.
From thorn pricked thumbs and aloof accusations. Have some passion, please. See the blood, rusted and raining, dribble down your palm, and ask me where it came from. What barb did I make, just to see you wounded? Mercy is not in my nature. Barbaric, animalistic, my headlights will sweep the streets just to see you freeze. My insides are screaming at the cages of my bones, rigor mortis howling on the precipice. Will you decay in the winter sun? Will your body bloat, releasing toxins as your last breath stays trapped somewhere sickly in your charred lungs? Your cigarette scarred my hand once, a constant reminder of everything. Grief is a gracious ghost, a romantic in the realm of rot. Beetles may generate highways in the nooks of your flesh, from larvae to leaving. May the ammonia linger, finding a forever home just beneath your nose- so that every breath you are reminded; lightheaded. Mercy is not in my nature.
I loved that they loved me. I was addicted to the attention, the obsession that comes with young hormones and ill-lit basements and black leather couches. I just wanted to be the girl that people were drawn to, a lighthouse, and instead I let them crash into shore.
I always knew when it was time to go. The whispered prayers over an atheist man. The moth in my sister's hair. Looking in a mirror and knowing who was looking back. Touching the tip of my finger to a lit cigarette. The smell of my skin burning. The quiet car ride home after putting our dog to sleep. The buzzing in my head after another beer, bowling pins falling, and your father playing slots.
Sometimes I wonder about your avocado tree. I hate it.
The get rich quick scheme that they sell you, is that love never dies. But it does.
It’s a slow bleed out, blood pouring, no mercy. The love seizes on old dining room tables of houses that no longer belong to you, the indentations in the wood from childhood, ephemeral. The love breaks against heirlooms no longer wanted— just a dissatisfaction of an object over you.
I don’t believe you remember me at all. Tracing my spine as I fell asleep in your bed, sneaking downstairs to play cards, absent escapades, or midnights screaming.
I spent my childhood idolizing, worshiping; swans and the moon. Misbehaving adolescence for the generational mythology. Stolen fruits from orchards. Dirty feet on the double yellow. Now he sends me emails; apologizing for who you’ve become.
Because love does die. It sits battered in a storm cellar, malnourished and unkempt. A midwest eulogy. It will walk one hundred miles, gunshot to the chest, red dripping from its mouth, just to get to you. But it’ll never make it. Love is an immortal that dies every summer, buried in the damp earth of what used to be.
