What Would She Know About Me? Me And The Outsiders Never Spoken But A Few Words To Each Other.

I miss him. I see him out of the corner of my eye, walking into the living room like he’s done a hundred times before with his stark blue eyes and crisp white coat, a proud look on his face like he has the body of a panther and not a simple house cat. But he isn’t there. Only shadows cast by the wooden side tables he used to stretch himself on. A trick of the light, played on me by my aching heart. For the ornery flame tail Siamese to prance into view, and reject any and all affections, sitting elegantly with his tail tucked around his legs like a statue. Fine art, looked at, not touched. What I wouldn’t give to adore him from a distance again. Though even I was lucky enough at times to win his favor, and have the statue descend from his pedestal to rest at my feet, with his head on my ankle and the occasion lick of my fingers as I let him sniff me. His fur was soft as a rabbit’s, a forbidden fruit tempting me every time he strode through the kitchen to watch me cook. I respected his space, and in return he sat on the counter where he knew he wasn’t allowed, and perused the grocery bags curiously, often times sitting in the empty ones. I didn’t mind it, I cherished spending time with him, even if it meant washing the counters of paw prints. I miss him dearly. And I wish the tricks of the light would last just a little bit longer, so that maybe as I look at him, eager to absorb every detail of his little perfect face, he can look at me one last time and see me too.

Why can’t you let me have anything? Why can’t you let me have anything? I ask the mirror.

The girl in it is too busy weeping to answer.

On the Photos from Gaza

She screams, but her mother can't hear her. She's only inches away. But the soft, floral blanket caked with dust is heavier than the broken concrete that used to be home, than the missiles that stretch out cold metal arms to dismember and destroy, than the guns young men tote in old men's wars. It holds her mother's dead body in a vice-grip, but there is no grip tighter than the girl's on the blanket. She screams harder. She wants nothing else than to lift the veil, between life and death, between her and her mother, but it is too heavy. It is too heavy for a little girl who only wants to be with her mother.

It’s easier for the caterpillar to die than to grow wings. You cannot choose ease when splendor demands difficulty.

A mermaid is born when a heart is buried, deep in the trenches of the blue sea. A mermaid coveting motherhood need only snatch a sailor’s heart and offer it to the seabed, and within hours, her baby girl will rise from the sand and into her arms. What happens, though, when a mermaid steals the heart of another mermaid? How will the others forgive a murder, even if it is done out of love?

-Diary of a Siren

The truth is I have nothing worth writing about in me. I don’t connect with other people and that’s where good writing happens. I’m often in other people’s arms, I’m enwrapped in their laughter, but I don’t let them anywhere near me. I want so desparately to be loved as the mangled creature that I am but I’m too ashamed to show anybody my real face. So I hide it. And I make people laugh, I make them laugh so hard their sides hurt. And I feel the closest thing to love that someone like me can have. And I hope it is enough, because I don’t know how to have more than that and still feel safe. Maybe there isn’t a way. Maybe truly being loved is supposed to be scary. And I’m just a coward.

When you wear masks like you take breaths, you don’t notice that the act is killing you. You don’t see the bags under your eyes, the redness invading your scleras. The undying tug on the corners of your thin pursed lips. You see only the delighted faces of those so pleased to see not your face, but the faces you adorn for them. Catered to them. For some, the mask you wear is a mirror, for they want nothing more than to see themselves in you. For others, black as night to obscure anything akin to their likeness. But you are so enraptured with their happiness, you neglect your own. For there is a worse fate than being unloved.

It is being loved as something you’re not.

Life is happening, life is happening all the time. I can’t seem to catch it in between my fingers, elusive as rays of light. I cannot keep it high in my lungs, it leaves me like a breath. I am a meager stone in a fast coursing river and I watch what erodes me away. Life is cold. Invigorating. I wish I could hold its hand and study its face before it escapes me again.

How does a siren know your song? The proper words, the perfect intonation to pull you from the safety of your vessel into the sea? It is no small task, tainting minds with tongue, but a siren knows this well. Every sailor she devours shares with her his innermost desires, simply by being eaten. His mind is consumed by her, his memories dissolved and swallowed. Internalized. And when you’ve had one man, you’ve had them all. Or so she thought.

-Diary of a Siren

What could you have if you let yourself dream? If you didn’t squash anything that shone under that worker’s boot of yours?