I Never Knew Nothing Could Be So Heavy As It Is Now. Air Rests In My Hands Like Handlebars On A Bike

I felt a twinge at first in my stomach, like I’d eaten bad crab, only worse. Like I’d eaten two bad crabs. Horrendous to even imagine. As my god unraveled me by an invisible umbilical cord leading back to him, my skin loosened and bones leaned on each other like the limbs of a wooden puppet. Weirdly hollow, with a sudden cacophony of clatter, I simply disappeared. I come to you now as a memory. A ghost, maybe. Or a cloud of events so positively stupid and unyielding that not even a god could get rid of it. I’m sure you’re wondering how I pissed off a god I so dutifully doted on for years on end to the point of being turned to dust, I must tell you, the reasons are long and each grow more foolish than the last. It began the day I blamed god. And he blamed me back.

Our screams were never songs. Is that what you’ve been hearing all this time?

-Diary of a siren

What would she know about me? Me and the outsiders never spoken but a few words to each other.

She knows enough to ask for you by name. Your real name.

Who is this girl anyway?

She didn’t say. Just go talk to her and get her out of here. I don’t like her sniffing around the den like this.

If you don’t know her name can you at least tell me what she looks like?

She was a mousy little fuck, insisting I don’t take a message and she talk directly to you. Brown ratty hair, looked sick. Real puffy face.

Oh my god.

What?

It’s the girl from last week. The one I, almost robbed.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I’ll take care of it.

Take care of it.

I just said that I would!

I mean it. I do not want to see her here again.

You won’t!

What is there to do but wait for everything to come crashing down in a sudden cold splendor, and remove the sand from beneath my feet.

Remembering him is like getting to know a shard of glass. I push my finger tip down gingerly into his jagged profile and draw tears; he is not whole anymore. He will never be whole again. I could sip tea at my window sill and watch the clouds roll on, but I prefer to live on the edges of his memory. I prefer to dwell in my scrapbooks and peak into his diaries, peeling back the brokenness of disappearance into the smoothness of understanding. Floating in the ether I am pricked again by the knowledge that no matter how deeply I learn of his soul, I cannot unplunge him from the river styx. And I am content to keep hurting, I am content to keep pressing my soft body into the recesses of his absence, if it will only bring me closer to his place in nothing. I am content in that.

I belong to my animals as much as they belong to me. I am no owner, and they are no beasts.

Algae bloomed on the face of the lake at summer’s height, like zits in bundles of thick and slimy green. The siren that dwelt deep in the lake’s toes could not bear the warm swampiness, it drove her mad. Not only that, but her sailor girl, her shining beacon of hope for food had wounded her in her escape. She felt rotten, her gash festered in hot white patches. No food, no beauty, no cold deep blue lake water to retreat to. All that was left for her was a walk. To find the sailor girl and give her what was coming to her.

Twilight miss me when I’m gone, bleed my shadow ‘til it’s grown.

Light don’t follow where I go, my face anew you’ll never know.

I find comfort in rotten men, with nothing to their name but their love for me. They are corpses of their former ambitions, if they had any to begin with not that I’d care, and I rest my head on their bloated bellies and dig my nails in their cracked old skin until scabfulls of pride fall off. What sour smell fills my nose oh I can’t get enough of it. They adore me you see, and I never have to worry about them running off. Their legs don’t often work, stationary fellows don’t often stray. Good of them not to, for if they ever did I’d put them deeper in the ground than even the most desperate woman would be willing to dig. I can’t help but be the romantic that I am, and what is there not to love in an utterly rotted man. It is addicting the level of devotion they provide, the sort only an abandoned man can. How sweet is the love of a loveless one, untouched and untainted in wait for me.

Even in its darkest hour, the world carries good people on it. And we must fight for them. Love is sustainable, a replenishing and revitalizing energy. Hatred ravages the wielder just as much as those it is wielded against. It can propel you, surely, but for how long? How long can you hold the fire before you, too, are turned to ash?