Nero

I want nothing more than to cause you pain.

I hope every time you see me, you wince.

I hope it's excruciating.

Pinprick after pinprick after pinprick, until you have bled out every facet of your identity that once endeared you to me.

Let's be friends now.

Make sure I'm in your life.

Because my tongue feels like a knife and I'm carrying it between my teeth like an assassin that's coming in the night.

And then I'll fiddle.

Just call me Nero.

I want to dance in your burning ruins.

I want to confuse you.

I want you to doubt yourself, your actions, your worth.

I want you to hurt.

And now I've got the tools to make it so.

Stand back, I'm burning some bridges.

Or better yet, come closer.

Martha

Practicing Pope-like rhyming couplets to describe someone.

"Martha"

She stands by herself in a great white room,

Clothed in a shroud of melancholy gloom,

Eyes fixed like an eagle with easy prey

On a table of treats on bright display.

Éclairs, cookies and sponge cakes soaked in cream,

She approaches as in a daze, or dream.

Her slender fingers graze sweet after sweet,

Caressing, touching, not daring to eat.

She chooses a cake with trembling hand,

The temptation much too much to withstand.

But there are so many options to choose,

Afraid she won’t like it, afraid she might lose

Her appetite, so she spits out the cake

And throws it away, there’s too much at stake

To choose just one, a decision too great

To fathom now, she’s becoming irate.

The table is overturned with a bang,

The cakes and the candy might as well hang.

She falls in a huff, devoid of her spread,

Her once shining world is now full of dread.

By herself in the room, there’s a scream like a squall;

She wanted everything, but has nothing at all. 

Mirrors

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

When I was sixteen I used to stare at myself in my bathroom mirror and imagine cutting off long slices of extraneous flesh and fat
Wrapping them up in butcher paper and selling them to French chefs to fry in clarified butter and oil
I'd have to cauterize the wounds with a hot iron but they would leave my belly and limbs flat as a chopping block

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

Real women have curves
But how can that be true when you are realer than anyone I've ever known
Acute angles and edges softened only by the bangs skimming over your narrowed eyes like a satisfied feline
And when you stand beside me and I breathe in, I cannot deny your reality
You're like some fragrant vanilla-scented ghost come to haunt my waking hours
You linger on my skin the way you do in my mind

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

Something repulsive
A monster
A creature so horrific that it evokes such a visceral response as vomiting up brunch, even though that pumpkin bread was the best you'd ever had
With the taste of fall and self-loathing on your tongue, you hide from mirrors because they tell you the prettiest and the cruelest lies you can't help but believe

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

If I could sit beside you every minute of every day and tame your fear of mirrors, I would
We could master them together, brown and hazel eyes glaring into the void and silencing the malicious whispers that live inside your head
You'd see yourself as I see you, as we all see you, a creature so wonderful and rare and perfect as to be kept safe, and whole, and near to us
Not alone with clammy hands and toilet bowls and noxious fumes
Hating yourself for getting to this point, when you had done nothing wrong, nothing to deserve the punishment you inflict on yourself for the crimes you attribute to your own weakness
Don't be a martyr for your hate
Please

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

tracy/hepburn

I need to hear the tone in your voice when you tell me to go away. Will the notes increase in volume and pitch with a rush of emotion, or will it bottom out as if I should already know you want me to go away and telling me is just an afterthought, a low rumble of a post script.

In the words of Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in that grand old Southern classic: frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

I don’t care whether you’re enraged or couldn’t give a flying fuck.

But I need to hear it.

I need to hear something.

I wish I could record your voice saying every possible sound in this English language and then some nonsense words for when I’m feeling silly.

I’d hook you up to a computer and have a bot that would respond to my compliments in questions with over 300 canned-phrases in exactly your tone of voice but not quite. The syllables would fit together awkwardly and amusingly and it probably wouldn’t be enough, but it would tide me over for awhile, like reaching elbow-deep in the cookie jar and finding only oatmeal raisin or ginger snaps. Basically a let-down, but fuck, at least it’s got sugar in it right?

Right?

Oh, to be a leading man.

I’ve come to the realization that I will never be a leading lady.

Too tall.

Too fat.

Voice too low.

To never be an ingénue is not the worst fate in the world, I have decided.

But if I was Gable, I would know what to do. I would handle you with mild, distanced disdain.

Calm, cool, collected.

Cliché.

But if you clapped your hands three times and spun around counterclockwise and cast your eyes my way at exactly 3:39 in the afternoon on an alternate Tuesday you would see the passion smoldering behind my perfect dark eyes.

If you’re lucky.

You would be Vivienne Leigh, railing against me, cursing my lack of emotion, beating your fists against my barrel chest (ha!) and crying bitter, pretty tears into my frustratingly comforting arms.

You’d be such a spunky heroine: now you could be an ingénue if you really wanted, I have no doubt.

But then you wouldn’t need me.

Not that you do now, I suppose.

You’re wildly independent.

I envy you that.

I admire it.

I suppose that’s why I prefer to imagine you as characters from black and white movies—even the plucky ones needed someone to look after them.

You could be the Leigh to my Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire—except in our version I leave Stella because my voice is raw and sore from sounding her name into the night and I’ve had enough of her ripping my wife-beaters in fits of passion. We run away together. You tame my brutish ways and I save you from yourself.

Again, you don’t need saving. I know this. It’s frustrating.

I want to be there for you, but I don’t know where there is.

I guess in the end I would settle to be the Tracy to your Hepburn.

Me, the gentle giant, blustering about trying to tell you what to do

how it’s all for your own good—

and I know better—

and it’s because I care about you

and I don’t want you hurt—

And each time you, the strikingly beautiful yet capable brunette, cut me off with a sarcastic diatribe and pat me on the head.

I’ll smile sheepishly, awkwardly loveable. You’ll get all the one-liners.

Doesn’t that sound appealing?

alla has hemligheter

Sometimes it's important to remember painful things.

remember how it felt
remember the dizziness
the clumsiness
remember your heart beating out of your chest
remembering staggering to the bathroom, trying to make yourself throw up
but you couldn't
thinking: "the one day chase ducket food doesn't make me nasueous?"
remember the unbearable heat
remember knowing several correct responses to this situation but instead lying down in bed
because everything else took too much effort
remember feeling like it was right
but wrong
remember lying in a bed and laughing maniacally when the head of counseling introduces herself
thinking: "you're a little late, aren't you?"
remember needles
and IVs
and more needles
remember the sticky sweet, bitter taste of charcoal as you suck it through a straw like it's a vanilla milkshake
thinking: "couldn't someone create something beautiful with this instead?"
but it serves its purpose, keeping the poison from spreading to your organs
remember being escorted to the bathroom and looking at your reflection in the mirror
head freshly shaved, grimaced lips stained black
thinking: "when did I turn into a zombie?"
remember trying desperately to slow your heartbeat
analyzing every single minuscule change in the machines connected to you
even though none of the numbers made sense
they just made you feel like a robot
remember refusing to sleep despite the oppressing fatigue
because you know as soon as your eyes close they would shove a tube down your throat
and you would wake alone
and afraid
like the dog Kim had to put down on Keeping Up With The Kardashians
because it was all the nurses watched.

the land of misfit connections

how many of the missed connections are ever found?

do they have missed missed connections?

that must be a sad place

like the land of misfit toys in the Rudolph TV special we all watched as kids

love (or like) is surprising

you can crush and lust and lust and crush over someone for so long

and then SMACK IN THE FACE WITH A MOUTH you're head over heels over someone else

you're living in the state of subjectivity

place of possibilities

it's a mystical, bipolar land

one minute you're basking in the sun and what may come

and the next you're being hailed upon by homing missiles of self-doubt and self-hatred that know just where your weak points are, poking and prodding and breaking the thick skin you've spent so long building up to this moment but they're hurting you where the cuts won't heal so easily and you have to google the word missiles to make sure you're spelling it correctly

it's going to take more than a little neosporin and a bandaid to fix you up

more than Dr. House on one of his good days

and don't even get me started on the spelling

Schiele, Courbet, Pollock and Rubens

You're not what I usually go for--

More of an Egon Schiele than a Courbet.

Idealized, but not realized, I implore

You to see yourself through my eyes one day.

In my eyes you are a goddess, a muse;

Dulcinea, admired from afar.

Lines and curves like a Pollock, if you choose

I would duel windmills and berate the stars.

Rubens' figures have been my preference,

Bug curvy hips and breasts; zaftig, but strong.

But to your slim form, I show deference.

Wherever you are is wherever I belong.

You may be like Don Quixote and art,

But I refuse to end this rhyme with heart.

Which you've stolen from me, by the way. So please remember that you're a gorgeous lady and not an emaciated child. If you lose 20 pounds, you will disappear and I am terrible at hide and seek.

No, really.