◊
…and I think I’m dying.
I think I’m trying to kill myself with my own memories—with words. I opened the floodgates on my nastiest sewers and now I’m drowning. I’m drowning in thirty-seven years of my own piss and shit and vomit. Then another flood gate opens and I swallow mouthfuls of other people’s piss and shit and vomit. It’s endless. I’m losing my breath.
I remember another beating every day. I remember being hit with belts. I remember being hit with metal colander spoons. I had welts on my leg for weeks. I remember being hit in the head with a fork.
The blood was spraying from my head in spurts. I remember.
I remember. My muscles convulse with fear. I remember. I’m paralyzed. I’m screaming. I remember it all. I feel the beatings again and start weeping. My muscles are nauseous; emotion is spattered on all of my walls.
Its finally coming out. The pain and the fear and the rage—all of it is coming up at once. It’s disgusting.
Lara, Dawn, Rae, anyone, please grab me. I’m sinking. I can’t tread though this muck much longer. I’m so fucking exhausted.
I think I’m dying of my own poison.
◊
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
I tell you: one must have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.
Dumas said:
“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.”