My head is only there to receive
and not to store;
I am training it.

Through very simple instructions:

like the 
destruction
of a five year
friendship.

The collection of
albums from family trips
since I was
ten;
they all have
been
lost without lamentation.


And when you're
done
with a day so good,
don't
rest your reminiscing head on a pillow.

Wait for sleep
to bat your eyes
shut
from a world
that would
eat you in the rest of your nights.


And best of all,
is the eradication
of a love
that once
was
through
disclaiming its cause.

What you
have to do
is so
brutal;
you
deny
the
love
you felt
and
you call it something
else.

Gullibility.


Barricade yourself.

Obstruct
and
destruct
every emotion that hurtles
your way;
it will
crash.
The shrapnel
will not tear you
down
your skin will not
sore
the walls are
high enough
to keep you
safe
and
sound.

Never again
will you be
bound
to a person
to a thing
to a feel-
ing.

But the saddest
part of
leading
life
dispassionately
is that
at times
you will be
lonely
and you
will
rummage
in
your head
searching for
companionship
and you will
find

nothing.

On Neruda

You asked me why Neruda shall stop loving her

                      little by little,

                      if she, 

                      little by little,

                               stopped loving him. 

We deemed poor Pablo just another casualty of unrequited love and left him to love her in the rest of his poems. 

And as you,

        little by little, 

         stopped loving me. 

I,

little by little, understood what Neruda had to say.

Loving you rendered Poetry a slow and wholly painful experience. 

Because I loved you and sometimes, 

                                     only sometimes, 

                                      you loved me too.

Why couldn't you love me always.. 

And when he wrote the saddest poem of all, 

                    that night,

                                     I could feel his pain puncture my heart

                                  and I understood that Poetry is vandalism.

Because she broke Neruda's heart and the hearts of the already broken-hearted who read his saddest lines and loved what they do not have. 

And I started to write the saddest lines myself, because that was the only way I knew of that would let me keep you. 

So I kept you in lines like:

If time were to stop

this very second

and earth did not

chase itself around

Only then will

I replace

all the yous

in my poems

and leave the Is 

to stand tall

and alone

and I would

finally

stop 

needing

you.

Just as Neruda kept her for him and you for me and

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly.
I love you because

I know no other way than

this: where I does not

exist

nor you.

You may have forgotten me but
I have not stopped looking for you
because I have not yet
stopped loving you,
little by little. 

Let me tell you the story of a girl


The first six years of her life:


She grew up knowing no one but her mommy
and daddy
and little tiny brother


Her mommy and daddy really
really loved each other.
They both brought her up
learning that each night
before you go to bed
you have to kiss both your mommy and daddy
goodnight


One day her mommy and daddy had to catch a flight
and leave her and her tiny brother with their granny
who wasn't used to kissing her own children
before they went to bed


This little girl's mother
when she was little
instead of having a mommy
to take care of her
she had a nanny
that would tuck her into bed
and give her a peck
on her little forehead


This little girl then learned
that her daddy grew up
without his own mommy
and that when he was fourteen
his mommy had to leave
because something very mean
invaded her body


Then this little girl
grew up some more
and met her very first
friend
whose mommy and daddy's life
had to come
to an early end

This little girl had a friend
who was a boy
and both their mommies
talked a lot
One day his mommy's
eye
was black
and this little boy
left his home
and to this very day
he never came back.


Now this little girl
whose parents had taught
that the world was made of everything nice
she started to doubt
that little thought
and that everyone's friends
had two parents
and love
was not
what everyone
was brought
up with.


So the little girl,
our little friend
was once good at maths
until high school algebra
dragged her into a most perplexing world
of Xs and Ys



and that was the sort of change she could handle.

Until she started to ask why

Why was everything changing so fast



This little girl kept growing
and seeing
all the good in the world
as it went by
and waved
goodbye


For years
She watched as the sky
told her that she'll never live on a cloud
and
she saw her mother scream
and her father cry
and

she had her first bad dream

and in high school she failed her 

maths test

and 

her best

friend

was in blood

and she held her hand

in an ambulance

and suddenly

everything

didn't seem very nice

when she was in a room

that was very very dark

and someone had just died

and she couldn't cry

This little girl

who wasn't little anymore 

watched the world change

and it wasn't as easy to handle

as those Xs and Ys

and she always asked why

Until one day

she got very

very angry

and smashed a plate

to the ground

and a remote control 

into her not so tiny brother's

head

and there was blood

and she laughed

and had no fucking clue who she was

at this moment

the world was no where

near nice

Let's draw this little girl
in our minds
and put hair over her head
and let's call her she
She is me.

She is me
and she used to
run and kiss her mommy
before she went to school
but now I don't tell
my mother how
much I love her
anymore

and she used to love
so much
and I
have no clue
what love feels
like to you
because to me
love used to be
this drum
that beat
against the walls of my heart
that robbed me
of sleep
at night
and now
I sleep like a baby
because love
stopped striking
and the beat
is dead
and
every night
I crawl into bed
and
whisper to the sky
and wish
that I'd be
this little
girl
one
more
time.






     

A Compilation of Things I've Been Told

I remember being a little girl in a big family. I was the only one of my age and I've been told that I was quite the extraordinary child. It still brings me pride. Now, I remember being a little girl and listening to a lot of talk from mighty big people. They told me that I was the wisest person in a room full of grown-ups and they told me that I needed to cut back on chocolate and potato chips because my belly was getting bigger.

Then I started school, my mother made sure I had a sufficient supply packed in my lunchbox for break-time and I liked those sandwiches she gave me and I really wanted to make friends. No one liked me because I spoke too much and said things that weren't necessarily true in nature, but they were rather interesting. It didn't matter anyway, because they decided to make fun of my chubby cheeks. They told me that they didn't want to be friends with me.

I grew up some more and I was always one of the smart students in our class. Our English teacher wasn't the nicest person alive, to me at least, I took it that she didn't fancy me much because, to her, I was the second smartest girl in class. One time, I was engaging in friendly side-talk with the smartest girl in class and the teacher caught us. She looked at me and told me that she was extremely disappointed. I really hated her.

By the end of that scholastic year, I was in four plays that were to be performed in front of all our parents. My friend's mother walked up to me and said, "Now we know where you'll be in twenty years."

Today, I am a Theatre student.

More time passed and every family gathering was a four-hour medley of, "you'll be something big one day," and "you're a pretty girl but you'll be prettier if you just shed twenty pounds off."

I've only gained weight.

Then I turned eighteen and remembered all the times my grandmother told me she loved me and I started wondering why someone would say something they don't mean, so I just stopped telling her that I love her back.

It really hit me when I turned nineteen and a boy told me that I feel strongly about all the wrong things. He said it as if feeling strongly is a vice that I would be better off without then he smiled at me and I felt like a little girl again and he was a mighty big person.

I felt strongly about him.

Now, I've been told a number of things and some of which I cannot mention here because someone will read them and they'll either call me to apologize or elucidate and I've heard enough.

I don't have much to say now, but I remember being told that I'm good with endings; writing them.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'll have to end this on a rusty note.

Barcelona

She's big. The smaller parts of her are my favourite. I got lost in them several times and even though I've been there several times before I still get lost because somehow she leads me through her wide and narrow and big and small parts and every part. She's big and she shows me around every bit of her and when you think you know her so well, so well, she brings you to a new part that is as charming as the rest of her. She's infinite; she never rests; never sleeps; never stops. She is always.
At night, she dances and sings, and it's almost as if you are caught on camera and the soundtrack's there, it's always there and you have no idea how she does it. When she dances, oh dear god, it is beautiful and everyone around her dances along and sings along and you are caught in the magnificence of it all; of her.
It's amazing how she can make you feel there; unconstrained and unrestrained and light on your feet and happy. She makes you happy. She makes me genuinely happy; just being with her.
I like her when we wake up together and rise and shine, here's a new day with her; we can go to the beach, we can walk in the street, we can sit and watch people cross to the other side and wish we were them.
She's helped me find something; an untamed passion. I feel a bundle of things when I am with her, I cannot describe it. When I move in her she moves in me and I forget that there exists the rest of the world.
We met in 1995, and I was born in 1996. I've seen her rain in August and drown in November, I've seen her hot in July and I've seen her every month of the year and I love her in all the ways she can be.

I sat on a table of
old friends

and old conversation and

five years ago

I am not today who

I was

Five years ago.

But the conversation

five years old

without a speck of

difference

and I 

stained 

and 

tainted

by a hundred million

specks 

of it.

The conversation

took me

five years back 

and it was horrid

and scary
and all too familiar.

It reminded me

of my

failure 

in Love

and 

Friendship.

Because 

I

would have 

laughed

would have

spoken

should have

fallen in

Love

by now. 

I would have laughed 

would have talked

would have

conversed 

And caught the words 

in 

and tossed them

Out.

And

back

and forth. 

But today

one word slipped.

And went the other.

Followed by 

another.

And I remained

Quiet.

Dear Stranger and Friend,

Dearest Reader, I find it an obligation asked of me to report to you in moments of strong feeling and this is fortunately and unfortunately one of these moments. I must speak to you about my weathering body. I must speak to you about my nightmares. I must speak to you about my lack of feeling and you must help me. Do not make fun of my words, because they are my only weapon and they will help me fight; had it not been for them and you, my friend, I would have given up. 

It started in the middle of the night when I had been lost in a dream and could not find my way home—the first of a series of corresponding nightmares that would follow the nights ahead—I could not find home and home was not there so I stood alone and felt my body push against the ground in the most painful way and it sank into and through the ground until I could only see the remainder of me: the fidgeting tip of my index finger trying to prove that I am. 

I am going to get through this. 

Since then I would wake up to days that would end in nights of the same homeless terror. 

I might have mentioned it once or twice before that I seldom cry because of some absurd reason that I have yet to find out. Nevertheless I have cried once not so long ago and a tear made its way down my face and through the crack that separates my lips and it tasted salty and not mine. I cried some more and licked the drops off my lips just to render them familiar, otherwise I would be excruciatingly confused at the moment.

Stranger, Friend, Reader, bear with me and be a good example because I cannot bear the company of those I love anymore and I do not know why. I crave and care for the agonizing thoughts of the night that would wait until the first sight of light to leave and return when the lights come off. 

Should I not sleep then? 

Should I leave the lights on?

I catch myself yelling at the faces of those I care for, for reasons unknown to my mind. 

I catch myself throwing away love for reasons unknown to my heart. 

Dear Stranger,

I do not recognize my mind, I do not recognize my heart.

The only thing I recognize at this exact moment is my writing because the repetition is familiar.

I have cried for help here before.

But not this desperately.


Dear Stranger, 

Please.

One Heart

Be it that one heart is burdened in sleep

In time of peace, one heart finds himself without peace

On that occasion: Where must one heart be comforted? 

Be it that one heart is burdened in prayer

In time of need, one heart kneels and kneels and kneels

On that occasion: When must one heart be comforted? 

Be it that one heart is burdened in love

In time of weakness, one heart remains blighted

On that occasion: How can one heart be comforted?

But one heart is weary and sleepy and sad

So one heart finds a hiding place 

Stays there forever 

Lest he burden another heart

But it appears to be that one heart is burdened always. 

And dear, dear reader,

In the end it is a sad fact that

One heart discovers the saddest 

And most uncomfortable burden of all

And it is that one heart is burdened
Most

Whilst
Alone.

You're a person who enjoys their own privacy.

I get that.  

Still, I'd argue with you about how you give it all away when you slowly, very slowly, turn your head to the entrance and watch people as they walk in and out.. in and out. Hey, I'm talking to you. 

When your forefingers, and only your forefingers, cling to the ends of your shorts when you stand. You have long arms and your feet: they're always crossed as if nature's constantly calling and you look so anxious it drives me anxious. 

You also gulp down a shot of air mid-speech; you do that a lot. You wouldn't be you if you don't do it.

And your neck stretches at times and it looks like you want to get rid of your body, because you stretch it upwards and your lips contract inwards and in a second your head and neck will break free and your body will be left all alone. I know that this is an ugly way to describe it but it seems like that's what you really want to do.

And sometimes, sometimes you walk like a vertical plank of wood with feet. Sometimes, not always. And I contemplate asking you if you're trying to balance an invisible stack of books on your head. But I keep quiet because you wouldn't like me asking. 

And one thing you always do is look at me. You look at me when you really should be addressing the person who asked you the question. You're shy.

When you're happy you skip, you move in flying leaps. 

And when I ask you how you're doing, you say, "What's up with you?"

So I stopped asking you how you're doing and I make it my prime concern to figure you out through your skips and obvious inattention and your invisible books and unruly neck. 

You can't call it a breach of privacy if I don't tell you that I notice it all.

But I saw that.

I saw it. I see it all.

And if you don't mind

I would really like to see more.

Abusing Tea Biscuits at 00:22 AM

You and I have been feeling the same shit. But at different times. Or at the same time maybe, you never know. OK, you want to know the truth? I have no idea what I'm doing here, I just haven't been able to write in a while, mainly because I've had a good chunk of my time occupied. I've been distracted and now I'm not. Or maybe I'm less distracted than I had been before- All I know is that now I can think. But it's not doing me good. You know. I haven't cried in a while, I don't exactly know whether I haven't cried longer than I haven't written or it is that I haven't written longer than I haven't cried. Well, one thing's for sure, I haven't done either one. I also haven't loved in a while, Silly me, always bragging the L word into the fiasco. Why am I being honest with you? I don't even know you. You don't know me. To be honest, you are comfortable to talk to. You don't say much. We were both babies before, right? At some point. Why can't we remember the events of that point? Did we have fun? Did we cry a lot? Maybe I cried so much when I was a baby up until four or five months ago that all my tears have dried up and I will never ever ever ever ever cry again? I'll be the girl who never cried again. I just ate my twentieth biscuit. I ate 20 biscuits from the instant I started writing this until now. From You till now. Twenty fucking biscuits.

Twenty-one.

Tea biscuits.

I'm not original. Ho can I be original? Is it just luck? Do I need to get lucky? Or is it that I need to be cocky? I know, I just need an incredibly unoriginal idea and just be incredibly cocky about it. I thought I had everything planned. I really did. And I've never been lost, I haven't went searching for myself, I think I know who I am and what I want to be. You've been lost, haven't you? I know it's difficult and challenging but I just- I just got lucky. This can be one confusing monologue acted out on stage. I'll print this in a book on a series of one-act plays. Cocky.

Something's not right. This is very un-pretty, It is. I was hoping I'd start this and halfway through I'd start stuffing it with pretty words and I'll end up with a well-written piece of shit but now it's all just a piece of shit in it written my shit. Cussing in relieving as fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.


Twenty-three.

Fuck.

Something's wrong.

















































Thirty.

The Poetry Whore

1

It was all u-u-u unexpectedly exotic. You don’t climb down your mother’s womb with the intention of leading a life of whores and art and alcohol, it just hap-p-pens to you. An exotic life happens to you. It hits you. Art and whores and alcohol hit you.

Violetta was a downright whore - in the literal sense. She worked at a place called Prostíbulo Poético; it was a brothel for the intellectuals of the raving Spanish city. The brothel of the Barcelonan art scene; packed with ridiculously-dressed painters; ostentatious women with extraordinarily huge breasts and kinky hats. The tables were occupied by mad old men and their mad old whiskey and their mad hoarse laughs, ricocheting off every corner of the smoke-filled, dimly-lit niterie; the corners were ornamented with priceless gothic whores, decently dressed for their vocation; and in one sacred corner, there stood Violetta, my Violetta.

It was a place for the miserable and astray. It was a place where the lonely would resort to in time of d-desperation.

 Un-inspiration.

Cathartic liberation.        

Prostíbulo Poético was located in the bohemian district of Gràcia. You had to climb down a worn-out set of damp, wooden stairs to make it to the disheartening cabaret. The entire space was occupied by lustrous red and yellow, yellow and r-r-red. Everything screamed sounds and colours and everything was brilliantly seizure-inducing. In Prostíbulo Poético you were allowed, for a fair fee of twenty-five euros, a private poetry reading with the whore of your choice.

Now, accompany me in imagining all the gruesomely dirty things that could- and would -take place inside one of Prostíbulo Poético’s private rooms were I to ever join my Violetta in poetic secrecy. Imagine all the seductive words I would ask her to recite; all the tempting, enticing, intensely lecherous, and unacceptably perverted prose she would read aloud to me and only me.  

My Violetta, my beautiful Violetta, was a Poetry whore.

2

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Thump...

I – I – I was too young.

I started stuttering at the age of five; that was when my sister died. Ten years my senior, banging at the locked door of a bathroom, she was by herself; our parents got us used to being by ourselves most of the time. I stood at the other side of the door, quiet and helpless – a highly competent five year-old ­– while she screamed for help.

They later informed me that it was her heart’s fault; her heart hurt her and then it killed her.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Thump...

I thought we were playing a game.

I was too young to have a dead sister.

3

My parents weren’t around. It was just me.

It was just me and Bukowski, Salinger, Kundera, Neruda – sometimes Plath – and a pack of cigarettes at eleven. I started smoking at a young age because I liked the burning sensation each cigarette brought along. My throat burned, my lungs burned, I burned. With each smoke I felt like my entire existence slowly and gently disintegrate; a hundred more packs and soon I will be nothing.

I don’t blame my parents for not being there; they’d already lost one kid they didn’t care for much, I was too hostile for my age anyway. They would find me in my room reading instead of playing with the other kids outside, they didn’t do anything about it, they just left me there. I liked them for giving me my privacy.

I was too young to be left alone.

4

I grabbed my first p- p- p- paintbrush when I was sixteen and three months old. By that time I had read all the books that seemed interesting enough to me and I didn’t want to read anymore. Bukowski was morbidly miserable, Salinger talked too much, Plath had only one book published, Kundera talked about sex a lot and I had no one to love and Neruda made me want to love and Kundera, well, he made me want to make love. So I resorted to canvases and paintbrushes; I had the talent, I was good at painting, I just didn’t know what to paint.

5

At eighteen I moved out of my parents’ place and went to study in Spain; the same land where Picasso and Dali were brought up. I managed to find a good Art school in the middle of Barcelona, the city of everything. I painted fruits and flowers and sketched people while walking down the street. Even so it was still inadequate; I was still not good enough. I had reached a point where I was willing to shed someone’s blood for artistic inspiration; everything and everyone existed but I was unable to find the right subject. Everything inside me was empty and motionless and I was dying to wreak havoc inside my poor, wasted body, let it fall to bits then spit the fragments out onto the canvas. Only then, would it be my precious canvas of sacrifice, and I would finally want to exist.

I was already nineteen when I found out that pain is the soul and Art is the body. That pain is God’s answer to life and Art is the manifestation of it.

Art dwells in pain, pain dwells in us; therefore, we dwell in Art.

I was in too much pain already. Cutting and suicide were not the answer. I had never been in love, that caused enough pain altogether.  

6

One night I visited a studio apartment right off Urquinaona square, it was about five blocks from where I lived. A classmate of mine from Art school had decided to start a weekly get-together for his artist friends. That night – to my unfortunate, sexless luck –he decided to have us spend two hours working on life drawing. That’s when you have a perpetually motionless human- stark naked in this event- posing for you, their ever so artistic master, to depict their every feature and every contour on paper.

That was the first time I laid eyes on my beautiful Violetta.

My Violetta’s collarbones were one of God’s m-m-most impeccable works; the pair of them protruding beneath flesh fabricated by nonexistent entities, entities that are capable of unearthly perfection. She had one hand laid over the side of a long and seamless neck, while the other was gently placed on one of her v-v-very, very, very gentle breasts, and her nipples, mi Dios! Superbly sketched and shaded and firm. She had previously pierced her navel and I was unlucky to have never been there with her before - since the beginning of my existence and hers and the world’s. Her pubic area was not what had necessarily aroused every iota of my being. To be quite honest, it was her nose; a silken slope of beauty, with a tip that would drive Aphrodite jealous. My Violetta’s hair ran down her spine and slept over her breasts and caressed the corner of her lips and at this very moment, I could not breathe.

We started sketching.

Everyone in the room was sketching Violetta, but I was sketching my Violetta.  

7

On a day of bitterly cold rain and self-condemnation I visited Prostíbulo Poético’s cabaret in an idle attempt to finally unbosom myself to the agonizing beauty that is my Violetta. And only heaven could witness the degree to which I rue the day I spent twenty-five euros for privacy with my only. For there she was right in front of me, in all her aesthetic glory, undressing her mind and soul to a stranger who has seen her body bare before – without the service of her memory of course. But even at that moment of unsurpassed nudity – in all its senses – she was still unapproachable, I was still unfamiliar; a regular customer in her world of poetry and whoring.     

But there she was and that was enough for the time being.

There she was, reciting the verses of Lord Byron’s When We Two Parted. At my request, Violetta’s tongue began to sermonize:

When we two parted 
In silence and tears…

To harmonize…

Half broken-hearted 
To sever for years…

My mind, agonized… 

Pale grew thy cheek and cold, 
Colder thy kiss…

The hem of her lips…

Truly that hour foretold 
Sorrow to this.

The untimely candlelight…

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—

Shadowing the hollow of her breasts…

It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.

Her breasts…

Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken, 

Violetta…

And share in its shame.

Violetta.

They name thee before me, 
A knell to mine ear;

Violetta…

A shudder comes o’er me--
Why wert thou so dear?

They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well--
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met--
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?--
With silence and tears.

8

Yes, that night Violetta and I made love in a room in Prostíbulo Poético’s cabaret, she did not know it at the moment nor did I, but later that night after I had departed from the gloom-ridden space where all poetry whores reside, I enjoyed the company of my aloneness and had known that I had made love to my Violetta at last. Yes, she may have screamed a plentiful of times; she may have fidgeted and howled and was concerned about the eerie fact that a stranger like me is capable of such fervent love-making to a beautiful stranger like her, but she was no stranger to me.

I have spent years studying Violetta’s steps as she swayed on Prostíbulo Poético’s stage, I have drawn her face more times than God could count, I have practiced making love to her every night.

I may have been a stranger to Violetta but dear Violetta was no stranger to me.

Yes, that night dear Violetta and I made love.

She did not know it at the moment.

Later that night, tinted in delicate blood, after I had departed from the gloom-ridden space where one poetry whore will no longer reside, one last time, I enjoyed the company of my aloneness knowing that I would forever miss Violetta. 

THE END

Hey.

So, last night I had a dream of everyone I ever loved and they all loved me back again. Last night. They all loved me back at the same time. Imagine how depressing it is to wake up to your long-accustomed lonely morning after a dream like that haha. You were there by the way. Yeah, you were there for a bit. Maybe I'd missed you before I slid to sleep. Maybe, I don't know. It was an exhausting night, last night. I'm reassured, though, that at this very moment in time I don't {miss you}. And I trust my guts when they're not submerged in waves of blinding infatuation. They've loved before and have never lied to me. Maybe my guts will pester me one more time when I see you for the first time after I had loved you for the last time and waves of love will crash against their walls and my heart will join them in a grand fall. But they will eventually hit the ground and dry out and I will not love you again. You know, I've been telling people about you because I've been finding myself engrossed in warm conversations with people I've just become closely acquainted with and then they start venting about their past loves and how they can no longer love the same and I remember you and and I listen to them and I remember you and I remember you and I I.. remember you. It is an ever so gentle comfort knowing that you do not love alone, that yours is not the only heart that wanders astray. How have you been lately? Are you OK? (God, I hope not.) The thing is that everyone, EVERYONE, every single guy I have ever had a slight jerk of affection towards, they were ALL there and I woke up and out of that disorderly mess of romantic retrospect remembering only you. I've always hated you Never, really. It's not that I miss you it's that I can't find anything else to feel about. It's a good thing I don't have your phone number because I know I would send you this at night after I'd missed you just enough to write it.  

I've got my head underwater
and my torso
mid-air,
knee-deep in a world
where minutes make no sense
and Physics
cannot discern the structure of atoms;
cannot determine the speed of light;
cannot expound the forces of magnetism;
where gravity does not pull you down
but instead, lets you     o      e
                                             h    v    
                                                            r.
                                                 

In a world where everything defies
all earthly conventions,
where nothing is a natural cause
and everything is caused by you.
In a world where you are--
you are nature.


I've got my head underwater
and my torso
mid-air
in a world where people
cannot speak.
Where words cannot exist
because being scolded
for throwing up too many times,
for falling in love with too many guys,
for the scars on your colored skin,
because here,
being scolded for that is fair
being scolded for that is allowed
being scolded for all of that is
not
a sin.

I am buried,
underwater,
I can breathe,
underwater.
I'm in a world
of no spatial dimensions.
Where Earth does not break down to
longitude, latitude, and altitude.
Where Earth breaks down to nothing,
independent of a guilt-ridden conscience
and unceasing helplessness.
Where you and the Universe exist
alone.
Where I and the Universe exist
alone
at the same time.

I am underwater,
breathing,
alone.
In a world where
people
do not exist.

I am underwater,
where I can safely
love,
live
without being scolded.

Theater and Leaving People Behind

I've never been the type to stick around for too long. I'm constantly leaving places; 

I leave places behind and I leave the people in these places behind. 

Heck! I even leave the person I am in these places behind. I just don't stick 

around because when I stick around too long I start adapting too much to the people around that - and I kid you not - we start looking, speaking, walking, feeling, everything alike. 

A fucking mess.  

It's like every ounce of your being is gradually vaporizing to mingle with their being until you just stop being altogether and start transforming into the most irritating, disappointing, absolutely blandest version of yourself or them, you can't even figure out who or what you're becoming!

A fucking mess. 

So, I just leave. 

and leave.

and 

leave. 

I wasn't born with the desire to let go of people because I've slipped out of my mother's womb with the hostile urge to live alone. On the contrary, I hate being by myself. I just do it, deliberately, out of spite. 

I've been left before. 

A number of times too! So, now it's my turn to leave. 

In theater, I've been a bitch; an old woman; a doctor; an old woman again; in love; hated. I was called Rebecca; Alma; Gwendolyn; Emma; Betty. I was everyone and everything because I can, because I'm allowed to. I spent weeks and weeks and weeks learning lines and having these lines spend nights tucked beneath my tongue that I would walk around and these words, these words that have absolutely nothing to do with me, would walk around with me and become a part of me, and me them. I would convince myself that I was, in fact, hopelessly and helplessly in love with John and Bore and Ernest. I prepped myself for getting hanged every night for six nights in a row. I lived as these people, with these people, to bring life to these people for a day, three, eight, sixty. 

And then I would leave.

It would all be over and I would leave Alma and John to never make love.

I would let go of Rebecca as she dies.

I would take off Emma's lab coat.

And they would all cease to exist.

And I would cease to hold on to them.

Or to anyone else for that matter.