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‘alive’ is good enough
everyone is always
so scared
of a suicide note
but they don't think
about how
paper, and letters,
words in
pen or graphite, or
typed and printed out
typed out and
in ink,
they are all
harmless.
words are just words.
they cannot end a life.
so better to write
letter after letter -
dozens of them,
if that's what you need.
because in the end
writing a letter
or two
might just be
the one thing
that keeps you
alive
for long enough to
remember
why it is
you ~should~ be.
writing
your suicide note
might just
be what
saves you.
wash it off
I must have been young
when I learned
the proper steps
how to wash my hands
to keep clean from germs.
in pre-school theey said,
"sing your ABCs"
"Happy Birthday twice"
but it wasn't anyone's birthday,
and ABCs were boring.
i sang twinkle, twinkle
little star
how i wondered
where and why and how -
can't the universe
know better
than to punish children
who are innocent
by giving them to parents
who hurt them?
twinkle, twinkle
little star
children only go so far
little hearts and little minds
cannot handle cruelty's lies
twinkle, twinkle
little star
what would punished parents fix?
my siblings never
saw the pain
the need for staying clean
i protected still
kept them neat so
he'd not scream
they never saw him
touch my mother
i would reassure
that the noises in the
room next door
were nothing of concern
and even after everything
he let the virus grow
he'd planted so early that
I'd failed to even notice
never stood a chance
never had a moment to
recant the tales that
he told to them.
horrid deeds, feed them poison
break the things
they work to gain
break their will
manipulate, take everything
to make them change
behavior to behave your way
and all the while
lay the blame on
someone else,
talk and train their tiny brains
to hate, repeat
the things you say
play the game
dissociate the damage
from the virus, take
the keys from the ignition
put them in the hands of
the main victim
of your violence.
this is how he did it.
never *had* to buy their silence.
put a gun up to their heads
spit the hatred and the filth
tell them line by line
lies and stories that you built.
and in the end it worked.
it works, I should say.
but no one else could see it.
no one knew he hurt
her in that way but
me. so they believed the words.
Viruses are dangerous.
but people?
we're far more so.
we get power to decide
to protect or let die
and even with the former
we can doom a person's soul.
because I protected them
i didn't let them see it
how he'd hit her and beat
how he'd yell and he'd scream
i kept them in a bubble,
and I thought it made me good
as a six year old big sister
like age-six big sisters should
and instead, you wanna know?
wanna hear what happened?
with no memories of him
as bad guy, mom the victim
he hijacked the habits
he got through the firewalls
undeveloped mainframes
easily bypassed and hacked
straight into their brains,
turning perpetrator 'victim'
and innocent to 'cruel'
he brainwashed with accompanying actions, words, and tools
results forever devastating
"mom" now equals "fear"
it equals memories of
threats in harm and violence
and years of childhood trauma,
two decades each of pain
he flipped the script
made "mom" a word
synonymous with "witch."
if only it were easy
to wash our hands of sin
and our brains of the hurt
that takes control of the center
a virus in motion, growing
spreading, resistant to
treatment;
nothing to do
but manage
the symptoms
and hope
(and pray)
that one day
they will wake.
daylight robbery
why is everything you write
every line, word, and phrase
crafted oh so terribly and grimly?
don't worry yourself about
my melancholy words
and the shifts in my mood
chasing dopamine tricks, no,
I write love letters to death
at least twice a week
although, sometimes more,
see, last night I wrote three -
but the thing about letters and paper
is that they always will be
the best of two choices.
(i flirt with Death, while
you steal from the hearse.)
"hey," I hear the voice whisper,
one time I laid down
as the static in my brain grew louder
and louder
and instead of fighting the nausea
instead of fighting my brain
to pop the pills keeping me alive, or
take the chemicals into my veins
instead of measuring the dosages
and mixing liquid hydrogen bonds
flavored with grief
of a life that keeps on *changing*,
"want to be a child? never.
grow up to escape? not realistic.
athlete, soldier? stolen dream.
teacher, writer? next to scene -
scientist, researcher, even?
don't think you can pretend you didn't hope for happiness. but darling, let's be real -
dreams like these weren't made for you."
and so when the whispers stopped I realized I was crying
and yet I hadn't moved
just me, still, plugged into the earth
remove my tired veins.
please. please. I beg you. please, just let me be.
my throat and voice are raw
from choking down my screams
and i'd like to say i want to fight
it might have been true once
but i no longer have it in me
to lie
so please
let me die.
because i don't want to
fall through the cracks
of this system
the same one that put me
to live with my abuser
so that i cannot even rest
in peace
at night
all I know is fear,
and you can tell me
that I sleep
but the things that I see
at night say otherwise
and this vessel isn't one I want any more,
see I prayed my whole life to know why I was born into the place
that I was
my existence a punishment
and me and God
have beef, cause
i'm pretty sure he made
certain to create me
only as a means
of torture, because
how else could I have come out of my childhood alive
except for as I am?
broken in mind
incapable of trusting
with a body shutting down
betraying me since 14
i cannot do three more decades of this hell
(and I'm certain that it is.)
let me wake up, or sleep
I don't care which
I cant breathe
I cant breathe
let me be
I just want peace
I just want to be at peace
and I think I've earned that much
i'm ready. please, let me leave.
self destruction of the year
feel the shift, zapping
short circuits in my brain
ringing ears are flashing
pulling me between dimensions
where glass grits
between gears
gli-
gli-
gli-
gli-
glitches slash
tears into the fabric
and reality, its
fingers, the shards,
slivers of the crystalline
micro-needles stitching
stabbing
zig zag patterns
in erratic
attempt
Stop.
hold it together,
not psychotic
not physic[al]
eclectic and epileptic
look the same
sure
but one dose less
of doses better
left un-skipped
and I no longer
know fear
from
self- hatred
or neglect
and when nothing
feels real
let me be
first to say
i apologize
i didn't mean
for things to
go this way
unzip
my skin
let me back
inside
i cannot control
anxiety
but maybe I
can turn this life
to dust instead,
around me
if nothing left
to fear
at least nothing
worse here could
come than that
i forced from
fractured
moments
of clarity where if
i had known
exactly what it was
that i'd been
doing
I may have been
able to put it to
a stop. but
in the end it
falls on me
the fault
the break in
my world
plates shifted
i caused it, now
i'm sure, because
it's easier to
sew up hurt
when you know
the pain is coming
and the dust
that settles
on ashes
ive burnt
is mine alone
to choke on
no return
gotta feel something, right?
punch. keep going. again. again. again.
don't stop. don't you *ever* fucking stop. even when your body betrays you, don't you dare stop the assault, keep punching through to feel something, to feel anything, to feel the
anger.
not at them. it's not their fault, after all, that you're gullible, soft, easy to manipulate; not anyone else's fault that you're a whiny piece of shit. you won't last much longer anyway. but it's not their fault. not the world's. not anyone else's
but yours.
it's yours.
feel that rage that takes form in stinging on your skin, warm, hot blood dripping in rivulets down knuckles, lusting for the floor. might as well, at least. while you still can.
Cesar-ian
you no longer feel the pain of your wound. blood pours out, sure, the battlefield around you is fraught with shouts, orders yelled across the lines that blur in your vision, motion and stillness blending into one. and you can feel time stand still around you, you can feel something starting to shift inside your soul, in your breath, in your mind, in your bones, in your life. but you don't feel the hurt.
so it's not the pain that gets you, it's the chest crushing pressure as you begin to realize that you can no longer breathe. and you reach for a comrade, and find a lieutenant, one who tells you what he sees rather than assuaging fears as you lay there, helpless. the realization as time begins to slow that this is it, that you have been spilled open, and you're staring at yourself, guts all spilled out, organs exposed - that's what gets you. that's what does it. it's when you realize the elephant hand-standing on your chest is no elephant but simply pounds of tangled organs you cannot feel. *your* organs.
this is it. there is no return. you can never come back from that moment. you're a soldier, sure, in the Army of Caesar; you swore loyalty and meant it.
but this is not what loyalty looks like. loyalty is two way street. and you cannot win a battle where your commanding officers don't care to devise strategy that treat soldiers with respect and humanity.
so it seems to me that they should rename the procedure.
because Caesar may have been born in the same manner, but Rome's most famous general died by countless stab wounds in the Senate, and as far as I know the military man committed many cut-throat atrocities but never psychological torture of this nature.
and placing women's organs so carelessly upon their chests while they are conscious to the sensation, even if not the pain? well, that sounds much more like Caligula than Caesar, to me.
(but then again, what would I know? I'm just a sort-of-woman who studies history, living with chronic illnesses, navigating a medical system - that didn't even start researching menstrual products with blood until 2023 - with my own reproductive health issues.
it's just my Roman Empire.)
autopilot
I woke up this year. I really, truly did. I don't know how long I've been running just following the programming, going through each protocol. one must have an error, because every so often the system does get overloaded with all the files it keeps ignoring and tossing to the side. there's nowhere to put them, see, it just shoves them into a folder within a folder but eventually they reach maximum capacity and there is an
[ e r r o r ] .
and so everything stops while the system overloads, sometimes crashing other programs running, even destroying other files and projects and protocols and me? well I, the user, I have to wake up and Step In, I have to Pilot The Plane, so the speak. I have to reorganize the folders, find a new external drive. Except there isn't one, because I can't afford one, my brain is only so big, right? I don't have *that* many resources, I have to get back on task. I have a life to get back to, and quickly. this machine has things it needs to do.
so instead I set the original aside, lock it up, and redirect the protocol to a new folder entirely, present with empty inserts, ready to be filled - stuff them with the things that you don't have time to handle! shove the problems back! emotions, memories, traumas? no problem. filed away. bing bang boom. a well-"oiled" machine. and I, of course, am back on autopilot. I can go back to sleep. I, the user, can rest. again.
of course, there's always the *next* time it fails. and who knows when that will happen. the plane could crash. maybe it'll delete the protocol that holds, like, the will to *live* this time. or, say, I don't know, crash and burn on top of the job I'm in, but there's no way to know, really.
ah, well. c'est la vie.. ...isn't it?
...isn't it?...isn't it?
At least, that's certainly what I used to tell myself. But it's like I said in the beginning.
I woke up this year. At some point, I began to break down, and then all of a sudden there I was, seven months later, stripped to the wire, tubes and plugs throughout and liquids pumping into the veins of copper and iron and zinc, electricity zapping at the beating heart and brain of my being, the motherboard.
I woke up, and I was utterly destroyed. Useless. Broken. And I realized something. This was not just a time of suffering or pain. It IS not. If it were it would be an insult. No. This was, in fact, an opportunity - to rebuild my own system in a way that it flies so much easier it doesn't even *need* an autopilot.
I woke up. And the very, very first thing that I realized this year was that I never, ever wanted to sleep through it all again.
dead end: no access
usually, the shots are louder from my window. and today, I suppose that they were - one, two, three. typically there's the screech of rubber tires, one in awhile followed by glass shattering or shouts, by this time there was nothing but silence. no lights. no sirens. no whine of the cops (not that that's abnormal; fuck 20 on this block,) or EMS to follow after.
but then, something was different, today. because this was midday. not evening, no - right in the middle of the sunlight. I heard the neighbors talking when I took my walk to see the trees. I stopped to give a quick hello to a puppy, then say hi to the kids who bike up and down the dead-end street of the apartment complex.
"hey, hey! you hear? cops killed 'em!"
"What's that?"
"Shh!" (That's his sister.)
"Hey you guys go play, lemme talk to your Mama."
They say he was armed.
"You know he did not come out shooting."
"'Armed' my ass."
"Please, you hear how these gangs be poppin' off some nights. And they try and get the kids doing favors for them so young, too, now."
That's nothing new, isn't that how it's always been? Most of my students were being recruited by their own siblings and cousins for errands.
"Not the ones in this city. Ain't always been this bad, here."
"I'm just sayin', you don't know he wasn't going for it."
"Since when are you defending cops? Come on, girl, wake the hell up. Get your head outta the sand."
Everyone has a camera in their pocket nowadays. Bet you anything it's on video. If they were provoked at all, much less that much, I'd be shocked. Cause in the town where I grew up, cops shot the suicidal *white* kids at a rate of one per 36 months.
"See? She knows it."
"Alright, alright, I get it. You don't like it."
"They better bring in investigators. That's all I'm saying."
The kids' mom levels her sister with a furious look as I turn away. "You know damn well that man did nothing."
I don't bother staying for the rest of the conversation. I trudge back over to the kids, give them each a fist bump, and continue my way to the corner of the basketball court, where I sit against the outside of the fence in the shade. I can see the road, from here. Sure enough, there's no one driving on it. the traffic lights are stopped, flashing red. they've closed off the block. yellow tape. I can just catch the taillights, turned off, of three cruisers and a single fire engine. I slip my headphones on, look around my phone for a bit, searching for the playlist I need. then I close my eyes & let the voices wash over me, furious that music written in the 90s is still relevant, overwhelmed about how it is that it could have been written today, about this event exactly, and you wouldn't know the damn difference. because thirty-five years, forty years, a HUNDRED, even, has changed fucking nothing.
and at the end of the day, push or fall, shoot or pull... bullet casings, bodies, and tears alike all hit the ground just the same.