mean to me

so much. you do. it does.

my mum bought me an Afghan coat for no reason. she went away on a trip and when she got home, she pulled it out of a brown paper bag almost as soon as she had said hello. i put it on straight away. i’m going to wear it tomorrow. i turn 19 in September. the little girl in me is getting smaller and i forget to tuck her in. my mum still comes in before i go to sleep to say sweet dreams. she went away on a trip and i secretly wore her clothes and use her face creams and spray the perfume she only wears when she’s going out for the night. i borrow her sweaters and scarves and socks sometimes. they all fit me now. i feel like i have to soak up or bask in or clutch at my youth as it leaves me. i want to still be a little girl making potions out of things i find outside, letting beetles walk over my hands. i don’t spray my garden with bug spray, how much can bugs eat? not enough to bother me.

i’ve been afraid to die with garlic corners under my fingernails and arthritis in my wrists. with sticky cheeks from onion tears instead of the tragedy i’ve been craving. i’m still terrified of being ordinary, its also all that i want. i’m scared of being full grown. i am scared of wasting away into mediocrity, of living a life i didn’t plan to.

kirby and i catch the train together sometimes. or have to drive somewhere we play the ‘our-house’ game. see a house or some land or a patch of sun and one of us will turn to the other, tug at a sleeve or tap a shoulder and point and say ‘our house’. there could be 15 ‘ourhouses’ on the way. sometimes we argue about which ‘ourhouse’ would be the best one. its such a stupid, immature thing to do but what it stands for is that i can picture us anywhere. i can picture us at any time. i want to be weathered and wrinkled with you. i want to bear the brunt. if i could live in between places i would. i think i’ve written about that before, always on my way to see someone, or playing car games leaning on an arm. pretending to be asleep to see if he will stroke my hair even if he knows i can’t feel it. i am so sick and writhing with my love for him i don’t know what to do with it all. like trying to hide milk in my pockets, or contain some uncontainable thing. i still humiliate myself with a coat on the doorframe. i still mean ‘everything’ when i say ‘nothing’. god i’ve tried to be gentle and quiet and sweet but i am sickly! i am swaying and rocking and i still haven’t found my balance here on this ship. i am fire for him. i study his face and i write things that have already been written the words that come out of me make no sense like a toddler dressing itself or a coat that just doesn’t fit right. i tell him that i wish i was his skin so i could hold all of him at once. recite him over my grace and watch as it revives me. speak him to the sea and listen to it sing back to you. we are two mirrors reflecting each other over and over, '“whatever you see in me is just you again”. i have waited for it to settle. it will not settle. i fall in love with you again every day. you give soul to my universe, make me curious for space. we talk about our children as if we already have them. i think about are hardened and creased hands, bowed and caved and fit together like two parts of the same thing. he lays his head on my chest and i sob over him and rock him and run my fingers the direction his hair grows. its so intense and i am so insane. i want to bleed Infront of you. i want to perform surgeries or return to my most primal self and bear down and crawl and growl and scathe and hunt.

but i can get mean when i’m frustrated and i don’t know how god can forgive me sometimes because he knows my misguided intentions, he knows how ruled by the moons phases i am 9everything must be fractured and return home again). i take the forest fire with wit and fist and i wish i was kinder in my moments of battle ( i am not unkind). i feel this rage in my chest and i swallow it or stroke it but it comes crawling and lashing with a forced rationality. it feels good to throw things into an empty space. it feels good to stay stagnant as the world goes vertigo around you, the whips and scorns of my hair being the only evidence of the movement. i eat my papas pocket watch to try and learn some patience. i sit with a tied horse ( i too must learn to stand). i hobble train myself so i don’t run and tear my flesh off my shins when i am caught in wire or bramble, i have this enormous and selfish appetite for life, i then struggle to accept when i have gained weight. i suck the marrow out of it. i can feel a thumping like a living thing. i don’t welcome the tug of relent. i drink lighter fluid to keep the flame in me, i pick up dead bugs i won’t let beauty be wasted. i recite my holy Maries over each blade of grass.

and i want to be married by you.

i want to sit across from clients and talk about mortality and grief and joy and pride and guilt. i want to get good grades. i want to read books. i want to eat summer stone fruits and let them drip down my chin and through my fingers.

i have such a clear image of my life.

i have a clear image of my life with you and its changing and transforming and melting and solidifying with all these possibilities and it’s something out of an impressionists fingertips or an optimistic surrealists fever dream.