the end of the world (is yours)

Maybe someone u thought was your friend hurt you deep, and you thought you’d go home and take the drugs that ease your hurt. But instead, you go to the end of the world and get naked on the picnic table where you shared intimate moments with your lover a few days before they died.

Glaring under the horn of the Natchez riverboat wheels, that offensive echo of the calliope bouncing off the mississippi; strangers approaching, then retreating.

I lay naked breathing out my anger, my mace switched open and held in my fingers. I am not afraid, I am ready, I am free. How many years to get all three?

Detering the curious erections half-formed, softened by my face. Is it the lines in my face or the dark in my eyes that deter you?  Is it that I chose to be free, I chose to roll my eyes at the imposition of fears, your control. Non-binary, not a femme. 32 AA cup iow, i need nothing. Stop coming for my perky nipples, stop coming for my tiny body. I’m strong and, worse, I’m too broken to feel fear.

This is the place my lover sucked my toes in mid-afternoon 3 days before they died, where we moaned so loud half nude on the picnic table sun that we scared would-be approachers away. We made the place ours with just our carnal pleasure.

I took your photo but it didn’t capture how beautiful you were to me. That golden light.

Now it’s me alone but your bravery is with me. Thank you for giving me the courage, the knowledge of nothing mattering and with it the freedom and with it the world.

you motherfucker i loved you.

 

 

a faint pink line

last night was unexpectedly difficult bc i took a pregnancy test and it was positive. this was really unexpected as i got my period a week after robert died. i started to think of possibly having their baby and actually felt good about the idea. i can direct my energy and attention to another being and, i can have a part of robert in the world. i imagined telling their family and being a part of their world too. i dreamt of it.

but this morning a digital test said negative and i bled a little. K says it might be signs of a miscarriage. it’s so confusing bc i’ve never wanted to have a child like this. but yeah, the thought of having theirs filled me with hope and joy. but i didn’t realize i as feeling that way until i read the digital test, saw the blood in the water. i felt suddenly even more alone.

i have to get out of this city. i have to move on. at this point it feels really hard to do that. impossible in a lot of ways. but i need to live in a place where people actually stay. also though, maybe i need to travel while i can. i hate traveling but i need to get out of my comfort zone. i know i need that. i say this covered in lush blankets and heating pad, 4 xans deep. but wow. yeah.

 

 

sunday

wondering if you are good enough gets very tiresome. there’s only a short window.

yesterday i thought of my student debt for some reason and smiled at the thought of how glad i am that i don’t care about it. we are all dying and im supposed to lived some suckered halflife indentured servitude to pay for an education i deserve? cutting my spending, working weekends, valorizing my labor to the cause of becoming clean by american capitalist standards. “lol,” i thought. in certain ways, im already free.

today is really hard, surprise surprise, sunday. i woke at 5:45 am and couldnt fall back asleep. took another walsom. weird trembling in my head when im laying a certain way. i thought if i was still up, id go to yoga at 830. then i thought i could do a long ride to that planetarium in the east. but the more i thought i could do it, the more i got sleepy. dreamt of a girl i follow on ig that i dont know and dont know why i follow. kill me.

last night, i popped by the rojava show at the mudlark for a minute. but i took a benadryl and 2 xanax right before i left, hoping the high would hit and give me enough time to be around. stressing about seeing julie, jonah and ppl robert was cheating on me with. disappointed in myself for that bc there’s really nothing left to fear. i should be free in that sense. in the least. but no, i insist on trapping myself in fake stresses so that my face permanently wrinkles into an angry worry. im not good enough is the underlying thought. everyone else has alcohol to ease that thought. me and my soft drugs, it’s not enough.

looped back onto port to ride, listening to the first at the drive in. thinking of that story robert told me of fighting off 3 guys with their ulock and their headset was still playing at the drive in. ha.

i think that im safe in sleep, but im not. i am my biggest enemy right now. chemical depression clinging to my tissues. if you hadnt cheated on me, this wouldnt be as hard.

 

 

saturday

today it was 77 degrees. i overslept and missed pilates but turns out pilates was canceled anyway so it didn’t matter. i went to open studio at around 1 and did my ashtanga routine. afterwards, i sat with my yoga high on the bench. listening to the breeze in the trees. thinking abour robert telling their brother about how everything is music you just have to be tuned into their station. last sat i found if i get hugh and listen to certain songs, i feel my heart and if i tune into the station, i feel robert. it’s a cathartic activity, now one you gave do a lot. but i shivered and sighed and cried and let out little girly mourning vocals. no one was home. it felt good. ‘but today after yoga a darkness descended upon me. i felt i would just go home and lay in bed all day. then i got on my bike and the darkness lifted.

the problem is: the high feels so good. i want that high all the time. but i black out on it now. and my tolerance is so high that i have to take less so i have enough.

im tired of jokey chit chat. im not playing with my full deck of intellect. im honing in on the lowest common denominator. i think if robert lifting me up out of that. the a=way they would talk to me and i couldn’t tell if they were starting a fight with me or not. but i met them there, there intensity and their willingness to jump into conflict so bravely nudged a better part of me. i loved talking to them like this. i loved them.

feel a little pre-occupied with my future and why i cant connect with anyone in nola. maybe its drinking culture. maybe its the transience of everyone. i feel worried about showing up with my whole self AND connecting with other humans before i die. im a whole person, where’s the rest. robert would bring so much. to come to them and sit on the couch with them, putting my leg over there leg, feeling their soft warm taught skin. they held me tight and said “YES!” when they arrived, everything else faded back into the dumb bullshit it is. We were in real life together. they made me so happy. and that’s not even a thinking i believe in. but fuck, i would just ride my bike smiling all the time. i was happy.

 

 

i’m stupid and i hate it

my healing is not in a linear path and i find that very frustrating. I will be really good, ok and then back to where i was weeks ago the next day, next moment. i am struggling with being present in my self. i had a real panic last night. and then today i am OBSESSING over how they wronged mew, how the lied. like a detective. the worst thought is that they didnt love me. I cannot bear that thought. I wish they were here to re-assure me. to tell me it’s insane to think they don’t love me, that i’m not smart and beautiful. that i’m not allowed to talk badly about myself. fuck, i hate that i need that validation. i always do this in relationships. i have a totally manageable sense of self and then once i date someone, i give t all away in exchange for what the other thinks of me. and iot takes moths to recover. ive recovered before. but this, fuckm it’s so final. i cant just se them. ever. they are in the ground.

i want and sometimes believe they are in my heart as well. im in high danger of becoming “spiritual” which i very much resent, as a rule, but I’m learning to realize that I don’t know everything about who i am. what a selfish activity though- to delve into more of who i am. as if there aren’t other people around.

 

I tried to go to pagoda on my way to work to sip my expensive pour-over decaf and read and “relax” – shake off last night. but the phoniness of others filled me with disgust. eh, it’s not rage, it’s true I’m hardly ever angry anymore. frustrated, yes, but anger, I don’t really have it. remember to count your blessings, your steps forward and back, back, back.

i feel my hair thinning and my chin fattening up. my size six pants fit me,  i haven’t even tried the zeroes i usually wear. i relish sweets and food. it’s all i look forward to. but i am pms-ing so i like to forgive myself. when will this period come and wash away these feelings. ugh help.

 

 

sex

when i think of sex with you, it still feels good. it doesn’t hurt to miss it. it feels good. a gift. thank you.

 

 

reserves

my therapists keep saying i need to journal more. but i feel like something terrible happens between my brain and the air that colors my thoughts and stories. makes them more clean, idk, inauthentic?

thinking a lot about my self-worth and how much i seek validation in my partners. Like if I have the best partner, a partner that has qualities I admire, I will also have those qualities. that sucks that im like that. thinking a lot about my reserves. the reserves i made when i was a child, to survive. and how that is valid. how i am small but strong.

i feel a constant panic. constant. panic. I think it is new orleans but what if it isn’t? it’s so hard to not romanticize new orleans. it’s not a place, it’s so alive. it’s so dark and fraught with trauma. wet heat. designed to kill you. we were never meant to sit here. this wasn’t even land.

 

 

i slept until 2 pm. not enough. hair done and sushi and chocolate. i saw your tag painted over. i saw where you died. it’s more real to me now, that you died. it’s more real to me that i will ease into death myself if i dont get up.

fuck i loved you. wasn’t it enough to keep you alive?

it wasn’t

love vs drugs; drugs always win

 

 

the moments when we paused to ask why it was so magical.

our taut bellies touch, electric

“why does it feel like that?! what the hell!” they moaned. they say “hell” like “hill” that’s their little accent from nowhere. “what the hell!” all exclamation points.

it was the day they met me at shake sugary. deep southern heat. they skateboarded there. we agreed to talk about being poly. they wore tye-dyed tube socks and

 

 

 

 

morning

i am worried I will forget what it sounded like to hear you say you love me.

you are happiest in the morning, when the sun comes up you pull me close and say “what the fuckkk you’re so pretty and i love you.” Our last morning together, when I turned to get out of bed for work, you pulled my hips to you and said “don’t go.”  And I didn’t. Fuck work.

I keep thinking about the sunday before you died you were laying on the greasy faux victorian couch in your borrowed shack. I was sitting up at the end of it. you said “I feel like I’m gonna die soon” but in a matter of fact way that chilled me. to be honest, it made me want to leave you. Because I thought of you dying and the unbearable pain it would bring and realized I couldn’t handle love and all its gothic accoutrements.

I laid on your chest and said “i dont want you to die” I felt your uneven heart murmur beat, which you’ve told me that you’ve told me that i forget a million times- i say “i can feel your heart stop beating!” and you say “I have a heart murmur” I forget. forgetting is both a side effect of my petit-bourgeois prescription drug addiction and also forgetting is my way of getting by because it hurts too much to hold everything. and in spite of what you say when you feel up my arms and legs – I’m not strong.

my habit is to survive and i survive by forgetting but i cannot survive if i forget you saying “i love you” to me.