July 30th, 2014

I’m sitting in Paige’s living room. There are birds outside; they twitter and tweet like social media thrumming in my eardrums. Procession in my temples. Thrum-dum-dum like a headache trampling every thought that passes through my skull—ghosts. Phantoms. In and out, disappearing as they come and go. I can’t think straight. I can’t see straight. My mind is full of fuck. The best way to describe it is to not describe it at all. Voltiel’s drunk again, what a surprise. Though I guess it’s more of a surprise to me than anyone because I thought I was over that. I thought I was over forgetting who I am. The numbness of half a liter, the tingling sensation of a quarter of the bottle remaining. The morgue-like eye-roll of a clean shelf … 40oz and I’m waiting for heaven (hell?). Bed spring marks on my back like ringworms. When I get drunk I can’t imagine that it’s like normal, human intoxication. It’s more like I’m drinking to stay human. If my blood is pure the demon will feed. Could you taste it in my blood, too? I know I can. The bitter tang of plasma isn’t the same after a night locked up in the bathroom, bath tub sanguine pink. You go into my old house and you wouldn’t see razors, you’d see the carnage of what was once used to shave my legs. Broken open, gutted of metal, small slivers of silver laid out on the edge of the porcelain tub. Criss-cross applesauce. I think you liked that about me. I think that’s why you did it to me. To think the demon stayed sleeping for that long.

I can’t explain what I’d like to see in you. Maybe I’m writing this entire thing just for you. No, I’m not. Not for you but, because of you. The muddled madness can no longer be contained. Paige said I needed to write. That I needed words. That I needed poetry. And it’s true. I took the bait and the hook ripped through my fucking face. How’s that for poetry? You put holes in me that only you will ever be able to fill, ever. Nothing will ever be big enough or small enough or the same shape as you. You’ve ruined me. How does that feel—are you proud of that? I hope you are. I would be. I was strong before you. I would have been fine, even after Colton. I’d like to believe that eventually, I would have been able to pick myself up and move on. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just writing whatever comes to my mind first. That’s it. There. Now I’ve got it. One, two, buckle my shoe. I’m not crazy. I’m just tired. I’m just getting older. I’m just about dead. Was it really five years ago that those puppet strings strangled every last inch of hope I could have ever had? I ask too many questions that will never be answered. I had nothing and you still took from me. You took and took, and then I was empty. You filled those holes you made in me with poison and now everything I do and say is toxic. I want my life back. I want to breathe again, but I know I won’t. I know I’ll suffocate and die here and that’s utterly terrifying. My composure has been compromised. I’m uncomfortable all the time. Experiencing too many omens. This is my life now.

I can never be clean or restored to my original state. Where does my outside even begin with an inside to big? My father built a cage. A cage for us all. The broken sounds that come from within, we don’t ever talk about. It’s the same at home. There is no safe place. We shouldn’t even have electricity. We are all children sitting in the dark. Sometimes I blame my mother for all of this. She found an easy way out of this world. You know, this is hard for me to write about. I’m a pigeon. My grandmother used to tell me that. She told me this story of my mother’s suicide. How the day after she gave birth to me, age fifteen, she climbed a small step-ladder and hung herself there in the room with me. Beside my crib. She said she walked in and I wasn’t even crying. Unusual for a newborn—the window was open. There were rat-birds cooing on the wire outside. My grandmother told me, Voltiel, it was so eerie how the pigeons sat there purring, their chests rattling. The day went on as if there was nothing wrong. No tragedy. No tears. And so did you. You didn’t cry. You never cried. My grandmother said hardly anything else to me before I was given up for adoption. My real family wanted nothing to do with me after my mother died. I was some product of her pain. I didn’t want to be that child. I didn’t want to be someone who unknowingly created all this devastation. Most of all, I was terrified of making my mother the villain, rather than proving that she was in fact, the victim.

I'm going to be writing to you more. Maybe some day when I know I'm going to be gone, I'll let you read this. Until then ... Sayōnara.