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in darkness
I am reborn my soul is illuminated in fire in the dark I am safe I see the eyes watching me there is a comfort in knowing that they aren't hiding anymore and neither am I I talked too much today and it all seemed trite communicating the old fashioned way when I telepathically communicate with ghosts, demons and other worldly beings we sit on etherial steps that we don't bother to climb knowing your true self isn't about escaping it isn't about taking away the pain it's about sorting through all you have discarded to find the answers the gods and goddesses knock at my door I answer in the night when my mind is quiet and the truth can be revealed the hounds of hell aren't so scary when you know they are guarding you I saw one hound standing at my altar sniffing flowers playing with the ghost of a little boy while my demons danced in the background I couldn't help thinking how much of my life I wasted being a martyr a victim all my joy had been hiding in old wounds I just needed to look there is a whole world in what you hide welcome it and you will be surprised
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I went to three different high schools
I was the weird one I smoked cigarettes in the school basement while talking to my abusive boyfriend on a payphone trying to convince him I was more than a hole while I listened to the cheerleaders chant those same cheerleaders asked me for my diet tricks at impromptu parties at my apartment my mother was never home and my secret diet trick was that I always had some asshole boyfriend that wanted me to look like a porn star I didn't have money to eat and I wasn't hungry from debilitating depression they giggled when I told them that but I saw the fear in their eyes when they realized the darkness they would need to adopt to become willowy and mysterious while they got lied to in my mother's bed by fake sainted high school football stars I cleaned the house and wrote in my journal about sad teenage girls getting abused I scrubbed at my new tattoos with a brillo pad love is always tattooed when you are too young to know you are worth something I poured water into the drunk girls they had neglected in their search for manhood I held greasy heads as they puked because they were not the chosen ones to be pummeled by soon-to-be potbellied, aging football players that sold cars or insurance or something that didn't include the magnificence of youth while I was alone in my own teenage ineptitude my young mother tried to relive this horrible youth-hood with some man that was doing the same when all I could wonder is why no one was welcoming death I longed to chew applesauce on a rickety deathbed with such saggy flesh I wouldn't be in fear of getting raped again and again or leered at by old men I didn't realize that twenty years later I would see all the above as nothing, that there would be worse, that I would long to be seen again even if it only meant being leered at because I had youth and belief how silly it is that we strive to be wanted when everyone wants what they can hurt. what they can take is what we have to lose and it never seems enough for them to want to take more that story the giving tree always made me weep I stopped reading it to my child because I couldn't bear her being yet another one that treated me that way she will gladly sit on my stump in a few years and I will be okay it will still make me weep every night a stairway appears
in my sliding glass doors all the souls along with me are at the bottom sometimes a light appears in the crack of the door at the top it emits the green of a glow stick hands beckon me but I stay last night I slept on the couch I astral traveled to a place where I was smothered in feathers and pushed until I fell back into my body felt like I was suffocating but my heart has a heavy sadness that keeps me in place when I dream my body never comes along it is a vacation without the baggage of limbs whoever calls me for a visit never lets me stay they pour information into my psychic ear with one of those old ear horns a joke my grandpa might tell then they push me down until I drown back in to the trappings of my skin souls float beside me like a school of fish forever frowning like this is serious business there is a place that looks like something out of a doctor suess book or doctor who but far more terrifying a desert with faceless black winged giants that carry you to sand mountains with hole shaped caves filled with souls they might be trapped there I don't know I just scream to hear my own echo like the fool that I am I listen to the echo of my name while all the disembodied eyes blink a few follow me home I wake up to an entity punching my chest paranormal cpr I guess I went somewhere too long the fall made me dizzy still I am annoyed that my trip was cut short then I remember that I am afraid of heights something within me is fading slept all day wrapped in a comfortable numbness now that it is dark outside I know I won't be alone much longer I have suspended disbelief that serenity is coming last night my heart hurt I wondered if I was in the midst of a heart attack but now I think it was just my heart screaming it has surrendered now my heart and I sit in the dark watch the flickering candles we imagine the soft pulp that holds love being scooped out scraping the last stringy parts as if it were a rotting pumpkin I discard the soft parts in the trash I wash my empty heart in Dawn dish soup so it is clean before placing it back inside me a wind moves through me as a sad echo takes up residence in my soul my heart's empty beats feel like laying down on crisp clean sheets the souls surround me so glad there is more space for them now we heard you we will free you my spirit children come to me while my demons sit in the corner out of respect for my indoctrination these empty hearts now beat as one all my friends are dead
they drift in and out of the darkness I call to them at night because when they are here I feel less lonely when I can't sleep it is eight hours of darkness where the dead tell me their stories just listening is enough to forget my own story no one will miss me when my soul leaves this timeline maybe that isn't so bad this reality isn't quite right no one thinks with their heart everyone is ready to stab you in back I can see the the other world the one where spirits float free you don't worry about being loved but instead about being seen and heard me and most other women aren't heard here so it isn't much different for women power lies outside the body and outside the body means in the consciousness I am only loved when I am hot when I am meek when I succumb to some volcanic ego that has no reasoning but I am aging I am only human I would like to not care I would like to remove my body as if it were a cancerous tumor everything I have ever known has been a lie it takes a toll my true family are all the ghosts that accompany me I don't feel at home here with all this bullshit this ego that parades as humanity is ridiculous everyone is out for themselves that is the truth that everyone lies about so many power struggles for what? nothing is real every man is always going to hate me because he thinks everything is a competition the only language I speak is in feeling when I am with my dead friends they all see that I just want to help there are no pretenses they see my wings they know my soul I don't trust anyone alive anymore except animals I want my last thoughts to be eating a cherry popsicle on a summer night near the ocean when I was a kid alone thinking about the future I thought I was going to have I had hope which is something I don't have anymore right now I just want to remember my first pet my cat Baby purring while lying on my chest I was so sick I thought I was dying he stayed with me I have never had that experience with a person people will make up reasons to leave apparently it is human nature and it isn't nice it isn't love it is just shitty makes me want to hug ghosts in the night I belong in the ether there is no such thing as loyalty anymore the angel of death visits me he is an angel for a reason he knows what the world is like he knows pain he knows how alone everyone is and he has a soul that feels as intensely as I do I have never trusted anyone love doesn't matter trust is everything if those you choose to love and your trust is broken again and again if that is all you have ever known then relationships start to have no fucking point I don't want to learn this lesson anymore people are shitty tonightI will commune with the dead and they will comfort me as they always do because they know that the living don't know how to live don't how to love and take everything for granted they hold my soul on their misty altar as I stand by and watch in awe they marvel at the light I still have after all I have been through my life is with the drifting souls who know what they missed they don't want you to make the same mistakes they did dying with someone who didn't appreciate them dying already forgotten over there I am a queen I have a family they come to me in my sorrow they surround me on the nights I can't sleep they are here now as I write this they want me to come home they tell me I don't deserve this pain I know they are right the only thing here is more disappointment all my best friends are dead as they hold me now I wonder why I want to stay in this place where I have to fight to be me to be heard come to me my friends all you spirits that drift let me drift with you let's be invisible together let's haunt the night when all had left me
and everything I had ever known was gone I listened to Lana Del Ray and Hozier busied myself in night life mingling with all the sad lonely others living like vampires wine was blood scars and tattoos were jewels in the dark Dionysus was laughing as we smeared our faces stuffed sorrow into our pockets with dirty pennies I danced on deaths doorstep flirted with the idea that the end was near enough to close my eyes and fall feathers drifting from a split pillow the tarot cards kept telling me my time was running out and I pretended I didn't care I read them on the bathroom floor in my underwear smoking cigarettes like it was a full time job my demons put me to bed whispering dark poetry that I needed to die to write each day I looked away as another part of me was discarded they tended to me while I slow swam through hell when they only saw my perfection I watched their sharp teeth turn to stars they took the bones of my past and cast them like runes turned me towards the mirror to show me my own sharp teeth fed me blood apples when I couldn't eat cloaked in darkness after a life of being vulnerable and naked I learned to let them help me now we sit here together I lower my cloak so I can feel their kiss and I hear them whisper my destiny their teeth graze my skin and I smile I see her in the background
of my reflection her body blue and bloated seaweed tangled in her limbs when she tries to speak black smoke billows out she can't be more then 16 a cherub face that only knew blushing cheeks before her untimely demise it was the 60s she was riding her bike back from the corner store in some small town where things like this aren't supposed to happen in her bike basket she had candy and a handful daisies to press into heavy books when she got home he lured her with a white kitten named snow he was a member of the church she went to he ate her mother's potato salad at the Sunday potluck every time she rode her bike past his house he watched her from the window watched her long lean legs pumping the peddles he kept her short white shorts and a lock of her brown hair long after she was gone her last breath still warmed his hands when she is near I hear the faucets dripping I see her last memory and I struggle to breathe his hands smelled like walnuts he tied heavy rocks to her ankles she watched herself disappear her screams are black clouds I sort through them so she can be heard I die with her again and again until she doesn't go back there anymore now she stays here my dear dark angel now that your story has been told you are free ghost pugs exist so do elves
fairies and demons a shadow man has been standing behind me while I take polaroids of the dead I am getting to the point where I am not so much afraid as annoyed the ghost pug looks terrified and I wonder if I am not scared enough my black dog's hair is turning white like that girl in the Freddy Krueger movies I saw glowing footprints on the couch a fairy face in my plant it is like someone has slipped me acid except there is no acid the hat man grinned at me from my window and I screamed did you know Hecate likes pugs? she likes all dogs and they party with the elves in my house they make faces at my dog even the goddess of the underworld has a sense of humor at least she didn't bring the grim reaper by today he is a bit of a debbie downer you want to come to this party? everything you ever imagined is real isn't that terrifying? the elves aren't scary they do steal your socks though the demons in the background just pretend they don't scare you fear is their drug they mainline it at midnight don't think they can't hear you they are mind readers and they sort through your sorrow thought trash and make it into knives to use against you pretend you are like them let them write a poem pose for a picture let them think they can trick you then play them like a creepy organ in a B-movie they will worship you something else you need to know elves can be sad too if they live with you and you don't laugh enough they lose their color and turn black and white I am seventeen
it is nineteen ninety something I am in a room full of teenage boys my boyfriend who has brought me here treats me like a pretty chair I am from Maine this is Virginia Beach one of his friends has just died in a gang shooting it is my first funeral an open casket I watch his mother cry as she holds on to his lifeless body I wear a navy blue dress I cling to my boyfriend who brushes me away like a cobweb now I am here with all these boys I don't know they seem like men so much bigger than me passing around a blunt laughing when I cough we are all drinking but I don't know what I want to leave because all I can see is the dead boy with his bullet wounds standing in the corner in the distance I hear his mother crying I tug on my boyfriend's shirt he swats me away while his friends take turns talking about raping me while I am this high I leave and go sit in the car push on the car horn so hard it won't turn off my boyfriend comes out so worried about his car I cry in the passenger seat his friends come out shake their heads and talk about me as if I am already gone she is beautiful but crazy they laugh while I cry the dead boy with bullet wounds holds me hushes me while my boyfriend screams at me in the car for ruining his car I am so far away from home I don't have a home I sleep on the floor in his mom's house she tells me how his father abused her she takes my side for once in a blink I see his future he has twins but not with me I decide to leave him but it takes me another year the dead boy blows me kisses while I lie awake remembering a room filled with smoke guys talking about ass raping me while my boyfriend laughed I hear my boyfriend in the other room complaining loudly about what a bitch I am for causing a scene in front of his friends now its just the dead boy and me he got shot from behind he tells me you never see it coming but when it hits you you still think you can run his hands are just vapor but they are still hands reaching out to me and I am so lonely so scared sometimes touching each other's wounds is enough to get by when I was thirteen I thought I was dying strangers looked the other way when they saw me bend under the weight of my stillborn bones my specialist a man in his mid-twenties sat with me in the exam room uncomfortable with my willingness to give up while I got poked with needles and squeezed the doctor's hand so he could see how strong I wasn't my mother sat in the waiting room I went home to alone my only friends a group of african violets on a rusty tv tray stand in front of a bedroom window I watered them when I couldn't bend my wrists I placed them in slants of sunlight when I was too weak to get out of bed in a year I would be like all the other girls laughing and smiling while some boy pretended at loving me I would miss those nights alone struggling with my affliction dabbling in death's whispers spoon-feeding pain to the moon with only my cat as a companion the violets went unwatered while I bathed in boys and sunlight their purple petals turned brown all those yesterdays so easily tucked away when I still had the faith of more tomorrows |
AuthorMichelle Tinklepaugh Archives
April 2023
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