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when you hang out with the dead you see the living more clearly i am peeling a hard boiled egg a snake sheds it skin my daughter was quiet when she was born i was quiet when she was born death was close then and they thought i didn't know her father was in the next room when they told him we might not make it the angel of death told me they were wrong he didn't have his scythe he told me everything i needed to know he brought my sister a stillborn baby showed me her death her name was sabrina she gave me the gift of my mother's pain i promised her i would name my child after her if she would just save her she left during the epidural told me the name i chose for my daughter was the right name Annabelle was stuck and then she wasn't she was born on Halloween they put a pumpkin hat on her head i held her when i couldn't remember she was mine he sat in the corner a stranger they praised for not watching football while i almost died i looked down at this this new human being and i promised to protect her from this fucked up world
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my daughter sits on the edge of my bed with her back to me i reach out my arms because i am so relieved to see her but she doesn't turn around just drifts farther and farther in to the distance like a lost balloon then i wake up to another day without her go back to sleep until the sun goes down the sun is an insult to my grief the only way i get to see her now are in dreams and nightmares i accept these inconsistent gifts and when the sadness sets in i float in the dark waters of my subconscious tell myself i am not drowning i am not drowning which obviously means i am in denial that i am drowning A crow with a broken wing sits upon my shoulder Two clawfoot bath tubs are overflowing such an obvious metaphor for tears Hekate leads the way torch in hand I am Demeter grief consumes me Persephone is gone humanity is in peril The ascent has not come this search in the dark seems endless Shadows flicker upon the wall jack o lantern grins my crow says we are running out of time by September she will have eaten the seeds my only child daughter don't gather the flowers they give you it's a trick he takes you where i can't find you then the world changes forever Joan Didion
sits in the corner chain smoking our anxiety vibrates on the same plane "a babysitter once told me that my daughter had death in her aura" i tell her i know your story she stares me down asks me "so what's new in the whiskey business?" i know him too and point to the angel of death who lights her umpteenth cigarette she stands up does a slow tap dance like the little man in twin peaks i look down and i am laura palmer in black light my words come out backwards i choke on secrets cough up black ants Didion's nose is bleeding she tilts her head back and says "embrace the dread" but the ants are in my ears now and instead i hear embrace the dead she fades away until she is a cloud of smoke in the dark then says 'there isn't much of a difference' there once was a gypsy witch
who lived in the deep dark wood she was a solitary witch but she occasionally enjoyed the company of those who wandered near her fire it was on one of those nights her daughter was conceived a man with a name she couldn't pronounce lets call him douchebagstilkson anyway nine months later daughter of fire was born and the gypsy witch carried her everywhere singing her songs and telling her stories douchebagstilkson wandered every day and all day looking for brighter shinier things some days he didn't even notice he had a daughter of fire years later when the gypsy witch had given her heart to the traveling poet and the daughter of fire was much older douchebagstilkson started coming around wearing white knight armor and insisted it had always been this way which confused daughter of fire and gypsy witch he didn't tell the gypsy witch that he planned to gift their daughter of fire to the ice queen the gypsy queen sang spells in to the fire like it was any other day and when the traveling poet read her sonnets by the fire at night she ignored the visions coming from the crystal ball in her caravan soon the traveling poet was living in her caravan with her and the douchebagstilkson would return daughter of fire with no explanation as to why she acted strangely daughter of fire only ate soup now and wore heavy winter woolens on hot summer nights she smiled less and became angry with her witch mother when she wanted her to drink nettle tea gypsy witch stayed up all night worrying dead friends started giving her warnings telling her that the ice queen is no good that she would bring danger to daughter of fire the wandering poet no longer wandered and he too worried daughter of fire used to laugh and now his jokes fell flat around the fire they asked douchebagstilkson next time he came to get her what was going on and he played dumb and shined behind his fake white armor they even asked the ice queen on the rare occasion she saw them as people and she crystallized and iced over at any question so nothing was ever resolved gypsy witch became sad all the time and started talking to the dead they always been around but now visited in droves she drank mead until vomiting in to the fire while the non-wandering poet held her hair and they conversed over the state of daughter of fires increasingly cold heart daughter of fire now wanted to live with ice queen and douchebagstilksen even though gypsy witch hadn't heard it from her mouth but had to read it on a cruel message from the ice queen's royal gmail the gypsy witch felt hopeless daughter of fire was now daughter of ice the gypsy witch didn't bother to leave the caravan anymore or stoke the fire she had to melt daughter of fires heart to bring her home and defeat the ice queen but how she couldn't even get out of bed and if it weren't for the un-wandering poet's feeding her berries she would have wasted away all the ghosts hanging about my sad thought bubbles trying them on to see if my pain fits them it does i lose weight in grief all food tastes like grey paste i lose sleep in grief closing my eyes means seeing more grieving ghosts sometimes they are helpful other times not the one next to me now keeps cheerfully reminding me that i could die from a broken heart at any time she says the japanese have a name for it but she forgets she read it in a magazine when she was alive my heart hurts now i think its acid reflux but my helpful ghost chimes in that i am probably dying one of them starts to clap the other ghosts shake their head at him how awkward i hold my broken heart while the ghosts wander around my bedroom pretending they aren't waiting for me to die |
AuthorMichelle Tinklepaugh Archives
June 2023
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