I can’t breathe. No, I can’t go on. I hope you understand.
My life, with you, is in a paper bag, in-and-out hyperventilation.
You can’t find the answers. Let it be—
Oh, you agree it’s a riddle, and yet you feign sanity as if the weight won’t crush you like a boysenberry. Splat! Blood and unwillingness everywhere.
Look! The shrubbery is green, the flowers are trying desperately to hold-on to Spring, but that blessed time has passed.
The ever-present avoidance.
Yes, nature, a glorious magic spell. I am aware, but please.
Why, because two espressos, and the morning’s black and white print, reading between the lines, makes you self-assured. In the meantime, the sky went grey hiding from a pessimistic interpretation.
To the contrary!
The sun called my name, and I was singing its praises.
I was spinning in optimism, about to create seven perfect days ahead.
You, however, toil for whatever tidbits the world feeds you, gullible—a sponge for imaginary gossip.
That’s your problem in life, taking it for something it is not intended to be. Dreaming of Eden.
Hard work and planning, I tell you!
I wish you’d wake-up in the truth far from expectation and madness.
When in the end, the plan of hard work and no pleasure are a tombstone and daisies? Honestly, I would not die from your silence. Being captive in its daily oppression is overrated. Do you remember being inquisitive, less stringent?
I recall more space in your voice for reason, less bitterness, long locks of auburn hair that embraced simplicity sweetly, a blade of grass, the vase-center table with tulips.
Before I became a victim! A scissor for a tongue, cut-out replicas of a heart,
tore to pieces, and the hardness in bones that struck the core, oh such pain
inflicted by arrogance.
Sorry.
(Black, shark eyes, no emotion. There is no sincerity in apologies). As if I could believe, and even if possible, would no longer want to. This time I will be a bird, courage, soaring into a time that is generous with love, reciprocity, a field that never ends in gratitude, sees me as fragile and simultaneously powerful, then takes me to its heart—a new home.
Unphased. Imagine his silence—
I will clear the gutters before the storm, board the windows, keep nature and life far from us.
I shudder at the earth that never moves inside of him, even on fire. For this, I can always trust—insipidness, steadfast in the things that hold us secure in mediocrity.
I want to die, at least, in the fever of reckless abandon.
Each step was carved-out in the endless days of years that passed too quickly, and I, waiting, always waiting, for the one thing to save me, lost myself in the process.
I adhered to expectation, stretching only my fingers and toes to brush the excitement of a churning sea or dreaminess of a Marigold. I remained sincere to fear, and the guilt that prevented ever fully submerging and emerging.
I am confident that I could breathe underwater living as I imagine:
Free from solid ground, as a yellowtail fish, a seeking white gull, as salt in waves, and mist in the air, the moon when it rises—the whole majesty, or each star’s wish,
and the glorious sun like an urgent heat that falls onto shoulders embracing a new day.
I want to be who I am unapologetic, free from the memory, delighted in a moment.
Ah, nothing. I mean, I’m tired. Today had a mind of its own.
Days often do.
Yeah, it would seem so… I just wanted to get the things done that I had planned.
It happens. What stopped you? Were you able to clear things up so that tomorrow, perhaps you can stay on track with your plans?
You see, that’s the thing about days with minds of their own. There’s no telling. If I get everything out of the way, it’s still left to be determined. They are non-committal that way, those days, or I am to them.
Right about the days, and you? What do you feel you’re not committed to, or that you’d instead be promised to doing?
I don’t want to be responsible for the external pull that drags energy from me and diverts attention to everything else. The daily minutia is so goddamn important, isn’t it to our survival? The rotten details in every aspect of living and not being. I want to be. Myself! Not selfish, but existing wholly, which I can’t seem to do with the pull, this way, that way, the needs and wants from everything and anyone else.
Did someone ask you to do these things for them today?
No.
So, why did you feel obligated?
It’s an internal struggle—a self-induced argument with my conscience—pressure to be perfect. I want to be, and simultaneously am resentful. I don’t want to care, not about my thoughts, or the dirty counters, the slippers left under the table, a dirty stovetop, or the dog wanting to go out for the third time. Most of all, I can’t bear to think of anyone else’s judgment in the case it isn’t all done.
Would they judge you?
I don’t know. Maybe. I mean sometimes silently, or by their martyr act. I know that I resent anyone else’s implication that I’m not up to par.
I think that’s more your internal dialogue and the things you’ve been made to feel, the tags assigned to you that hold no real truth.
I agree. Maybe I can have a tag sale.
Gentle laughter–Maybe you can.
Tell me what you’d like to be doing? If you could remove the distractions.
I’d live! I’d have fun doing everything that I want with zero roadblocks. I’d be free and perfect at the same time. Yes! I could find a place for everything, then all I’d have to do is maintain. I could stop worrying all of the time. I’d sleep like a baby and wake up years younger. I’d have time each day to breathe, not the way I do now with doubt or hopelessness, but empowered! I could silence the things that do not serve me. I would see myself in the mirror and be sure it was me looking back. There would be so much space that I could come alive, not the way someone said I ought to be, but the way I was meant to be.
I see. Thank you. You do have a beautiful way of expressing yourself. Perhaps your creativity is repressed by your expectations of being something or someone you cannot be to please a phantom.
Yes, the phantom ever-present within me because I care enough to listen. That’s my downfall—a need to please, to be validated.
Did I tell you, my muse has woken? She was angry with me for giving into fear and filling my world with clutter to mask the heartache.
No, you hadn’t mentioned it. I’m happy to hear if, as a muse, she is serving you.
Yes. I found her while taking my daily walks. She’s, of course, supplying me with incredible ideas far from anywhere I could write them down. But something happened last Tuesday.
What is that?
I was walking along my way when suddenly I was captured by a beam of sunlight perfectly situated on a green leaf on a low tree branch that I was passing beneath. It was so much more than what I describe. It was Omnipotent. I’m confident because time stopped, and I was given a gift of relief and clarity. It seemed possible that I could cross over into another dimension. I was overcome for seconds in pure joy, the kind unimagined or impossible in this life. I wanted to own the feeling forever but was left with only its memory.
Wow. That was certainly a powerful experience. What, if anything, did you take from it outside of the few moments of joy and their memory?
The knowledge that freedom exists to be truly happy. It’s a matter of believing, I could be or do anything, even on days with minds of their own.
I wonder what part of me it is, the creative, spiritual, or innocence, that beckons at the same time I look out of a window, not looking at all, but inside of my head, thinking thoughts that bring me to tears. Desperate to control the outcome, and rearrange what has past. Then in a split-second interruption occurs. I see what’s outside the window, outside of me. Wow, I say aloud, stopped in my tracks—splendid beauty! I must capture nature’s perfect story, its thoughts perhaps. Suddenly, I realize all of my parts are on loan and in unison with the Creator, asking I cast the fragile and human, limited ego aside. Dry your eyes. Trust everything is evolving as it should. See the tree rooted in nourishment. Upright, forming intricate branches—each having gone through rough, barren winter, the hopeful new birth of spring, joyous, playful summer, sprouting blooms of love in color, and in fall surrendering its leaves. I am witness to the miracle of existence. Every second, season, choreographed to perfection. I, a naked bud.
Julian stood on line along with more people than usual during his lunch hour in anticipation of his favorite pizza. The day was bustling. The holidays were approaching with celebrations underway everywhere.
Today, the chatter in the restaurant was loud, and it competed with Dean Martin’s, Let it Snow playing on the radio. Julian was hungry at 12:15 pm, which is unusual since he typically didn’t have lunch before 1:30.
Suddenly appeared, Sada – a wispy-haired, tall, and slender woman in her thirties. Her hair was the color of a tequila sunset. It was as unnatural as it was natural on her. Julian was enamored. The restaurant then seemed quiet to him as if watching a silent movie.
People moved about busily: Men in business suits with hearty laughter, others in jeans and uniforms, a group of female nurses from the nearby hospital, two secretaries in pencil-skirts collecting long glances for their curved figures, and the moms with distracted toddlers trying to have a decent conversation. They were all muted to Julian. He saw only the woman with tequila-sunset-hair and a perfect pair of painted-lips. Her spacious child-bearing hips swayed beautifully on top of her slender legs as she moved into the line like a wave above the rest.
“I ordered the Sal-Salad to go.” Her voice was assertive over the crowd yet delivered at a frequency that landed softly over the counter to Lorenzo. “Buon pomeriggio signorina. Lo sto avvolgendo per te adesso.” Then he folded over the top of a white paper bag and handed it to her. “Godere. Buona giornata.”
Sada turned to walk from the line and out of the door when, Julian, clumsily stopped her. She looked at him, not unpleasantly. He was tall and easy on the eyes with his waved dark hair and Roman nose. Still, she stared down at her arm and then back up at him in a way that questioned his intrusiveness. “I’m sorry, Julian said. It’s just that… I mean, has anyone ever told you…” STOP, Sada exclaimed! “What, he questioned? Truly, I’m sorry. I only wanted to…” “Seriously, stop, Sada responded. Don’t you know you should never start a conversation with, “Has anyone ever told you…”” Julian mildly laughed, then tried to retract it back into his throat, and suddenly with confidence, asked, “And why not?” “Because it’s typically bullshit. Don’t you want to be original, she wondered? I mean, if anyone else has ever told me this before? Don’t you want to be authentic?” Then she smiled at him wisely. Dumbfounded, Julian stayed quiet. Sada then turned towards the door then back again at Julian and said, “We should get off to a more profound start. Don’t you think? Julian was a combination of stunned, confused, and amused. Sada continued towards the door. Julian then managed to yell across a row of people, “Wait, what’s your name?” Sada smiled and said, “See you…”
The three slices Julian was starved for, handed to him at that moment on a plastic tray, no longer seemed important. He understood on a soul level that he’d just met the woman who would be the love of his life, and he was simultaneously woozy, elated, and terrified.
I was fast asleep. Dreaming about details. You know? I wasn’t dreaming about Paris or the Amalfi Coast. No. I was dreaming about a list that I had to write: The shit details of my life…
I heard breathing. In the noisy sleep that I was experiencing I heard loud breathing. It was dreadfully close. Someone with his jaw dropped-open and head hung back. An exhausted pulling of air in and out in counts of threes, then a whistling through narrow airways until it gasped for more and saved itself from choking.
It was close I tell you. Caterpillars with their sixteen legs crawling upon my skin, I could feel a thick presence—A humid sweat caught by a chilled breeze.
As if we were on a train, or that he was at one point, alone. Traveling east through a foggy mountainside. The curves around stirring nausea in his gut from one shot too many of whisky. I could smell it, and sweat through a damp, dark trench coat. So slovenly, and my naval began to pull inward hoping to find the womb in which I could crawl back.
I was aware of my bed, the permanent hip-imprint, and unraveled sheets like unsettled sleep. I was aware of the stranger in my bed breathing down my neck, and I wondered why I had to be aware of his travels. I imagined papered-tulips on old plastered walls covering sounds, yet I could not stop the noise!
My entire body was begging for quiet rest. Only, good sleep comes when I need to focus. In the numb zone! One day, Alzheimer’s will come and take the focus like a bird to a land of thoughts, and I will be left a shell. Somewhere in my confusion, I know I’ll feel relief.
Yet, another detail to get done. I always cared about each one too until the broken pieces of the world around me built a cage, and I couldn’t pass beyond, or find myself. Ah, that fog and fucking breathing!
Eldin, was looking at pretty young girls with firms asses, middle-aged women with full-fallen tits, thin, full-figured, dikes, druggies, and dumb bitches. I wondered why each one, not fair or smart enough to shine my shoes, made me feel disfigured in my own skin? I hated them, and him for his weakness. His profoundly firm arrogance initiated a want for him—to ravage and engulf that persona until it became my power to crush him to death!
The rain began to splat down in sharp speeding darts. I could hear each one bouncing back upward off of the asphalt. I knew sleep would not come but at least solitude, a most valuable commodity helps assess the loneliness.
I’ve been thinking about breaking into pieces leftover ceramic tiles from a shelf in the garage, and painting them then puzzling a feminine sculpture—torn-apart and gathered back together with all of her scars. I’ll prop it against the happy green dining wall so that it stands-out and screams: I am here! I am here!
My skin begins to itch. Blotches between dry-aged lines connect thoughts to an overwhelmed brain, between two swollen red ears. Perhaps I listen too well—Things you do not know…
(Me to my dear friend, Amanda – What do you think? It’s amazing! You are so talented. Thanks, but do I sound insane or scary? Not at all! I love it! I love to write, Amanda. Ideas come to me a lot in my sleep. Out of the blue it’s like someone is telling me a story. I then incorporate my own emotions, but I worry: What if people can’t tell fiction from reality? For instance, I’m done writing today and going to the gym, but someone may think that I’m Annie Wilkes. Who is Annie Wilkes? Yes, let’s go with that.) Have a nice day everyone! 🙂
Dellymari's Blog 