"The self is not so weightless, nor whole and unbroken."
- Achilles Come Down by Gang of Youths
Dear Self:
Maybe I'm embarrassing you by putting this
out with the laundry, but then
we've put worse in public before,
haven't we?
Lately, I've had this feeling
of duality; like someone took a wire
and carved down the middle, cut a sculpture
of a mirror into my skin
and it's a familiar itch that I've ignored
in favor of what I'm not.
You know what I mean:
telling tales to get by, stringing out your soul
for others to weave into cloth that pleases them,
dressing them up for the winter ahead-
I'm half-sick of shadows,
said the Lady of Shalott.
I am not a platonic solid — my sides
twist and warp and bleed, and the length of me
is like wrinkled sheets, measured without the aid
of an iron — yet I've tried to sew
myself into patterns
only to rip at the seams when I bend.
Do you forgive me
for needing a few stitches thrown by hand
to keep myself together?
"if this is it
and this is all there is:
I hope you live
I hope you live."
- ITIIITIATIIHTLIHYL by Blackshape
Dear Self:
What must it give to become?
This face has strained for so long
to burst, to let its edges tear apart
and unfold to the raw flesh beneath,
and it's offering the scalpel.
You've spent a lifetime as seamstress,
a lifetime whose years count on one hand,
and the thought of someone taking a blade to your work
sends you to your knees.
You stare past the knife's edge, lips shaking,
breathing, "I have not yet had the chance
to live, don't let me die,
I don't want to die yet"
while it cuts through your words
one by one.
Cutting open a self
is the sort of job best
set aside. To be the blade
is to shuck off doubt
and let its husk settle in the leaves
somewhere at your feet, to be both
the instrument and the surgeon
all knowing the patient will die.
The surgeon's offered you as sacrifice,
tied you to the altar and propped up your shadow
to hold the knife over your chest.
You grab at its hands, mouth gaping open
as you fall against its body and beg,
"stop, stop, you'll leave a
hole",
knowing that's the intent.
"I went down among the dust and pollen
To the old stone fountain in the morning after dawn.
Underneath were all these pennies
Fallen from the hands of children-
They were there and then were gone.
And I wonder what became of them
What became of them."
- The Shrine / An Argument by Fleet Foxes
Dear Self:
Does it burn inside?
Does the spark flicker and flare
into a roar that shakes the house
to its foundation, or is this
the quiet sort of ego-death where
machinery shudders to a halt, something
gumming the works? Where
does fire go when it dies?
Where are you?
You're not supposed to be here, and yet
here you are, an alien
pulling the levers in my skull
like my body's mechanical, pistons hissing,
hinges rusted off.
Always, the obsession:
the fingers plucking away, pulling
every little hair, carving out every pore,
caking your face in blood,
feeding the acne to excise the flaws.
More than metaphor, a kind of syncope
of the self- my skin is packed with spiders
straining to keep their shell woven together
with lies spun like glass. They're beautiful,
but delicate, stumbling along until they collapse
and crack open.
Maybe one day the surgeon will die
instead of the patient, a trans-substantiation
of the flesh; we'll cut scars into their stomach,
crack the sternum,
rip out the heart to replace our own
in hopes that forgiveness is physical.
I'll say it again:
You're not supposed to be here.
We'll call this a coming-out,
someday.
Go away.
"Loathe the way they light candles in Rome
But love the sweet air of the votives.
Hurt and grieve but don't suffer alone.
Engage with the pain as a motive."
- Achilles Come Down by Gang of Youths
Dear Self:
Do you forgive me? Do I deserve it?
I've fought wars to win this crown,
and even as its spines dig into my scalp,
I'll wedge it deeper into my skin.
I'm not religious, but they say
pride is a sin, and I think my sins
are killing me.
I wish we taught our children
how to stop.
Dear Self:
Will you allow yourself to change?
You've sewn yourself together so well
that you're tied down in place, no room to bend
and no space left to weave in. The weight
of that crown suffocates you, wrapping tines
around your throat to choke your voice away.
I wish we taught our children
how to grow.
I wish we taught our children
anything at all.