from the archives

conor has an old song,
“i’ve been eating for you”.
what if i added a ‘not’?

i just stared into a bowl of soup longer than i’ve stared through my own contacts.
never more abhorrent of the pieces i was stabbing vilely.
...as if i could murder something inanimate.
spinning noodles that cannot even be spun,
in a soup with no broth.
oh wait, you thought this was a 'food thing'?
well, you’re wrong.

i grabbed pencil and paper;
my crutch to devour the truth,
eating more of that than i consume calories.
i’ve been writing on bathroom walls for three nights in a row.
my mind, a saltless dinner
yet its grains carve deeper than gravel ground into a dirt road.

my lips have since turned blue,
my eyes dead as a cadaver in a graveyard of wilted roses.
i’m withering away and you don’t know,
because you’re not here.

so i ask myself questions.
my own personal season of Jeopardy and all categories have my name on it.
and yours.
alex can’t keep up,
and the contestants are all in the red.
i am the panel.

what if blinking has become too hard and i don’t want my eyes neither open nor closed?
what if i completely stop breathing just to ensure that i’m invisible?
what if passing out is the only sleep i achieve and i crave the unconsciousness?
what if i could write this with impeccable grammar and award-winning verbiage, but spend more time intentionally dumbing down my words than i do creating them?
what if i think most writers are snobs and want to show off their possession of a higher vocabulary but suck at expressing anything even remotely substantial worth reading?
i am a writer..?

what if when i told you i literally died once, i wanted you to say “will you tell me about it?”
what if instead you told me how many people you slept with?
what if i want to steal the words of others just to open your eyes because you don’t listen to mine?
“i carve smiles on my hips because i cannot find one on my face.”
would you listen to michele?  hear her and finally grasp that’s me?
and, what if you’d given me the only smile i’ve known and now you’re the reason i can’t anymore?
what if when they said, “kristie, this is likely leukemia.”, i smiled and thought, ‘good.'?
death doesn’t scare me; but that doesn’t mean i go seeking it.
…often.

so, i may sound apathetic;
or maybe just pathetic.
then again maybe the scars on my skin didn’t all get there on purpose.
so, maybe i want you to listen.
or maybe just pretend to.
but, most of all i’ve learned to expect you won't truly care.

what if indie lyricists are the only creatures who seem to understand me,
but country musicians are the only ones who can make me cry?
guess what?  no one listens to them.  
so, i am sure you aren’t listening to me now.
just watch. i’ll prove it.
let me tell you a story:

i watched a music video last night.
a little boy was playing in a baseball game,
his father was screaming, violently shaking the fence.
“you won’t amount to anything!!”
the little boy said nothing; distraught, afraid, defeated.
he walked away and just gave up.
the singer sat in the stands watching this happen.
he could say or do nothing about it, but it tore him up inside.
it was written all over his face.
the rest of the crowd didn’t even notice that little boy.
oblivious.

i wondered:
what if there was someone standing back?
…watching me quietly from behind as i went about my days;
holding their tongue but hurting inside witnessing the wrongs of my everyday norm.
watch as i take it, choke down another secret, and just walk on.
i wondered more if anyone had back then.
what about the little girl on the softball field?
his fiery eyes and bleeding throat,
cursing my existence and shrieking blackness through yellow teeth and reddened skin.
i’d just look up at him silently.
stare in obedience, swallowing my sadness and guilt in disappointing him yet again.
when the shame was too much i’d look at my feet and the dirt was dry quicksand that i could no longer drag or push away with my cleats.
did anyone see that?
was there anyone in the stands thinking, “what a shame. that poor little thing.”
i wouldn’t be mad or upset if you did and did nothing; you couldn’t have.
but, did you see it?
did you sit in your seat with a wince or a grimace, shake your head any - so disgusted by the injustice and palpable hurt?
…if you were our team’s spectator, you had five years to notice...
did you?
i couldn't imagine how anyone could miss it.
i've no question you saw him.
but, what about my face? my little body? my spirits crushed?

so, my story doesn’t end there,
not even close.
but it does make me cry.
i don’t do that.
“crying weakens my immune system”,
and, i am wildly ill.
so, i’m finished now.
i just wanted to know..

what if i get mad at you for asking me questions about that time, but even madder when you don’t?
what if i hate that you call so late, but hate you more when you don’t call at all?
what if i wanted to be seen, but spent my whole life trying to vanish, run away, disappear, and hide?
what if i swore i’d never go back, but the truth is i never left?

what if i knew no one would read or think about the words comprised in terrible form above regarding a singular example of the past, and yet i still wrote it anyway?
what if i hate the darkness and depression makes me vomit, but i throw up in it every night. the world cannot get any darker or else i cannot sleep.
what if i hate the clichés of “i hurt myself so i can feel alive”, because i destroy myself so i can feel dead?
what if i think most of the people who speak of such horrid, unlivable lives are just liars with narcissistic dramatics and don’t know the first thing about real pain?
what if i’m a heartless bitch for thinking that?
what if i don’t care if i sound that way because i know i still hold firm on that thought?

i endured this all with a smile on my face; and the only regret i have for doing so is that i didn’t realize i should’ve hated you sooner.
but, what if i’ll never hate you because i don’t understand Hate or its value in the world?
i think hate is useless and forgiveness isn’t so the other person can feel better about themselves.
so, maybe i forgive too easily and maybe i’m a doormat; but, i refuse to Hate.  i won’t do it.  you can’t make me.
what if you hate me for being honest, but when i tell the truth you call me a liar?

why can’t i celebrate a whole year of being hospital-free?
..because i’m still too ashamed i’ve been hospitalized at all – and i don’t want to remind the world.
why do i hate to love you?
..because I’d rather you beat me blue from impatient cruelty so at least it’s something familiar.
why do i still look to the sky to connect with God when i know He’s in the air, at my feet, by my side, in my chest..?
and, yet i choose the furthest thing away from me to connect to Him.
do you not find some sick twisted symbolism in that?

why do i burn with fury when you guess my weight is something lower than it really is,
but, when you yell i'm a number that’s too high,
i gleam inside happy, stitched with a horror-film grin and think “yes, you only wish.”
why am i such a hypocrite, but i hate hypocrisy?
why do i respect drug-addicts, alcoholics, self-injurers and mental cases more than i ever do the everyday honorable person?

why do i dream of singing when i can barely even speak?
why do i consume music for breakfast but by lunchtime deplore my musical lackings.
why do i memorize poetry and quotes and the secrets you told me,
but forget to take the medicines that keep me alive?
maybe those aren’t the things that keep me breathing.

why do i speed at 85mph on a back road leading home when i don’t ever want get there?
why do i have the best children’s names picked out, but swore i’d never have a child?
why do i speak in pronouns of you and he and she, when they’re never referring to the same person?
whoever these You and He and She are; they must be some pretty awful people because we all seem to talk about them a lot.  oh. 'them'.  they’re the worst of all.
why do i sit here with the most biting lines of poetry and spoken word, but refuse to share them?
….i want to keep them to myself.
let them sit in my head on repeat,
even if the torment sends me to an asylum.
maybe i like the madness.
maybe i’m a Native American and sharing those words means i lose a part of my soul.
..like a photograph.
words are my picture.
my face is a false advertisement of someone that does not exist.

so i sit now on a mattress – no sheets, no bed-frame – on the floor.
there’s a giant bloodstain - rather morbid and haunting.
i don’t know how it got there, but i’m sure i don’t want to remember.
here, my breaths are shallower.
my eyelids are barbells and you’re loading the weights.
my pupils are swimming, playing tag with my irises;
the truth is i’m dizzy and i can’t focus.
i don’t need drugs for the world to become a haze, a blur, a demon or delight.
all i need is solitude and i’m as wasted as six sheets to the wind.
my skull has a jackhammer trying to break through the bone,
i feel it right above my eye.
it reminds me that i’m blind and that i think too much.
it drills me with questions,
but, also pounds the reality that i actually know the answer to every single one.

what if i didn’t want you to know this, but i wrote it anyway?
what if my lies are more believable than the awful truth?
and,
what if when i titled this “from the archives”,

…..i really meant last night?