literature

you told me the truth

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Literature Text

the truth i made you promise to tell me.
the truth i wasn't ready to hear.
..never expected to hear.

you claim it was a mistake:
confused, a cluttered mind and stress pervading your thoughts;
betrayal, fear and a guarded heart that froze you..

well i was freezing
when i walked outside in twenty degrees at three in the morning
a place to clear my head
a street to turn teardrops into ice slopes on chafed cheeks
a pavement my feet couldn't feel beneath me because no feeling existed in my body

like the clawing at my arm that burned in four red lines
carved from the same fingernails you fell in love with the night before for scratching your back.
[funny how i used the phrase 'in love' just now when it's the basis of my scribble here now.]
but like that burning on my forearm
i watched you light a stove to fiery flames, searing hot -- to sanitize a knife.
why sterilize something you want to use to inflict pain on yourself i wondered?
and why am i standing here witnessing it in you
when it's my chest that's been speared with 12 daggers in 2 seconds not but 5 minutes ago.

--

there's a promise that can never be kept
not in anyone
word to the masses!
never promise these words:
i'll never hurt you.
it's inevitable
it's real
it's going to happen
it's the human condition and we were built with feelings for a reason.
we hurt and we get hurt.
i don't mind a broken promise when i knew it was "unkeepable" from the start.
but i mind hypocrisy.
the hostility and anger over my broken skin from a writhing fist that grappled at my body in attempt to withhold crippling tears;
i didn't want to hurt me,
you took care of that for me first.
but watching refractions of light ignite the ceiling in glare from the lights
off a silver blade of yet another steak knife that met your throat?
for that?
i have no words
only horror
only confusion
only pain
only a slice of that very knife right beneath my heart.

oh wait, you think i would've said 'straight through my heart', right?
did you forget?
i do not have a heart.
only a cellar hole where one should've been created but never was.

--

so i couldn't breathe
i choked and coughed
vomited acid and decorated the road in bile.
i held the breath in my lungs like i was storing for hibernation
the oxygen scarce,
my body fell limp and lifeless in my state of unconsciousness
i guess the respiratory system was created for a reason
i'd never seen its purpose or function before

in the bitter cold with only pajamas and a coat
the calls from my coat pocket signaled someone worried
shame on me for choosing the word "ignore"
such a cruel and bitter and uncaring word
but maybe that's what i am
though i thought i'd done everything to prove the precise opposite.
i guess when you walk through the door of the place you just started calling home
and someone attacks you with some semblance of a hug,
the message is unclear.
my skin, the jagged iceberg with purple fingers and blackened eyes
my aorta, chipped with an icepick not for a beautiful sculpture
but you're warm and worried.
i'm cold and cadaverous -- inside and out.
the paint on the walls can't even be seen through my fogged-blasted irises.
tell me
am i white, am i blue, am i alive?
because i feel like a ghost
which takes care of the answer:
i am both colourless and dead.

you try to revive me
i can't believe you
not yet.
misguided ghosts have no recollection or understanding of truth or reconciliation.
but this was all because of the truth
the truth i made you promise to tell me if you uncovered it
and you did.
so, i had you to thank and me to blame.
yet i'm the paraplegic with a bloodstream of no platelets,
and a gaping wound that won't stop draining.

--

you're asleep and i am writing.
we have to put on smiles
give thanks to the end song of November
with a family that is not my own but has invited this happy couple.

i think i'm regaining flesh;
my celestial absence taking human form again
i believe you
i love you
i just never expected this;
those words
from you.
those had belonged on my lips from the uncaring, emotionless, inhuman cyborg.
but i begged for the truth,
and you told it.
now we wait and see if it had the merit you claim now it didn't.

--

i think i'm going to shut the door and go for a walk in the cold now.
without a coat
in my same pajamas
an empty stomach
..and maybe i'll get some coffee.
this is all just fiction.
fiction is unreal, dishonest, a fabrication of something that doesn't exist, never was, and some would simply say "made-up".

.....i like to live in my fictitious world where we're all just words on a page and stories, right?
© 2009 - 2024 carvingbackbone
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