Eighth issue: Enticing through curving fingers and leave an angered, empty fist.
As I've told a couple of people in the past few days, I've been postipated. Justine suggested suppositories, but I can't stand those things. Too chewy. I finally took some Litamucil. Maybe it was Scribogel. I don't know. Of course, the problem with that kind of encouragement is that the sheer force of block removal results in some unpleasant, unsophisticated expulsions such as this one.
The real problem is restlessness. I've been complaining about this for days, ever since it occurred to me, following the sense of light dread - there is such a thing - that covered me after my stupid dream about flying cats. They had propellers strapped to their backs, man. And they lunged and bit with that rrrrrrrrrrr sound from the propeller engines. Straps digging into their striped fur covered fat rolls. Those flying bastards fucked me up. Gina illustrated it for me, (I say for me, but I mean against me) but in my trauma over the fact that you couldn't see the fangs, I forgot to copy the URL so I could show you.
I have a strange set of superstitions. Suggested superstitions, the absolute worst kind of superstition to have. Someone wonders aloud if something might be bad luck and I'll start getting the jitters about it; for me, now it IS bad luck. Ridiculous.
Every few years I'd purge these superstitions, except for the most tenacious ones, and I'd have a nearly empty slate ready to receive new ones. The tenacious ones included the need to knock on wood after talking about a blessing in my life, and the need to throw spilled salt over my shoulder, even though the devil stopped peering over it years ago. I also have the inability to comfortably talk about how I got a cut or a scrape until I could see it healing. When it's on the mend, I can talk about it in the past tense. If I talked too soon, it'd never heal. I hadn't thought about it before this past week, but this also seems to be the case when the cut is emotional.
The bitch of it is that I want to talk about it. I really want to get it out, like exhaling smoke. The less smoke I have in my lungs, the better off I'll be. I can talk around it, even mention that I feel like shit, but if you want a why, I blank. I can't even form a sentence about it in my head. It just goes away, ghosts itself just enough so I can still feel it, but not work out the shape of it. All I'm breathing is smoke.
There's too much for her to suck out on her own, so I put my mouth against yours and yours and yours too, on the off chance that you might be able to clear it out. Every little thing helps, and I have to thank you for that.
We think each other elusive. The truth is, it's our security that's elusive, or has been. Impossible to feel safe when the ... yeah, the terror of betrayal is bigger than faith. I never thought I was faithless, but I realized this all went back to my superstitious nature. The mere suggestion that this would be hollow, temporary, ill advised, quick to expire, blackened to poison as soon as I parted my lips to accept - that was enough to fuck me out of faith. We were terrible at reassuring each other. So many other reasons, other influences eroded our honor and caused this tendency to recoil as if burned with the hint of the slightest possibility that one of us did not feel as strongly as the other. So we were on opposite sides of reality, eyes narrowed, stuffing experiences away from each other into our mouths and choking on them to give ourselves an excuse for the wetness of our eyes.
Stung and vicious, driven to tremor and inebriates to dull the shriek, lungs burning for lack of your breath. I sought solace everywhere but where I could find it.
She sat on the edge of our bed, I was on my back. Her hand was on my bare chest and the tiny weight of it was what I focused on to steady my breathing while my eyes were streaming. So much smoke in the room, after all. I curled around her, held her as tightly as I could, and our instinct kicked in and we were rocking back and forth and she was just plucking at the hair on the back of my head like she was plucking out little snakes. I heard nothing but oh, oh on a whisper from her mouth and the first words I recognized from my head, though I didn't recognize the voice that pushed them into the air. Dragged over jagged rocks, the voice of the dead or the dying. I do. Love him. I steeled myself against the shivers that racked me, my eyes full of apology and apprehension but she touched my cheek and all coherent thought disintegrated. She was actually smiling. Bon. Tell him.
This is where I knock on wood and roll another.
I still smelled like her when he got in the car. Every time I brought my cigarette to my lips, I got another reminder of her. We drove to the tar pits and parked and I smoked until he complained about having trouble breathing. I laughed. Funny you should mention that... I managed. What? I looked out the window. Nevermind.
I couldn't say a word, nothing important. We went to an organic restaurant and I pushed twigs around my plate until he made have-to-go noises and I drove him back. I fell silent again for days. I could only speak to children and animals, though I complimented a few plants that I think snubbed me. Then I get this phone call.
Ha.
I think my exact words were, Hell yes.
The real problem is restlessness. I've been complaining about this for days, ever since it occurred to me, following the sense of light dread - there is such a thing - that covered me after my stupid dream about flying cats. They had propellers strapped to their backs, man. And they lunged and bit with that rrrrrrrrrrr sound from the propeller engines. Straps digging into their striped fur covered fat rolls. Those flying bastards fucked me up. Gina illustrated it for me, (I say for me, but I mean against me) but in my trauma over the fact that you couldn't see the fangs, I forgot to copy the URL so I could show you.
I have a strange set of superstitions. Suggested superstitions, the absolute worst kind of superstition to have. Someone wonders aloud if something might be bad luck and I'll start getting the jitters about it; for me, now it IS bad luck. Ridiculous.
Every few years I'd purge these superstitions, except for the most tenacious ones, and I'd have a nearly empty slate ready to receive new ones. The tenacious ones included the need to knock on wood after talking about a blessing in my life, and the need to throw spilled salt over my shoulder, even though the devil stopped peering over it years ago. I also have the inability to comfortably talk about how I got a cut or a scrape until I could see it healing. When it's on the mend, I can talk about it in the past tense. If I talked too soon, it'd never heal. I hadn't thought about it before this past week, but this also seems to be the case when the cut is emotional.
The bitch of it is that I want to talk about it. I really want to get it out, like exhaling smoke. The less smoke I have in my lungs, the better off I'll be. I can talk around it, even mention that I feel like shit, but if you want a why, I blank. I can't even form a sentence about it in my head. It just goes away, ghosts itself just enough so I can still feel it, but not work out the shape of it. All I'm breathing is smoke.
There's too much for her to suck out on her own, so I put my mouth against yours and yours and yours too, on the off chance that you might be able to clear it out. Every little thing helps, and I have to thank you for that.
We think each other elusive. The truth is, it's our security that's elusive, or has been. Impossible to feel safe when the ... yeah, the terror of betrayal is bigger than faith. I never thought I was faithless, but I realized this all went back to my superstitious nature. The mere suggestion that this would be hollow, temporary, ill advised, quick to expire, blackened to poison as soon as I parted my lips to accept - that was enough to fuck me out of faith. We were terrible at reassuring each other. So many other reasons, other influences eroded our honor and caused this tendency to recoil as if burned with the hint of the slightest possibility that one of us did not feel as strongly as the other. So we were on opposite sides of reality, eyes narrowed, stuffing experiences away from each other into our mouths and choking on them to give ourselves an excuse for the wetness of our eyes.
Stung and vicious, driven to tremor and inebriates to dull the shriek, lungs burning for lack of your breath. I sought solace everywhere but where I could find it.
She sat on the edge of our bed, I was on my back. Her hand was on my bare chest and the tiny weight of it was what I focused on to steady my breathing while my eyes were streaming. So much smoke in the room, after all. I curled around her, held her as tightly as I could, and our instinct kicked in and we were rocking back and forth and she was just plucking at the hair on the back of my head like she was plucking out little snakes. I heard nothing but oh, oh on a whisper from her mouth and the first words I recognized from my head, though I didn't recognize the voice that pushed them into the air. Dragged over jagged rocks, the voice of the dead or the dying. I do. Love him. I steeled myself against the shivers that racked me, my eyes full of apology and apprehension but she touched my cheek and all coherent thought disintegrated. She was actually smiling. Bon. Tell him.
This is where I knock on wood and roll another.
I still smelled like her when he got in the car. Every time I brought my cigarette to my lips, I got another reminder of her. We drove to the tar pits and parked and I smoked until he complained about having trouble breathing. I laughed. Funny you should mention that... I managed. What? I looked out the window. Nevermind.
I couldn't say a word, nothing important. We went to an organic restaurant and I pushed twigs around my plate until he made have-to-go noises and I drove him back. I fell silent again for days. I could only speak to children and animals, though I complimented a few plants that I think snubbed me. Then I get this phone call.
Ha.
I think my exact words were, Hell yes.