Entry for August, week 1 of Brigits_flame...
I realize I am not built
like a bomb.
There is no digital countdown, seconds sliding by in red lights, no hardwired detonation sequence. No ticking, and no fuse. No rag to ignite like a Molotov cocktail. No terrible center awaiting a push of the trigger, no tripwire, no gunpowder.
I will not detonate-you can chalk it up to mechanical failure. But I
I am just not built
like a bomb.
Instead, I am red and white Christmas wrapping around a set of kitchen knives. I am the loosed ribbon, the bow shredded and tossed to the side. I unravel, I shed layers instead of seconds. I offer feeble papercuts throughout the year and a half it takes to unwrap me, until at last you have reached the blades, sharp and silver and new. Blades you test on your wrist and tongue like a daring little child, an exotic game, delighting in the danger, delighting in your clever aversion. I have not cut you; I have not yet.
This unraveling, my dismantling. I will exist in the end, as kitchen knives instead of scattered shrapnel. I will be whole, but bare. Blades exposed. Blades sharp enough to sever my own suspensions, sharp enough to sever yours, but I have yet to try.
So now, nearly unraveled, the line of my blade evident through thinning layers of Christmas wrapping, I want to break things. I am at that stage, that destructive stage, like the Cisneros poem. “When all that is breakable is broken…” Oh destruct, oh my desire, to destruct far, far beyond repair.
Because I, I still
would like to think my blade
is sharp
for a reason.
like a bomb.
There is no digital countdown, seconds sliding by in red lights, no hardwired detonation sequence. No ticking, and no fuse. No rag to ignite like a Molotov cocktail. No terrible center awaiting a push of the trigger, no tripwire, no gunpowder.
I will not detonate-you can chalk it up to mechanical failure. But I
I am just not built
like a bomb.
Instead, I am red and white Christmas wrapping around a set of kitchen knives. I am the loosed ribbon, the bow shredded and tossed to the side. I unravel, I shed layers instead of seconds. I offer feeble papercuts throughout the year and a half it takes to unwrap me, until at last you have reached the blades, sharp and silver and new. Blades you test on your wrist and tongue like a daring little child, an exotic game, delighting in the danger, delighting in your clever aversion. I have not cut you; I have not yet.
This unraveling, my dismantling. I will exist in the end, as kitchen knives instead of scattered shrapnel. I will be whole, but bare. Blades exposed. Blades sharp enough to sever my own suspensions, sharp enough to sever yours, but I have yet to try.
So now, nearly unraveled, the line of my blade evident through thinning layers of Christmas wrapping, I want to break things. I am at that stage, that destructive stage, like the Cisneros poem. “When all that is breakable is broken…” Oh destruct, oh my desire, to destruct far, far beyond repair.
Because I, I still
would like to think my blade
is sharp
for a reason.