clairenchanted

[clairenchanted]

the ways you make yourself a monster.

tw for body horror, blood, torture, death.

when he enchants her so that her body is frozen and sluggish, she willingly fails to resist it. the first time she had said, straightforward and unassuming, to just ask her and she'll comply. but his eyes, always a startling blue that seem to cut through the darkness, were clouded over as if he couldn't understand her and she had wondered if it was the magic that had changed him, or if he could truly feel the effect of the deaths around him.

perhaps it was unkind, but he'd willingly killed his whole family, so.

though, of course, so had Deirdre. she doesn't want to think that it might not be the same thing that they had done, because they had both done what they felt was necessary.

so when he spells her, now, she allows it. her body grows heavy and sluggish, fingers barely able to twitch, eyes rolling in their sockets. he hoists her over his shoulder and it never fails to surprise her that this frail man -- a mage, never dedicated to making his body strong -- can carry her. it seems cruel, that his hands are so spindly and his face so sunken but he had strength enough to grab his son's wrist and --

every time, he brings her across the stone paved room, magically hidden from the estate above and the world outside, and lays her across his worktable. it's a small mercy that she doesn't deserve, that he moved her from the cell in the outer room, the one by the altar, to this one in his laboratory. perhaps she deserves to still have been in the other cell, where she can still feel tianna's ghost, but if she's going to survive this she needs any room to breathe that she can get.

so she lives in the little cell in his workroom and sometimes he drags her out and places her on his table. the ends of it are cluttered -- quills, paper, journals, arcane focuses, spell components. sometimes he works with alchemical tools to create things that Deirdre knows will fail -- attempts to bottle command spells or ways to contact planar entities that simply don't have the power to work once they are distilled in liquid form.

now he lays her down and when he speaks, it's more to himself than to her. it makes sense, given that her lips are too heavy to move anyway.

"I need something from the source," Viallis murmurs, rifling through a drawer. from where her head has flopped to the side, Deirdre can only see glints off of metallic surfaces that reflect that strange aquamarine lights that burn in the braziers and sconces. "Last time it wasn't enough, probably. I'll cover the rune this time, saturate it. Of course, if you're not pure enough..." he pulls two different glass vials from the shelf, examining their mouths, comparing them. "I suppose it will come out in due time. Maybe a single transgression isn't enough to corrupt you entirely... we have time, we have time to get this right..."

every sentence trails from his lips and dies in incoherent mumbling. when he stands over her again, she can't turn her head to see what he has in hand. but she can guess, and she does so correctly when she feels her shirt pulled up to reveal the flesh around her midriff and feels the bite of a blade carving a thin line into her side. aquamarine light flashes, a weak spell sparking along the rift as he guides the blood that falls into the chosen vial.

blue light obfuscates the sight of steel and blood, and even though she can feel the scored line, she simply takes the sensation and files it away in her mind where all the little aches and pains go, all the sensations that she cannot afford to feel if she is to properly convince him to let her go.

"We'll try this again, again, again. I'll check the records -- if I need to, I can simply find someone new and try to imbue them with his gift..."

something acrid roils in Deirdre's stomach. she swallows it back with a numb throat. so he's planning on expanding this operation again. he was never going to retreat forever, or else she wouldn't be here, but how long has it been -- weeks? a few months? she'd been diligent about keeping time at first but when his schedule became erratic, hers did too. after all, there is no light in this basement lab and when he is gone, there is no way to tell time.

but now she has a time limit.

she continues to bleed sluggishly as he moves to a smaller table, attending to runes carved in stone slabs. she still doesn't have her movement back, so she can't see precisely what he's doing. but it's safe to assume he's pouring her blood through the carved tracks, and when a dull aquamarine light sparks up, he makes a noise of approval and writes something down.

then she is back in her cell and he's sitting in a chair, writing. slowly, her fingers begin to twitch again, and once they do she forces herself to quicken the process, steeling her will and regaining movement and agency in her limbs, in her middle, in her throat and mouth and head. she ignores the head rush as she pushes herself to sit quietly against the stone wall. reflexive healing magic blossoms against the cut on her side, but she can't bring herself to admonish her patron for trying to heal her and Viallis isn't paying attention anyway.

she does, though, ignore the warmth in her chest and the high, twinkling voice in her mind.

"... Perhaps you might want to carve the outer plane symbol on the metal component you're sacrificing," Deirdre says.

Viallis slows then pauses, head tilted.

Deirdre does not allow the rustiness in her throat to sound in her voice. she is meant to be bored with all this fanfare, indignant that he is not taking her on as a partner, as the chosen vessel of the eldritch god. she is supposed to be ruthless and dedicated to the cause Viallis has given his life -- his family's lives -- to. she cannot allow even a hint of hesitation in her tone, of desperation, of suffering. she cannot feel whatever feelings might exist in her, lest they rise to the surface and do anything to let him see through her lie.

really, it's dangerous that it's a lie at all.

don't feel. don't stop. don't back down.

her eyelids remain at half mast and she draws one knee up to her chest, letting her elbow rest there, and props her chin in her palm as if this is all beneath her. her voice is even and uninterested, almost a bored drawl. "typically, planar contact requires some form of attunement, which you're aware of, given how you're trying to use my blood as the conduit for the ritual. but for a god as powerful as him? cover your bases."

Viallis turns to her, recognition returning for a moment, returning with a flash of desperation and deep pain and commonplace greed. how else should a man look when he's sacrificed the only good things in this world in service of finding power for himself? Deirdre remains thoroughly impassive.

eventually, he nods. "That's not a bad idea..." he buries himself in his journal, and Deirdre almost wishes she had a journal of her own. but she can't want anything, so she just repeats the names he's mention in passing to herself in her mind, willing herself to memorize every detail he's let slip. Malfius, Greenfast, a cell in Baldur's Gate, an order calling themselves The Tempered Slaughter. names of people he's planned on grabbing here in Waterdeep should his experiments on her fail.

she remembers them all, vowing that the moment she has been freed she will write them down, keep meticulous logs, and undo every inch of what he's wrought. what her father, eldritch god take his soul, had wrought.

eventually, he nods to her, gathers his things, and leaves. the lights in the braziers go out, but she can see well enough in the darkness. she doesn't know how long he'll be gone -- he was down here every day in the immediate aftermath of his murder of his family. but eventually there were long stretches of time that left her alone in this cell with only the voice in her head, and it was only recently that she learned he'd purchased land in Greenfast, near her father's country estate.

when the voice in her head grows too worried, she lazily turns her palm over and summons a handful of goodberries. one is enough to fill out of the emptiness in her stomach and stop its rattling, aching emptiness. it seems foolish enough to magically care for her hair or her clothes; she's done so much to survive, if she truly thought unkempt hair would kill her, she'd do something about it.

instead she settles against the stone wall, on the stone floor, ignores the hard surfaces and the cold, files all the little complaints away in the back of her mind, and she plans.

he's trying to summon a monster. so she will simply have to become one.

[clairenchanted]

so you want to be a hero !

tw: abuse, injury 

o1. you are born glowing. all twelve sets of your ribs, pristine and perfect, are outlined in the white light of your powers from the moment you first start crying. you will never remember the way your mother holds you against her chest and your light suffuses pink against the blanket you’re wrapped in; you will never remember the way she calls you her starlight and kisses your forehead. you will never remember the way your father watches the scene unreadably for two minutes before he turns on his heel and walks away, murmuring about a call he needs to make. you will never remember that there is no call. you will never remember the way he says light under his breath like a it’s a curse that you were born glowing and not destroying the hospital room with some exponentially stronger superpower. you will never remember the first time you disappoint him. 

o2. daddy always smiles; you are three and looking up at him with his blue eyes, wide, flinching against the flash of a camera. sitting in his elbow, you look for safety in the crook of his neck against the sudden brightness; what you find is his rumbling laugh and a gentle hand on your back. 

c’mon, sierra! don’t be shy -- everyone’s happy to see you. say hi! 

your eyes hurt and your head swims -- there are too many people, a tangle of limbs and voices, asking questions you can’t hear and can’t answer. eventually, when you don’t look away from the crowd, he moves his other hand to sign things: photos, posters, souvenirs. and he smiles the whole time. mommy’s dark hair tumbles over your shoulders as you try to sit still and face forward. 

that’s daddy’s little girl! 

the next time someone takes a picture, you even manage to smile. 

o3. mom used to do your hair for you every day -- you remember that. she sits with you now and it’s only because she does that you realize it’s been some time since anyone but Rosemary has done it. the maid is somewhere else in the Blake estate tonight; you are on your mom’s lap and she has her hands in your hair. the braid in your hair keeps spilling strands that tickle your cheek; you laugh, and her hands still. 

sorry honey, she says. i guess your hair’s gotten a little thicker. 

you are five, so you don’t know what that means. but you also know that your mother is here so what is there to be sorry about? you smile, you know how to smile, and you reach back and clumsily pat her arm. 

it’s okay mom. 

mom can’t manage a full braid tonight, but she brushes out your hair until it’s straight and shiny. you don’t know what it means when her hands shake. 

o4. when Gabriel Blake saves his six year old daughter and his wife from a villain at a meet and greet, it makes every paper later that day and trends on twitter for a week. he comes out with various statements after the attack: how quickly the villain was taken care of, how he will always place the safety of those around him -- his fans, his family -- before everything else. he’ll be taking a break from public appearances to make sure to spend quality time with his beloved daughter and wife, but he thanks his supporters from the bottom of his heart and promises he’ll return to them soon enough. 

o5. when you’re eight, Grim’s mom tells him to take his glove off when you spar. you both pause and look at her, not sure sure you understand. but she just watches you and you watch Grim and Grim watches his hand as he painstakingly takes his glove off finger by finger. you almost ask yourself where his dad is, but that’s silly -- Reaper’s never at practice. 

the first time is clumsy. Grim’s mom corrects you both too much; there’s not as much disappointment in her voice as dad’s, but it’s more bitter and you wonder if it’s a power of its own. if her disappointment is going to curdle in your blood when you’re not looking. after that, you both do better. 

o6. you and Grim are nine and at the mall when the clothes in hot topic suddenly, and without any warning, come to life. it’s the slip of black fabric like a shadow over Grim’s wrist and then he is pulled away from you and you both start to scream then stop yourselves. this is what you’ve been training for since you could walk; if you fail now, facing your first villain on your own, then you have failed everything and everyone and every moment and purpose of your life. 

when you plunge your hands into the fabric, your light does so little. your powers have always been weak -- you’ve barely managed to make it physical, making little cuts in the fabric that do nothing to thin the onslaught. so you rely on the gifts dad has given you: extensive training, hours of building muscle and reflex, and the tenacity not to give up. you fight your way in, fabric wrapping around your throat and face until you can’t breathe, but you find Grim’s hand. he destroys the fabric with the other, rotting it by touch alone, and you pull yourselves bodily from the animated clothing. 

Reaper was with you that day; he apprehends the villain, and the two of you escape with only a few bruises to pay for your first victory as heroes. 

o7. somehow, your private school uniform has gold thread through its seams. in navy, white, and gold, you pass each day in much the same way. Grim is sarcastic and funny, Jeremy is sunny and approachable, and you, Sierra, you are quiet. you fail at being funny a lot, and charming sometimes, so you discover quickly that the best thing you can do is be neither. you keep your head down, do your work, and speak only to teachers, or to Grim or Jeremy. 

your grades are impeccable. once, when you’re studying at lunch, one of the kids asks why you try -- shouldn’t you just be good at this stuff already? you had never stopped to consider what it would be like to know this without studying, without work, and why it should matter. that’s when the laughter starts, the strain of isn’t that Echo’s kid? isn’t he number one? maybe she’s just weird. maybe she’s just weak. 

Grim’s leaning across you, bodily, to throw a napkin at Jeremy distracts you enough that the voices fade. 

it’s cute that you think you can sit with us, Grim tells the kid who stands beside your table. his face turns confused then offended -- then white as Grim’s hand, free of its glove, makes clacking sounds on the plastic of the tabletop: skeletal and deadly, eating through the material like it would through flesh. but you’re nowhere near top three. 

what? 

didn’t you know? that’s who you’re looking at right now. so try to be a little smarter next time you open your mouth. 

the kid trembles. Grim waits until he turns on his heel and runs before tugging his glove back on -- holding it high, one bony finger at a time. Jeremy cracks a joke. you remember how to breathe. when you get home, your father clucks sympathetically at the boy that was just so rude to you today -- he got the call immediately. the kid won’t bother you again. and you won’t give anyone else a reason to, will you? 

no, you won’t. 

no, you won’t. 

no, i won’t. i’m sorry. 

you stop opening your books at lunch. 

o8. dad is the number one hero in the world. he has responsibility on his shoulder that you can hardly dream of understanding, no matter how hard you’re working now. he was always going to break eventually -- but it’s not him. it’s not his fault; it’s not his inevitability. it’s yours. when you’re twelve and he changes. 

you are used to pain, because you have to be. that’s how you prepare -- dad always keeps bone regrow and med kits on hand when you’re too slow and break something in training. he shows you how weak your hits are, shows you how to make them stronger. shows you the kind of mercy a villain will: none at all. because i need to make sure you can keep yourself alive, Sierra. i want what’s best for you, because you want to be the best. 

of course. 

you’re used to that: the odd arm, the odd rib. healed over many times, you don’t even notice the burn anymore. today you’re distracted, probably. you must be. that’s why you’re too slow. he’s been quiet the whole time, but he’s allowed to be quiet; he’s number one, he’s helping you, and he’s your father. you are the one learning -- the mistakes are yours. 

what did you do wrong? he asks. 

you don’t think. you’re too quick. you were too fast. 

excuse me? 

the training room is half the size of a city block, and all of it is silent in the wake. seconds pass as you watch his face, absent of a smile, hardened in something sharper than disappointment, and try to let your reeling thoughts make sense again. try to remember how to breathe. 

flesh on flesh shatters the quiet, and you’re already down before the pain blooms across your jaw. he waits for you, gaze narrowed and appraising. get up. 

he’s on you again before you’re standing and you have no chance with your center of gravity compromised. you hit the mat and the wind knocks from your lungs. your face aches -- but that’s fine. it’s only pain, Sierra. if you let pain distract you, how will you ever be a hero? how will you ever survive when something really tries to kill you?

up, then down. up, then down. your face, your leg, your arm, your ribs, up then down until something cracks in your side and all you see is white and when you stumble to your feet, shaking and desperate, your knees buckle. hands are immediately on your arms and you flinch because -- because you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t flinch because it’s your father and his touch is steady and gentle and doesn’t hurt. this is training; he’d never hurt you. 

woah now, kiddo. you can’t open your eyes, you can’t see. is he smiling again? please, please be smiling again -- you did a number on yourself this time. you know how to roll better than that. 

i do, i do know, i’m sorry -- 

what are you apologizing for? it’s all sun over the thinnest sheen of ice. kind and earnest over the chill. 

i don’t -- i don’t know -- 

what are you apologizing for, Sierra? 

i -- i know how to fall better. i let myself get hurt. 

oh, come on honey. yes, you know better, but there’s no need to apologize for an accident. 

he helps you to the bench on the side of the room and holds your ribs together as you swallow bone regrow. the injury burns as it seals into place, and for hours after. it burns for days. eventually, you ignore it because surely it will fade some day. the same with your right shoulder next time, your wrist, your right leg, your nose. the burning lasts for a while, but you are Sierra Blake and you know to take pain and put it somewhere you won’t feel it. 

it has never once crossed your mind that anything could have healed the wrong way. your father taught you, and he’s the best. besides, if you forget to block the ache when you breathe in, you can just use it as a reminder. 

o9. one day, you’ll know how to ask the question because you won’t have a choice. it will come to you, sobbing, aching in ribs that never healed right, desperately grabbing onto the front of Grim’s shirt, unable to do anything but crash to your knees as you scream why couldn’t he love me? and it’ll hurt more because you know Grim is hurting too, and he doesn’t have the answers, and it’s not his responsibility -- you shouldn’t be stronger than this, strong enough to not need anyone. but knowing that will make you cry harder, cry until you can’t breathe, confused and hating yourself and pleading to know if you’ve ruined yourself and Grim and the love you had for each other. pleading to know what you could have done to lose your father’s love, because it’s always easier if it’s your fault. because you don’t know how to fix things that aren’t your fault. 

you will cry until your voice breaks and you can’t -- or won’t -- speak for a week.

now, you pose for the photographer, holding up the certification of number one as your finish your freshman year at Beaufort, your father right behind you with his hand on your right shoulder. you don’t need to remind yourself to ignore the pain of old injury in it anymore. all you need to do is smile for the cameras. 

1o. it’s always been you. it will always be you. your successes are only given by the grace of your father’s training. your failures fail him. when you secure your place as number one during your first year at Beaufort Academy, you know that you did not earn it. 

but you have to try anyway, because you are Sierra Blake. 

[clairenchanted]

genesis. 

i take your hand at the end of the world.

but not yet. first there is the making of it.

i. you turn on the light, and it floods the room. the bulb had been burned out for weeks. i watch it every time i hit the switch and nothing happens, every time through the door i hit the switch and watched its nothing, watched the lamp change with the colors of the long days, light in the light and dark in the dark.

you see it and you laugh. you tell me something like, of course you would. i say it’s alright, but you are already looking for the bulbs and i watch you through half lidded eyes. you are slow and steady, and the light flickers once before it holds. slow and steady. let there be, you say, creating shadows that fall in the shape of your hand and your body across the hardwood.

ii. the window shakes with the rain. i lie beneath the window and i shake with the window and the rain.

i sink low in the bath; i watch the water bead at the crease of my wrist and fall down to my elbow.

i smell the earth.

iii. the summers smell like honeysuckle. i walk by them; they’re growing along the water. i walk by them in the heat of august and my shirt turns yellow where they bend in the breeze and brush against it, and yellow on black i am the same as the bees. honeysuckle plants grow every summer, larger and wilder and i smell them on the bank of the bay, then from my window, then in my memories, then in my dreams that come and go and take the edges of reality with them until i sleep in daylight and wake up in pollen and honeysuckle.

iv. i went north, a few times, and i saw the stars. i saw the way they spread across the band of the milky way, and i saw the ones that my father gave names because they existed in a pattern that we can see, each year, each time we lie out at the edge of the woods, north of the city, and look up.

on paper there are lines, dotted lines, that draw indelible chains between this one and that one, and when i was young and i saw the stars for the first time i was afraid and angry because the lines weren’t there, and how could they know to hold on without them.

v. there were deer on our lawn. we watched them, the young bucks and their small, growing antlers. does and fawns, soft brown and spotted in a way that we can hardly make them out through the trees. once, you ask how we’ll get to the car and i laughed. or maybe i asked and you laughed. i was not afraid, then, which is the only thing i remember for sure, for sure.

we watched the ducks on the lakes, and we watched the swans. it was summer, and the sky grew dark but we did not leave. we made drinks out of fruits and ate them and drank until we buzzed like the lighting off in the distance. the lake was blue and the beach was grey, and in both depths i looked for something massive and living.

vi. i stole seeds once, when i was young. you smiled when i told you, and you said you’re still worried about them, aren’t you.

i wrap my teeth around my fingers ( i did, i do ) until the flesh turns red, sometimes turns slick. i bite what i can, where i can. i feel my heart race fast and aimless – too fast to know and understand, because it is seized with the knowledge that there is nothing and everything stretched out before me. all this world, and time enough, and none of it will come to be and all of it will come to be. i cannot speak for the effort of it, for the meaning of it, for the point of it all. i cannot understand the why and i cannot uneclipse the what. i sink my teeth into my flesh.

you take my hand and rub your thumb against my palm, or maybe i take your hand and rub my thumb against your palm. i see you. i know you. you see me, you know me.

vii. the ineffable unknown rises above the horizon, and there may be a tomorrow or there may not be a tomorrow because that is the way of the world: created and ended every time i close my eyes. but there is nothing in a terrible storm or the morning that comes after for me, when the sublime is here in you and i, in the distance between us.

what a miraculous thing, for your hand to be.

that was then, so now:

i take your hand at the end of the world.

[clairenchanted]

man / monster. 

maybe the creature was the monster anyway. 

that’s the line, the frankenstein’s not the monster, he’s the doctor! and then  the well meaning pause, the he’s still the monster, isn’t he?  to make someone and leave them? to revile them? to hurt them?  a little laughter, the kind you find in polite, intellectual conversations.  honestly, you say to your grad school friends, he’s still the monster. 

my mother and i have spent our lives fluent in anger. english is our second language. i remember getting off the bus at the stop before the bridge where i’d meet her after school. i remember the car was silver that would camouflage itself against the watery afternoon light, and the thing that took up most of the space in the interior was the anticipation of what would come. do you know how long i’ve been waiting she would say, or. what did you forget to do today. or, i bet you didn’t start your homework yet. or, i can’t today i can’t do this with you today. i would breathe, i would start my words, and they would all fall against the knife edge of her anger; i learned that mine needed to be sharper and harder if they were ever going to stand a chance. 

whenever i hung out with the girl down the block, or the only cousin my age, my mother would sigh. she would say you talk just like her when you get back. like it’s a bad thing. i searched in her tone and in her eyes and in my own words circling me in my empty bedroom, trying to find the part where it went wrong. 

the thing was, the creature was beautiful.  canonically, specifically. his limbs were in proportion, and i had selected his features as beautiful. beautiful! the creature is eight feet tall and does not fit the beautiful features the doctor --  (he’s not a doctor, your grad school friend whispers to you with the delight of knowing these kinds of things. he dropped out of college! where’s your degree, buddy? where’s your student loan debt? and he calls himself a doctor.)   misery became me in college. that was our currency -- money secondary. we traded in sleepless nights and how many pages we had to write and how many classes we took. i started to fall from where i had been (a star of a student, an apple of an eye, a requisite on the honor roll) and i learned how to make failure my home. it was what i heard, it was what i saw. so, necessarily, it was what i lived. 

they would drink, so i would drink. they would beset their sentences militantly with as many syllables as they could mange -- i learned how to breathe around longer and longer words, lost in my own verbosity. (read: wordiness.) 

anyway, the creature does not fit the beautiful features frankenstein selected for him; he stretches his skin and makes it sallow. all of the parts of him, beautiful on their own, are disparate together. they show their differences, their points of origin. they do not hide. they do not make one seamless whole.  so frankenstein, in revulsion of what he has done, leaves.  and the creature, who does not know that he is a creature, does not know why, because he does not know that he is a creature. 

i am used for my intelligence, so i start to use others for what they can give me. i structure my world in varying degrees of usefulness. i curl around the empty parts inside of me and tell myself that they are unnecessary; what can emotions do for me? how can loneliness harm me? 

but then i am met with understanding, and something in me surges up and out, trying to copy what i have just seen. 

we learned about mirror neurons in a cognitive neuroscience class i didn’t do very well in. but i remember those; i remember thinking about looking at someone else and letting myself feel the urge to mimic them. i remember wondering if it would happen if i looked in the mirror; if i could ever want to mimic myself. if there was an answer at the bottom of that endless philosophical cycle the very question would create. 

in the story, the monster doesn’t eat meat.  he is well spoken; he asks things like: isn’t he meant to be adam (biblically, literally)? who is he, where did he come from, why is he alone?  was he made to be alone? 

what the creature also doesn’t know is that frankenstein (the man who is not a doctor) did not ask any of these of the creature he made, because it was never about the life that would be made. what he loves are the questions: how much blood, how much flesh, how much air makes a corpse a living thing? what he hates is: how can one live now that they are alive? 

the man hates the monster, and the monster learns how to hate. 

(all men hate the wretched, says the creature who becomes a monster, how, then, must i be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!) 

(this is not a justification for murder, of course. but this is a story, and the monster is making a point here.) 

my best friend’s laughter -- rare and quiet -- is infectious. we sit on my couch in my apartment and start howling with laughter until we forget what we were laughing about in the first place. but her red face, streaked with joy and tears, fills my chest with an electric warmth and her euphoria becomes my own and we laugh again and again. i cry with her, too, when the hour grows late and she opens the shell around her fragile heart; we are connected with a thin live wire and when she feels, i feel. 

they (a special they) approach me with gentle hands and words unmasked and unbeguiling. they come without wants except for the fact that that’s not true; we all have wants that live deep within us, tender and lacking bite. wants that don’t hurt, that fill us with a softness that wraps around our jagged edges and soothes the ache in our throats. they come with understanding and honesty and everything in me rushes to meet them with the same: twin waves kissing at the crest. 

i have learned things in the intervening years and my slow crawl into adulthood. i have learned that my anger is sparked by its twin, brought to life with the same electric shock that raises the creature in every film iteration. i have learned, sometimes, to swallow it back. i have learned to want things that are not shown or given to me: i have learned to want to be soft and open, to want to hollow out my chest and make space for the things and people i find around me. i have learned the things i like and dislike about my disparate, stitched together parts. i have learned to find the seams bound in tight, black thread. 

i have learned my creature-ness. 

the argument inherent in monster versus man is what makes each. inevitably, though, you can only find the similarities: both are made; both are made of what they see of others like so many fingerprints left behind on glass. both desire; both desire to understand who they are (doctor, philosopher, loving, loved). both are who they make of each other: monster, man. murderer, meddler. 

there is something relieving in monstrosity, as if i can breathe fully around the idea in a way that humanity denies. there are many ways the story could have ended: in understanding, in acceptance, in dignity and knowledge and perseverance. and there is only one way it could have ended (tragedy) because the question sits like a knot in the deepest part of the story’s heart: what is the difference between monster and man? 

as if it’s important. 

i am not un-dangerous. but i can reach out my hands, palms up, fingers without claws, and know that i, the monster, will be gentle and loving. and in that moment, it and i become only a word to keep track of things, at home in our sewn together body. 

[clairenchanted]

wild sage; ocean spray; the earth in the high, dry summer. 

a few things you remember, in no particular order. / previous. 

o1. the room is dark and quiet with every thing that made it alive petering into nothing in the growing night. the television screen has gone to the complacent blue of the movie menu, and it spills insubstantially over kate’s face. it makes her face soft where it’s pressed against her arm and where her arm is pressed against ray’s. the shadows cast by ray’s hair grow darker, but he bleeds into light in the glow the further down his face is illuminated. 

you cannot see victoria. she is sleeping on your shoulder. your back is against the legs of the bed, and you are on fire where she is draped against your side, you are on fire in every place that she touches you and you hold her unintentionally upright. you don’t understand what it means, to feel so blindingly alive in a room so dark and still. you don’t understand how you have not burned down the bedsheets at your back, the carpet under your thighs, the delicate and infinitely breakable form of her cheek her elbow her knee jammed up into yours. 

it’s too quiet and far too loud. you sit for hours trying tread the water of your desperation, aching to understand why you are so acutely aware of your body. you don’t fall asleep. 

o2. you look at your reflection in your sister’s mirror. you try to understand what you look like in her sweater, turning a little to catch the light in the slivery threads that slip through the seams almost unnoticed until you see them the right way. emma shifts on the bed. you hear the way sheets shift under her. you wait for her to say something; the tension in the silence wraps around your throat and begs for your voice. 

deep maroon. you wonder if it’s too dark for you. 

i don’t know, she finally says, with the precision of a scalpel. 

what don’t you know? you don’t ask. 

a little more silence. you think about how short golden hour lasts, and how much you’ll blend into the shadows of the basement as the party lasts so much longer. 

she sighs. i don’t think it fits you right. 

you don’t know what to say to that, or why you want to say anything. but the chord wraps tighter and you scramble to find the release: can you argue? do you want this? does it matter? what could you possibly need help with? 

you look at emma’s reflection over your shoulder in the cool glass. your lips part; you don’t say anything. you take off the sweater and give it back. 

o3. no one says anything on the ride back home from the police station. you stare out the window of the SUV and idly note the landmarks that pass by. you don’t remember the questions you answered, and you never asked about the paperwork that was filled out. you turn the memory of your father on the phone over in your mind for as long as you remember to -- something about forms, something about documents -- and then it’s gone. 

the pitcher sage is growing. it’s april, so this makes sense. you know something about pitcher sage, or maybe you remember something, but the thought ebbs out to sea. you can’t smell them from here anyway, and you’ve never been anything but neutral towards plants. 

when you get home, the foyer feels a little larger than you thought it was. maybe the ceilings are higher. something hot presses against your elbow; by the time you turn, emma is already a few paces ahead. you catch only the tail end of her look, the last pointed hook of it, before she is gone up the stairs. in the distance, echoing in this too big and meticulously kept foyer, the slamming of her bedroom door is the only sound. 

your mother is wearing all black. she stands a few feet away from you at the crossroads where the living room branches off from the stairs. you watch her, cataloguing the things about her that stand out: her perfected waves frizzing at the ends; her lipstick smudging just at the corner of her mouth; the front of her dress is wrinkled. you don’t know why these details whisper to you, and you don’t know why you should care. 

o4. when you and victoria are nine, you realize the true extent of your power. it’s a hot day -- it’s too hot in a way that it never really gets in california, all sticky with rare, heavy storm clouds gathering on the horizon. every time you shift in the sand, it burns your skin where it’s bare. it hurts. the back of your throat burns and it’s stupid -- it’s just a stupidly hot day -- but the moment your face turns red and your eyes sting, there’s a sticky, familiar hand on your shoulder. 

c’mon, she says. she takes your hand and helps you stand. i think i have enough for ices. 

she doesn’t, and you want to cry because victoria is so nice and it feels so unfair that you’re just fifty cents short. your throat aches; you want to yell, even though it’s useless and selfish and bratty. even though you know better. it’s hot and it’s not fair and you just want to eat ices with your best friend in the whole world so you can stay out here and not go back home. 

aw. the ice seller guy probably isn’t as old as your parents but he’s old to you. you wonder if he’ll get mad at you both, but something breaks in his expression and he hands v’s money back to her along with two little ices, lemon and cherry. don’t worry about it, girls. 

this is a magnificent superpower, but you both whisper to each other that you need to be careful with it. you laugh when v’s lips turn bright red as she eats, and then you can’t stop laughing just, just because. 

o5. the hallways are packed with the throng. you marvel at the fact that you haven’t been trampled yet; you dread it, you dread its certain coming. you press yourself against the back of lockers, hugging your books to your chest. room 205 must exist somewhere but it doesn’t exist here and you don’t know which way to go. 

more important things don’t exist here: the ocean spray, the smell of pitcher sage, the tang of lemon ices from the boardwalk. the burning heat of the august sun and victoria next to you. you knew this would happen once high school started -- you’re right and for a moment, anger lashes up your chest and into your throat. how dare the world be so large and loud and so lacking of anything that you can cling to and understand with each intimate breath. how dare the world do this to you, how dare it take you here without your permission and ask you to deal with it. 

you manage to make it to english just as the bell rings. you sit in the back row, and you spend half the lesson curling notebook paper around your pencil. 

o6. there has never been a bigger deal than the junior class trip. your grades have been immaculate -- straight a’s, a glowing report card, a need for nothing more at the fall’s parent teacher conference -- and you find yourself with a signed permission slip and a check for mr. chester. 

we have basically two full days, v says solemnly, the two of you leaning over her spiral edged notebook. so we have to plan strategically. if we start with skiing, we’re not going to have time for anything else. 

you picture mammoth mountain’s snow capped peaks, soaring high above the hot desert valley below. you picture leaving the heat-packed sand behind, forgetting the dry earth. you think of cute hats and gloves and scarves, and try to imagine what it feels to look at your own outfit on your own body with approval. with excitement. maybe you’ll manage it -- maybe you’ll leave the constant, gnawing anxiety behind in southern california behind for a weekend. 

okay, you say, imagining v’s face red with the cold -- the tip of her nose, the tops of her ears. you smile to yourself and look at the notebook. do we have any time to hang out in the lodge? 

absolutely not, she says primly, everything under control. this is a once in a lifetime thing until we get into some fabulous east coast college and we can go skiing all the time. 

in between classes. 

sure, sure. now look, if we do snow tubing and ice skating first, we have the whole second day to figure out the skiing and snowboarding trails. 

you picture spinning in concentric circles over and over, hands linked, gentle guitar-heavy music wrapped around the scene. you nod. 

sounds great. 

we also have to sit with felicity for like, most of the time. 

-- felicity? you wonder sharply. felicity? you ask gently. 

she’s been making eyes at jake for like, the entire semester. she chews the words, deliberate and hard edged. something’s up. keep your enemies close, gus. 

you are cold. you are very cold. you breathe through it and look at the schedule printed in v’s spiky, flowing script. oh. i didn’t realize that was still a thing. 

it’s not anything. not yet. but i’m not going to let something just -- just happen between them. you know how i feel about jake. 

do you? you should. you should know everything about v. you watch the notebook, and you tell yourself you’re not cold. right, sorry. 

no worries. v waves a hand like it’s not a big deal. like it’s not important. that’s okay. it’s okay. just help me, okay? 

this is part of your world now: the smell of books, the off white lighting, the hallways of your same old high school. but it suddenly feels very, very large again and you don’t know how to form the words. 

okay? she asks idly, not looking at you. 

you nod. 

o7. three days after you all come home -- from the funeral by way of the police station -- your mother opens the door to your room. it’s past midnight. you blink at the sudden light, waiting until her silhouette resolves into something familiar. 

she jumps a little when she sees you. you don’t understand why. 

my god, she says. why are you awake? 

you don’t know, so you don’t answer. 

you watch her as she stands there, eclipsed by the low light in the hallway. part of you wonders, briefly, why she’s here, but then in the next wave the curiosity is dragged back out and you are left alone in your bed. 

she finally moves. you don’t know how long it took her. she presses the door behind you until it is still open but only just. she crosses the room. she stands by the side of your bed. she sits, so close to the edge you think she might fall off. she reaches out and you blink when heat -- searing, brilliant, entirely strange -- covers the back of your hand. you feel her flinch, and you look down at her hand then back up at her face. 

-- august. there is something rough in her voice that you don’t remember -- catching, steely, ragged. rusty. she reaches forward, pressing a hand to your face. her eyes are wide, brows up. she looks as if she’s searching for something, but you don’t know what it could be so you say nothing. 

in one motion -- sharp but fluid -- she wraps her arms around your shoulders. you don’t move, but you don’t feel the need to pull away. august, she says, as if there is something to excavate in the depths of your name. august. please, can you -- please? 

you don’t know what she’s asking, so you cannot answer. 

in shattered pieces, she pulls back. she looks at you, one hand still on your shoulder. her expression pinches more, still at her eyes and lips. august, can you please say something? 

what? you try to ask, because this seems like the most logical question, but you try for the sound and it rasps in the back of your throat, stinging with seawater. you grow colder. you try again, and nothing comes out. 

your mother’s expression draws darker. she lets go of your shoulder. coldness rushes in to replace the burning warmth. i don’t know why you’re being like this. i don’t know why i try. 

you don’t know either. there’s nothing you can say as she gets up and leaves, closing the door behind her. 

[clairenchanted]

the one where you drown in a few different ways, all of them different, none of them final. 

trigger warning: drowning, ocean, death / resurrection. there’s also an annoying amount of abstraction. 

previously: ( x )

at some point, you learn that it was about four feet of water. you could have guessed that, but it’s different knowing how many, counting it on one hand with a finger to spare. 

you also know, as you have always known, that there was never anything out here for you. that wasn’t the point; pirate’s treasure doesn’t show up on a beach in California in the digital age. it’s just the thing you would have called it -- a soda bottle or a fishing net would have been bluebeard’s long lost gold. it would have been called booty while you laughed because you will never be too old to laugh at the word booty and because you would have been together: a collection of limbs shivering in the last breath of spring, laughing and shaking water off, holding trash and calling it treasure. 

these are important things to understand and they must be understood at the same time, always, but you don’t quite know what to do with them now so all you can do is hold them together and accept what they mean: you drowned with four feet of water above you, chasing after debris. 

you remember every second of it. 

it should be a blur. it was the end -- it was the end of your life, it was the end of august evans, it was the end of you four as you four ( it’s always you four, isn’t it ? ), it was the end of victoria-and-gus / gus-and-victoria and everything that meant ( begging free ices off the hopeless teenage vendor, lying as close to the surf as you could get, riding bikes home well after sunset, feeling the space between you as a living thing and never giving it a voice a name a breath ). it should be a rush of surf and salt and a deep darkness that eases you from this life in this world. maybe a light, bright and unyielding, waiting for you down some long, deep tunnel. maybe fear or absolute peace. maybe a sadness that floods your bones and turns them briny or the knowledge that everything is working out the way it should and you’re meeting the end you were always destined for. 

instead: the waves swell higher than the rocks that make up the jetty, and you think that the skies have been clear for so long so why is this happening this doesn’t make any sense -- you feel the force of it in your chest, the rushing swell catching you just as you’re about to break the surface. your back hits the wall of stone, blunt and slick. the tide bears in and you bear down, one hand splayed against the rock, holding your breath until the flow follows the ebb and you’ll know which way is up. the jetty holds you still while the ocean churns and you wait you wait you wait with air in your lungs the way you’ve been taught since you were a child. when the current gets you, don’t fight it. let it carry you where it wants then swim home. 

what you remember most is the sunlight. 

it pierces the shell of the ocean in asymmetrical fragments, shattered and brilliant. light illuminates the white foment of the surf and the seaweed and the bubbles kicked up and you look up, searching for a sun you find so, so easily. when you were small and the ocean was too large and dark and deep, you imagined a rip current pulling you so far you’d never seen land again and you’d be trapped so far in the depths that you’d never see sun again. but here it is; if you lift up your arm, your fingertips might break the surface. 

the tide moves out. you are pulled with it. you do not move. sunlight stains the world of water all around you, close enough to touch. you push yourself to follow the tide back out, chasing air, but you don’t move. you brace one foot against the rocks and push and windmill your arms and something holds you back just long enough -- just, just long enough -- for the tide to rush back in, howling and alive, and you take in the chest again and relief ( all consuming, you were made of it a moment ago ) turns icy and desperate. no -- no, no. no. through the whitecaps, you can still see the sunlight. 

-- lying on the boardwalk, drying out for an hour. wandering back to your bikes. waving around the netting or the bottle, debating what pirate last claimed this piece of history. deciding what you’ll do with the millions you’ll make selling it to a collector. finding victoria’s eyes, finding the moment when you both brush elbows at the same time, wrapping up forgiveness in the passing touch. victoria presses her lips together in a thin line and you hold your breath waiting until she says she doesn’t believe the dread pirate roberts really exists and then you exhale in a flurry of gold and laugh --  

you hold your breath as the tide goes through its cycle once more. you’re not disoriented; you know which way is up. 

( you ache with her, and you won’t trade it for anything. you can’t give it words. she’s your best friend. you know her body language like you speak it fluently, even though you never speak it. you know her eyes and the set of her mouth. you think about her. you dream about her. being next to her wants to tear you apart where your joints are the softest, but you chase it. every day, you chase it because it’s enough. ) 

you try again, chasing the tide to the surface. you can’t move away from the rocks. 

( you don’t know how to be brave. you want to be, but there’s always an excuse: it would change everything. what if it changes everything. can you survive everything being changed and changing yourself. aren’t things fine the way they are. she’s happy. you’re happy. let the tide carry you, gus. you can always swim home afterward. ) 

vaguely, something feels looser. but when you try to reach up again, you realize that you can’t. you move a little. the sunlight is four feet above you, crowded now with black spots. you keep your eyes on the sunlight. 

you’re tired. you should feel the panic, but it’s dull around the edges and far away. 

( maybe one day you’ll find the secret. you’ll find the thing that other people have found to make them brave. maybe that’s when you’ll live -- maybe it will take time. but you can do that. you can wait. you know how to survive a rip current and you know how to swim home. ) 

you don’t last long enough to feel the moment you become unstuck. the last thing you see is sunlight. 

[clairenchanted]

a moment, together, before things change (metaphorically, literally, inevitably). 

you are sitting with a girl on a pier. she’s your best friend. for the first time, you think of these two things first separately, then together: a girl, and your best friend. sunlight limns her glasses and tangles in her hair, and her lips are drawn into a pout as she watches the tide roll past -- roll beneath you both, churn deep until it breaks at the shore twenty feet away. you’re both ten feet up, maybe less. some of the surf breaks against the rocks.

this place, with its tides and worn wood and rolling, endless ocean, is part of you; you’ve sat here -- apart and together -- since you were kids. it’s stitched into who you are, etched into your bones. you’re not looking at it now; you’re looking at her.

“maybe we should make a plan,” victoria says. “high school’s going to be so different. like, bigger, y’know?”

“way bigger,” you feel yourself say, tasting salt. the world is so open here -- it’s so empty here. it’s just the ocean and you and her. high school will be nothing like that. you shiver. “what kind of plan?”

“hm.” she hums tunelessly, thoughtfully. she stretches her arms in front of her. “no boyfriends for at least a month. we have to figure out the scene and we can’t let stupid things get in the way.”

“like boys.”

“exactly.”

“that won’t be a problem for me.” there’s an edge of something like roughness or like laughter in your voice. she reacts immediately, reaching over with one of her stretched out arms and shoves your elbow.

“gus! don’t doubt yourself! in fact, that’s rule number two. you’re not allowed to doubt yourself. and before you argue, i don’t care at all what your mom or your sister says about that.”

you smile to yourself, curled in and bursting with everything you keep locked behind your teeth. she doesn’t have it all right, but that’s okay -- you haven’t told her the important part. the why it doesn’t matter, not for you part. but she got everything else right and she’s touched your elbow and you take these little things (she knows you so well; she stays with you) and write them in your heart where you keep everything you remember.

“okay,” you tell her, because she makes you want to say yes to things. then you smile bigger. “as long as you let yourself believe that other people want to be friends.”

“ugh, c’mon. people are just so...” she trails off, waving a hand. it dances through the sunlight. when she gives you a look, you recognize it immediately and your whole face softens.

“just so,” you prompt her.

“they’re -- just so.”

“are you going to take honors english or something -- ?”

“gus!” she laughs as the waves break against the pillars of the pier. your body moves in time with both of them -- feels the rumbling roar and the visceral, dancing thing and leaning into both. just a little, palms braced against the edge of the pier, feet dangling a few feet above the water below, tingling with salt spray and laughter.

then, she leans against you. her shoulder is braced against your shoulder as if both of you have been made for this.

“ -- they’re not you.”

no, they aren’t. no one else in this world is august evans and no one else is victoria ruiz. gus burns with it.

“of course not,” you say quietly, nudging her a little but not enough to dislodge her. (never that.) “but some of them can be almost as good.”

“woah!” victoria’s cry echoes over the ocean. she turns to you with glittering eyes and you forget to breathe for just a second there. “is this confident gus? is this the new and improved august evans? is this your high school form?”

“oh my god.” you press your sweatshirt-covered palm against your face, snorting a laugh into the fabric. “you’re impossible.”

“of course. that’s the whole idea.”

“i guess i’m stuck with it, then.”

“you are.” victoria threads her arm between yours. you’ve never felt warmth like you feel where the insides of your elbows lock.

you smile again, full and broad, teeth and all. “i guess there are worse fates.”

she watches you for a moment; you don’t know what to do with it, but then she turns back to looking at the ocean. “damn right. anyway, that’s rule three.”

“four.”

“ugh, fine. four. we stick together. always. like, you show me your schedule and we walk home together, and if we get different lunch periods we complain to the principal.”

“or sneak in?”

“or sneak in.”

you cannot imagine this kind of warmth existing in the crowded hallways of high school. the handful of days left in the summer are slipping out of your palm like sand, and something aching and worried keens in the pit of your stomach.

but you’re not there yet. you’re here: on the pier, in the last of the golden evenings before fall. you’re above the ocean, tucked against victoria’s side, and this is your world where no one and nothing else can get in.

this is where you’ve spent your summers since you were little. making sandcastles on the beach, swimming, making puppy eyes at the boardwalk vendors until you get a free popsicle -- always with victoria’s hand in yours. always together. you are august, living in an august world. you were made to exist like this; you’re safe here.

so you rest your head on victoria’s shoulder and stay that way until long after the sun sets.

[clairenchanted]

the one about the pandemic. 

it was summer. i fucking hate summer. 

i don’t hate the earliest morning in summer -- when there’s still the faintest hint of a chill from the night. it’ll burn off in an hour, and i’m never awake enough to really appreciate it, but i can convince myself that the day won’t be so bad when it’s not that hot yet and i’m not sticky and burdened by the sun. 

i always remember the parts of the day when it’s an unseasonable temperature: spring nights that are too cold, winter afternoons that get too hot for layers of sweaters. the mornings in the summer when i can feel the breeze off the harbor. i felt it that morning and that’s why i remember it: that i had to get up, and when i did the light was at a strange, low angle, glittering around my ankles, bouncing against the buckles of my new sandals. 

people were out. it’s brooklyn; people are always out. they’re out when i get back from the bar at one in the morning, and at not-quite-eight in the morning they’re out. a few of them -- jogging, walking a dog, getting to the subway to go to work. i didn’t go to the subway. i went to the post office to pick up a certified letter that i was worried would be some sort of time sensitive thing i’d missed a deadline for. 

the whole walk, i worried. i don’t normally walk there -- it’s just a little too far and i have too little mail and even less that requires a post office. but i didn’t want to take a bus one stop. so, i walked. 

by my apartment, i can smell the honeysuckle. it grows a block down, by the shoreline, where there’s just a bike path and a park and the highway and then, finally, the bay. the further away i got, the less i smelled it, until it was finally gone and it was just the summer city awfulness: trash and exhaust and the ugly things i don’t like to think about. and weed. a lot of fucking weed. i’m extremely sick of the smell of weed. i walked away from the honeysuckle and through the trash stink and thought about the what ifs. 

it could be something about my employment -- a notice i didn’t give back in time. something disciplinary. did i do anything fireable? did i miss a class i was meant to teach? does a student hate me enough to ruin my life? i could be walking towards my firing without even knowing it. --- is it a letter from a friend that needs to be sent certified because it’s coming from far away? probably not. definitely not. that’s not something that could happen. i don’t get things in return like that, because i hold candles when i should be putting them out and saving them from melting. 

i worried, and i self pitied, and i wallowed. there’s some feeling that comes with the neighborhood’s familiarity -- some physical thing settling warmly in the pit of my stomach when i see the sights i’ve been seeing for almost all of my life, from when i lived with my family, what i see now that i’m grown and have a little apartment not a ten minute drive from my childhood home. i could walk these streets blindfolded, and on every block i see something: the bus stop i took to high school. the place i walked with my friend for hours because we didn’t want to go home and let the day end. where we got italian ices. where i got my first bike. 

the letter turned out to be a repeat of a confirmation e-mail i’d gotten a week ago, no action necessary. on the way back, i went half a block out of my way and got the largest iced coffee i could. it was sweet with vanilla and sweetener, and stayed cool in my hand even as the day warmed up. by the time i got back, my drink was melting and i could smell honeysuckles again, and it was only a quarter to nine. sunlight streamed through my window, spilling over the hardwood with a deep, golden glow. i had the whole day ahead of me. 

for fifty five days these past two months, i have not left my apartment building. it’s now day sixty seven, and i have gone on two walks in the past two weeks. after both, i had a panic attack. i scrubbed my hands until they bled. i took a shower immediately, and i have taken my temperature at least five times a day. i’ve been quarantining for over two months, completely alone. no roommates, no work, no family, and when i walk i wear my mask and gloves. 

when it started, i had at least three panic attacks every day. they ebbed off a little, then came back in my sleep. i haven’t slept more than an hour at a time in over two months. i wake up from my sleep gasping for air, crying and screaming as i try to force air into my lungs. i started throwing up again -- involuntarily. voluntarily, even though that, too, is fairly involuntary, because eating disorders are like that. 

i went out for an hour today, just to walk. i was thinking about last summer, with my dunkin’ donuts iced coffee and the golden early mornings, and i realized with a jolt that i had been inside so long that i hadn’t been there to see the trees go through their pink blossoms stage. i thought, just for a moment, that i could remember what it felt like -- to be out, when it’s not too hot yet. to feel the sun, to smell the honeysuckle. to exist, for a moment, in the person that i was last summer. in the world that person lived in. 

i have been so staunch in my convictions about how to live responsibly that i have gotten into a fight with my father every time we’ve been on the phone. don’t take your mask off and only put it on when you pass people on your walk -- you’re supposed to treat it like raw chicken and not touch it once it’s on. and birdseed’s not an essential item! you’re not going to the bird lady to buy seed! and our comfort isn’t as important as staying alive. i’m not coming home, and you’re not going out. i have showed my parents, over facetime, how to wash their hands. i have holed up in my apartment and have ducked out of the way of neighbors and people on the street. i have monitored my symptoms and have unfollowed as many news outlets as i can. i have muted anyone on social media posting about the deaths -- the destruction. the warnings. i am following them all and every time i see these things, i feel irresponsible and in terrible danger, despite the fact that i have been lucky and smart and terrified into behaving above and beyond what’s expected. 

it has kept me alive, probably, and maybe my family too. and it has eroded me from the inside out. 

this is not to complain. this is not to want something different or else. this is, singularly and only, the first time i have processed my grief. survival has been more important than my mental health, to me. this is what i told myself, over and over. this is what i remind myself when i wake up shrieking, convinced that i cannot breathe, pacing my apartment at four thirty in the morning, waiting until dawn so the sun can protect me from the shadows at night. 

i hadn’t thought, until now, about all the little things, because they weren’t important. smelling the honeysuckle and going to the post office and getting an iced coffee. these are luxuries -- but i understand now that they are also memories i cherish, because they are the small, merciful moments of happiness that i have built my survival upon like bricks shoring up a seawall. 

i am drowning. this is not a protest; i will give my life before i demand a country return to normal, when that normal isn’t real and the most vulnerable lives are at stake. but personally, quietly, with every passing day, i am drowning. i find other little things now: sitting by the window when it rains. lighting a candle. writing, here and there now. 

but the wall cannot be built up as quickly as it has come down, while i have stubbornly looked away from it, and the sea is rushing in. 

the tide is only ever coming in. 

[clairenchanted]

rarely and unwillingly.  

i find reasons to live, usually unwillingly and rarely in a way that sticks. 

the things i find are things i feel with my body. i open my mouth a little in the rain, but only the rain that comes right before spring, when you can smell the cool and the earth in it, as if the soil is coming to meet me. i open my mouth and tilt my head up so that my lips can feel the farthest edge of a storm, so that i can taste something sweet without digging my nails into the flesh of my stomach. i open my mouth and the rain is familiar to one specific memory of being in college in late march and sitting in my car and watching the rain loose pink dogwood blossoms from the trees until they landed with a soft, wet thump on my windshield. 

and in that single association, i remember what it felt like when the entire world was spread out around me and i wasn’t afraid of it, because i was safe in my car. i don’t remember that for long -- only for as long as it takes to get to the door of my apartment carrying my reusable canvas bag, full of groceries i will cook then throw away without eating. 

i clean the area of my apartment that i call the living room, where the couch is pressed up against the window, in the hopes that i will sit on that couch pressed up against the window and hear the rain fall against it. instead, when i am done, i sit on my bed (that is not near any windows) just to rest, and fall into a restless sleep. then it is time to wake up and make a dinner i won’t eat. 

one day, i do a little more. i eat something of what i made, and i wash the dishes right after. my hands hurt; my hands always hurt in the cold and the water makes it worse. but when i stand back, the dishes are done. 

my joints don’t like the cold. i ache, all over. my shoulders click, click every time i move. my ankle throbs where i have sprained it, three times a year for the past four years. (because i have lost stability in it -- because of the sprainings, of course. this is an example of a cycle.) when i sit for long hours at my computer (working, staring at the work on it, not working, worrying about not working) my back burns. for a moment, i remember being sixteen and spending every saturday morning at borough-wide orchestra rehearsal. i carried my cello up four flights of stairs (because there was no elevator) but i remember never hating it, never worrying about it. 

i started sautéing mushrooms tonight, for dinner. i told myself that i would enjoy them (because i enjoy mushrooms) and that it would be fine to eat them because i cleaned them, and because plenty of other people buy and eat mushrooms. halfway through letting them brown with the garlic in the oil, i throw them out. (because i know that i can be brave now, but later i will be up for hours thinking about the unseen dirt might have missed, the only dirt in the world that will give me a strange disease when i am alone in my apartment, in danger of no one hearing my cries for help.) 

i look up recipes online. i watch cooking shows. i write down lists of ingredients i will never buy for things i will never cook. 

but i make myself go out, at least once every day, to walk somewhere. to go to the grocery store on my corner, even if i struggle to eat. i want to feel the rain. i want to open my mouth in it, and live in the smell of my college campus, late at night with my friend beside me, surrounded by pink dogwood blossoms and deep, dark evergreens. 

i won’t remember the feeling of rain for long after i am out of it. i won’t remember the way certain books and shows made me feel a day after watching them. 

but i will remember those things exist, occasionally. 

but at least i do it. 

[clairenchanted]

first love. 

i never asked if you could love me. i only ever asked if you would let me love you. maybe we both knew i wouldn’t have been able to. 

in middle school, you were the boy with the soft face and grey eyes, and i thought about kissing you were everyone could see. because all the girls thought about it and talked about kissing boys. i wanted you to walk up to me, in our matching uniform plaid, and want me where every girl who’d made fun of me could observe the way i made your face light up. you would turn a little pink but we’d stamp out our nerves. with my wooden lips and heart beating fast as a rabbit’s i would kiss you and prove to you that i was worthy, and loving, and normal. 

a year later you were someone else. you were the boy who was my friend because you never mocked me. everyone assumed so i did too, that you would let me into your heart. on a violet post it we played games in science class, and i didn’t let you win but you didn’t mind that. we went through a haunted maze at the school halloween fair, and we’d talk for hours on the phone every night about: the simpsons, fantasy, how you wanted to be a chef and i wanted to be a dog walker, how if you joined the military you would have to live because i couldn’t live without your nachos. curvy bands of streetlamp light played across my hands as we rode home from the JROTC ball, and i tried to feel butterflies from how close together we were pressed, tried to go breathless at the way we almost touched. 

i understand now why i couldn’t love you, and this was not the great tragedy of our lives. neither of us were left broken. but i still wish you hadn’t lied to me the last time we spoken, or that i hadn’t heard the traffic in the background. i wish i hadn’t been left to wrap the cord of the phone around my finger over and over as i cried in that basement, frightful and lost. i know i shouldn’t have wanted to love you, but i still wish i could have tried. 

( -- it’s called compulsory heterosexuality, but / and / so it hurts. )