itsgraywrites

[itsgraywrites]

I'll never write any of these in Spanish

My first language is one that transcribes my soul.

A language when spoken it felt like the very fibers of my heart were crocheted into a tapestry of my own thoughts, in a way that felt unavoidable.

Revealing.

To speak my thoughts in English–a language I decided to adopt–feels like speaking through glass.

Less meaningful, but untouchable.

Not raw, but medium rare if you will.

To be put unto a display that was meant to be seen.

My Spanish is private.

Disowned.

Hidden.

Yet it's there, right there.

Bleeding into my syllables,

Rounding my vowels,

Twisted around my tongue.

Forming cracks in my display.

My unassailable showing being put in reach of prying fingers.

I'm not writing any of these in Spanish because I can't.

In order to write them in that language I'll have to show parts of myself I'd rather do without.

The parts that make my mother cry, that confuse my siblings, that give my father a lost look in his eyes.

I'd rather be vaporized than deal with them putting me together wrong.

My English words belong on my notebook pages.

My Spanish words belong in the inside of my childhood home.

[itsgraywrites]

You did something wrong

You wear the dread like a noose,

As you wait for the chair to tip.

Then it comes.

That feeling,

Like swallowing down a glacier,

A mountain of iced water crashing down on your shoulders,

Crushing your collarbone.

As you can do nothing about it.

Consequences coming like a right hook to the jaw,

Forced to roll with them or be broken by them.

Your choice matters little to them,

The bullet doesn't slow in the face of guilt or innocence,

It kills the same.

Sometimes the guilt leaves,

Disappears one day like a satisfied ghost,

Sometimes it's a healing burn,

Re-experiencing the singeing of flesh and muscle every time you're reminded of it.

You wear it all the same,

You swear by never making that mistake again.

Sometimes that's true,

Sometimes you have your fingers crossed.

[itsgraywrites]

Ever think about how you cut your mother's wings?

How you see them as persistent shadows on her back,

Her smile,

Her eyes,

A tired reminder of a life she can never get back.

Because of you.

You the price,

You the taker,

You the burden.

The harsh truth that you only come to piece to together once you grow your own unclipped wings,

and see that nostalgia,

That remembrance,

For a life not lived through her own actions,

But through yours.

What weight it is,

How heavy are her unfulfilled dreams.

[itsgraywrites]

[itsgraywrites]

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[itsgraywrites]

Panic

Congealing in my lungs a vestigial response activates my brain's warning lights.

Its useless subsequent processes a scared thing of me makes.

My nose pistons air into me as I sit down and grieve my lack of function.

I reel and struggle at the utter malfunction this despicable response turns me into.

There's barbed wire sticking into my throat,

I grind my teeth into dust,

All sense of control of my hands is lost,

They find a place sticking at my ribs trying to find a place in the gaps between.

I keel over hoping that the cold hard tile will tire of me and knock some sense into my hollow skull.

Knock! all my sense is lost when a strangled sob rips through my chords.

Gasps of a drowning man reverberate through the walls of my self.

I grasp at a jumbled electrocardiographic line, it graphs my arhythmic pulse crushingly thumping through me.

Eyes vibrating with every shrinking and expanding gasp in my chest and they find themselves shuttering at the pained scream I involuntarily make.

It goes until my chest stops its disintegrating compressions.

It goes until my throat is damaged and raw.

Until my fingernails are red and bloody.

Until I can feel a cold puddle of salt water and saliva sticking to my face.

I am numb and carved.

My brain restarts useful functions.

[itsgraywrites]

You look tired

They chip in.

"You look exhausted"

Dead eyes crinkle upwards.

A smirk appears.

Negation, explanation, remediation.

A choreography well practiced.

Not a step missed.

Calculations made in seconds for expert avoidance.

An evocation of a more energetic happier person flashes through me;

It is merely an illustration.

But it inspires enough consideration to cease their inspections.

Once again I am left to my isolation.

Once the illusion slips from my features I am left in humiliation.

Why should I stoop to falsifications without any justification?

What is my motivation for hiding my depression?

So clear in my features that it can be supported by simple observation.

However my automation is in ever continuation.

Negation, explanation, remediation.

None of my speculations have found justification for this continuous pattern of animation.

[itsgraywrites]

The worst part

It hurts to know that somehow every tear I spill is caused by another person.

That my smile shines with borrowed splendor.

That the tremors in my exhausted hands are for foreign work.

When your purpose is to please others what is there left for you?

Nothing.

An empty expanse of useless platitudes and polite smiles.

There's nothing for you here.

Yet here you remain.

In this endless plain of worthless toil.

Is it because you can't make yourself happy?

You stuff your face with borrowed smiles, and copied laughter.

A stopgap solution to the emptiness thereafter.

Or is it that you cannot find purpose anywhere else?

Your work will not be rewarded, it will sit on a wall collecting dust.

But you'll do it all again.

Over and over.

How many times it takes.

How weak are you not to be Selfish.

[itsgraywrites]

Canines (TW: Self harm)

My canines sink into the flesh of my hand

Holdovers from a more carnivorous past the sharp ancient points in my mouth turn against its own flesh

As instinctual response, as ancient as the evolution that created its weapon.

Replace pain with pain

Counterproductive and senseless

However, it works.

The animalistic activity calms me

Huffing through my nose

My breathing slowing

My heart ceases its hammering

How could such a contemporary problem receive such an ancient solution.

The painful pressure into the meat of my hand remains as my jaw locks.

Wet tracks mark my cheeks and chin;

I try and think but my mind is a dim empty room.

The brain is not producing thought, as if malfunctioning at the very act.

An attack upon itself; an attempt upon harm.

A recognition of where I am and what I am doing lights my prefrontal cortex.

It takes work to make an animal release its jaw.

My hand is free at last with my teeth loosening off the bloody exterior.

Eyelids shutter as I stare into the perfect imprint of my pearly whites

My mind goes blank at the self-imposed injury

A foreign action, and a step into the abyss

I self-implode and I crumble into a unrecognizable mess

The action was worse than useless

I stare at my hand

The unblinking eyes of a predator contemplating its harm.

[itsgraywrites]

Cigarros

I don't remember most of my dreams

Some are fleeting as spring breeze or stay in my head like a stake upon the earth.

In the end I forget them somehow.

Today I had a dream, where I don't remember anything but this one serene moment.

I sat in a chair, in a nondescript room,

A vast expanse of serene white as far as my eyes could see.

I reached into my pocket for an object for reasons fleeing my mind.

It's a pack of cigarettes, I don't smoke in real life but I think some part of me yearns for the buzz and the fluid smoke

I reach into the small box, the label green, words ascribed to them lost to the expanse of the dream.

I pull out a singular Cigarette whether it was alone or together with others of it's kin is a detail my brain decided to omit.

The cigarette burns at the end, it's warmth waiting for me as a campfire found burning in a isolated cold forest. The warm feeling spreads through my hand, blood rushing the ends of my fingers like sinking freezing hands into warm water.

I put the warm tube of paper and leaves into my mouth. The movement feels elegant, a small waltz of willing movement. The warmth spreads throughout my face, a feeling of needed calmness reaches my bones. My breathing slows, my heart stops rushing.

I breathe in, my chest expands as the toxins reach my brain. The calmness settles in my bones, cuddles into my muscles, massages my unconsciousness. I close my eyes, the expansive wave of oxygen willing them shut as I sit in an expanse I do not care to know. As I exhale I feel the smoke touch my face, it's a small caress settling me in the chair as I feel more relaxed than I've ever been.

I wake up.