#mhactire

[mhactire]

I beg you — leave pieces of you wherever you go. Leave your earrings on my desk. Leave your shoes on the living room rug. Forget your keys in the dish by the door. Throw your coat onto the recliner & please don't put it away. Fill my house with yourself, so when you leave, you're never truly gone.

- a.a.j // please, linger longer (to the forest, with love) Dec. 2023

[mhactire]

I thought because it hurt, it was right. // I pulled my own teeth & I felt proud. // The pain was nothing in contrast to the reward. // Every time I pull a tooth, I anticipate the reward but now the blood is pooling in the absence of fullness & I do not remember a time before that.

a.a.j // I think it's gone beyond martyrdom (truths I tell) March 2024

[mhactire]

I've been thinking about you. // By that I mean, I've been thinking about knives. // By that I mean, too many people know about the summer of 2019 & the consecutive months that followed. // There is nothing that will ever hurt like those years — like you. // People are knives as much as they are bandages. // I get my blood from pricking my fingers on the images of you burnt into my eyes. // You should've never texted back in November.

- a.a.j // the haunted, the hunted (truths I tell) March 2024

[mhactire]

Age quantifies tragedies. Age holds a magnifier to horror & screams; "Here! Here it is! Look!" And I look — I see. There is no turning a blind eye. No reprieve from this.

- a.a.j // it tends to hurt when it makes sense (truths I tell) June 2023

[mhactire]

I think I love it. Like a mother, like a father. I created this. I brought this into existence. This stillborn, this dead thing. This wreath of my dismembered pasthood. This torture, this horror. It is mine & I must love it.

- a.a.j // daily birthdays & funerals (truths I tell) June 2023

[mhactire]

I hadn't meant to be a bad child. You hadn't meant to harm me. This is how it goes — inevitable continuation.

- a.a.j // hereditary horror (truths I tell) Nov. 2023

[mhactire]

I sometimes wonder what it would feel like to have been born right. // To have known from the very beginning that my life would be meaningless in a room full of lives. // I wonder then, perhaps, if I would be less worrisome. // My mother picks twigs & bones from my hair, spindly fingers like an old scarecrow. // To her, I was born right. To her, I am her grave faring firstborn.

- a.a.j // grave faring firstborn, child of dead things (truths I tell) August 2023

[mhactire]

You had loved me. In some way, at least. I was enough, for a moment — then worth no more than what you could gain. I do not hate you for this. I pity you. I pity your parents, and their parents before them. You have grown so used to survival, that devotion seems like weakness. If I was a weakness to you, then I am honoured.

- a.a.j // in the end, I will always care (truths I tell) Nov. 2023

[mhactire]

All things teach. I am learning, as I should be. A child staring in bewilderment, in horror. When do I get to close my eyes?

- a.a.j // it's ripping me apart, this world (truths I tell) Dec. 2023

[mhactire]

I meet your eyes in the rearview — I see myself reflected in your dirt-tone irises. What made us like this? What made me like you? Blood burns in my veins, my hands are yours & yours have harmed. Will I harm? Will I promise the same destruction you promised me? Sons carry the sins of their fathers. I fear myself.

- a.a.j // your atonement was a miracle, mine will be predictable (truths I tell) Dec. 2023

[mhactire]

To count them — the lies, I would sit for years. // Tallying until the walls are chalk black; rotting like I am inside. // It's a certain illness, a certain wrongness: I tell you what you want to hear. // I fear the wholeness of truth, the absurdity of allowing others to witness this. // Witness me, a sensitive & senseless creature — or beast. // To cut is better than to fold.

- a.a.j // what an odd little thing I am (truths I tell) Dec 2022

[mhactire]

You pretend there's nothing wrong with you. You want to take the night and sew it into your guts. The dark is the only place you feel any real peace. You pretend there's nothing wrong with you. You were supposed to be asleep by now.

- a.a.j // it's midnight blue in Cairo (truths I tell) march 2023

[mhactire]

I barely like wine. Not since I was drunken & shattered & begging to be held, to be loved in some way. I sang at the top of my weak lungs & tripped over my feet like a newborn deer. I chased it. The drunkennes was like arms, was like lips. His arms, his lips. It's desperation that drives a man to sin. It's almost like seeing a car crash in slow motion. I crashed in slow motion. I wonder if he saw. I wonder if he knew. Do I taste like wine? Or do I taste like blood? After all, the church likes to think it's the same thing.

- a.a.j // willingly poisoning myself to breathe easy (truths I tell) Feb 2023

[mhactire]

Love is not as simple as a vivisection. // You cannot take a screaming man and cleanly cut at his chest & point to where the love has sunken its teeth. // Love itself is entirely transcendental — it does not exist in a form one can examine or scrutinize. // No vivisection, no autopsy nor exhumation may tell you where in the body love may be visible to us. // Love will exist & we will exist alongside it.

- a.a.j // there exists no logical explanation for the enormity of love (truths I tell) Aug. 2022

[mhactire]

You must forgive me my trespasses, mother. For you were God, and I had been profoundly devoted. You created me, and you decided for me. You were all-powerful. Untouchable. Unrivalled. Of course I hated you. As children, we tend to hate easily. How many hate God? How many have burned for Him? There is no love without hate. No care without harm. No guilt without forgiveness. Do you forgive me, mother? I forgive you.

- a.a.j // I will never be washed clean of my sins, mother (baptism for a nonbeliever) Dec. 2023