turpentineblue - Tumblr blog

[turpentineblue]

The corn never ends, once it's July and hot.

Miles and miles of green framing highways

Grows tall to hide the teens drinking warm beer in the fields

Once the sun goes down and their parents' lights turn off.

It's not a dry heat, couldn't be, there is so much water here

Makes the air feel like soup you drink with your lungs

We forget what the word drought can really mean

Crackling dry air that hurts to breathe

Our air never hurts, only

suffocates,

drowns,

swallows up

The middles of our words run together

Our mouths are soft and trailing.

We're not often in a hurry to say what we mean

But most of the time we mean what we say

I think we hold the words in our mouths so long

They become slushy before we let them slide out

Some people say it's centuries of alcohol, permanent slurs,

I think it's because we're taught to hold on till we can't.

Till the thing you're clutching crumbles in your hands.

We're taught not to pack our snowballs too tight

Pressure doesn't make diamonds here, but ice

Even in our violence we are quietly protective

Every town along the rivers was once a logging town.

They left great logs on the river bottoms when they left

When there were no more trees left and no reason to stay

Sometimes they resurface

We watch them float down, wherever they go

My father says they're cursed, that they're angry

Sometimes he'll drag one out of the river

And try to make something beautiful

It never turns out right and he always scraps it

But he keeps trying

It makes sense that transportation is our export.

That we pioneered automobiles, made millions and millions

I've never met anyone here who wasn't trying to leave.

[turpentineblue]

Despite it all, despite it all, despite it all

[turpentineblue]

What do I do with the love that was bad for me?

The love I do not have and do not want anymore.

The love that isn't love anymore, it's rotted and ugly

I still wonder sometimes what he's up to.

If he's still kissing the same girl

Or if she's a memory like me.

I wonder if his angry hands have learned anything

Or if she still wonders, like me, if he'll ever strike

The tension when the fist never comes

But also never unballs its fingers

Is

Terrifying.

In a horribly unique way.

I don't love him anymore.

Thank God.

Loving him was the same as killing myself.

Even now, I'm chasing what is me back down.

It is forever on the horizon, she is scared and lost.

I am trying to bring her back home.

It will take years to undo what he has done.

[turpentineblue]

If there is more than one of me out there, more universes, I hope there's at least one who went for it. Who dropped out high school and ran away. Who sleeps on warm sand beaches with her toes in the water. I hope she already has all the tattoos I mean to get, and more that I will never think of. I hope she got the sleeves I will never be able to. I hope she's in a different state, or maybe even country every time she calls home. She has that big dog of hers so well trained and he sleeps at her feet every night. She tries to count all the stars, even if it's pointless. She doesn't care. She's kissed so many people and regrets none of them. She was able to let go of her long hair in a way that I was not. It is short and all the colors of the rainbow, she dyes it whenever she feels like with reckless abandon. She gets stick and pokes from her friends because she wants them on her skin forever. She tells everyone she loves them. She gets angry. She writes books and stopped biting her fingernails. She does yoga. She owns a little cottage somewhere on the East Coast, where it gets so cold and she is rarely there, and when she is there she sleeps in the barn instead. She does not give her parents her address, but visits them for every holiday. She knows they worry, but some things you have to do for yourself. She learns to dance but still does it wrong. She gets lonely, and then she gets unlonely. She laughs so loud and gets caught in the rain. She forgets how to find the area of a circle and that's okay. She runs and runs and runs until she's eaten up as much of the world as she can and then she vomits it back out for everyone else to see. If the multiverse is real, there is one where I went for it. And I'm rooting for her.