wrenramblings - Tumblr blog

[wrenramblings]

girlhood

a poem about growing up under the patriarchy and how…weirdly saccharine and subtle it feels. for a while, anyway. thank you for reading I love you

Before he was a boy he was a child, but she had always been a girl.

She learned it like language, her side of the line— there was no linear study, no moment it clicked, no conscious separation of consonant and vowel.

Like language she was immersed and floating from her first inhale, from her first sound.

She hadn’t the words to describe it then: all stuff of life was hunger and satiation and pain, so yes let’s call it hunger.

They look at her and they are hungry.

For what, she doesn’t know but she is stronger than her cousins (boys, or more precisely, children) and that she knows well.

She has wrestled them to the ground and she has quelled their crying more times than she can count,

but in the world of pretend where she is free to fly if she dreams it, she assumes the role of the damsel without prompt.

Watches her cousins sword-fight from cardboard castle windows and to the grown-ups, those rough and rowdy children are small athletes,

but she is a girl, so when vintage dolls are excavated from the basement they are excavated for her, and to her own resentment she knows exactly how to play.

She plays differently when the grown-ups are around.

At her great-grandmother’s funeral, her cousins (boys, or more precisely, children) are dressed in suits unbecoming of youth and they sit in church quietly learning to grieve.

At her great-grandmother’s funeral, her mother teaches her that girls in dresses must cross their legs while sitting

and she says, they’re doing it! pointing to her cousins but mom says they are allowed to spread their legs because they are boys,

and people are always trying to get her to slow dance.

She does not want her grandfather to teach her how to slow dance,

not after he taught her cousins (boys, or more precisely, children) how to drive his little boat through the shimmering chop.

She rode in the back that day pink life vest sun beating down and waited her turn, for she is a girl and she has never been a child, so surely—

but her turn never comes,

she does not learn to drive a boat, she is not invited on the long hikes, she is not taught to play ping-pong, or foosball, or pool, she is not privy to conversations about sports and politics.

By the time she realizes there is a door, it is already closed.

Locks hands with a friend on the playground, innocent as spring, and a group of boys (or more precisely, children) tail her endlessly making smooching noises embarrassing her for a love she doesn’t feel,

and when she does fall in love, early schoolyard love, he tells her girls shouldn’t jump off rocks and she falls instantly out of it.

Sentiments repeated as she ages, do you have a boyfriend yet? such a pretty girl, just like the ones I dated in college— substantial though, not a small thing, are you?

Her cousins are asked polite questions about school and work.

She comes of age and what most strikes her is that there is no difference between girlhood and womanhood, no fucking difference at all—

gender, sexuality, etiquette, even the soft, tenuous topic of her young body:

they have been on the table from the very beginning, from her first inhale, from her first sound, exhibited like a rosy-hued feast.

They look at her and they are hungry.

She emerged one night, long ago, in pajamas so neon pink they burned with sunset-fire, and she was proud enough to hold her head high.

Her grandfather laughed and said, girl, they’ll see you coming from a mile away.

[wrenramblings]

Troubled Kids

a poem

TW for references to self-harm and suicide

When I was young for some reason I think for comfort I used to read terrible stories about children doing terrible things to themselves.

Like comparing two blackberries for creep of mold I would dissect the psyches of these children and rummage for neural fragments resembling my own—

look, here, a boy fifteen years old drowned in his bathtub of his own volition and I, too, fourteen at the time occasionally sat in the bath dissolving in acid by my own hand

or a young girl thirteen years old fancied the silver in her household the safety pins and, god forbid, the knives like a rag-doll she tore through her clumsy stitches again and again just to persuade the night: look, believe me, I am red.

Back home where every morning I crept through cobwebs to the bathroom, I dashed the curtain over to hide the tub from view; you see, the boy must have drowned in my bathtub I read all about it, my tub is haunted by him.

Downstairs in the tremor of terror I walked swiftly past the kitchen knives (general use items there was nothing I could do to cover them up) and although the girl certainly ripped at her seams with the old kitchen steel, the knives weren’t haunted yet— even then I knew.

I was not a troubled kid I knew lightning and her subsequent bellow as April knew rain

I was not afraid of the dark I did not understand its purpose but I knew its place.

Then girlhood like forbidden fruit and now the world is made of transactions and forewarnings— thunder means hole up dark means strike flint

yes there will be wonder first you must pay in whatever you can bear to part with, pray it is not yourself.

And that is the story, that is how all of us become troubled kids, that is how I picked up a blade and used it and did not reroute my fury kindly like a wayward traveler but beckoned it into the maw—

and deep in the blue briars and thickets of night, that is why we slice ourselves open from belly to throat: just to hear ourselves do it.

Just to convince the troubled kids of the forest:

look, believe me, I am red.

[wrenramblings]

long time no poem

[wrenramblings]

Two Deer at the End of All Things

At the end of all things, we are nothing more than a pair of deer. I walk with you between the sunlit trees of a snowy forest, far from where we began.

We swap stories until the sun sets. You tell me about the wildfires to the west. You tell me that your antler was licked by the flame and you were forced to shed it a season early. I offer you one of mine, but you do not take it; it seems you do not mourn the loss.  

Then we fall into a stumped spell of silence. What is a deer supposed to say in the sun’s absence? We should be hiding. Willfully or otherwise, we often forget that we are prey, even in our sanctum, even in the midst of another Big Freeze.

Entropy did not request a wake this time. There are no more goodnights to bid, no more stories to tell. We are supposed to don black and quietly acknowledge its passing as it bleeds into the backdrop of a receding cosmos. We are supposed to make ourselves something politer than known.

You turn to me anyhow.

I have observed the stars, you say.

And what conclusions have you drawn?

None whatsoever.

Then how will you know when it ends?

You pause for a beat. I feel its tendrils creep closer, but it doesn’t seem to bother you, so you carry on.

You are still thinking in human terms, but we are deer now. There is no end. I shed my antlers this winter and I will grow them back next spring. I have forgotten the poetry which foretold my impermanence. I have forgotten the star charts which foretold their own. I have not the hands to craft a telescope or draw a map. Why do I look up?

Does it frighten you? I ask. The dimming?

No, I am a deer. Only the snap of a twig means enemy. Only the crack of a gun means attack. Only the rush of the twin suns means…

At the mention of the twin suns, we both shudder, wide-eyed, caught for a moment in the flytrap of time. Our joints melt at length.

So why do you look up, if not for fear?

For wonder. Because I do not understand the machinations of our heavens. Because I do not need to. Because I already know they are vast, and changing. Because it does not matter how they change.

Because we will always be deer? I ask.

Because we will someday be dust.

I look at you, and it lingers, and it does not soften.

I take comfort in the idea of returning to the womb of the star I was born in. Don’t you?

I look at you, and it lingers, and it does not soften.

I take comfort in the idea that nothing ends. That all my particles are hand-me-downs. That matter is borrowed and returned, and someday I will return and know why I was borrowed.

I do not feel the same, I say.

I take comfort in that idea, too.

You smile at me.

Go on.

I go on.

Why can’t I call this matter mine, for the blink of an eye that I have it?

Well, what is your name?

I am a deer.

What was your name?

I cannot remember.

You stare at me, not unkindly. I try again.

Why can’t I create myself? Why must I be the reincarnation of other particles, other stories? Doesn’t it matter when I choose to shed my antlers? Doesn’t it matter what I choose to tell you tonight?

You watch me closely, carefully. It takes you a moment of consideration to speak, but you do.

It matters very much.

I take comfort in the idea that I am changing. I take comfort in the idea that everything ends. I take comfort in the idea that when I return to my mother star, there will be an absence in my wake, and I take comfort in the idea that you might mourn me.

Your chest swells and falls. We swap particles of matter as the stars rise and the air cools.

I imagine that I will, friend. I imagine that neither of us will be forgotten, not for a while.

And I imagine that we will end up in the core of the same star.

And I imagine that our dissonance, however brief, will have mattered nonetheless.

And we say farewell.

You tell me that you are continuing east, towards the rising sun and away from the wildfires, which claimed a piece of you, which you find you are beginning to miss.

I give you one of my antlers as a parting gift, to show you that I understand: what the universe borrows, the universe will return.  

And you give me a name, to show me that you understand: we deserve to be known anyway.

As I venture home, I look forward to meeting you again. By then, I will have named you too.

[wrenramblings]

The Pool

Entry eleven! This is about getting help. Please get help, dear reader. You deserve it. CW for mental health related themes

—

Remember what happened in the pool? 

You can’t hide your arm forever. Do you think the scars will someday go away? 

No, not just those—I mean the ones you got when you were fourteen, and you were jet lagged, right? Maybe that’s why you were awake, trembling, waiting to throw up into a bowl at 3 in the morning. Or maybe it was the dog. That’s the story you like to tell: London, allergies, and being woken up by the dog. 

But I’m not certain you actually woke up. I have this feeling—and that’s all it is, just a gut feeling—that maybe you jumped from one dream to the next. Don’t give me that look, you’re familiar with the sensation. Remember the shift in the dreamscape, the subtle graying of light? The molecular change in the static surrounding you, how it was suddenly fluid, something you could part and push aside with your hands? Remember, in the hairs along your spine, how something mundane became something sinister? 

Remember what happened in the pool?

I think you might be past it. You’ve moved on to bigger and better things, after all. And you’re a good liar. I’ll tell you something: good liars don’t dwell. They can’t afford to! You would be crushed beneath the guilt, just as you would be crushed beneath the memory—and look at you, dancing between raindrops to avoid the tap tap tap of both. 

I get the feeling your guilt burns hot and fast. I get the feeling it gathers in the roof of your cranium when you lie, white hot and buzzing, threatening to send you airborne like a candle in a hot air balloon, or better yet, threatening to boil your brain in its own broth. 

I get the feeling you have experienced both in equal measure, and given them human names like brain fog and fear, later derealization and panic, later still the unpleasant, but not intolerable, side-effects of safety. 

Because that’s what all of this is for, right? That’s why the lines on your arm are just scratches, or careless mistakes, or forces of habit? That’s why you stuff the panic down into a single bouncing leg? That’s why you haven’t been crying? That’s what you tell her to keep yourself safe? 

What ever happened to the hand, ghostly in blue rays of sunlight, plunging down into the eerie calm of chlorinated water? 

Remember what happened in the pool?

You grabbed on. I remember that much. You clung to life like the soft creature you are, and you emptied your stomach and your lungs onto the sun-baked concrete, and she rubbed circles into your back. The shame would come later. For a single beat it lessened and let you live that moment unaltered: that visceral, divine moment of being still alive, waterlogged-alive but alive nonetheless. 

It’s a strange type of drowning now. No chlorination. No thrashing. No lifeguard blowing the whistle. You’ve created such little commotion that when the hand finally plunges into the water, you don’t know if you still have the right to grab on. 

But you’re a soft creature and you’re drowning. Those two facts rarely change for us. All we can do is swim towards the surface and tread water until we’re strong enough to get on the raft. 

Someday I’m going to be there and I’m going to remember you. I’m going to lie flat on my stomach and plunge my hand back into the water, and I’m going to wait. Please, when you’re deciding, don’t make me wait long. 

Grab on. 

[wrenramblings]

2023

1. COMMIT TO THE BIT

2. PARTAKE IN THE DIVINE ACT OF CREATION

3. LET THE SOFT ANIMAL THAT IS YOUR BODY LOVE WHAT IT LOVES

[wrenramblings]

writing exercise: autobiography preface

Entry ten! I did a creative writing exercise tonight where I tried to write the preface of my imaginary autobiography. Please steal the idea if it resonates with you! I fear this is too intimate to live online

—

Preface

My life is not important enough to be documented, but it is as Jenny Boully said: “Perhaps I believe that by building this monument of remembrance I can propel myself into the future and make it so that I truly exist.” I am nothing if not a feral, self-preserving creature, and I want to be known, and I want you to know me. So I write.

I suppose I’ll reveal my first secret right off the bat: I cannot take life for granted anymore because I’m too superstitious to assume I’ll live a day longer. I knock on proverbial wood before merging onto the highway. I check WebMD before the sore throat has even bloomed into congestion. I think about the future in terms of if, and never when, because I once cheated at the board game Perfection as a kid and I think it might have cursed me, and maybe the opposite of my intentions will physicalize themselves until I have somehow atoned for my sin. So I don’t plan to live long. So I write.

I think about this a lot, actually: if I was diagnosed with a terminal illness tomorrow, how would I choose to embalm myself? How would I beam myself back into the land of the living? What would I do to avoid being forgotten? Sometimes I imagine filming enough videos so my family and friends could watch one, a brand new one, every single day for as long as they live. 36,500 videos to last 100 years, just in case. Then I imagine the hostage situation this would inevitably create, how they would be forced to watch me day after day, animated and alive on a screen, and remember that I am now made of ash and pixels, ancient and artificial and dead, yet returning every day to dig up their grief and haunt them. God, how I yearned to be a ghost. I tried to convince myself that loss would be kinder to them this way, if I was never truly gone. But people are meant to be gone, meant to be here and then not here—and projections of a person, even projections filmed in 4K resolution, cannot replace that hereness. My family doesn’t want me to be a ghost. No, I want to be a ghost because I am scared of dying. Is it that obvious? I don’t want you to forget me. So I write.

Writing is kinder, I think. Pick me up and put me down as you choose. Shelf me or donate me or burn my pages when it’s time to let go.

Here is everything you know about me and everything I fear you do not know.

[wrenramblings]

Hi heretic’s guide to homecoming is my favorite book and I’m here to start the fandom if it doesn’t already exist

[wrenramblings]

Camera Obscura

entry nine! a little snippet of a story I’ve been working on!

[wrenramblings]

entry eight! this is for anyone who is struggling with the fluidity of their gender identity. I feel it. there is so much power in being a shapeshifter kid

[wrenramblings]

entry six! I am eighteen and…very much not invincible as it turns out actually

[wrenramblings]

entry five. sort of a “lines of code” part 2. a simple one but a necessary one nonetheless

[wrenramblings]

entry four! …there is very little I enjoy about being awake so late, but this helps a bit

[wrenramblings]

third entry! don’t you also want to live everywhere all the time

[wrenramblings]

second entry! slurp it up like a cup of tea, why don’t you

[wrenramblings]

here it is! my first entry for between the two of us! I like words don’t you