Pandatry

Pandatry

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It's weird when a chapter from your story fits within a folder, gets a case number, like lines of a barcode, forest of identifiers that are menacing some nights and just ink the next.

clay

The year stretches out, my hands red from trying to mold its granular form. It always spins out. If clay isn't centered on a wheel, it breaks orbit, the collateral its entire shape. I keep throwing lopsided bowls of last year - broken cups of the year before, and they'll hold nothing. They'll never hold anything but memory, dents and fingerprints that no one wants to touch.

gypsy

She says you can tell a lot about a person from their hands, reading callouses and palms like gypsies, a sunday full of esoteric attentions - or, at least they seem to me. I've never had someone notice the freckle underneath my bracelets, the excess callous above my Solomon's curve. I've never had someone ask about all the things I've held, just to know them.

I always get off at this stop. The train whistle leaves me behind in a smoke cloud of memories. They always leave me at this stop, too. I say I understand in a way that eases the mountain from their shoulders as I take my landslide out of the train doors, their hand-made goodbyes waving without the courage for words. This train goes so many places, and they can't be tied down. There are so many stops on this train, but this? This one is mine, they say, I belong here in this spot, gilded with my initials, staked-in plaques refurbished each year to tell of its founding history. I'm tired of his name, his touch, a hot brand behind my eyelids sometimes in dreams that leave me too cold for the summer heat to sterilize my bones. No one wants to wait for frozen things to thaw. I don't think it should be hard to proceed slowly, to build trust before you expect all its riches, but then again what do I know? Nothing but this train stop in this loop of suitors and visitors who find the knowledge of this place too stifling, who see my shoulders and tell me I'm just fortunate enough to be strong enough to carry it. Sometimes, I want to nail this coffin shut. Sometimes, I want its headstone to read 'it wasn't my fault,' damnit. It wasn't my fault.

Rafters bring to mind memories, the kind you'd pay someone bury with a bloody shovel on a half moon's night: no one likes to see the skeletons. No one likes to be reminded of the death it took to birth you, as you are now - take away the screaming, the placenta, the blood-soaked umbilical cord, because life is glamorous and you are now as a miracle... a fortuitous clash of supernova dust come packaged in a way that won't chip nails or turn stomachs. Just smile and sit pretty - but not too pretty, and not too boring, and a bit alluring but not too sexy, and remember that a "real" woman doesn't have anything that a man can steal because she owns herself completely. You are not with the responsibility of celebration, no mourning your grave, no wearing your skeleton inside out. Bury that stuff with a shovel, to the back of a new moon's night, because a miracle is not a crime scene, and you don't get to wonder over justice.

My joy is a ringtone for your smile. Don't pick up. Not all the time, at least. I want to feel this. You are a source of wonder. I pull scratched lottery tickets from my pocket and wonder and wonder and wonder over winning you, instead.

other

crown like Saturn, rings laying claim to something I can only wish upon, a comet visiting every seven years. I still climb mountains to see you.

Thoughts create skylines I try to see the stars through; light pollution swallows and burps up a moon you have to shield your eyes to see. It's too artificial. Slow footfalls down dead streets. They don't live here, anymore. They don't live here, anymore. I count the wildflowers stroking past my fingers, and ask them of loneliness. "Define it, please," I ask the lilacs. They sing to me of the absence of stars, and I confide, "It's okay, I never see them, either."

edits

Maybe heartbreak is an edit of the soul. Something is considered polished when there is no longer anything to take away. I am soft stone, deposited by the sea, and maybe it is for the better. Maybe death is the final edit, and one's story will be bare and polished - a headstone. Life is simply amassing the experience to jot down - so you have something to take away from.

Railroads have become compasses to us. We've never loved less in the valley of these mountains, never more outside its edge. I prefer meetings so brief they already drip nostalgia. When the audience swoons and says "maybe you'll meet again," I hope we don't. It holds a stronger impact. Railroads are paths to us. I've been following one, and while its hidden beneath the earth my feet know the turns. I don't ask how I know. I just know.

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writing since 2013 · 171 entries · 169 days shown up

each square is a day—lit means Pandatry showed up.

5longest streak

169days written

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on this day 10 years ago

Pandatry wrote about thieves
“pitpockets of suns, cans in hand clinking with crystal teeth. what is it worth to be forgotten, crosshair shading of city lights, but still there are bluebird skies and pockets full of sun…”

the words Pandatry reaches for

eyeshandssometimesfingerslipsgodhoperememberwondercannotlovebehinddeathnowlungssuns