wewereinfinite
Isn't that funny, that only a few hours ago you were in my womb? Your father is a lamb, my darling, and the cord of your birth is a sickle. I felt it open me in swathes, in wide and disinterested sweeps of the wrist, and it didn't matter if I kicked or brayed. Your mother is a stall horse, my dear, locked into her pen and mewing.
The look of the creeping floorboards across the house gave her the shivers. She had never liked this place, even as a child full of imagination--no, especially as a child full of imagination. In the corners of her eyes, dustbunnies became whirling vortexes of malicious dirt, every flash in the hallway must've been a monstrous eye peeping from around the corner--every part of her body screamed in fear.
There was something in the hills beyond the village, where the mist and the horizon merge into a wispy greyness of layered scales, where you had to squint to make the silhouette out of anything--anything at all--and in the silence, your mind imagined massive, looming possibilities, bones the size of skyscrapers, arms thicker than thirty men--things too terrible and awesome to confront directly.
That's what they told me, anyway. Felt like cold drips of water right down the back of your neck, straight down the middle of your back. Hold your hands behind your back in the corner and close your eyes. That's you speaking to Jessus. And when the nuns hit your palms a little too hard and you think, gee, I could just snap their neck like a twig—that's when you have to listen to what Jessus tells you. Because the things that are whispered in that corner—
Is it the only thing that made her attractive? He wondered, as his hand paused at her chin, the fabric fanning under his knuckles, if her face, her real face, could ever compare to the myriad of dazzling fantasies he'd conjured thinking of her. Maybe she would be as gorgeous as he'd imagined--but more than likely not. Selfishly, his heart throbbed at the idea of being wed to mediocrity.
In the sky above me. Dotted with white clouds, pale as porcelain. Where were you? I squinted. The sun is so bright in my eyes everything begins to stretch into metallic lines. A dot here, a glimmer there--you had to be up there somewhere, didn't you? Flying on those delicate metal wings, the interlacing of wood and fabric--in that clumsy little plane you'd said you'd always fix up and fly someday. You were up there, I suppose. You had to be.
How was it authentic? The shape of her hands, the lily white column of her throat, the shimmer of dark hair all around her. Was she all alone in there? Could you bite through the supple flesh like the skin of an apple--white teeth biting into hot spurting scarlet. Your lust is libido. Your libido is violence. You must abuse, you must bruise, you must tear apart. It's the only thing that makes you feel real. You must confess it all.
A warhammer into my chest. Blunt-force impact with all the intention of a fist to the face. But how could I had seen it coming? Oh, to make me maudlin; to make me sing out in despair. Your face alone is enough to send me into woes. I sing your funeral violins every time my hand slides down my stomach. I can't deny you. I can't defy you.
Oh, those famous words. "We are legion," that strikes fear into the churchgoer's heart. They cross their palms and pray like Jesus, like earth-worshippers, and they fall to their knees and obediently suck in their spare time. Devils and demons walk this earth in multitudes, they'll claim, fluttering their fingers at their foreheads, pointing nails and painting pentacles. Demons and devils are all amongst us.
We had so many of them, down below. We had millions of them, laughing gaping empty eyes with empty mouths and smiling teeth. They said in their endless babble, "We love you, we love you, we love you." They pulled and broke things with their grasping hands. They dragged us down and smothered us with kisses. With a children's view, I might've loved them, but they needed me so desperately. They cried at me with kitten's voices and I had to shut them up. Don't you understand? I had to.
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