literature

unfinished.

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Literature Text

i.
the fabric is cold beneath my fingertips. i can feel its weave, but my mind remains abstracted from the sensation, muting my senses. I pull the tangled covers back. place one foot, then the other on the dingy shag carpet. i struggle to find the will to bring myself to my feet (i'm so tired, of getting out of bed). sunlight through drawn curtains, bare-feet and bedding still twisted from the latest nightmare, leftover mascara marking dark half-moons under my eyes; these are my mornings. the night brings only pain anymore, but the day only brings to light my obvious brokenness.

i stand. make my way to the kitchen, feet padding softly. the sun blooms softly off faded 70's-yellow-puke cupboards and matching flower-print curtains. i retrieve my cellphone from its negligent place by the unfinished dishes.
i can't seem to finish anything anymore.
16 texts that i can't bring myself to check, 4 missed calls that won't be returned. i hold the end key. flip it shut.

my tea stands half-empty when the Compulsion hits. i can hear Them calling to me to stop from the places they've taken up in my head, but i shut the door firmly and lock it tightly. the path is swollen with snow and my naked feet leave the imprints that follow me to the car. i climb into a tiny car, my forest green camry and flip the ignition.

i drive.

i don't stop until the tank begins to work alarmingly close to the E. the Compulsion has only intensified. I park and step out. the fringes of some town stretch before me.

i walk.
then i run.

i don't stop untill the sun has dipped below the horizon and my breath won't come to me obediently anymore and my mind is somewhat clearer. and for just a few minutes everything is gone. replaced by an infinite nothing:a fleeting oblivion that i cannot even catch in sleep anymore. my body throbs. it screams an exhaustion i have refused to acknowledge. the hunger i refuse to feel.

i sit.
then i lie down.

vulnerable, lost in nowhere. somewhere beyond feeling, beyond sight. breathing in the night air and finally, finally feeling alive.

but memories can't be outrun. and it didn't take long for them to catch me once more by the throat. i can feel myself begin to go Under. my numb fingers fumble in the pockets of my pj's for my cellphone. it flick it open and on, trembling as my own personal demons close in.

i dial.
i go Under.

Under feels like The End Of The World. Under feels like the cold sweat of a nightmare, the pain of a knife between two ribs. Under feels like drowning. Under is losing control.

under is when They've gone.

ii.

Indulging in the Compulsion has cost me. Laura (red-finger-nail-pedicure, brisk-walker-blonde, bunned-perfection-coifed-in-a-suit), she can't handle me. so she hired Diane. i swear, even her name sends my hands into fists. crescent shaped scars have marked out a permanent home in the flesh of my palm. my jaw aches from the tension of my teeth set on edge, and day and night work paths into the carpet with my bare feet. Diane, she fusses in what she thinks is motherly way, but which only ever makes me sick. she breathes her sticky rot breath in my face as she constantly babbles requests please eat this/ why don't you...?/stop pacing!, small talk weatherweatherweather and every sort of nonsense she can brew up. always Diane wears these most absurd flowery prints, and her carefully manicured nails make the most maddening chickity-click when she is upset with me. which seems to be always.

they coax me to eat, but i can't even seem to do even this. i see the way they look at me. they've all but locked me up in my own personal asylum. i am caged. and the things that kept me sane are now beyond my grip. everyday i can feel myself slipping away. i have nothing to anchor me anymore, not even some semblance of a life.
Diane, sweating in her nasty flower prints.
Laura, brisk in her coif of business dress,
they cannot save me.
they only beat their useless wings of styrofoam and glass at me and screech.

they hate what they cannot fix.

iii.

today i took a sharpie to every clock in the house. i am sick to death of their endless hours, seconds, days. i am sick to death of time progressing without Them. sick of their white blank faces ticking at me.
i removed the batteries of the round clock on the wall, the one hanging between the door and the mirror. i smashed the alarm clock that fattens itself on the shelf in my room. and your wristwatch i slipped from your bedstand, dear Diane, while you slept. i dismantled the grandfather clock that guards the dining room and hid his gears under cushions and beneath the floorboards. and to the clock above the stove i blacked it out with marker.

you were angry when you woke.
you said you couldn't understand.
but when you looked into my face, the fierceness you found there stole the fight from your eyes. once again your eyes spoke defeat before you even tried. even your flowered smocks cannot keep your tired face from sagging. you've given up on me.

I thought i'd feel a sense of victory in breaking you. so why do i feel so dead?

maybe all i really wanted was for you to fight back.

iv.

I find peace only in the little white capped bottles that now line most of the surfaces in this house. but these demons are mine to face, and face them i will, without the aid of a hazy-pill-induced-slumber. sometimes, they tempt me. sometimes, they call out to me.
and sometimes, when the night claws at me and sleep mocks me.
sometimes, when the monsters beneath my bed rise too high
sometimes, when i get scared:
i give in.
but when Diane pushes them at me in clear plastic cups it only gives me strength.

v.

its Christmas again. Diane even put up a paltry little stick-plastic thing to 'make it more festive in here!'. her words. it holds more resemblance to Charlie Brown's tree then with the fine conifers it supposably imitates. i hate fake trees. but Diane insisted. she even brought small snowflake lights to flicker upon the sparse branches. but no ornaments. no family. no memories. not any of the good things that go along with Christmas. not after last night. not after last month. not ever again, is what she yelled at me.
Diane treats me like a china doll lately,
but the more they set me on their safety shelf, the bigger the fractures get.

i've come to like the bright little flakes on our scrubby tree. at night the room flickers and the bright little points of light push back the dark that pushes in.
after the ordeal, i curled up under its lights some part of me hoping it could push back the dark in me. for the first time i sleep like the dead.

vi.

i wake to the smell of tea and eggs. there's a pillow beneath my head and the arms i clutch to my chest have been carefully bandaged. i'm touched. i'm too hard on Diane.
she doesn't deserve this dead-hole job, eating the crap i throw at her.
she means well, despite her hopeless eyes.
sun drifts through the windows. and it dawns on me Diane probably slipped me some night-quill or some other crap. but i can't find it in me to be angry with her. some days are better than others.

vii.

Before, the inevitable pull of a semblance of a life gave me a reason to keep it together, to some degree. but its gone now, and i'm spiraling with no reason to keep it together. no one to keep it together for. They. They're all gone. leaving only Laura and i. Laura, so perfectly perfect in her composure. i'm the only thing anymore that can break her ice facade, so she runs from me. sister, you cannot hide within the fortress of your composure forever. one day the dead will haunt you like they haunt me,
then you'll understand.
you can't run from it, you can only scream your way through the pain until you burn up and die and join them.

viii.

Laura was born first, on Nov. 23rd. 3 years and 8 months later i came. she was always my rival first, my sister second. when we were young we took in turns our fierce anger at each other a fierce protection of the other. later that love-hate was exchanged for unbreachable distance. i never understood fully where my sister went. i was young when she exchanged me for lipstick and late nights, boyfriends and parties. she was young then the more my parents tried to take up their parental mantle, the further Laura drifted.
you wouldn't have recognized Laura then. she claims she's changed. she says she's done running. done running from responsibility. but i know the coif of respectability, of responsibility, is just another form of running. she wields it like a shield, using it to keep me, the world, and grief at bay. now she wears dress suits, then it was mini-skirts. extremes wrap around to meet at the same mentality.

it's just another cover.

ix.

somedays, its all i can think about. others, its everything i can't think about.
either way, it consumes me.
someday i'll learn to breathe free of these memories, but untill i can ground myself again, i will learn to face them down.
somedays i'll lose the fight.
somedays i won't be strong enough to hold back the dark.

i know this.


but i have to believe in the days when i will hold strong.
someday, me and Laura, we'll learn to let go. only then can the broken be mended. its just another lesson in learning to fly, afterall.

nothing lasts forever.
This is how i find clarity.

edit:
Finally found a little bit of clarity, and pulled an ending off. (somedays it feels like writing letters to myself). i also touched up various parts, but its still a work in progress.
does the ending bring any closure? what do you guys think?
_________________

been writing this for days. not sure how to end it.
exploring of fuller style of writing, a different view.
this is quite possibly the longest thing i've ever written.

new to this.
critique: [link]
questions for :iconthewrittenrevolution:
is the reason for her fall into grief relatively obvious?
does it flow ok?
ideas for a proper ending..?
are there any parts that should be cut out, or didn't fit well?
© 2012 - 2024 arabesque-o
Comments13
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Lottie-Girl's avatar
This is amazing.
You gripped me all the way through.
I like that you don't quite tell us what's happening, like the people who died and why they died and what not, gives it mystery.
:D