The Structure of a Scab
The steady drip of bitterness clouds the formation of veritable sentence structure. It’s clear to me now that I’m still not over this. With a particular sharpness old roads rip scabs clean from their wounds, I am bleeding again. Wrestling with the skin I thought I shed but to no avail, the pain is primary, still present crossing the trek on Clinton Street. You said it felt all so date-y and I’m still wondering what that means. I went home that night and self-abused, popped gum and breath savers to conceal the medicine I take, to conceal the smell of whiskey and the tremors in my hands. Just a shot to settle my nerves and another to set me straight. That was over a year ago now and while the booze has left my system the virus that is you has not. I departed here some time ago and now I find myself back in the confines. There is a familiar anxiety, saving myself extra trips to Safeway as we have a strange history of happenstance in parking lots. I measure my steps in inches while I hope you take strides yards long covering more ground but please leave me my corner. This is your place now and I can respect that, I have a new home on the Willamette with more area to the power of two, if you’d like I could show my work but I have a feeling you have no use for my mathematics. Sometimes I wonder if I hide from my mind what success I should expect to have? I suspect I’m on the right path now but the unrelenting nature of my memory stabs me in the heart as the IV drips heavier somewhere in Renoir Plaza. Ripping cigarettes in the alley behind Coffee Perk I think this city may have been made for you. A new difficulty in being present, the sky is grey, I project the color above and it might be best for everyone if I depart sooner rather than later, it’s best not to disturb old graves if the headstones are all still legible. What’s the use of disturbing settled dust? What’s the use of turning over old dirt? I’m a ghost here, a wisp of a spirit stifled, it doesn’t feel like running anymore it feels like the beginning of the healing process, the structure of my scab is improving even if I ripped them all off. I can’t estimate the number of words I’ve erased trying to write this right, I don’t think there’s a solution to our longer division without a remainder of one it’s the best our numbers will divide. The structure of our scab left on my body I’m just glad one of us evened out.
Still, I sit sick with a darker fantasy of passing you in the street and suddenly it all rushes back. I wonder if time has afforded us the clarity of hindsight but I fear all it has done has deepened the pain of past mistakes, mistakes that glow so glaringly to me now. I imagine you saw them immediately as women often have the gift of realization before the more romantic of men can decipher their puzzle of personal responsibility. You said you didn’t hate me and I imagine that’s due primarily to the fact that your switch flipped before I knew the lights were out. I suppose that’s life, I refrain from the feeling of loneliness in regret and the nudge toward exclusivity as most of life is heartbreak until it is not. For some may only have a sip while for others, it is a deluge, a waterfall, a thirty-three-year flood. The time for harboring ill-will has expired there’s a Novocain numbness induced not by prolonged periods of reflection but by the dullness of time, the dullness of others captivated but obfuscated by my inability to feel anything for anyone else. Beyond a ferocious appetite for hedonistic satisfaction, I am but a preoccupied lover of a person long past. There’s a danger in being where I am presently. I’ve forgotten the freedom felt in the city below and to the west. I’ve been stripped of a particular state of safety that keeps me from venturing too far, staying tight to my tether I am in a territory exposed to nature, bivouacked every time I leave my father’s house. Sitting in the empty cafes around the city there is a danger here that constitutes that darker fantasy. I am looking for the thing that killed me, but, for what, to kill me all over again? I dart my eyes away from the bulletin boards as I need no clues as to where you are or what is going on the inside of your life. After all, I have no right to know anything other than my own trappings and order of operations. Bordering on a personal obsession I can feel it all rise again, I want a drink but I’ve made that mistake enough to know it’ll only make this worse. You’re in me, somewhere at the center of my chest and I find it best to keep that little secret to myself half-knowing you will never leave, I can carve more space as the limit is lifted with every new interaction but like a microplastic, you are embedded in my soul and cardiovascular system. When you find an opportune time please vacate my body. Ahh, the bargain begins again, but one may never pray their naïveté away. This is more an appeal to Angels as I know you’ll never read this and I can’t very much blame you.
In my title of Man, I am both divine and fallen, fallible yet capable. When I pray, I pray for strength, strength to overcome the thing designed to kill me in liquid form, the wolf in cloth made of wool. I drink but I do not thirst, I devour but I do not desire, I yearn but I do not satiate, I long but I do not love. How strong am I to turn this page? The book is heavier than I’d like but a burden I carry nonetheless, in my backpack looking back with altered vision the shapes contorted and twisted can I even trust my mind? I’ve forgotten what it means to be proud, I know all my transgressions and victims of emotional murder. I have raised a hand to none but I have ripped a few hearts out of chests still beating. I wonder if it all comes out in the wash or if a tally is kept somewhere and the four before the fifth is marked with a line struck through them.
Cover Photo: Isle of the Dead - Arnold Böcklin
