Thu, 19 May 2005

the ballad of my corpse
One day, a long time ago, I did a terrible thing. A thing I regret to ths day. After I did that thing, I felt a weight upon me, and a touch across my skin, and though I could never turn my head fast enough to see him, I knew that I was no longer simply carrying my own weight, but the weight of my corpse, tied to me with sinew and wire. Someone had been standing in my shadow, speaking to me, tracing my steps, as long as I could remember, but that distance had now been crossed, and I knew who it was that had been watching me, waiting.

My corpse had once been happy to occasionally gloat over my failures, to watch me as i stumbled and fell, and I knew then that my corpse was weak and not to be feared. Once I felt the weight, however, I knew that balance had shifted, and the sound my corpse made was now constant. There was a slow dry breath, so light as to almost be dismissable. The voice has the rattle of husks and insect hum, of faroff electric lines and water deep beneath the ground. The voice does not stop, ever, and it does not change tone. It speaks to me not as though it wants something from me, but as though it is telling me a truth. The sky is blue with low-flying clouds. There are crows in the trees. You have to die.

Over the years I have developed a means of diminishing the corpse. I have argued, in my mind, over the course of actions set out for me by the corpse. I have reminded myself of patience, and of connection. I have made a daily prayer of the people I love, and of the people who love me. There are times when the drone of my corpse is thus faded to the back of my head, into the rest of the chatter that swims through my skull. The voice returns, eventually, and has learned new methods of reply. I could explain the core of these arguments, but they do not hold up in teh light of day, and you would think me a fool to believe I could be swayed by such things. I should know better, and I do. In order to keep that balance, however, I have had to come to the realization that my corpse will never leave me, that to my last day this voice wil remain, teh mouth pressed against the base of my skull, the atrophied arms crossed at my shoulderblades.

I believe the voice knows that I will not bring myself to death. I have seen, in people I know, the process by which they approach their dying to this world. the lights inside them go out, until there is nothing left behind their eyes, until the door is closed. My corpse knows this, and has taken after the small lights inside me. My corpse attempts to convince me of my failing before I make any attempt, in order to stop me from trying. My corpse sticks its fingers into my brain, pulling at chunks of tissue, filling my ears with blood, until I cannot remember the things I need to know, and I find myself with the person I was talking to staring at me, waiting for a reply, and I go off to hide, to be away until I am okay again. My corpse whispers of psychosis, of loss. Whatever connection I have, it cannot hold. I fear for the words which leave my mouth, and I hold them insde me. My corpse denies it exists, tells mow I’m always looking for an excuse, a scapegoat, a reason to pull down. It never laughs, and it never yells. I am lost, it says, and there is no way I will find my way back again; I have run out of time. Whatever it was that I was supposed to do on this earth I have not done, and the things I have broken I cannot fix. Every conversation is a series of doubts, ficticious accusations, the stink of my own lies. My corpse convinces me of my weakness, that I should have such trouble over nothing while those around me suffer so greatly and so well. I do not deny that I am a coward, that I have hidden when I shoudl have stood, that I have been a silent witness to the evil of the world. I cannot deny that in their times of need, of true and honest suffering, I have abandoned the people I love to cultivate my insipid and endless litany of faults and forgettings.

I am, from this point on, at war with my corpse. I will feed myself from the meat of his throat, his hands. I will fear no evil.

You and I will never discuss this again.

….

It was five years ago. I don’t remember if we had slept together yet. I don’t remember if I was yet homeless. I do remember that I hadn’t yet been hit by the car, because I wouldn’t have done this afterward. You were talking. We were not sure of what we were, what we were going to be. We didn’t want to talk about it. You had decided to tell me about him, which you had done before, which was not a strange thing. We got coffee at Great Mid and you tried to figure out if it was okay to smoke up on the second floor. I bought a cd earlier and I remember thinking how much i wanted to leave and go listen to the cd and then see ou later tonight, after this thing had passed. I think you were waiting for me to encourage you to go after him, to move back to Davenport with him, live with him, but I didn’t. I started bashing my face into the table. You sat there, still, until I started screaming, at which point you got up and left. Startled, I stopped, wiped the blood from my mouth, and left. I did not go back into Great Mid for years, by which point the turnover had cleaned the building’s memory.

I went looking for you, once i had moved back, but your landlord told me you had moved to Davenport. I wanted to tell you that I didn’t want to touch you, that i didn’t want to lie in your dinosaur and rocketship sheets, that I was content to be your friend, but at times I would need some space, somewhere to run off to, because I don’t know what i’m doing, and I want to be careful. It is probably for the best that I didn’t see you then, because you would have known me for a liar, as always, as ever.

Last week I was in Great Mid and I missed you, but I always missed you, even when you were in my arms.
(12:09.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #