&REA

Anom

Once I had ever painted but I do not like to paint.
I like Indonesian language.
I also like badminton.
I do not like singing.
I like to tell funny things.

leggsy asked: Everything you write is so beautiful

Thank you kindly!

The Sink is an Ocean, I am Learning to Swim

By Jeanann Verlee

Why is fire the only metaphor I have for all this dying? Who feeds the dogs when I end? Where have all the rivers gone? When did I learn to float? I cut my finger on a piece of tin in the office kitchen. I have an office. I have appointments. Plans. I’ve cut my finger and don’t care to find a Band-Aid. I want to send a search party. This is the office kitchen and I have rent to pay. What of my privilege? I have coffee and too many shoes. A bank account. Body lotion and dental floss. What of the invisible sink? Nothing but a river will do. What if I lose the map? How will I meet the bridge? What if I never find my hands? Why does the cut clot? Where does a sedative go to die? I keep secrets in obvious places. Stole another box of razors. I hide sleeping pills in the underwear drawer. A new end wakes me every morning. How far is four stories? What if I crush a pigeon? Where does guilt go? I have all this privilege and I’m always trying to leave. There is leftover chicken in the office fridge. I am vegetarian so I give it to Lupe who cleans the office and has two little boys. What would Lupe do if I ended here? Why all this blood? Who can show me where I keep my bed? Who will love my father when I’m gone? Who will clean this goddamned kitchen? Red fingerprints, everywhere.

Just to Be Safe (A Thought in Three Parts)

1. In Prose

In an interview with Lisa Pollack, former soldier Sam Slavens talked about his experience with Iraqi civilians in the early days of the invasion. “Nobody shooting at us. They were just, you know, happy to see us, glad to be there. They’d bring tea out for us and sit and socialize. We even had one family bake us a cake.”

When a few months had gone by, and the tension began to increase, radical Islamists began infiltrating the communities and converting those who had been Sam’s friends. “It just didn’t make sense to have somebody right there shooting at us. And I was just like, this is ridiculous. What are you doing? Because, you know, I’m going to have to shoot back. And, you know, we did. I mean, just from that point, we were just like, you know, we ought to just kill all these people, just to be safe.”

2. In Quotes 

“I don’t believe there is a single person who I have loved who I didn’t eventually betray.” -Albert Camus

“Et tu, Brute?” -Shakesepeare

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” -William Blake

“‘It was a mistake,’ you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.” -David Leviathan

“It’s sometimes hard to feel perfect when you can’t tell an adam’s apple from a fist because some ashtray of a man picked you to play his Eden.” -Sierra DeMulder 

3. In Poetry

He told me that now,
all their dark eyes look the same,
all their hands are holding guns,

and I imagine the sky raining
the pink mist of his blood and body.

It must be hard to live in a world where everything looks
like a crater
and everything sounds 
like the sound of your bones,
or the sound of your heartbeat in your ears.

I hear your words in everyone else’s voice,
I feel your fist in my husband’s hands,
I taste your poison in every kindness,
I should probably kill them all, just to be safe. 

Know That You Are Welcome

Not being welcome is your greatest fear. It is the deep seated fear that it would have been better if you had not lived.

At every moment you have to decide to trust the voice that says, “I love you. I knit you together in your mother’s womb.” 

You must keep unmasking the lie and think, speak, and act according to the truth that you are very, very welcome.

-Henri Nouwen

Crash Test

I know you feel like you are a car made for a crash test,
something that God created only to destroy,
an object lesson,
whose purpose is to be a full-time visual aid, with no thought to the pain you might feel,

I know you feel like you are on display, 
a crime scene, 
a lamb led to the slaughter,
Job,

but continue spitting out the broken teeth,
don’t stop turning the key.

A Prison With an Open Door

Who lit the flame that softened your body enough to
wrap you around his finger, taught you to stay,

burning the siren song into your wrists like a branding iron,
put up the runaway posters, the milk cartons
with your face on them, that made you

come back out of habit? Who gave you these
gifts - the choke chain, the electric fence, the
fish hook - and smiled as you unwrapped them, stroking your hair,

“these - I knew they were what you wanted.”

On Command

When I’m in the mood to die, I work on that poem you told me to write, the one about being a marionette, and I remember the way your arms moved up and down, comically, when you described me as a puppet, and the comparisons aren’t even so obvious, you said, it’s not that I’m dead, or performing, or have my predictable smile predictably painted on, but it’s more that I’m completely wooden, and that I have a hole all the way through my body, and I’ll admit that when I write it, I practice bouncing on someone’s knee, and moving my jaw mechanically up and down, which I suppose makes me more of a ventriloquist dummy than anything else, but I think that counts, and anyways, we both know I’m never going to finish this poem because of the following reasons:

1. A marionette is a stupid metaphor.
2. I’m never going to see you again.
3. I’m always going to need to want to die, and so I’m also always going to need to keep living.