nirvxna__

Nothing that happens, is ever forgotten, even if you can’t remember it.

Each aberration of my skin is a song. Press your mouth against me. You will hear so much singing.

All that matters is making this dance last forever.

When we’re in his house, together, with all the signs of Riley-ness, his well-
          thumbed old books in the sturdy bookshelf, his records alphabetized on shelves all around the room, the comfortable, elegant, and crumpled velvet couch, the carelessly full ashtrays, I think it’s somewhere I could stay: inside a life already lived and firmly in place.

I cut because I can’t deal. It’s as simple as that. The world becomes an ocean, 
          the ocean washes over me, the sound of water is deafening, the water drowns my 
          heart, my panic becomes as large as planets. I need release, I need to hurt myself 
          more than the world can hurt me, and then I can comfort myself. 
          There, there.

And in her room, with the wild blue walls and so many posters and solar system ceiling, I could tell her anything, and I did. Charlie, Charlie, you’re so beautiful, so fucking angelic. Her hand in mine. She wore white flannel pajamas with black skulls on them.
          And that was that. My secret keeper.

In Group, Casper doesn’t like us to say cut or cutting or burn or stab. She says it doesn’t matter what you do or how you do it: it’s all the same. You could drink, slice, do meth, snort coke, burn, cut, stab, slash, rip out your eyelashes, or fuck till you bleed and it’s all the same thing: self-harm. She says: whether someone has hurt you or made you feel bad or unworthy or unclean, rather than taking the rational step of realizing that person is an asshole or a psycho and should be shot or strung up and you should stay the fuck away from them, instead we internalize our abuse and begin to blame and punish ourselves and weirdly, once you start cutting or burning or fucking because you feel so shitty and unworthy, your body starts to release this neat-feeling shit called endorphins and you feel so fucking high the world is like cotton candy at the best and most colorful state fair in the world, only bloody and stuffed with infection. But the fucked-up part is once you start self-harming, you can never not be a creepy freak, because your whole body is now a scarred and charred battlefield and nobody likes that on a girl, nobody will love that, and so all of us, every one, is screwed, inside and out. Wash, rinse, fucking repeat.

My father was cigarettes and red-and-white cans of beer. He was dirty white T- shirts and a brown rocking chair and blue eyes and scratchy cheek stubble and “Oh, Misty,” when my mother would frown at him. He was days of not getting out of that chair, of me on the floor by his feet, filling paper with suns, houses, cats’ faces, in crayon and pencil and pen. He was days of not changing those T- shirts, of sometimes silence and sometimes too much laughter, a strange laughter that seemed to crack him from the inside until there wasn’t laughter, but crying, and tears that bled along my face as I climbed up and rocked with him, back and forth, back and forth, heartbeat heartbeat heartbeat as the light changed outside, as the world grew darker around us.

In the very depths of hell, 
              Do not demons
                    Love one another?

Love at first bite <3