solitude and shame
(on the lord’s birthday)
there are some things you cannot give to God.
this i know because today during
the rupture of weeping
i nested in a pile
with an implement in between my fingertips
narrating an old pilgrimage on my skin
(no longer storytelling,
just a pause in the timeline
just an old version of cigarettes)
and when i tried to give it all to Him,
He said –
i’ll take most of this, but…
can you hold onto that?
and that which He asked me to hold onto was
the suicide.
apparently
sometimes
when you want to die
you should.
just –
you should not toast in the shower
or overdo the tylenol
or dismantle a pencil sharpener
or walk out into the december air
soaking wet
in the early morning.
we don’t have to ever do this to ourselves.
from what i understand
it’s a pretty mortally binding
contractual body we carry. we will die.
(and if we can’t wait, and we have to dance
ourselves into the mortal veil by our hand,
well, there is…
no right or wrong answer).
(it is an extraordinarily hard life to live).
He tells me
there are other ways to die.
i should let the part of me
that wants to die, die –
regardless of what part of me it is.
the abstract, the comedian,
the one that people rely on.
some piece of you
has to go in order for the rest of the parts
to live.
sometimes it surprises you –
a part of you dies
and you grieve for years
just to find it down the line
in a new shape, effectively reborn.
either way the love and grief feels
like dying in slow motion
but eventually you remember
your breath, and you can even
sometimes catch it in your fist
after enough practice.
sometimes you’re born again
and it feels like it made no difference.
the part of me that wants to die
(a halo-crested neptunian devil)
is that which needs his mother to live
in perfect condition, doing the math
just the same and sewing together
the holes in our winter coats
every year, faithfully
swishing the needle in and out
of feathered bodies.
but i have to let that die, you see,
because i am young and
she is old now.
i emerged, uranian and
hot to the touch with my
ideas about the world
but now she is getting close to
losing me by miles;
as i orient myself
her grasp, her hands,
they curl up on themselves.
there’s nothing for her to hold onto anymore.
lately i have seen so much of
that dark depth of death and
i know, i feel it, i will still be alive
trying to live
when she is to walk through it;
i extend myself into the future
and even the most hesitant angels
tell me this is an inevitability.
so i must let this part of me die,
and now,
so this sunset may be
a journey of grace,
dissolution,
letting go,
as much as it ever can be.
the other suicide
in fresh skin
i learned long ago
the south node
washing dishes as she wept
over the typically obtuse things
he said and did but
i was six years old or so,
submerging to my elbows
hot rinse water and
curling my hands around
hot steel and ceramic to
release them in the air and
i can see it so clearly
how she turned to me
and said
you are the one who will take
care of me when i’m old
please don’t put me in a home
that’s why i had you, to take care of me –
the burning hands
a genetic curse she said
my grandfather laid his bare feet
in the winter snow just to cool
the peripheral war in his blood
so i carried this legacy
in the back of my mind
and waited nearly two decades
for the nightmare to come to life
(waiting, inch by inch, for the time to come)
and now, ironically,
i’m catatonic and avoiding the cold air.
so this death might be about mercy, actually,
and we don’t have to speak about the
quiet dread pervading every dream.
every funeral procession,
every december from now on.
