Saturday, January 11, 2014

(not untitled, but no title)

I've never really been able to explain Imogene in a coherent fashion. 

I think it's because the so-called living don't understand what it's like being trapped between the two worlds like I am. between here and there. between now and then. they don't get how I can't assign myself to one or the other, life or death. they certainly don't grasp that Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end, was more than just a girl, a person. she was a smile. she was a kiss. she was a laugh, a fuck, a teardrop. she was a place. she was a time. she was a feeling. 

when I met her, it was like getting in touch with an old friend after years of separation. as we told each other about ourselves and pretended to get acquainted, there was a recognition, a familiarity, a sigh of "oh, I already know you" and relief at finally being reunited. 

when I kissed her, it was everything you grew up expecting kisses to be. it was like the point in the movie where the hero, whom you'd never doubted all along, finally gets the kiss from his object of affection that you wanted him to have in the very first act.  it was the first spoonful of pudding in your grade school lunch box, cool and sweet. the way it slipped over your tongue and slid down your throat with ease, conforming perfectly to the shape of your mouth, coating your lips with a light sheen of happy that left you hungry for more as soon as you licked it off. 

the nights we stayed up worshipping each other, the nights that were ultimately when she first set hooks in my heart, were just like the concerts you went to as a teenager. the exhilaration of the sound waves being so strong they were tangible, bodies packed in, sweaty and excited, like Alaskan salmon battling to get upstream. it was those nights I fell for her like a stage dive, that feeling of "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing but I'm gonna do it anyway!" that sensation of your toes leaving solid ground, a nervous, electric free fall, and finally, being caught by eager, frantic hands. 

being in love with her was a drive in the fall. the colors were vivid, the ride was smooth, and the air itself was enough to make you feel alive. 

being without her was a week of insomnia. the flies on the wall saw you pace and moan, saw you whimper and turn circles in your bed until you (almost on accident) wound your sheets into a makeshift noose. they buzzed about your head, following you from room to room to empty pointless room, all the while making a constant droning sound that you hear even still.

getting her back was the shower after a very, very long, hard day. she was the water you lifted your face up to, no reservation or hesitation, letting it drench you from the top of your tired, weary head and rush it's way down over your sore throat, your aching shoulders, your protruding hips, down the backs of your trembling knees.  imagine letting her wash the day and the exhaustion and everything that wasn't her off your flushed exposed skin while the steam rose and filled your lungs and cleared your senses. and when you just can't take the downpour of hot and the thick, wet clouds anymore, you turn the water off, wrap yourself in terry cloth love, and emerge a new person. 

losing her was the worst ill you've ever been. the pain and tired, coupled with the "how?" and the "why,?" covered in "ohmyfuckingGODwillthiseverbeover?!"  it was the oaths you swore to a god you usually don't believe in, laying in your own toxic sweat, swearing things you don't usually mean but you would mean them this time if only this misery would stop, or even lessen. it was a car wreck, terrifying and chaotic. it was trading your existence for the color red; like going from having and appreciating all five senses and the variety that they afford you, to the only thing you know being the touchtastesmellsoundlook of searing heat. 

but these aren't specific memories, experiences.  this is just the closest I can get to describing a girl, the girl I lived and died for. the girl who took me aback, took me aside, took me from behind; I was so taken with her. explaining that to the average joe has only ever gotten me the kind of glassy-eyed, slack-jawed stare that so often precedes "do you want some fries with that?" 

I have trouble believing that anybody who didn't know her, and know her the way I did, was ever really alive anyway. 

she's my heart, my lungs. 

she's my blood, my air. 

...haunted or not, ghost or not, the fact is she's still fucking gone. 

 

Friday, January 10, 2014

cotton fever

sometimes, being haunted isn't that bad, not really. 

every time she was taken from me before, I would scrape the walls of my skull, I'd push my way through the sinewy mass around my brain like walking through a roomful of cobwebs. I would let my footsteps echo across the empty surfaces as I made my way down a mental hall of mirrors and memories. I would really feel the lonely, like one feels the winter cold in their bones. 

sometimes I'd shut myself inside this backstabbing, treacherous mind I've got and think her name for hours on end. 

now that I'm haunted, I'm never alone, not really. 

it has it's downsides though. sometimes when a real, live person speaks to me I can't hear them over the breathy angel sighs she makes in my ear. she always keeps herself wrapped around me, like a mink stole, filtering their words, only allowing the ones she knows I like to reach me.  sometimes she does them the same favor, and sifts through my response so that by the time it goes from my throat to my mouth to the air to the opposition, she's removed all but what she knows they want to hear as well. sometimes she plays mediator, protecting me from their coldness, and keeping my heat insulated, trapped closely between just the two of us. when she rests, nuzzled against my neck and humming softly, I forget how to speak. 

but sometimes, it's the only thing I know how to do. I'll lay still as death, clutching at the wispy smoke of a ghost, letting my words flow through her, talking in circles about absolutely nothing but her mouth, or her kisses, or her lush lavender scent. sometimes she'll talk with me, we'll pore over where she went, what she misses, which side of the coin it's better or worse to be on. 

after times like that, though, I always wake up. 

some well intentioned interloper will shake me by the shoulders, scream in my face with warm, moist air that feels thick with the living. 

"you're so cold," they'll say. "I thought I'd lost you," they'll say. 

you never had me. I was never here. 

I'm every bit the ghost she is, looking for her every where I turn. looking for a sign so I can cross over to the other side. looking for where I belong, looking for home. looking for my heart, sticky and bloody, beating haphazardly in the grasp of the girl who stole it.  she stitches together all its broken pieces with her sharp needle stare; she sews straight, even x's with words like "I need you." 

it takes a long time for wounds like that to close. 

but while I'm looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, I pull my ribs further apart so she can climb into the hollow space she took that traitorous muscle from. I want her to curl up where I can keep her safe, where I used to hide her memory, and let her keep mending it. let her hold my heart in place while it heals, let her sleep soundly where she belongs. 

which is, of course, with me. 

my beginning, my end. 


cravenly

When I sleep, I dream of her.

In my waking life, I swear to never indulge that kind of obsession again, to never fall prey to temptation and addiction and hallucination again. I won't do it, I won't bear the pain, or the loss.

But I do bear it, the worst of it, over and over.

I bury her every night.

I relive her death every night.

Sleep or no sleep, moon or no moon, I lower a cheap pine box into the ground, with numbers on it instead of a name. I throw a handful of dirt and rose petals on top. I say my goodbyes, quietly tearful some nights, hysterical and violent on others. I say goodbyes that I never got to tell her, and things I didn't think of until she was already gone. some nights they're hardly goodbyes at all, just accusations and insults born of confusion and hurt and lonely, lonely, lonely...  I trudge off, turning my back on the hole that my heart lives in now.

And then I wake up and the mourning is fresh. The grief is as raw as it ever was. Imogene, my Imogene, is a memory. A tri-fold pamphlet with an outdated picture and a poem I didn't write.

She's as gone as she ever was.

...which is to say, she isn't gone.  At all. Not really.

Now she's the wind that turns my hair unruly. She's the rain that runs slick down my up-turned face, dragging ribbons of mascara with her. She's the ache in my stomach.

She's a ghost, silent and cold, descending from her watchful spot on the ceiling in a haze of TV static. On nights I can't sleep, she settles on my skin like mist so she can weep into my pores while I lay there and stew. So she can gather in the corners of my eyes, pool in the hollows of my collarbone. So she can work her oppressive chill into my sheets and pillows, grind into my mattress with every fretful toss and regretful turn. On nights I can sleep, she lays next to me like a thick blanket of fog, watching my eyes twitch under their lids as I dream of her funeral again and again.

Why do you keep burying me? she asks. I'm right here, she insists. She walks next to me at the supermarket, sits by my side at dinner, politely requesting attention in her quiet, unassuming way.

I walk.
I chew.
I smile, swallow, laugh.

I'm the only one that sees her.

When she loops her icy arms around me in the middle of a crowded room, I stiffen and excuse myself to collect my bearings. It's difficult to hold a conversation with an honest-to-goodness person when the dead half of your soul is draped around you, nipping at your throat, begging for kisses. 

I often ignore her.  I more often can't.

When I'm leaning over the sink, staring at myself in the mirror through a matted curtain of snarled hair, she sits on the counter next to the tap and brushes it out of my eyes with cool fingers, just like she always did.  Sometimes the lavender is so strong it makes me gag, and I double over and spit things I don't mean across the faucet, watch things I do mean circle the drain.  She rubs my back and holds my hair to the side.  Sometimes I get fed up, and whirl on her in a fury, matching her coolness with a heat of my own.  "Why are you doing this?" I'll hiss at her.  "You're dead.  You're gone.  So just fucking go." Sometimes she just looks at me sadly and fixes my collar, tucks my bangs behind my ear.  Sometimes she opens her mouth to respond, but I can't hear her because somebody else has come into the room and asks me, "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

She's right in front of them, the most beautiful thing they could ever hope to see, and nobody sees her.

I do.

I turn the water off, pull my hair up, and check my face one final time before I turn out the lights.

I'm late for a funeral.