ART AND POETRY BY MEL B. C.
IT’S SCARY WHEN THINGS CHANGE, IT’S SCARY WHEN THINGS STAY THE SAME
my mother puts a homeopathic pill under my tongue and tells me not to swallow says it will protect me I still feel the sugar melting in my mouth like half chewed candy when she buries a picture of me under the soil of a houseplant fifteen years later says it will protect me
I still don’t know how to love her back the way she wants me to cut my fingers on her paper-thin expectations a bell jar with no breathing holes I was taught to call home
do you wanna know the story of how I broke my front tooth I swear I’ll make it interesting this time I won’t tell you that I tripped over my own feet and that I was seven and already realising I was my biggest enemy I’ll make up something different for that time I fainted face down on the kitchen floor
half of me is sitting here and half of me is sitting on the other side of the desk today I’m the one asking questions and taking notes today I’m the one sobbing quietly trying to tell the whole story
here’s the thing: I don’t know if I can write a poem that doesn’t include lies or the word “blood” you realise I’ve already told this joke only once I’m halfway through the punchline I’m far too gone to stitch my mouth shut now
remember when you told me the best place to hide something is in plain sight my front tooth still chipped I’m still so bad at forecasting my thoughts but I want to make a prophecy you tell me this is the first time you’ve pictured a future I am in I tell you actually it’s the first time I can maybe see myself in it
EVERYTHING I DO TAKES A BIG EFFORT
I am almost twenty-five and I’m making a friendship bracelet for the first time wasting nostalgia on things that have yet to end not everything is a universal experience but I can’t even relate to things that happened to me I know I must’ve been there yet it sounds like someone else’s story these have always been my hands and legs and lungs I don’t know what my metaphors mean and I don’t have anyone else to ask for clarity
I wanted to take a picture but it was gone already nausea a list or a poem or a death count at lunchtime I can tell what the air tastes like
moving on and starting over moving back and doing the same again I can only remember a couple of things that happened in 2008 where does the rest go? I always burn my fingers on candle wax but I thought this time maybe just this time it wouldn’t be hot
A PICTURE OF MY NAKED BODY INSTEAD OF THIS POEM
It’s never been this quiet before, my stuttering heartbeat echoing restlessly the flickering light in the empty hallway the taste of blood in my mouth – haunting like the vague feeling of always being slightly out of place
out of focus
Can I be sure I still exist if no one is looking at me? I am scared I don’t know how to be loved I am terrified of not being wanted back moulding myself into the shape of my own absence my naked body as exchange goods, as a silent plea, as an armour I don’t want to be seen through I don’t have the words to describe what I’m craving fire running through my veins and I can’t sit still can’t remember the last time I took a deep breath my wrists still a glowing exit sign at the back of the room my naked body as phantom pain, as an escape route,
as a display cabinet of hoarded thoughts Where do we put all this pain? The hollow of my bones can’t contain it all my shaky hands, my hunched shoulders lipstick mouth clenched shut with eyes wide open
my naked body as a scape goat, as a tell-tale sign, as a wound that’s never allowed to heal Please don’t ask me to explain – why can’t you see I’m trying, I am
I am
Fading scars leave me empty handed, my skin
(no longer proof of suffering) offers no answers my naked body as a peace offering, as a Ouija board, as a sacrificial victim
So I’m trying to teach myself to move slower to stop making a weapon out of everything I feel and just exist without the urge of running away no more shaping myself into what other people need no more filling my chest with approval my naked body nothing more than a home this time.
SO PRECARIOUS IT HAS TO COLLAPSE AT SOME POINT
Dedalus warned us – you can’t go too
high
without crashing down at some point but you didn’t build these wings you don’t remember walking to the edge of the cliff yet there you are,
precarious
patchwork of everything you’ve ever spoken into
existence
and
invincible
you know you’re not going to enjoy the downfall broken brakes on your childhood bicycle felt powerful and safe in their predictable danger, guilt-free knees
scraping against concrete – you didn’t choose this
either
thoughts racing each other, overflowing and spilling out
loud
louder
bright
a feeling so fleeting it tastes familiar slips through the gaps between your fingers, no matter how hard you grasp it doesn’t linger and if this is the only amount of happiness you’ll ever be granted you’re not sure you want to know because the higher you get the hardest you’re going to
fall.
A POEM IN WHICH I NEVER STOP BEING A TEENAGE GIRL
the doctor tells my mother this is just what teenage girls do bends down from his middle-aged man knowledge to take a look at my battle ground thighs defyingly bare in my teenage girl shorts
tells me he’s seen much worse tells my mother I’ll grow out of it as if he’s talking about my scene phase or my habit of only eating exactly ten olives at a time as if he knows everything about what teenage girls do and don’t
tells me boys are not going to like my body now tells me my pain is ugly when it becomes visible
when it’s not consumed in my teenage girl bedroom teenage girl undiluted rage finds no recipient has yet to be domesticated into the right kind of weapon
the doctor tells me it’s not like you’re going to kill yourself, right? self-punishment allowed only when it’s religious or when it ends in tragedy the doctor doesn’t tell me but I know it already there’s nothing holier than a teenage girl playing god
I’ve seen it before (these teenage girls are playing but they’re also dying)
tells my mother to take me to see a psychiatrist anyway but she looks away uncomfortable in front of my public display of suffering forcing her to see me as something more than a mystical extension of her own body
she tells me can’t you just stop tells me how could you do this to me
tells me didn’t I teach you not to pull the fire alarm if there’s not an emergency? tells me what is the doctor going to think of us now?
future me never stops checking other women’s wrists wondering if they too have been teenage girls and if so, how they tried to chase it away future me goes back in time teenage girl adult woman wearing jean shorts and gives the doctor the middle finger
(future me doesn’t grow out of it and goes to see the psychiatrist)
YOU FIND OUT SOMETHING ABOUT ME YOU WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO KNOW
and suddenly you start walking on eggshells stare at me from the other side of the room only to look away when I catch you I don’t offer an explanation and you don’t ask nobody’s talking nobody’s listening
we’ve been here before, I don’t know if you have forgotten or you’re just pretending not to hear the echo of your hand hitting my cheek the sound of my misplaced guilt hitting the walls
and bouncing right back at me I’m blaming you – (and by blaming you I mean I am blaming
myself)
tell me you’re both sorry and maybe I’ll stop apologising tell me you both care and maybe I’ll explain you’re not as scared as I thought you’d be (why are you not scared of this?) you both keep saying you love me like you’ve forgotten plants drown if you keep watering them
THE EMPTINESS MAKES ITSELF AT HOME
There’s nothing here
but it’s so heavy and I carry it with me everywhere.
I should’ve gotten used to it by now can’t remember a life where I am anything else yet the novelty of a hollowness this heavy never wears off I keep trying to take it out and sometimes
it fools me pretends to leave but just hides deeper even if I stop feeding it no matter what, it always comes back.
I once asked it where it came from. It hissed at me and said I’ve always been there We are one, it said, you can’t get rid of me without losing yourself
and I hate it therefore I hate myself and I wonder if I would still be the same person without the loneliness and the self-destruction.
Make it stop, I plead please make it stop show me where it hurts I can’t tell, I say
everywhere
Sometimes it comes in waves, Sometimes it comes in earthquakes. In my dreams, I pull it out like a rotten tooth. When I’m awake
I can never let it go.
SOLIPSISM
Sometimes when I hear thunderstorms raging outside
I close all the windows and picture the end of the world – I crave it yet my bones tingle and whisper “we want to live!” “Be quiet,” I tell them. “You'll be free soon enough” but they laughedat me the day I tried to touch sunlight and ended up biting my tongue instead.
L'appel du videis French for the instinctive urge to jump from high places; gravityis English for what is stopping me. Gravity and also the gentle breeze on my back reminding me
I can't fly. Also I can't sing and I can't hold grudges but it has never stopped me from doing both. It would make such a great story.
Sometimes I have to remind myself I am real so I keep existing even after I close my eyes though the same can't besaid for the rest of the world. I don't open my eyes and I don't look at the sky and I can't help wondering
how many other things I couldn't see despite being this loud.
My bones want me to play it safe so I don't jump off bridges and buildings though I dig my fingernails into my skin sometimes. I never reach my bones. Sometimes, when I hear thunders, I open the door and step outside.
A RECURRING DAYDREAM
I have a recurring daydream: I am running through the school courtyard holding her hand; no one is there besides us and the sun shining through the leaves casting warm shadows over her blond ponytail. She’s there because she’s picked me and no one else and her laugh echoes through my ribcage. I am seven years old and this is the only way I know how to love, through half-closed eyes in a religious studies class, obsessing over the fact
that she can run faster than any boy in our grade. I don’t question whether this is right or wrong, but I want to keep her a secret that I know the lock on my journal wouldn’t protect. So I gently tuck the thought into the back of my head and I don’t even mind that when I’m awake I run
and I run but I never manage to catch her.
I meet her in the neighbourhood sometimes. I don’t think she remembers me. I do. I’ve never forgotten anything I promised I would keep safe.
I HAD TO GOOGLE HOW TO SPELL APOCALYPTIC
I have to google how to spell apocalyptic while
the whole city is on lockdown and suddenly I realise I don’t know how to write about the kind of death that is out of my control, doesn’t leave a note I always expected the world to end from inside out thought I’d be allowed to play God and pick my doomsday on my own terms but I don’t have a saying in this, no weapon in my hands at all I didn’t expect this one to be the year we’re forced to learn about grief but the other day I made a
strawberry loaf cake and I felt like crying the whole time it was in the oven – it feels unreal like reading a book and knowing it would’ve meant something completely different at a different time – days blending together but I am here now.
KEEPING IT INSIDE AS A DEFENCE MECHANISM
Inches of skin stretch over feelings and thoughts, holding it all together but only barely, unsteadily. Sometimes it tries all to come out but through the wrong path; failed attempts stay there, on display for everyone to see
or to comfortably ignore. Skin heals, but only barely. Words are forced back not because they’re not strong enough, but because the world is not quite
ready to sit back and just listen. So they pile inside of lungs and ribcages and try to make a home out of something that was meant to be hollow.
I don’t know what the words sound like, what they look like, I just know how they feel when they push and push and push against my bones. Skin heals, and does
its best to help me sit still while my insides swift and stir. I also know they can’t be forced out without a wound, once again. The barrier was never there to sew my mouth shut but to keep the fragments together. It’s just there to keep me safe.
THINGS I’M CARRYING WITH ME
one. I’m in the car alone and I’m having a panic attack. I can’t feel my feet but I’m driving manual so I know that somehow they must still be attached to my ankles my hands are tingling ghosts, fingernails that may or may not belong to my body leaving half-moon indents
on the steering wheel, I know that I might throw up or die or both and then suddenly a lucid thought: I have to pull over (pull over pull over pull over pull over pull over) but I look around and there’s no emergency lane and I can’t stop and I can’t stop and I can’t stop and I get home safe in the end but I don’t know it yet.
two.
We’re drinking red wine and talking about high school. It’s not like we’re happy now but do you remember how miserable we were back then? and we didn’t tell each other watched the girls slowly making ghosts out of themselves in front of our eyes and we let them because they were not like us, the emergency exit separating us from them they’re chain smoking outside and we’re drinking tea – no sugar – in the hallway but we’re all talking about death, I still ran a mile even thought my vision kept going black
and we’re starting to forget their names by now but don’t you think they were also pretty miserable back then?
three. My sister is teaching me how to become a witch. We use my brain power to move the bread from the kitchen counter to the dining table – my eyes are closed and I’m trying to make myself disappear you’re starting to look a bit transparent, she says you’re almost there – and I believe her, because I’ve believed every single word that I’ve heard from her mouth since the beginning and I’m not going to stop now
I know she’s annoyed because I’m five already and I shouldn’t be scared of being in the bathroom alone anymore but she sits on the edge of the bathtub and tells me a story anyway I have a theory: I can only sleep safe if she’s still awake.
four. A boy is kissing my neck and I am letting him. I am letting him because he said I was pretty and I don’t like boys but I sure do love feeling wanted lips sticky with vodka drank straight from the bottle I bend over backwards to chase the specific kind of high I can only get when someone tells me I did good
the loneliness takes a break from haunting my bones and goes for a walk my hair’s blue and he thinks I’m more than I actually am I think it’s because I am seventeen and it’s not it’s because I am myself and being myself is a truth I pray nobody can find in my mouth and I don’t believe in God but I pray you never see me through my own eyes.
AND NOW I'M SAD HAPPY
I dreamt you were getting married
and I was sitting on the floor of a hotel room drinking paint water from a blood-stained mug with your maiden last name on it. From the window I could see David Foster Wallace laughing at me –“get out of your uncomfortzone” he told me, “oh, and watercolours are nice but next time paint me something
bright” and a dog who had eyes kinda like yours stared at me and whispered you are loved you are loved you are loved.
Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort which comes from behaviours conflicting with one's thoughts, also known as not having sex with him
despite being in love, or knowing your life is wrong and still choosing to exist. I also like to call it being afraid of birds and filling your soul with paper cranes because what's on the inside can't hurt you (spoiler alert: I was wrong) or considering yourself a rational person and refusing to leave
the house with mismatched socks.
“You're not the only one I've ever written
poems about” I say laying in your bed because I love you so much I want to hurt you. “In fact, each stanza of this poem is about a different person” They're not, you say. They're all about you, as usual. “There will be other people after you” I say just like there will be another attempt at self-medicationafter yoga and green tea while trying to figure out where is the line
between mental illness and character's flaws. “But you're the only one who ever made me want to paint in yellow”, I swear. me want to paint in yellow”, I swear.
I THINK THIS IS WHAT’S CALLED SELF-SABOTAGE
I don’t know why you were crying
but I didn’t ask you – I am so ashamed of my own vulnerability I can’t stand yours, understanding my own feelings such a foreign concept your tears make me uncomfortable. I can’t tell which one of us I’m trying to protect but I know we’re holding hands and we’re still both lonely, we’re sharing a twin bed and there’s still so much space to fill – I know you can feel it too but we’ve both always been pretty good liars.
The therapist says I need to stop making lists and to start recognising patterns – it’s the first step to break the cycle but I’ve been feeling at home inside the déjà vus and the predictability of impending endings, the warm comfort of a lesson never learned. I’ve always been so bad at reading my own needs my body speaking in languages I have yet to master but I’ve known you long enough to know the difference
between not knowing what you need and not allowing yourself to get what you deserve.
I don’t want you to end up as collateral damage but I know you can’t look at my pain either can’t help blaming yourself for the bloodstains you don’t know why I keep doing this to myself, you say but I don’t know why we keep doing this to each other either.
LYING BY OMISSION
Blood stains on the clean carpet, the Metaphorical expression of all this
anger
But I don’t know where it came from I didn’t even notice you left the room Still seeing your ghost out of the corner Of my eye – we were both silent anyway
I don’t want to come up with excuses but I’ve never been good at this game Don’t know how to face something
Unless I can see it – like pain And truth. So I swallow my secrets so deep they can’t accidentally spill out
I know that lying by omission is still
lying
But I’m holding onto my thoughts So hard my knuckles turn white An impending panic attack that never comes The siren blaring in my head a familiar signal
But there’s nothing I can run away from
I am tired of writing about unsaid words.
Maybe next week I’ll write a poem About what the psychiatrist said Maybe I’ll finally write about the year I wasn’t allowed to use scissors
Maybe I’ll stop reading Sylvia Plath’s Journals like it’s bible study A tragic tarot reading that can only end in One way – I’ve spent my teenage years Getting ready for this
I’m sorry I lied when I said I’d go to the library And I got home with a new knife
I’m sorry I lied when I said I only feel safe at the Natural history museum Taxidermy predators staring right at me We both haven’t felt real in quite a long time
Still I stand, calm and collected, focused and Reliable – there’s nothing I can explain without letting myself
feel it all.
MAGICAL THINKING (for R. and all the great things she could’ve become)
In this version of the story, you make it out of the fire alive. You cough the ashes out and breathe in the cold night air – you’re going to tell us such a crazy story at work in the morning.
In this version of the story, there are no panic attacks
no crying at the television screen no silent praying that you’re in a better place now I hope you’re in a better place
now.
In this version of the story, young people are invincible can’t believe in an afterlife because there’s no need for one
no need to remember because there’s still time for new memories.
There’s no other version of the story – we wait for you but you’re not here and we don’t know how to mourn yet grief is a foreign concept for us but it fills this room like the smoke
must’ve filled your lungs like your voice is going to fill my head for a long time, louder
than the ringing in my ears that I don’t know how to stop.
We close the door behind us so what’ left of us – what’s left of you won’t slip away, hands held so tight they bruise, but we can’t keep tragedy from striking can’t keep you safe
now.