Chew
I kiss and sniff your arm when I wake from sleep
I want to take a bite to keep a morsel with me
Ill stick in in my lip like a hipster does with zyn
Carry it all day then in the morning do it again
And when the arm gets a little sparse ill switch sides
Ill convince you somehow cause I need it to get by
Without a piece of you with me at all times
I dont know who I am or if I can survive
Im addicted to your skin
I yearn for a little piece of flesh
Its what keeps me going
Its whats keeping me fresh
A nibble here and a small bite there
Once bones exposed id thought youd care
But so far nothing so again im masticating
Now im skipping and chewing this is so liberating
You dont bandage up, you let your wounds breathe
You look at them like theyre tattoos of me
And when we walk away both covered in blood
I cant help but notice its the shade of love
And if these bites were to get infected
Grow black and green with pus from the scab
Through this sickness I feel more connected
You'll chew bits of me as a kind of rehab
Youre feeling better but now youre addicted too
The urge for flesh growing within you
So I lay back, and expose my tender spots
For you to take from me in ways that keep us soft
This obsession has grown more and more
Till we are 2 skeletons laid out on the floor
No explanation, no help from above
No skin left but smiling cause we are in love
Dear Self of Selfness Past
As I got home from another maddening day as an untrained, underpaid, sleep-deprived zookeeper (a.k.a, a ninth grade English teacher), I stopped to look at the itty-bitty mirror near my front door. Of course, being that it’s essentially a mirror fit for a Polly Pocket, I have to look super close to see more than just my poorly plucked eyebrow, close enough to see every single one of my cavernous pores. I decided to count them (I got tired after 37), and eventually, I let my mind wander to the question of how I found myself right here, in this moment, as a fully-grown adulty-adult counting her pores in a mirror that could pass as a frisbee for a rat. I thought of all my past selves and what I would tell them to let them know I eventually made it out of childhood discomfiture and teenage obscurity. After (finally) going to the bathroom for the first time since seven AM, I decided I would spend my afternoon doing something productive--negating my bathroom break by guzzling wine and drafting letters full of advice to my past selves to save them from (themselves? Myself? Self-adjacent? The--self of selfness past?).
Dear Kindergarten me,
When the nice boy sees that you're a friendless loser and asks if you want to play a game with him and his friends, do yourself a favor and say "yes" with your words, not "no" by kicking him in the shin.
If you can do that, but not man up when the teacher calls you out in front of the whole class, and instead blubber like a baby, then you are a woefully inconsistent six-year-old.
Also, please note that you're going to move school districts at least three more times, and across the state. I hate to be the one to tell you, but that means you and Brayden are never going to work out. Sorry, kid. Walk it off.
And yes, I know that you're proud to be one of "Ms. Schneider's Spiders” (at least until you got on her shit list for assaulting a classmate); However, you will develop a crippling fear of spiders that spans well into adulthood. You become the drama when mega-spidey drops out of thin air onto your bathroom floor.
AND YOU WILL BE ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED IN YOUR PHOBIA.
Dear middle-school me,
STOP. USING. THE WORD. “RENEGADE”. TO DESCRIBE YOURSELF. You’re on the honor roll and have never snuck out once. You know what renegade means. You’re not that.
Also, it’s super cool that you voted yourself out of your emo friend group “most likely to be the lead singer in a screamo band”. You’re now a bespeckled book loving English teacher with a collection of cardigans. Rock n’ roll!
Dear high-school-fishy me,
I know, I KNOW, you’re tired of brushing your hair. But I implore you, I beg of you- DO NOT GET THAT PIXIE CUT. I know it looks cute on female comic book characters, but please bear in mind they are cartoons intentionally drawn to be attractive, busty, powerful women--and you’re 14 and still only halfway through puberty. You will not look like a bad-ass superhero. You will just look like you’re “confused”.
Also, stay away from Jesse. I know he’s a hot Italian dude with a Spanish last name. I know he’s got pretty, shiny, swooshy hair and an inexplicable ability to grow a five o’clock shadow at the mere age of 15. I know you quite literally want to be “Jesse’s girl”. But, years later, he’ll date this really sweet girl (long after you’ve mostly accepted that he’s just not that into you) and he’ll turn into a total bum with no place or money of his own and mooch off of his girlfriend until she finally decides to dump him like the grubby little trash panda that he is. Do not try to date a moochy Italian trash-panda.
Finally--pay attention to the bathroom signs before you walk in. You’ll thank me later.
Dear junior me,
Yes, I know Veronica is annoying as hell. I know she reminds you of the pretty popular girl from every Netflix movie ever who actually doesn’t have a single thought in her head (I mean, Veronica definitely doesn’t). I know she’s a pick-me with a propensity to hog all of Cameron’s time and yet somehow still find the time to cheat on him anyway. However, it’s not worth it to be angry at him. You’ll regret it in May when he dies in a car accident in Rio Vista. You’ll go from wanting to strangle Veronica until she stops twitching to hugging her often, because she’s broken too.
Dear senior me,
No, Jesse is still not into you. On the bright side, your hair finally grew back out! Then you dyed it fire-truck red, but you looked great. Your parents had no trouble spotting you on the field at graduation. They just looked for the little mermaid after the bippity-boppity-boo and voila: your mom got a blurry, pixelated portrait of you waving at no one in particular like the princesses during the parade at Disney! Also, note that at 22 years old, you’ve still never seen those parades... because you’ve still never been to Disney.
*sigh*
Please, for the love of God- retake your SAT (and maybe crack open a book beforehand this time) so you can apply to A&M right away. Otherwise, you’re going to spend your semester off working 80-hour weeks slinging sandwiches at Chick Fil A just to go to a tiny university six months later in butt-fuck Egypt where the population is so small you’ll finish your first semester swearing you had a moderately attractive stalker. Then, you’ll transfer three times to finally get into A&M and have to pay again and again for official transcripts (which you didn’t save enough chicken slinging money to do). At the height of that absurdly complex process, you’ll have a--mostly respectful--bitch fight with the office lady at Tarleton because their SPEEDY e-transcript system as they call it is less like Speedy Gonzalez and more like Slow-Poke Paco.
Dear college me,
Stop working so damn much and enjoy the ride. Go to parties, make friends, join an organization (just not a cult), and be a real Aggie (even though it’s a cult). You’re gonna miss it one day when you’re that weird random old person at Northgate chasing every *single* vodka red bull with a *double* glass of water, or standing outside the Dixie Chicken hogging the Oxygen because your claustrophobia is *never* prepared for butt-to-back proximity.
Dear 21-year-old me,
Man up and stop worrying about throwing up. When you went to the lake for your birthday, your roommate got hammered, and you were still buzz-less and sunburnt. Pathetic.
When I finished drafting what seemed to be a sufficient number of wine-stained, amateur advice columns for an amateur(er) human being, I decided to call my high school best friend, who was still living in College Station because he was finishing his major in engineering. After informing me that time machines weren’t “actual science", he asked me how much wine I had. I lied.
I got up to look in the mirror again after tripping over an imaginary shoe. Everything that led me here kept running through my head. I may have been a shin-kicking, spider-fearing, pixie-cut wearing, chicken slinging, lightweight former Aggie- but I was proud of myself.
If you’re not familiar with the philosophical point of the “butterfly effect”, it’s the theory that the world is interconnected, so much so that one small occurrence can influence a much larger complex system. All of those little dorky (and sometimes cool) things I did when I was younger got me my career and the opportunity to shape other young lives. I may want to save them from the same goofy mistakes I made, but the truth? They’re going to make their own goofy mistakes. They’re gonna have their own Jesse’s. They’re going to get their own stupid impulse haircuts, put off school, accidentally walk into the wrong bathroom (we all have), and drunkenly call their friends asking about scientifically unsound machines. And it’s okay. They’ll end up exactly where they’re supposed to be. Just like I did.
I crumbled up the letters and threw them all away. Not because they were wine stained or because time travel is impossible. But because younger me didn’t need help.
She Follows Rivers
She follows rivers to the gently rounded bank
near dilapidated slices of concrete she finds her home
over back when, things made sense and life was just a road
or
rather like a path to the ever elongated rivets of obstacles
furrowing their way into life’s roads fluidly cemented in its stubbornness
if only the mind knew its way back from such traveled paths
to wander completely down would pit the soul of any brave traveler
I wonder when things began to erode so perfectly
first at life’s road then at the stubborn slowness of its realness
when this came about settlers took flight and the new world
was never found
all new became ordinary
all ordinary came to ruins.
Sun and Stories
(Written outside a pub in Wales, on a sunny day.)
I'm sitting
In the sun
Glorious
With a cooling wind
And beer.
Sea behind me, lapping
As I sup.
They're mildly rowdy
Telling old tales
Of schoolyards
And best friends.
I don't mind.
They need the sun
And stories .
As the day fades
They return inside
And I watch them through the pane
Singing and hugging
As they say farewell
To the memory of a friend.
Pounds of Flesh
My mind wonders often
it delves into
the abyss of eternity
questioning and wandering
about its own mortality
for it's trying to discern
what’s waiting
on the other end
of the long tunnel
so it can free itself
from the genie of smokes
and the euphoric pandora
box chained within
relentlessly fighting
to expose the older man
who is hiding
under the mask
and white lies,
who truly yearns
to free the lost younger-boy
who’s trapped beneath
the pounds of flesh
that’s beating nonstop
yet non-responsive
to his demands
like an ear foreign to
a deafening sound
MidnightInk 8-17-2022
“You deserve a break today at McDonalds” (1982)
“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.” Khalil Gibran
Deserve: to do something or have or show qualities worthy of reward or punishment.
Thus, to deserve something requires some effort on our part. And whether or not someone deserves praise or recrimination, gold or coal, is not for the person to decide. Someone or ones outside of ourselves set the standards and decide whether or not we meet or exceed them, and what we deserve in return. (Despite the title, I am not talking about all the marketing that says you (everyone with disposable income) deserve the best car, insurance, diabetes-inducing coffee drink or soda, whiskey, artery-hardening hamburgers, etc.)
What are you owed? Nothing.
Outside of payment for services rendered, based on the employment contract you accept, no one owes you anything at all.
It would be nice if your parents loved and cared for you, gave you a roof over your head, food to eat and an education/opportunities that might aid you in your efforts to become an independent, self-sufficient human being, but, no one is owed the jackpot of all parents. We are the result of a race: the fastest sperm breached the egg. All seven plus billion of us. (I know, minus the IVFers.) Anyway, what makes anyone of those billions deserving of the situations, bad or ideal, into which they were born? Certainly nothing they did. We have no control over where, when or to whom we are born.
It would be nice if when we work hard, we reaped rewards of some sort – a raise, a promotion, an A+ on a test or paper, a word of appreciation for stellar work or behavior. But if you only work for someone else’s response, you may end up quite frustrated. You can work hard and never get that promotion. A bully may never be disciplined and good behavior may go unnoticed. You have no control over other people’s responses or actions, or the wrenches life tosses into the mix. One of the few things we can control, however, is our attitude or response towards all that life throws our way, good or bad.
Study to learn. Be kind because it makes the world a better place for you and those around you. Work for self-fulfillment; for the pleasure of knowing you did your best; to pay your bills. Not for a pat on the back you think you deserve.
Don’t confuse what you want or desire with something deserved: if you tie your happiness to something distinctly out of your control (nearly everything), you make a difficult life more challenging.
Dale Carnegie has some great quotes related to happiness:
“It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
“Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions; it is governed by our mental attitude.”
And my favorite: “Two men looked out from prison bars: one saw the mud, the other saw stars.”
I hope you are a stargazer.
A Call to All Writers
If you didn't know, I am a part of a book collaboration. It's a lot of fun and a lot of work. This post is a call to all writers who are interested in helping, whether that be as a writer, editor, or just a reader. We would love your help and feedback. We have 12 chapters put together but we are currently working on reviewing and editing. It's not a rewrite but it is the next step and we need a new set of eyes. We meet every Saturday at 2:00 EST over zoom but you don't have to come on if you would rather be an editor and reader but regardless of what you are helping with, you are more than welcome to come on. If you are interested, just leave a comment or PM me for more information.
A bit of background for the book: it would most likely be categorized as mystery and drama. It's about a young girl's disappearance and death and how her family deal with the loss.
Note: We each are assigned a character to write and there is one character in need of a writer and two whose writers are unresponsive. If you would like to write and then one of them decide to come back on or we have more than enough writers, we will just have multiple people writing for a character but I'm not sure how many people are going to want to write so please don't hesitate if you are interested.
Heart Attack
It happens swiftly,
no warning,
and you never know when,
or why when it is too late.
One day perfectly happy,
all smiles,
until that feeling begins.
You tingle,
for all the wrong reasons.
Your body becomes numb,
you sweat,
tears form in your eyes.
Everything in front of you disappears,
and your world suddenly becomes empty.
No one but you can feel this surge of loss,
this sudden drain of every fiber of your strength,
of belief,
of trust,
of all emotions.
When love is pulled away from flesh,
ripped from the mind,
bursting outward from the heart;
as we know it, we have died.