Life does not allow me to see myself as a unity. It’s as though I’m a pack of tarot born of bizarre dreams and a feverish brain-hand synapse – a neverending pack, images that are the times of my life flying, flying, filling the sky of my existence like clamoring birds. This is why I don’t have a tattoo yet. I’m inconsistent. My chameleon skinned life is indecisive, always twitching, never in control or aware of itself.
When you’re always changing, you’re always moving. A rolling yarn loses all its wool, systematically annihilating itself in its quest to live.
I remember when I wrote of myself as a river – I was young then, not afraid of clichés, typing out my thoughts and beliefs in boldface.
As I grew up, I wrote about my excursions into the cosmic sea, adventurous, reckless, pained and hopeful.
I saw myself drowning, and the words wrote themselves before the thought itself became clear – I was a miserable little sea urchin, lost in deep blue waters, struggling to break for the surface.
And since I tried hard enough, I lunged out. The surface is not a nice place to be at. I was still not the master of my movements. The sun baked me and the waves slapped at me, apathetic, vicious bullies.
I understood that my place was below, back in the deep towards which my previous drownings had led me.
But now I was afraid. Of the dark, of the mystery that sang in my sleep, that buzzed and boiled through my blood when I was awake, tearing open my eyes and willing me to stare into the sun.
I could not face it.
The terror, and then the inadequacy. It has torn me from myself. It has transported me.
Now I am an isolated lake in some far, dead moon. Cold, still water defines me. I am crusted over with a layer of ice that glistens like the edge of a butcher’s knife. But I am weak, and treacherous. The light I steal from the heavens and reflect blinds you to the cracks that web across me. It is not safe to cross me, to get to know me though all I present to you is a surface.
I wonder now if another season will ever arrive, if the freezing crust that is my own hand pressed tight over my nose and mouth, will ever melt. And I wonder at the notions that now solidify within me. The eyes inside are witnessing the birth of an iceberg. I am becoming the impassive waters of destruction, I am creating death.
But even in my distant, self-contained misery, I cannot deny one thing. The pull of the sea. The earthly gravity that bore me demands its dues. And even from this distance, I see you. You have become the sea I long wanted to be. It’s you and your love. And my fear has doubled. It seems that I fear both you and me, now. But this ghost of myself, the icy lake in a far away moon, it does not believe it can ever return. Terror jets through me, red, bloody, blistering hot. I do not let it mar my placidity, but it unsettles me. I long to return. I long to take this chance to be what I knew myself to be, what you have shown me is possible. But I’m no longer sure if I’m welcome. I’m no longer sure if that old place of mine still belongs to me. I dam the temptation to burst through the ice, to flow, to rush, to drip into your love. I recede from you because I fear losing what’s left of pale, meager me.
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