Neptune_54
Stressed Bisexual
(Something I've wanted to write for a long time. We've recently started the poetry section in my lit class and this came spilling out of me tonight.)
A poem to the person I loved:
Once, when I was very young, my sister told me that if I grabbed
Both the metal fence post and the electric wire,
it wouldn't shock me.
I did it, of course, just to see.
No hesitation at all, white-knuckle grasp on the rusted metal, little thin fingers curling delicately around the wire.
In the breath of the second before the electricity hit me,
My hairs stood on in as my body tensed, breath gone, now suddenly aware that my sister had lied, even though I had not yet been shocked.
Here is the curious thing about grabbing a metal pole and an electric wire at the same time: You aren't able to let go.
My body is completely rigid and frozen, volts coursing wildly and wickedly, not so much pulsing as flowing viciously in a continuously and excruciatingly.
However, my fingers did not obey my desperate attempts to let go,
and my feet were traitors, motionless even though my very toes tingled with electricity.
We had thrown watermelon over to the horses,
barely seconds ago, and my elbow had tapped the wire,
it had jolted me, just barely, enough to make me weary of it,
But now, the electricity was amplified ten-fold by the metal pole. Agonizing. I hate my sister.
My sister pulls me off, after a few minutes of observing and realizing that I was very much going to tell mom.
When she touches me, of course, the electricity momentarily racks her body as well. I think,
Serves her right,
But I wouldn't wish that sort of pain on anyone.
Even after I let go, the tingles and the burn lingered,
my palms red and my whole body shaking.
Loving you was exactly the same feeling.
I hope you understand, of course, that I occasionally wondered
If it really hurt that bad, because I can't remember,
really,
What the pain exactly felt like, only what I imagine it to have felt like.
Maybe it hadn't hurt at all, and perhaps I should go to my back yard and check.
Loving you was a bit like those dreams I have,
Where someone else, usually a stranger or maybe an acquaintance from school, or sometimes you,
gets stabbed by a faceless assailant,
But I am the one the knife pierces
It rips through layers of skin when it plunges into my stomach, violating my body in a way that should, truthfully, kill me.
The blood rushes over my fingertips while your friends assure you that you're okay, call an ambulance for you, defend you from an attack that missed you by miles.
I bleed out.
No one stops to see if I am okay, because, truthfully, you're the one who was stabbed. It isn't really their fault.
When I'm about to wake up, finally being freed from the nightmare because that's what dying in a dream usually does,
Someone, usually you, notices that you haven't been hurt at all.
They don't, of course, realize that I have taken the damage without ever wanting it, and they do not save dream-me from dying.
I have that dream a lot.
Loving you was like that, but it was also
waking up, jolting in my bed,
damp with sweat and tears but whole and breathing and alive
Which is to say that the knife, the wound, the blood, the pain, was all of my own design.
My heart will pound rapidly, wildly, for what feels like the next few years. I won't sleep again, I don't want to sleep again.
Loving you is like the book I'm reading right now.
I have never wanted to read a book slowly before this one.
I've always been a reckless reader, because that it how I write: Pen first, thought later.
I absorb pages in minutes, finding myself having devoured fifteen chapters without recalling having turned a page
Recently, I've encountered a series that requires the same sentence to be read multiple times to understand everything it implies.
I find myself, often, looking over a paragraph once, twice, thrice, because everything links together so beautifully and easily that I want to gather the words into my hands and swallow them.
It took me two whole weeks to read the first book.
I have read a book three times it's size in less than a day,
but I decided to take my time without ever truly deciding that
I could only handle the book in small quantities at a time,
because things that good demand to be taken slow
which was, surprisingly, very okay.
I am on the second book now, and wishing I was on the fourth,
still only able to read a few chapters at one time,
but thinking constantly about the burning feeling that eats away at my chest when I'm holding the book in my hands
Loving you, was a lot like that.
It was a lot like a lot of things, actually.
Have you ever gotten your foot stuck in the bottom of a shopping cart?
It was a bit like that, the sudden irrationally terror that you were going to have to cut your own foot off
but, it was also the flood of face-reddening relief when you finally twisted your foot at just the right angle, and were released. Your whole body is tense with that feeling. It's like that.
Loving you was noticing a wasp crawling on the trampoline inches from my hand.
I can't yank my hand back, am not allowed to spring suddenly from the trampoline, am seized by fear.
Loving you was also like anticipating something exciting to happen the next day, like a field trip or Christmas,
The being unable to sleep, the everythingness that seems to be all laid out waiting in tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Loving you was a lot of crying, a lot of smiling, more crying, a bit of hating myself because I couldn't hate you and if I could just hate you it would all be simpler.
Loving you, of course, was not wanting to hate you.
Loving you was realizing there wasn't a was but an is, because I will never be able to truly say I do not love you:
I meant everything I said that night, I still do.
I have always loved you, I always will.
But, loving you is also realizing that I do not actively have to be loving you to love you
That doesn't make sense, I know, but listen:
I've accepted it. I'm okay. I know the wire will shock me real bad if I grab it and the pole at the same time;
I'm not going to go see.
I know, also, that I sort of love you like I love my dead relatives. Yeah, I'll always love them,
But I will love other people, too,
And I do.
I don't really need a million metaphors to know what loving you felt like.
I know what it feels like every time I breath.
A poem to the person I loved:
Once, when I was very young, my sister told me that if I grabbed
Both the metal fence post and the electric wire,
it wouldn't shock me.
I did it, of course, just to see.
No hesitation at all, white-knuckle grasp on the rusted metal, little thin fingers curling delicately around the wire.
In the breath of the second before the electricity hit me,
My hairs stood on in as my body tensed, breath gone, now suddenly aware that my sister had lied, even though I had not yet been shocked.
Here is the curious thing about grabbing a metal pole and an electric wire at the same time: You aren't able to let go.
My body is completely rigid and frozen, volts coursing wildly and wickedly, not so much pulsing as flowing viciously in a continuously and excruciatingly.
However, my fingers did not obey my desperate attempts to let go,
and my feet were traitors, motionless even though my very toes tingled with electricity.
We had thrown watermelon over to the horses,
barely seconds ago, and my elbow had tapped the wire,
it had jolted me, just barely, enough to make me weary of it,
But now, the electricity was amplified ten-fold by the metal pole. Agonizing. I hate my sister.
My sister pulls me off, after a few minutes of observing and realizing that I was very much going to tell mom.
When she touches me, of course, the electricity momentarily racks her body as well. I think,
Serves her right,
But I wouldn't wish that sort of pain on anyone.
Even after I let go, the tingles and the burn lingered,
my palms red and my whole body shaking.
Loving you was exactly the same feeling.
I hope you understand, of course, that I occasionally wondered
If it really hurt that bad, because I can't remember,
really,
What the pain exactly felt like, only what I imagine it to have felt like.
Maybe it hadn't hurt at all, and perhaps I should go to my back yard and check.
Loving you was a bit like those dreams I have,
Where someone else, usually a stranger or maybe an acquaintance from school, or sometimes you,
gets stabbed by a faceless assailant,
But I am the one the knife pierces
It rips through layers of skin when it plunges into my stomach, violating my body in a way that should, truthfully, kill me.
The blood rushes over my fingertips while your friends assure you that you're okay, call an ambulance for you, defend you from an attack that missed you by miles.
I bleed out.
No one stops to see if I am okay, because, truthfully, you're the one who was stabbed. It isn't really their fault.
When I'm about to wake up, finally being freed from the nightmare because that's what dying in a dream usually does,
Someone, usually you, notices that you haven't been hurt at all.
They don't, of course, realize that I have taken the damage without ever wanting it, and they do not save dream-me from dying.
I have that dream a lot.
Loving you was like that, but it was also
waking up, jolting in my bed,
damp with sweat and tears but whole and breathing and alive
Which is to say that the knife, the wound, the blood, the pain, was all of my own design.
My heart will pound rapidly, wildly, for what feels like the next few years. I won't sleep again, I don't want to sleep again.
Loving you is like the book I'm reading right now.
I have never wanted to read a book slowly before this one.
I've always been a reckless reader, because that it how I write: Pen first, thought later.
I absorb pages in minutes, finding myself having devoured fifteen chapters without recalling having turned a page
Recently, I've encountered a series that requires the same sentence to be read multiple times to understand everything it implies.
I find myself, often, looking over a paragraph once, twice, thrice, because everything links together so beautifully and easily that I want to gather the words into my hands and swallow them.
It took me two whole weeks to read the first book.
I have read a book three times it's size in less than a day,
but I decided to take my time without ever truly deciding that
I could only handle the book in small quantities at a time,
because things that good demand to be taken slow
which was, surprisingly, very okay.
I am on the second book now, and wishing I was on the fourth,
still only able to read a few chapters at one time,
but thinking constantly about the burning feeling that eats away at my chest when I'm holding the book in my hands
Loving you, was a lot like that.
It was a lot like a lot of things, actually.
Have you ever gotten your foot stuck in the bottom of a shopping cart?
It was a bit like that, the sudden irrationally terror that you were going to have to cut your own foot off
but, it was also the flood of face-reddening relief when you finally twisted your foot at just the right angle, and were released. Your whole body is tense with that feeling. It's like that.
Loving you was noticing a wasp crawling on the trampoline inches from my hand.
I can't yank my hand back, am not allowed to spring suddenly from the trampoline, am seized by fear.
Loving you was also like anticipating something exciting to happen the next day, like a field trip or Christmas,
The being unable to sleep, the everythingness that seems to be all laid out waiting in tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Loving you was a lot of crying, a lot of smiling, more crying, a bit of hating myself because I couldn't hate you and if I could just hate you it would all be simpler.
Loving you, of course, was not wanting to hate you.
Loving you was realizing there wasn't a was but an is, because I will never be able to truly say I do not love you:
I meant everything I said that night, I still do.
I have always loved you, I always will.
But, loving you is also realizing that I do not actively have to be loving you to love you
That doesn't make sense, I know, but listen:
I've accepted it. I'm okay. I know the wire will shock me real bad if I grab it and the pole at the same time;
I'm not going to go see.
I know, also, that I sort of love you like I love my dead relatives. Yeah, I'll always love them,
But I will love other people, too,
And I do.
I don't really need a million metaphors to know what loving you felt like.
I know what it feels like every time I breath.
