Diatribes x Prayers - A collection of musings

1// YOU FADE QUIETLY BUT YOUR SILENCE IS SO LOUD

Do you know how difficult it is to try and not cry in the middle of a packed bus? It’s no circus act or a five hundred kilogram deadlift but with the way it makes my stomach churn and my eyes water and my lips quiver, you’d think it’s the same thing. I’m sat here, leather brushed up against my orange cable-knit sweater and the comfy brown joggers adorned with text saying “Medellin Cartel,” I’m sat next to a girl I’d traverse through universes for and by all accounts I should be okay. But instead all I can feel are the hairs splitting under the wool of my clothes, making me itch and want to claw my skin out; the gritting and gnashing of my teeth, there’s a prayer on my tongue but I cannot speak it. I know the language, the rites, the ritual, it’s a waltz I’ve practiced a dozen times before. But that does not make it any less painful, each and every time.

You look so beautiful. Even now, running off of zero caffeine and three hours of sleep, dressed in clothes and a pair of shoes I’ve seen you in a dozen times before, you’re beautiful.

You’re beautiful and I don’t know why you’re doing this to me. I don’t know what you’re doing to me. I don’t know why it hurts. Why you hurt.

I have no mouth but I must scream. That’s a book title, you know. I’m being wishy washy and metaphorical about it but I get like that when I’m emotional, so bear with me. Bear with me as I write these words about you and I think of all the ways I’ve tried, all the ways I show I care, all the ways I try and try and I try. We say we want to make it work and we say we want to be better but it seems that every time you or I try to be better there’s always something that ends up grating us, scratching our nerves, sparking flames of rage so hot they scald Hades. And yet we push through the fire, phoenixes baptised by harsh words and tender kisses. We are driven by the dreadful need of the devotee that makes us look forward, march onwards on that inexorable path. We are Orpheus, looking back on Eurydice. Or maybe it’s only me who’s Orpheus. I’ve always been the poet after all, and you always wanted to be the muse. Even when you did nothing to deserve it.

I write all these pretty words with pretty meanings and pretty metaphors but I don’t ever know if they amount to much. So I’ll bring it to you straight. Cut the fluff, the fat. This is the meat.

There are so many ways I want to express how I care about you. But times when I think it’s a good idea and it ends up upsetting you or hurting you makes me feel like dirt. Worse than dirt. You giving me the silent treatment now feels like punishment. It feels like I’m a child being given timeout and that I’m not worthy of being spoken to, like I’m some pet project that you want to chip away at and shape and mould into the perfect man. And I try so very, very hard. I’m not saying I want to stop trying. I’m not saying I want to give up.

But sometimes it feels like I’m drowning in expectations. Mine and yours. I’m figuring out what I want to say whenever you wake up. Or at least whenever you’re ready to speak. I’ve given you time. I’ll give you more.

My piece is done now. Six hours left. Never done a try not to cry challenge that long.

Six hours that droll on and on and on and on, sweeping scenes of ugly grey and muddy brown just outside the tinted window. Every second is a century, every minute a millennia, every unsaid word left in my mouth like bile that I just can’t vomit out. I’m hurting. I’m hurting and you can’t see that. Why can’t you see?

I know you need your time but I also need my security. I need to know you won’t just ignore me forever because when you do something like this it feels like you’ve fallen off the face of the earth and I can’t look for you, I can’t reach out and grab you.

I want to be swallowed by the ground and wake up to a different me. This is worse than the waiting yesterday. This is the hell afterwards. My heart feels like it’s being tied to an anchor sinking so damn far down and I’m trying to pick it up, hold onto it, beach it. But it keeps. Sinking.

Sinking.

Sinking.

Sinking.

Happy new year to me.

---

2// STARGAZING

You don’t “close” your eyes. Or at least, you don’t like that turn of phrase. That implies shutting them forcefully, slamming two doors shut so that the darkness lapping close can finally overtake you. No - instead, you let your eyes close, allowing them to fall down gently, softly, carried adrift into that open ocean of infinite blackness. At first there’s nothing, except the still tides, and the glimmering underneath the water; it’s the stars, you think, they’ve fallen from the sky and now they’re swimming through the sea. Then it happens quicker than the mind can register - the stars grow so big and bright that to ignore them would be an impossibility, only for one of them to launch at you, seizing at your tiny frame, swallowing you whole in all its honey-golden gaze.

Each star is a gift, waiting to be unwrapped and revealed. But the gift isn’t always new, it isn’t always store-bought or minted fresh. No, this star is deja-vu, it reeks of the petrichor left in the wake of thundering rain, it is filled with verdant green and cerulean skies, it’s the noise of your earbuds thudding through your ears as you stroll through the forest. But listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness, says the song, like a heartbeat drives you mad, and you grab those words and hold them close to your chest, feet tapping to the rhythm of the drum, hips swinging to the thrum of nylon strings. Yes, yes - this is a lonely star, but a thoughtful one, one filled with just the right amount of pure and unadulterated right, the kind that cannot be burnt by an old flame or tainted by your own scorn. It is a star floating through space, solitary and unconfined, and that’s exactly how you want it.

You leave that star and flicker into the next one.

This star’s worn and dull, like an old coin. The colors here are mute, slicked with gunmetal grey, except for the occasional amber glow of dying street lamps. The star shows you your footsteps echoing across the pavement, a pitch blackness blanketing the world above. You’ve got three layers on and yet you’re clutching your arms because it’s still too damn cold, and you wonder why that is. It’s only the witching hour, after all - you’ve been awake here before, and you’ve walked this path a thousand thousand times, and it didn’t used to be so cold. But those other times were different, then, huh? Those other times you walked back, it wasn’t just after you came out of their room: that room which you slaved away your hours in, that you’d grafted a piece of your heart to, that you’d prayed with all your might to like it was congregation. As the mist clears and the shock wears off, you understand, completely and utterly now, that the temple you’d spent so long building in holy dedication to them - was never really a temple at all. That all the sacrifices you offered and the rites you performed and the hymns you sung in their name didn’t amount to some eternal happiness, to some everlasting love.

All those nights you spent cuddling under messy faux-silk sheets, grasping onto each other like two skeletons in a coffin. All those nights you spent looking into the darkness knowing that it was their eyes you were staring into, their heart you were attempting to jumpstart. All those nights of you tasting their lips as they tasted yours and before you know it, it’s 4AM and you’ve still got a packed schedule for tomorrow, and yet neither of you care, because this is the here, this is the now, this is the temple to you and me.

You understood then, painfully and abruptly, why the walk back home was so cold. Because you knew the only time you’d ever see that temple again would be inside a star. Through fire and flame and hell, that, even if you braved through, would only show you pieces, glimpses of what ought to have been. Of a house left unfinished. Of a chorus left unsung. Of a regret left unsaid.

Of a love unrequited.

Each star is a gift, you think.

So why did this one hurt so much?

---

3// THE AFTER PARTY

In the dead of night, there is a house that stands lonely and still.

The grand steps leading to its entrance are wide and tall, like a stone tarp, drowning in a ravine of auburn and carmine leaves from this year’s fall. Inside, the halls are grand and antique and yet, feel so empty, adorned with furnishings from a decade lost to the years. All of it is deep brown, muddled and scratched, scuffed at the edges so even the curves are like the javelins of ants. You could poke yourself if you aren’t careful, start to bleed like a stuck pig all over the ragged, tattered carpet, tainting it crimson. It was a deep shade of evergreen back then, fit for all the fairies in the world to sleep in. Now it’s faded, darkened, as if taking even just one step means you’ll be mired in a swamp that stretches out to forever.

He had stumbled all over it an hour ago, vision swimming, swaying his lean frame to the bada-bada-bum of weighted death metal. He danced and sang for hours, or maybe it was for seconds, or maybe time paused as he simply lost his body to the thump of the drums. He doesn’t know anymore and he’s not sure he cares. Nor if he’ll ever care again.

Well, I feel the rain, here it comes again, dear

And even when you showed me

My heart was out of tune

The death metal’s been usurped by a plucky acoustic whose sound foments through this living room, which is one of many. Like the smell of food that’s gone to rot, it grips his nostrils in terrible attention as he lies still, palms rested, on the torn leather wingback chair.

For there’s a shadow of doubt

That’s not letting me find you too soon

Blue moonlight leaks through the gridded window pane and spreads out into a pattern over the room. He sits at its center, caged by the immaterial bars, staring out into the nothingness of his great home. In his eyes, the flames burn, but they don’t rage. The wicks they sit on are short now, reduced by the heavy toll this life of his has exacted.

The music that you gave me

The language of my soul

Lord I want to be with you

Won’t you let me come in from the cold?

Day by day, hour by hour, the light behind his eyes is slowly being snuffed.

But the night is still young. He slumps, pieces and shreds and tears of what came before occupying his brain. His mind is a bear stalking the forest grounds, hungry for the honey of his past.

He recalls her face, fair and peach-hued - her silky smooth orange hair that sat on either shoulder like rivers made of sunsets. Her lips that seemed to invite him, beckon him with every little motion. Her eyes, glowing and so deep that he felt he could dive into them and lie there for all time. She was hotter than hell, better than Heaven, and when they were together the havoc didn’t matter, it didn’t matter if dad was concocting another game. The sky could split open and the Earth could be torn asunder and even then, he knew that when the smoke cleared, they’d still be standing. Together.

The bear has found the hive. It claws at the honeycomb, eggs bursting against keratin, bees buzzing and stinging. It will stop at nothing for a taste of sweet honey.

A part of him knows it’s the drink that’s making him stand up and reach for her. A part of him understands the weight of this decision, the consequences. But it’s a part that’s been buried, ignored and cast aside. Whatever bright light he may have had earlier has been stolen by the ravaged debris of his pain.

Right now, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

He leans forward, clasps his arms, shuts his eyes, and thinks of a spell.

He imagines dark, roiling seas of blood and gasoline. In the midst is him, the captain of his lone ship, searching for a face from his past through the howl of the storm.

Then he finds her, marooned on her own island, just the way he remembers her. He sucks in the air of his sanctuary, this dream, like a smoker would… then breathes out, ready for this casted spell to carry his message across the red sea.