hot coffee

I take a sip of my coffee; it's gone stagnant and just above warm, but I swallow it anyhow. I can drink my coffee black when it's piping hot, but anything less than scalding has me choking on the sludge. Funny how a hot nectar can be a warm sludge and a cold poison..

I am frigid and cold inside, cool blood coursing through a cooler body. My flesh is pale and tinged with blue, and I paint my nails to cover the sickly beds beneath them. I emit no heat and am always shivering, bundled in sweaters and seeking an unseen warmth. I buy used clothing, oversized cardigans. I burrow into the warm memories of previous owners, but I can never quite seem to make their memories my own.

I need my coffee so it burns, so I can drink it and hope that the warmth can disperse, that my heart isn't just a morbid diathesis of predisposed sickness, too ill and cold to pump.

I breathe in, breathe out, and watch a single puff of breath leave my mouth. It's winter, and the trees are so bare.

I get up and go to microwave the coffee; there's still some remaining in the pot, but my mother's voice rings through my mind--- something something wasteful, and so I can't bring myself to pour it out. If I want to drink a fresh cup, I have to drink this cup first. I smile briefly when I think of my mother, but then I frown that, here I am, twenty-two and obliging myself to rules that used to make me cringe. That being said, I still follow them. I quickly down the coffee, fresh from the microwave, and grimace. Looking at my watch I see that, yes, it's nearly seven and I poured this cup at six.

A fresh cup. Fresh, hot, soul-warming coffee.

stag

I imagined myself as a spirit, cold and breathing from the habit of it, my lips blue like my eyes. I was drifting through the mountains, my feet hovering over the dirt and my body angled and quivering as I ascended. The air was thinner, and although I didn’t need it, I found myself growing lightheaded. I was a visitor in my own body, lacking control or even will, just going where guided. The top, my mantra. The top, the top, I whispered. Trees were plentiful , and I extended a ghostly appendage, my fingers touching those Alabama evergreens.  I moved faster, dizzingly fast, and began to circle the path, still headed up, up, but now through the trees and into the trees. Spirits can’t bleed, but I imagined branches scratching my face as I flew; I imagined the lines such scratches would make, thin and slightly raised, jagged skin torn in some places, just perturbed in others. The trees with their long fingers, gently caressing my cheeks with biting fingernails and the wind dancing with me. The image seemed beautiful.

I saw a stag, his horns thick and captivating, his eyes dulled and a pale blue- unseeing, and he turned to me, those milky irises square on me.  Unsettled, I reached a hand to him but to no reaction. The thought of talking appalled me, the idea of having to listen to my own voice. My words were to be a punishment to us both. I smiled sadly for this deer so clearly nearing the end of his life, so tired, dead-tired. He can rest, said the wind, writing in goosebumps on the back of my neck. I found myself thinking of his impending rest- a rest so deep and heavy, so permanent- with longing. As if he could sense my thoughts, the stag reflected those same sad eyes once reserved for him onto me. My hand, still extended, was met by his cold nose, a nuzzle as if to say do not be sad. You can rest soon.

listening to: between two mysteries, mount eerie

rebuild

If living has taught me anything, it’s taught me that I’m no soothsayer. I’ve always relied heavily on my intuition, but intuition and a clear vision are two separate beasts. It’s an odd juxtaposition; my instincts rarely wrong me, but the confounding and unknowable destinations that my instinctual paths build remain just that—a sort of place that I can sense but never see clearly until I stumble forward and fall flat on top of them. I’ve found that each time I think I’ve etched my path, each time I feel like it’s written, I learn all over again that it isn’t. Maybe my karmic life is like the phoenix, destined to live and burn and be reborn in its ashes. I’ve lived lives where I could close my eyes and picture a destination, where I could practically see who I could become, what I was becoming, only to have one small pebble start an avalanche and to be given the terrifying and humbling foresight to pack and rebuild. There’s nothing quite so transcendent as being destroyed so that you can become more than the sum of your shattered parts. 

ancient bruises

I wrote this a little while ago but never got up the nerve to post it. Something about it is oddly intimate, but it's been sitting here in my pocket.

     

There is beauty in the darkness. It’s in the ache of a slow burn, the chills I get when I drink, the brokenness I can feel when I play a song and kill the lights.

I am not a prisoner to my past. I get down (for reasons I can’t explain), morose even, but I enjoy my life, wouldn’t want to leave it. In my past, I’ve scared myself with the things I was willing and wanting to do- to go from watching a sunset to wanting to claw into myself, tear into my skin. To the desperation that wrecks and weeps and ruins, and the pain that began to taste sweet where it once tasted bitter. But I’ve gotten better- I know I have.

I wrote about it before:

"I put myself in a box, torn between wanting a rescue and wanting to slam the door. The perfume, the lipstick, the crisp dresses were all just wallpaper over rotting walls, flimsy barricades against the shame and disgust that I harbored for myself. I waited for the stains to seep through , for everyone to see and be horrified. The anticipation of that moment coiled deep inside, whispering fear and regret and grief."

I’m not a prisoner to my stupid habit- if it could even be called a habit. It’s just a quiet whisper. I think, more than anything, I miss the intensity of it. Of having my own secret, my own little bit of danger. I’ve expended a lot of energy chasing new things— music, liquor, going out, staying in— chasing the adrenaline. I want to hold my soul in my hands, feel it all. I feel like I’m mad, and often. I feel like I have to filter myself because I’m talking too much, too quickly, about things that aren’t suitable. I feel creepy and weird and alone and dark, much too dark.

I’ve been gifted a life of good things. My family and I are close; I have good friends. I had a decent upbringing, and I have support all around me. My overwhelming gratitude for the placid waters of my existence keeps me pretty upbeat. If you meet me, I’m a happy girl. Cheerful, goofy, self-deprecating, sometimes quiet. I’m weird and chipper and awkward and always laughing, being praised for my cheerfulness, my ability to make others forget. I cherish that, thrive on it, and then as soon as I can extricate myself from the people, the surroundings, I slip into my quiet sadness, into my darker thoughts. Because I fantasize about darkness, of cold black water, driving too fast towards it. Of setting myself on fire. Of medieval torture methods, of what I could last through. Of what is worth suffering for, worth dying for. I think about long, haggard fingers tearing the flesh from my bones, of gasoline and fire.. so I drown it out- I turn up the radio, open a book, tell myself to shut up.

I think about God a lot. Of the idea of an omnipresent force, a being that is invested in a person through every bit of his/her life, of being basked in warm light, in love, and having a certainty of happiness and glory after this life. I used to chase that, but my disillusionment with a lot of religion has shaped me into quite the cynic. I want to believe in that sort of joy, but in the darkness of humanity and the bleakness that I see— hell, the raw and ugly things that wiggle through my mind… I just cannot.

I think about sorrow and pain and agony. I read my tarot and look for meaning in the words written by other men. I call out for a ghost to kiss me or kill me or tell me something, and then when nothing happens, I pick at my nails and wonder if perhaps I am crazy after all. If my foolish habit from before was just the gateway drug into insanity. I wonder what would’ve happened had I kept my danger to myself.

new

Hello humans of Earth.

I'm assuming that anyone who's stumbled onto this page knows me already, so I won't waste time with introductions. I've set up my 'About' page, anyhow, for anyone who would ever care to see it.

I haven't kept with blogging in a while, and this blog will be my fresh start.

I'll be posting music, books I enjoy, all sorts of random bits. I'm looking forward to getting back into this, getting my feet back on the ground running.

Talk soon,
Amber