Dear,
listen to me,
I have not walked the Earth long enough that cemented roads seem,
to be,
just the same to me,
I did not follow my dreams and will and aims and goals and things they told me to write down on lined paper in second grade because I did not see,
what they did with words on paper, what they did with words at all, so please,
understand me when I say, I do not know,
it is not me you see waking up to mirror reflections of her ego so big it radiates in a circular dark halo around her throat,
it suffocates,
she suffocates,
on words and poetic conventions, she does not believe,
in broken science and perfect rhymes and adultry,
never has she walked away from anything, simply,
because of its familiarity,
and this, her rationality, was merely,
true.
They told her describe yourself in 5 words,
but words just too big, too small, to fit herself within,
she felt the echo of the space left within the letters she could not utter,
the fitted words she couldn’t crush her thighs to fit between too close a space for parked cars
she never knew how to be,
and she made revelations on the idea of her mere existence early in eighth grade when she was told she could not be worthy,
of letters and bodies she did not have,
and she believed.
Naive, naive, naive,
she runs and plays with ghosts of her dreams,
she knows, she knows, SHE KNOWS, how to build her own delusions,
strong enough for escapism and fragile enough for penetration.
Later throughout the years, they asked her what kind of person she wanted to be,
WHAT KIND,
and she did not want to be, she did not know how to want to be,
she stared at her blank paper and drew cubes all over,
tall modern skyscrapers of the new world that met Greek architecture of fountain-ancient times,
she wandered off between the lines, tackling ambiguities she knew she would never conclude,
she knew that at this point, any question raised in history class, was merely for discussion, it was not to know for sure,
how her own skin, like red ribbons wrapped around cake, could tear at the sight of existence itself.
Her existence remained a haunting ghost that never stopped at the threshold between reality and delusion
But oh, in eleventh grade,
she walks in to sobbing, and black, and all to her disknowledge of life,
she encountered death,
not anyone she really knew, just someone who knew another someone who had a mother who had a daughter whom she lost to medicine that was still too retarded to save from developing drug-resistant biology
the date and time for funeral life was sent across from face to face I couldn’t escape, what was this they told me of?
I did not go, I only traveled there in thoughts of what might’ve been a realistically painted Audrey Hepburn portrait of the scene,
All black, because sorrow came in colors and clothing,
All sobbing, because melancholy only manifested in tears,
All good memories, because remembering was only for the dead,
And all along, the faces she never knew of, came to condole her lost member,
Sorry if I’m intrusive, but honey,
none of this makes you feel better,
not coffins and roses, or spoken verses of religion can really help you through this, and most definitely not people who never knew her who act and sob and cry,
you are here, and he is there,
what is there to be so mad at God about,
what is there to be so sad about,
it is all gone, and this is only irrational.
When I die, when a dear friend or family member dies, I will not invite, I will not pretend to know the people he did not know while they offer their fake condolences,
Honey, I’ve met you once,
over lunch because a sister of a friend knew you, and happened to run into you one day,
and so we talked about background, horoscopes, and names of friends, we both did not remember,
so when your husband dies, I will not be there condoling you because if I open his coffin next to five others that look nothing like him, I will not be able to identify him, because his features along with yours are merely names smudged in my memory,
I do not know you,
and I will not fake sorrow for your day, your week, your month, your year in black just because you’re too emotionally distressed to understand where I’m coming from.
In twelfth grade, she was revising all profoundly-held ideologies, there was no going forward beyond this,
this world of Socrates, Descartes, and Heidegger now suffocated her, in all aesthetic ways of course, she knew she would forever admire thought,
but how she thought these thoughts, it killed her,
going back and forth on something she knew she would never knew,
little words of knowledge were so beautiful, but she’s grown tired of beauty,
her face has already wrinkled from anxiety and too early knowledge of all things of life,
it’s like she skipped high-school altogether and was walking into her fifties all dull and tired.
A grandmother to none,
she hoped to bore no children in this world of misery,
I did not want to bore my children and their children with my forgetfulness and incessant need for care,
I simply did not care enough for my grandmother, and expected patience to have a shorter time span at my time,
I just wanted to die next to my morning coffee and book,
looking outside my window, and letting the china cup fall and crash in my mind while it rests peacefully on the ornamented glass table,
I just never wanted to encounter my own anymore,
for this little fragment in time, between life and death,
let me have the peace of not knowing who I was and who I will be, and not caring enough to know, to have let go of all knowledge and all memories, and floated in this, just now.
beyond 