Blemishes

Sometimes I think there may be something stained or shattered when it comes to what’s behind this breastplate stuck in place. I’ve sobered up, sworn myself off of snorting OxyContin, I’m capable of waking up without thirty two ounces of beer and a hot bath. My body works wonders once more, my hands don’t ever shake and although my bones still ache I look forward to my mornings. The sun comes up before me and splashes itself onto the sheets, the comforter, my feet and crawls slowly across my body till it meets my eyelids. I am exhausted though. I am worn down and whittled like wood into this different version of myself. The version that my friends see and think is happier, which I suppose I am, most times. I still crave the grave. I still find my journey to have been a fall from grace and cradle all at once, tumbling down into the tile floor, the blood seeping into crack and crevice. I’m still in the mountains with my brothers, our machine guns and the enemy afoot yet always two steps closer to their goal than us. I’m back in that crater left by almost ancient ammunitions, with that cup of chai in my hand or still floating above my bed after smoking heroin. My flesh is fooled by the soft textures that I glance against, be it sleeve of a shirt of undergarments gifted by a lover. I’m consistently tricked into being present for a moment here and there, instead of sand or rock or tile I am met with freckled skin found on the inner thigh or ceramic cups for coffee. I teleport, I think, between the times I’m here and when I’m there and I don’t handle my decisions very well, often in a fit of lust or jealousy, often In combustion. I think I burn things down on purpose when they get too unfamiliar. If it isn’t gunsmoke or burning flesh from dogs we shot there in the burnpit, if it isn’t my mothers curling iron resting on the back of my hand or the leather belt my father tried to break me with, I don’t know what to do with it. If it’s flowers and vanilla, I am lost and found only naked and painted with the latest lover. The latest craze that hasn’t deemed me crazy yet or that I haven’t left out of disdain. My spirit isn’t one as free as I am always making it to be but one that howls out at the moon in songs of yearning, never quite learning the keys correctly nor the pitch. If swimming inside a woman isn’t working than it’s usually the drugs that I resort to or a mix of both. In Tahoe I saw God, he’d sketched himself out across a long length of wooden fence and used the knots and blemishes to tell his stories. I saw red hair and blonde and black and brown. I saw trees and bushes, cacti placed accordingly. I was shown my life and what it might become if I were to continue treading water. I’m always kicking and thrashing and crashing like little waves against little rocks while the women that I love have learned to only ever dip their toes. My love is porcelain, easy on the eyes but if you knock it over, you’ll never find the perfect angles to put any of the pieces back together. My love is a glass cannon, intense when loaded with spoons and rings and other little trinkets you might find while sitting at a table in a park. Intense and yet too difficult to stuff and light and aim, so if you don’t hit what you wanted to the first time, it’s best to walk away.

There are moments when someone has chosen to allow the burning wheel in my chest to find a moment clear of turning, to rest and sometimes even slow its motion to a smolder. I’m allowed to place my head to softer chest and let loose the breath that I’ve been holding since the war. It’s in these moments that I find my life to be a tapestry, one woven like that fence but one composed of true events that I can swallow. It’s in these moments that I am at home, instead of up to my head inside a hole meant for killing men. It’s in the grace that someone gifts me, it’s in the choice to hold me close, it’s in the necessity to surrender to these little things. The things that piece themselves together to become something you would never leave behind.

Sometimes I think that I am stained and that the many pieces that I come in haven’t aged as well as I would hope. I think the people that I ask to love me can’t even begin to bother. But when I’ve figured out a way to stay here, to remain inside the present and I put these pieces back together, I hope they see that I was still complete. I just needed someone who could talk to me while I bled and bandaged, yet still managed in my chaos to place the angles properly.