Swordsmen

Thirty five years have passed since my flesh and bones were pulled out of my mother’s putrid womb, since I first graced this world with my state of disarray and penchant for bedlam. I imagine that the stains I’ve left on Earth resemble the ones my creators left on me, hues of blue and green like forests and the seas. I would go to such lengths to say that my allergy to bees and soft spot for birds highlights the ever fervent feeling of lust that turns in circles inside of me. My friends find me to be warmth and peace whenever I am quietly breaking pieces of myself to fit the grooves that they display. You can come to me and stretch your soul between your hands and show me all the bruises that you’ve grown accustomed to. You can paint by numbers all the iniquities that you have suffered through and I can name the colors one by one. The shades that feel like home regardless of what happened there, the tints and tones that split your bones when gripped and thrown by people that you loved. Sometimes I wonder why the humans in my life find comfort in the sadness in my eyes, they speak of it as if it leaks like varnish down my cheek. Sometimes I wonder if they are aware that these things have a cost or if they see the value before they’re off and back to whatever fills their days. Sometimes I wonder if they think of me when I’m not listening to how they hate their husbands or how little love they feel when lying there in bed at night. I wonder if they question what they lay before me, before they lay it down or slam it on the table. I am to examine what contorts their comfort. I am to express myself in line with how they feel. These are things I seldom wish to do, in fact it’s not too often that what comes from my mouth aligns with how I feel. But I am never one to take somebody’s traumas and weigh them with my own, I think my issue is that there is nobody that comes to me and begs to split the burden. My spirit is quite heavy, as it’s made of stone and blood and wood. I think my issue is that there’s no time left in the day for what I feel because I’ve felt the things that other people need to drop. I think my issue is that I’m afraid to feel the things I need to feel because the only end that ever comes is people walking out. I think that perhaps it’s much too much to ask of friends or family to do the things I do for them, I think their hands deserve to stay quite clean as if baptized each morning while I’m slaughtering the lamb. My church is burning in the foreground but I’m off in someone else’s home, condoning actions I would never see as suitable, sustainable or smart. I think I harbor anger and it gnaws away in the early hours of the morning. I think I dream of war and death and whores and sex because I’m little more than that. I think I bury myself when I sleep. I think I’m always one foot in the grave, atoned by what little I can do for others. The wheel spins behind my ribs and burns like that old curling iron that my mother placed upon my hand. The wheel tightens like the belt my father used to leave his mark upon my face. The wheel grinds down everything that comes into its space, like sand and glass and teeth these things are broken into pieces. I don’t think about this all that often. Sometimes the world gets to be just loud enough that I can hear the ringing in my ears from bombs and bullets singing. I think the wheel loves the sound and counts on it to be what does me in. The screams and cuts and clashing of ribs upon hardwood floors, the bolt cutters and centimeters keeping limbs attached, the death of men much better than myself and families that they left. The rope that hangs inside the closet from when I was nine, the fact that my own children might not know my name, the smell of fire in the night and all the things that it consumed. The drugs and guns and things that I don’t speak about, the way that when I wish to lay my head there is no safe place in which to do so, the look in people’s eyes when they have dumped their weight into my lap and turn to push or pull depending on the door. I think these things all make me who I am. I think that God makes swords and when he saw that I was dull, I think that I was cast into the flame. I think that God makes swordsmen and when he saw that I was small he placed within my path a thousand miles I would walk. I think that God knows good and bad but hasn’t yet decided which that he will make me. I think that he is waiting, to see what it will take to break me. If I haven’t broken yet, perhaps such things will never come to pass. Perhaps the pain was purposeful and what I choose to do with it decides my fate. Perhaps it is how it has always been, with madness as my method.