Vinegar

The human experience, as a whole, has been as taxing as it has been worthwhile and yet what stands out often is the way it wears me down. I imagine that when the universe conceived its idea of me, there were spaces in its fingers where better qualities than I possess slipped through and spilled over someone else. I try my best to love others, I create space between my ribs with eager hands, digging into soul and spirit to pluck flowers that fit each one individually. There was a woman that I loved long ago that lied to her father about her intentions with me, even after I crashed her car a handful of hours away from her home. She loved being objectified and so I tried with all my might to see this person as a thing and to treat that thing as such. She wore marks from my hands as if they were decorations painted by God Himself. She looked at me as if I myself made the rivers run and the trees spring up and stretch out towards the sun. Her husband knew me only by the gas mask that I wore one time, when he had followed her from home to club and spotted us entangled in what I thought was adoration. She had hair that looked like it had stayed too late for Sunday school with concrete, chalk and children. Like apple cider vinegar had stained each strand. I remember the first time she spilled on me and how I thought the fluids that unfolded meant that I was something better than the rest, that I might be kept. I slept inside of her and woke with songbirds stuck between their notes, the lot of them in awe of how pale her complexion was when placed so close to mine. My flesh is red from rage and the necessity to cross the seas and conquer. My flesh is an heirloom passed down by men that separated people from their limbs and stole the wombs of those they came across. I saw the birds and thought about the things their ancestors have seen and if they wondered about womb and sword and why there was a hundred angels watching too. Making love is an act of mercy and of torture all at once. I think that I place burdens on the women that I love because I’m never full and never being full means taking way too much. I think that I let people see exactly who I am right from the start so they can place their clothing close by. My body opens up and while there’s flowers there is also genocide and that sort of sound that mountain lions make at night. Like children screaming when the sword is placed into a lung. The kind of sound that you might muffle out of fear and in that moment tell yourself is something else. I think that I contribute to the swan song in the way I say “good girl” or “such a pretty slut for me”. I think that I care more for what I want in those pure moments and the contrast on display is something of a symphony. Like the birds that can’t remember which sheet of music they were on, so while one is on this note, the others look perplexed yet carry on. It’s muddled and it’s ugly if you’re not the one that I’m paying mind to. My body sifts itself into the cracks and crevices and upon expanding I’m exposed to every weapon ever formed against me. You could bury a dagger to the hilt but all I’d entertain is how her eyes were widened and the scent of my favorite flower filled the room. I think I’m doomed to a sonnet of a death. I think I’ll die without my boots on in an array of legs and feathers falling from the ceiling fan. These things all come with their own costs and I am so grateful every time I’m asked to pay the piper. He comes with scythe and pockets full of wildflower seed. He sings the same songs as the birds and speaks of all the people that my people sailed over just to slay. I think the battered boy that I am underneath the stench of sweat and gunpowder is missing something paramount. Some part that when removed caused ripples in my path of water lilies and moccasins alike. I think that I was meant to find one pad to call my home and one serpent to destroy but in my missing part I’ve partaken in too many breaststrokes. I’ve almost drowned a time or two, in the distance between women or in the grasp of scaled body tangled up and wearing out what little muscle I might have. I saw the birds there too, tucked away but watching still and singing all the same, that old song with different notes that claws at me like memories. I think the little boy that I protect with lengthy legs and fast footed fleeing feels like there are no safe places to call home and that everything that sparkles in the sun is venomous. Yet he has to find out for himself if such is true. Perhaps I am still the man inside the mask, still drowning at that midway point between surface and the current. Perhaps I’m still intoxicated with my eyelids draped like curtains that I close when what I want lays available for feasting on. Perhaps the things that bother me are baked into my DNA and all the drugs I’ve taken covered up some morbid curiosity. I want the snakes to bite and I want the lily pads to sink because atleast I know that they weren’t meant for me. Some day I’ll come across a slender body on the surface and it will glide away into the glades, the birds will figure out their composition and the woman that I love will love me back.