“Ouse”

For a moment I am able to stare down the barrel. From both ends it’s daunting; from both sides, there, for a moment, I can see what for so long you couldn’t. Through the empty hole — the empty likeness, like brightness — I find light that carries. It’s a sour kind of blinding; the past vestige-ing itself raw. Can it always be like this? Repulsive, kind?

I think I wanted to die and didn’t. “Good for you,” I want to say. But then I’ve wanted lots of things, I hear.

I wanted to die but I bought you a necklace instead. Here, arms outstretched, another part of me revolving around you. This time, inanimate. This time a successor. Latch. Me revolving. Me as a revolver. You as the sun, a baptism, an excuse to curse and be saved. Me as a wet sock. Unwanted wet sock. Soaking wet foot. Shake me off? I am gone. But your foot is still wet.

You as a trap. Me, a bug. And Him as our mercy; grace. Him as He who damned me, and yet I fall at His feet? Him from whom we hide.

You as shame. Me as the Other Cheek. Me as your sins. Each of them as a rock? A stone? Cast me down! I do not feel your pity! I do not feel the hell! But I dig down deep into the dirty green earth and by the fistsfull — there’s the barrel — taste the grit; sweat the heat. The senses don’t leave us when we die, I think. Just like nails, kind of, just like teeth.

I am waiting to disassemble. It’s inevitable now, isn’t it? Some days I feel like a balloon, and others I feel like a spectator and always I am the needle. Here, arms outstretched, the one who destroys. And because I am nearly always afraid of the noise I am writing from the perspective of helium. Of air. Because is it not frightening to be liberated? Flowing in the world again, however briefly? But is it not also what I’ve yearned for? I think, Lucky me.

This is how it feels to live: an Onlooker. How it feels to face death: a Balloon. How it feels to die: an intake of breath, just longer than you can hold. I don’t want it to always be like this. I don’t want to breathe that long.

New note. Title, bold: “Please say this about me when I die.” Not that I’m planning to, it’s just — I thought I’d figured it out. The ultimate flattery of self. I thought I knew what I wanted them to say and it’s already escaped me again but I think it had something to do with how dragonflies dance. Alternate title, underline: “How much I hate bugs and flying things and yet continuously place myself in situations where I’ll be stung and fall.”

And when, again, tonight turned into last night and that turned into this morning, I was still awake. Insomniacs thrive when we can reason sleep away! Yes I was still awake and I remembered a dream from when I was eight and leaning from my bedroom window into the spring of summer. Praying mantises ate my elbows. The barrel was here too, but it wasn’t hot, wasn’t shiny, was small and weird and holy. A little grotesque, I know.

For the longest time I thought that dream is what fueled my fear of death — namely my own, and gross ones, at least — but reflecting on it now, I think it’s what fuels my fear of prayer. How it never works because it’s not like we’re going to change god’s mind anyway. As if things aren’t going to happen when they’re going to, how they’re going to; as if we aren’t parasites. The light attracts us, too. How associating a creature that disgusts me with hands clasped and heart trusting is suppressable, how many things I wish were. How I pity the insect. How I envy it. I went all the way to the grave and all I got was this creepy-ass bug. How I wanted to die and I didn’t.

The barrel comes rolling in. There’s that brightness. Sometimes I think about the significance of using a little ‘g’ when I talk about him but then how I always go back and capitalize Him because I’m still trying to un-sin myself.

I heard a therapist on T.V. say that guilt is the feeling of doing something wrong and shame is the feeling of being something wrong and the fine line between the two is the space between my eyes as I keep them open while everyone else’s are closed. How shame sits comfortably when it feels at home.

I’m trying to write my way out of damnation, as if there’s such a place. Sometimes I think about how I’m so afraid. But I want to see a dragonfly someday and I want to be a dragonfly one day so I can dance, too. Someone can watch me and not be afraid. But more, I want to be a praying mantis. I want to be a praying mantis. Sometimes I think about the one piece of advice I’d tell my eight-year-old self and it’s the same thing I’m telling myself now: being something forces you to stop fearing it.

So I stand on my toes at the last step before the wind and sway to the way it bends me. It’s easy to feel the temptation, but I do not take the leap. The next move is anticipated and so it bores me. I’d rather hang back for spite.

I wanted to die and didn’t. The edges are what call me and I am drawn to them in the kind of way one is drawn to the blue in a flame. Often the most intriguing things don’t match your expectations. Over there’s the barrel and over here is dissonance. To carry on unaware, un-peaceful, yet — to feel death approach, and then, to live.

I can feel the next one rock me and this one I decide is not a barrel, but a wave. Like a wave, it calls a rider. Grit, heat. But we’ll have no “out with a bang,” just a river of sorts. How we end is proof enough — just ask Woolf. Only one heavy-enough stone will do the trick.

For a moment I am able to stare down the barrel. From both ends it’s daunting; from both sides there, for a moment, I can see what for so long you couldn’t. I can think not of too many brighter, hungrier, more self-aware. But then I think I see a mirror at the end of the barrel.

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