When I dream, I am stitched into different skin. I break into blue for my father, a cold purple for my mother. They are Mary and Lucifer on a merry go round, and round and down the staircase with a thud. I can see the black lashes thick with blood and one hand on the bible; hearts swollen and pounding. Our generational gore is still glinting beneath the floorboards of the basement, let me tell you.
With every sleepless night, there is a small piece of my lungs that stays treading water. I am somewhere expanded beyond the horizon of my eyelids while the air slips past my face before I can catch it.
Dreaming and breathing are more alike than you’d think. I tend to drown before I make it to this part.
How do you know what your words feel like if you can’t see them? I ask the reflection.
It’s simple, she says. I see you smothered in these letters like old acrylics ; You are drawling and dripping. Too simple, she says, and my legs cave inside like mountain valleys.
“Good Thing,” Katie was shaking her head. “Not usually.” “What’s your trouble?” “Nightmares.” “How much is there?” no one asked. “A million, a million.”
The pill tapped the counter at Katie’s right hand.
No sign of anyone, the lights were out here too.
“God!” she screamed. “Judas!”
Nothing.
The third match would not light. “You’re a fool to betray me.” “Who are you talking to?”
Katie put her hand over her mouth. Katie
-Headaches, Katie.
Suspect that Katie wasn’t Katie.
Katie was dead, wasn’t she?
Katie- I must think of her as Katie–
“Medication will kill you, I always say.” “You use it too?”
“Since I was a baby.”
There they go again. And again. And again.
I became more captivated by grace than the mere idea of God as the years went on, as the years fell on. My body ran like a thread in an old blanket, it ran from my skin as a wounded dog would, hungry and frothing in the jaw.
And still, it seemed as if my suffering was merely suffering, though it came went in cerulean forms.
There’s so much powder, white hills. Tasting strawberry mixed with stomach acid and sinking lower by the minute.
3;35, and the angels keep singing.
WOAH. All I can really say about this piece is, “WOAH.” You have a way of capturing a moment or a conversation and twisting it into these insanely clever metaphors and sensory details that make your readers feel something about the moment that they never intended to feel. I think this is a beautiful thing to use in your writing, and it brings out your personality in every line. 🙂