18th gift is a gunshot -
BANG,
the person you have been gone in a flash of onomatopoeia
the breaking of a pen ink capsule in your teeth.
Dripping thick onto the page down
over the pockmarks in your chin,
teenage-heady twitching fingers,
secret lives and a world of being a cracked open shell,
spilling viscera verdent vitriol
but it is summer and you’re laid out on a mattress,
vacation to florida staring at the ceiling
your skin sweat-sticky pricking goosebumps under the AC
that kind of summer.
sharper around the edges but softer in the heart.
my frame stretches to fit me now
rasterized¹
chalk dust cleaned from under my nails
dirt swept from my feet
rainwater secrets bled dry from my gums
i like the way coffee tastes
milky and bitter
and i laugh like a harlequin even when i’m worse for it
i fill a room now.
like i never thought i could.
i write the same poem 12 times over
stuck to the same themes like a dog-
i am always the dog, or the deer, or the bloodied thing on the floor,
or the thing standing over it with the blood up to its wrists,
i am the one with the matches and the house up in flames and the one stuck inside
i write like groundhog day.
or more like the edge of tomorrow-
relive the same gory death as many times as it takes to get it right
maybe it’s because i’m so afraid of change that i’m like this.
in fact here’s a list of things i’m afraid of:
i’m afraid of car crashes
and housefires
(just about anything that would eat my ghost up whole)
1/1000 chance diseases that eat into the marrow of your bones,
the kind of thing they can’t stop even if they knew how to try,
anyone’s death where i don’t get to say goodbye,
unpreventable tragedy,
lost chances.
missed ones.
sometimes terror is a blessing in its own way,
because god i was once never scared
i would stand on the train tracks with my eyes closed and call it holy-
prayer was a plea
for the sound of a whistle in the distance
i loved the bullet in the chamber more than
fear,
more than anything.
but it’s been years.
and we made it to 18, by the way.
because we wanted to.
you had the trigger under your finger and you unloaded the gun.
it didn’t hurt when you did it.
your fingers did not stammer on even the briefest regret.
summer folds in on itself like origami,
a neat preservation of a crane.
there are secrets tucked inside,
but it isn’t worth peeling it apart for them.
and we are not saved
but not sacrificed as well.
summer will come and
you’ll go out and buy a suncatcher.
and sure as anything rebirth has come,
and will come again,
and you will smell rain on the air
and the sky will go gray and melt on your tongue.
Comments
Displaying 1 of 1 comments ( View all | Add Comment )
not about human tragedy
[1]: In some cases, you won’t have any option but to rasterize your layer to get the types of effects you’re going for. For any pixel type adjustments, you won’t be able to apply them without rasterizing first.
With that said, rasterizing a layer isn’t a good way of editing non-destructively. Since it would be a permanent change, it’s not necessarily a good idea. After all, what if you change your mind and want to go back to your original vector?
After rasterizing a layer, this won’t be possible.
[src: https://www.bwillcreative.com/what-does-rasterize-mean-in-photoshop/]
Report Comment