June 27th

Armand:

We are what we eat. If that is true then I must be made of you and you must be made of me. We have spent so much time together breathing each others' molecules and feeding on each others' love that there must be a bezoar made of you lying at the pit of my stomach.

You love me, my darling, but I'll never be free from the ravening and hopeless desire I feel for you. You can wrap me in your arms and legs and hold me so tight my ribs fit into yours or you can go through seven hells to prove your love for me, I will still starve for you. I'm rapacious and insatiable and I want to hold you in my bones and melt you into my marrows. I want... oh, I want, want, want, want, want! 

Don't you see how frantically, insanely and destructively I love you? Your presence would ameliorate the frenzy but what then, when you're not with me? Who else would be there to protect me from myself? So please, don't leave me alone with my heart, it'll destroy me. Claw it out of my chest, if you will - I don't care - just take it with you, you know what to do with it better than I do anyway.

And as always, I love you to death.

Things That Change

Once upon a time I was

flesh and blood and bones, 

I breathed the infinitesimal stars and the sky

and I breathed the universe.

I had the fire of the sun

between my ribs and 

the swiftness of the wind

in my legs 

(I unfolded them like wings). 

I had hair interwoven with thunder bolts and a 

head full of hurricanes. 

Perhaps I have spun on my axis alone

for too long. 

Perhaps I swallowed the inexhaustible salt of

loneliness too much -

because now, my 

dreams are scattered like constellations

in the perennial night

and my heart

is the color of

dying leaves. 

On Thoughts

Sometimes I wonder where our thoughts go. We do so much thinking and our thoughts are replaced by more thoughts but where do these discarded ones go? Are they vagrant alphabets that reassemble themselves to form another thought or are they lost to a mental event horizon forever? I hope that it's the former because disintegrating into a void sounds utterly horrid. I wouldn't wish it on the worst of thoughts.

A Story of Teeth

I remember when I was 6 and my baby teeth were dropping like flies throughout the year. Remember how the falling off of baby teeth would form a border in the transition from being babies to being full-fledged children? Despite the initial horror of toothlessness (which I then overcame by trying not to show my teeth when I smile) I was delighted that I was finally getting rid of whatever categorized me as a baby. It was when I was trying to grow up too fast and had no discernible idea of what growing up meant. 

Anyway, I started a collection of baby teeth after deciding that I couldn't bear to throw away a part of myself. I think I was scared that all the teeth I dumped over the years would come together and form the phantom of a mouth I once had but without my lips or my tongue or my oral cavity. It would be two rows of vengeful, malicious teeth snapping their way into my bedroom when I sleep and haunt me for the rest of my life. Far-fetched, I know, but you know how kids are. 

So the first two teeth were given the royal treatment. I used to brush and clean them individually then rinse them in Listerine every night before placing them back into their little bed of cotton wool in a matchbox from England that my aunt gave me. I lost both of them in an unfortunate incident in which they were washed down the sink when I drained the water. The next three survived for another year before I grew bored of cleaning baby teeth every night and just left them in their bottle until they rotted. I washed them down the sink, this time of my own free will. I traded the succeeding one with my brother for dominance over the TV remote control. (He wanted to watch Ed, Edd and Eddie but I wanted to watch The Book of Pooh) I still don't know what he wanted with my tooth. 

I lost more teeth as the years went by, mostly due to similar incidents and once because I planted two teeth in the garden after the dentist told me about teeth having roots and all. I now have approximately ten more in a bottle filled with mouthwash (because I am too lazy to have to clean them every night or even every month) and they have all turned Listerine blue. They remind me of floating fetuses in jars of formaldehyde and I certainly have developed a kind of... maternal(?) feeling towards them over the years. The first two even had names: William and Harry. Dead serious. 

I don't know why I'm remembering this now but Born to Die is making me strangely nostalgic. It makes me sad to think of William and Harry and the others. It's like having a cemetery of unborn babies. 

5th of June

1. Skinny Love
2. Jaime Lannister
3. Sandor Clegane
4. Na Ying
5. Arctic Monkeys

Secrets to the Grave

I'm scared of dying because I don't want the doctors to perform an autopsy on me. I don't want random strangers to cut me open where I've so skillfully hidden my secrets. I don't want people to see my charcoal heart, where lies and flaws left their indelible stains. I don't want them to see my shriveled lungs, where I've stopped breathing years ago. I don't want people to see the gruesome contents of my stomach, where all the words and thoughts and feelings I've swallowed rotted away over the years. I would rather have insects and maggots eat me away and have my secrets seep through the soil of the silent earth. I would rather not die at all.

(Not) The End

And it terrifies me that
it would come to a screeching
halt.

It's Part of Nature

Kiss my feet and they will blossom into an amaranthine meadow of flowers.
Kiss my arms and watch them twist into great, serpentine rivers that intertwine like double-helices.
Kiss my shoulders, they will stretch into two bridges that interconnect planets and systems.
Kiss my lips and taste the golden elixir of honey. You will be immortal.
Kiss my eyes and they will be the eternal stars to guide you through the endless nights.

To Armand,

My dark prince, my twisted twin, my tragic dreamer. You alone understand the blackness that comes in waves, you alone stepped into this whirlpool of demons and loved them all. You kissed them on their gnarled and distorted mouth, as if they were docile kittens, merely because you love me and they were part of me.

Love you, love you as I've never loved, love you beyond consciousness, beyond mortality, love you beyond comprehension. This savage and unequivocal love knows no bounds, wants you and your body and your blood. Wants your thrashing soul between my teeth.

I love you so much I rip myself apart mentally for you. It's a terrible love and we bring each other into such pure, psychedelic inebriation that transcends all meaning and coherence. We are two lost souls finding the light, and in doing so we surrender our everything. Fragments of us are disgorged into this great, empyrean void - so humbly and so modestly called love - that we leave almost nothing of our original selves behind.

Don't you see? There's no part of me that's untouched by your effulgence. My entire being is marked and scarred by you and still I want more. I'll forever be wanting more.

Always,
Sheryl.

May 7th

Because I let myself wade
into you too prematurely;
first the ankles, knees and thighs.
And suddenly I'm up to my shoulders
in you.

Everything was measured and everything was slow,
and because of that
I believed that I was safe
in the impenetrability of time.
I didn't know that I would
wake up one day
to find that I am
the color of your blood.