vanilla chapstick and nicotine
it isn’t hard to find the needle in the haystack; you just have to know where to look. i can tell you. i was there, i saw it when they first pricked perfect skin.
ticking like bombs at the dinner table, scratching forearms raw, and wrists. i felt them all trembling as we held them together. and then i felt them crumble. it’s not that easy to let go of bones, but when that’s all there is you just let them fall. eventually they crumble too, and then all that’s left is a memory and a vague recollection of a smell that’s somehow familiar, and sour.
you never forget the taste. metal and remorse, desperation and disaster. sometimes it tasted like dishonesty. vanilla chapstick and nicotine.
i saw it all. i didn’t crumble. but when i did, i built myself better. this is the stuff i’m made of.
and i feel it when it’s approaching like i feel a train carrying the north with it, hear and shake with the rumble of wheels and the knowledge that i’ll soon be swept away. carried off to forgetting and more forgotten. sometimes it’s what i need– the getaway, the remembering and the familiarity of a dark and unending void. but other times i fear it and ward it off like the curse and the blessing that it is.
other times it’s too heavy. and though we said we’d wear these heavy boots forever, i i forget that we don’t always have to march. sometimes i sit still and remember flying free. swept away in trains and orange leaves. either way, i know why i am here and where i’ve been, if not always where i might land.
