Baptism - 09.15.2011

Here I was baptizing myself in the throes of others’ misery, wanting nothing but to remember how it felt when the pang of life was so full it overflowed up and out each orifice. To feel the presence of gravity on tears that, for once, seemed natural. To fight the uncontrollable convulsion of face muscles, and the lack of will to direct where my identity would find itself—alive, or flat faced, dying slowly, breathing its’ last fleeting gulp of air.

It startled me when after half a year of submerging my desire to search, I found her in a photo, a blue flowing dress taut around her now womanly figure. Her family members boasting large smiles while one by one placing their hands on her pregnant stomach to turn in pose for the camera.

I felt sick. My heart seemed to squeeze a little harder while I attempted to understand how I should feel about what I'd just seen. Nothing made sense—I buried myself in a book while the chatter of co-workers clamored in the background and I suddenly felt annoyed, angry—indifferent. Nothing mattered anymore—I felt lighter, as if a piece of me had just been carved out, or a burden lifted.

My actions were impulsive and my demeanor became less than gravitational. It was time to leave and I was glad for that—eleven hours of playing polite to people who could care less about my feelings was enough for one day.

Despite my hasty driving, the ride home was long. It started raining and the thoughts in my head were whirling about. The brake lights from cars I was passing started to blur together. I made it just one street from home, stopped at the stop-sign, and I felt that pang for once, wanting to escape—I let it.

Amnesia

Picture credited to Shannon Freer

My spine is where I held myself together;
it kept my memories in its tendrils
to remind me where I'd been.  Identity—
they stole my memory.

Resolute

To who then do I owe this pleasure,
or this curse, to love a second
long after the first.  I must say
I have towed the line day after day

with no regard to a past ill spent,
but the past is present—I repent.
Now what then do I seek salvation from?
No god or man has talent enough

to make my deeds undone.
Nor even in a dying breath, a lament
shouted towards the sun,
would do sufficient harm or good

to make my deeds undone.
So I ask once more: why tread this path?
There is no reason for my treason
though to warily await each passing season.