Faith De Young
Stories (13/0)
Underneath the Bridge, an Animal Breathing
These prisms, they spread, they course as if a moment, as if an entire lifetime. Our emotional bodies are threaded together as if we were meant for each other. Do you want to hear what wounds sound like? They are less like the bold howls by moonlight, they are more like silence within a well. Something you want to reach but can’t see into, something that echoes and seeps out of you. Do you want to know how the wound looks? It looks like smiles without eyes that light up. It looks like fear when someone comes too close, too near. I wonder if you jump when your lover touches your shoulder? Wounds resemble the sound of your mother. They resemble the way she tried to escape in her daydreams and the way there was never enough rest in a lifetime to keep her alive. Do you want to know why paper cuts hurt more than bruises? Because of all the nerves that reach the fingertips. Because the emotions of childhood are not meant to buried, they will otherwise consume, eventually everything. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me. I played sports, I swam by the sea. I ate all of the Halloween candy. And yet, there was a fierce rage in me, something precious and deadly. I would disappear from time to time. I would stand on the edge of cliffs and wish I could jump, but something would pull me back, something I can only describe as birth right. I was born to break a curse. I was born to feast but first I had to fast in the wilderness of youth. The desperation of the temptation to cut myself into pieces, the temptation to be buried underneath something beautiful. I thought this must be normal. Everyone has days where they cry for hours, where they sink into their misery for miles. I did not know it was someone else’s burden. I did not know it was a poison being injected through lineage. From my grandmother passed down through to her granddaughter. I thought they would put me away. I thought they would ensnare me into another trap I was too blinded to see. This is a story about redemption, I swear. It just doesn’t always look so golden when you peer under the first layer. It doesn’t look so embolden when you realize these scars were scalded by a father from generation to generation. I thought it was something I had to carry in silence, like some gigantic mountain, like some forlorn burden. It wasn’t until I started to speak again that I realized I had a lot to say. It wasn’t until I realized someone would listen until I could get my way. This is a story of how pain has a way of invoking the deepest of silences, the quietest bird, the most broken laugh you’ve ever heard. This is a story of pain that was burnished to eventually look and feel like gold. A story meant to be retold, and refined until it was mine again. The well that can give life again. If you want the stories that taste like peaches on sunny days then you might want to stop on this page. I am full of that childhood rage, still, but I wear it like a crown now. A testament of strength that some would do better to ignore for it will bring up pain that has not enough words to cover. It is a storm that will awaken you from slumber. If you aren’t ready to take the helm, please move on, do not protest. This is a story that reflects what we do not like to see, the dragons we wish we never had to face. Please, try to understand if you can not relate than this is not a place you want to edge closer to. But if you think that my words empower you, I will continue. I will continue regardless, just know that I warned you of what is to come and there is nothing to do but feel the waves of truth crash against you.
By Faith De Young3 years ago in Poets