Visceral Chocolate Baby

I am still scrubbing you off the walls of that room, and my mind. The iron-rich stains have seeped so deep that I fear there will always be a piece of you that remains. I cannot decide if that’s comforting or haunting. Not many would choose to live in a home with so many phantoms from the past, and yet I do. Like a shroud I have worn them all these years, and I fear I am beginning to show the signs of their decay. I fall asleep to the sound of your whispers, lilting over the nightscape, and coaxing swirling dreams of matches and gasoline. I pace the desolate structures of my mind, the past so intertwined with the present, the line of demarcation indistinguishable. It’s been days since I left the house, or has that merged to weeks? I lay in bed, staring at the wall shared to your room. At times, it looks as though it is breathing, spurred to life with your DNA deposits. The sun’s path my only orientation to time. Sleep now rarely comes, and only in chaotic spurts that are more disturbing than restful.

I feel as though I am fading into you, the only voice I hear is yours. I am trying to hold onto the good memories, but they are becoming dim. I feel as though I have entered the land of void, as though I live in the casted shade of your shadow. One night, as I lie awake staring at the wall, laughter brims forth. The maniacal cadence is foreign, though its utterance bursts forth from my lips. My face distorts to this sound and I cover my ears unable to muffle my own noise. My body cringes and curls into itself, until hot tears burn a path and the grating sounds turn to howls. Dammed to years of repression, like Niagara they fall infinitum. I am afraid in this moment, for I know so little about myself and yet I have walked in this skin since I was born. Drowning in isolation, I know no bounds.

You ruined chocolate for me. I still smell the stomach swirling combination of sticky sweet chocolate cake blended with the soured metallic scent of your viscera sprayed on the wall we share between rooms, reminiscent of a Pollock painting. That is, if Pollock played with the medium of exploding meat. I continue to scrub your room daily, but I can’t quite reach that place behind my eyes where your stench and mementos reside. I take a shower, wishing to feel clean I scrub harder, and yet you remain. Were you hoping to disappear when you pulled that trigger? My eczema patches are open now, raw and stinging, reminding me of this residence of living flesh. Maybe this next shower will do the trick.

I avoid mirrors now, no longer am I able to face my disintegrating shell. I found some duct tape and flattened a cardboard box to take care of the bathroom’s looking glass. All others have been relocated to your closet, with a sheet draped over them for good measure. Tonight, my cackle sullies forth on the stale air of my prison as I yet again lie awake staring at your wall. I share my hilarious thought with you. “What’s in a face which we call Rose, by any other name would still stink.” Another hair-raising cackle elicits from my lips as I continue, “Mark another one down for you, your post-mortem tally is an all-time best!”

I have always despised my name. Or was I taught to withdraw from it, through the reign of your deprecating jokes? The truth gets muddied through the years of “just ribbing you” gaslighting commentary. The unconscious crafting of the patriarchy, planted like a seed when we are young, its diseased roots growing like a silent neurological syndrome. Conjuring symptoms that are confusing and easily dismissed in its’ early pathology, gradually consuming your perception and trust of self. Early detection is key. However, this diagnosis can remain elusive due to its amalgam of symptoms. This isn’t a disease you can cut out, for its dark tendrils surround areas critical to life. It’s a disease you have to accept before you can release it. My whole life focused toward your approval and acceptance, waiting for permission to be me. I know you more than ever, as I sink deeper into the abyss you knew so well. I feel I am riding your bloated corpse down the river, that my flesh is joining your decay. A school yard song creeps into my mind, “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,” and I wince in response to my cacophonous laugh joining the night’s song once again.

I am pacing the hallway, are those your footsteps or mine? I can no longer differentiate. I found a sledge hammer today as I pondered your choice of a final meal. A slice of chocolate cake followed with a 38 special for dessert. I realize that meal has begun to appeal to me as I lift the heavy tool and make like a juggernaut through your wall. Knocks on the front entry come and go, I do not answer. Shame keeps me hidden and I feed on meals of vitriolic effacement. When was the last time I fed myself actual food? I start searching for the binding terms I unknowingly signed with the blood of my youth. The familiar sound at my door breaks through this dark reverie. I lean the heavy tool against what remains of your wall. My knuckles are bloodied and covered in the white powdering of gypsum and I begin to feel the wearing of my body. Every joint aching against their abuse and neglect. I softly scuttle over, fully embodying the creature I have become. I place my ear on the wood of the door to listen and hear a worried voice through the grain,“Please feed yourself.”

I look down at my tattered and disheveled appearance. My frame has whittled away to bones and grated skin, my hair a matted mess of unending tangles, gypsum, and filth. A puff of dust wafts forth as I pat my chest where my tits used to be, now flattened to my skeletal figure and further hidden by my loose clothing. I have become what I feel, a wasting meat bag, the nothingness from within consuming outward. A faded mask crumbling. How could anyone love this rotting mess? How can I love me? I wait until nightfall, slowly cracking the door to peer out. My first whiff of fresh air, cleaning my palate, providing proof of the life continuum. A pyrex dish neatly packaged, sits atop my greeting mat—which at this point might as well say “Fuck off” for as often as I have welcomed anyone in. I pop my head through the crack and look up the street and then down it. I am startled when I make eye contact with a red fox, rare for this area and standing 6 feet away, majestically stoic as though carrying intuition for the occurrence of this very moment. After a long minute passes, the fox seems to wink at me before trotting off down the street.

I lean down and pick up the dish, eyes cast downward as I watch the specks of sheet rock fall like a soft snow over the dish and flooring as I carry it into the kitchen. Smells like casserole, my mouth waters and stomach lurches to life demanding real nourishment. A quickly written note is taped to the lid. I pull the note before placing the dish in the oven.

You are not alone. Call me when you’re ready.

J

I then draw a steaming bath, my abraded skin burning until it calms to the Epsom-salted womb. Tears blend with the heated waters as I gently wash my body and begin working loose my knotted mess of hair. Debris falling to the waters. I drain the bath, watching the grime swirl away and shower off the remaining fragments. My mask finally crumbles to completion and a human is born, a tabula rasa. No more material to hide behind—just flesh, mind, and spirit. Visceral, vulnerable, and somewhat feral, I sit at a clean table and eat like the animal I have become. It is through these primal eyes that I begin to see the cage I have been biting and tearing away at. I cannot pry the bars open through punishing my flesh. It is in the shadows we seek our truths, and it is only through embracing our darkness that we find liberation. I have dark places in me, some I have inherited and some due to the roulette of life. I allow these places to nourish me, to build me. For my darkness is just as beautiful as my light. Satiated by food, I dust off my promethean tool. A battered ball point pen, like a lantern I use it to seek a path forward. Tomorrow I will begin finishing the room extension, as I pursue the space needed for my expansion. Tonight, I wrote you this poem, or did I write it to myself?

Conscious Revival

I have been coveting this match for too long

Fear of hate and love lost, silenced my song

Thought love for another could forgo this nature

Instead, this demolition shaped a larger crater

True love sought is only found inside

Sangfroid assassin I became, struggling to hide

Beleaguered in the trenches I grind

To unearth myself, I leave my old life behind

Who would have thought that in celibacy

I would finally discover my legacy

In loving myself instead of another

I found a better way of standing with sister and brother

I am a writer, lonely no more

Further discovering what I am for

Revealing my hallowed tribe

Full of sacred values, free of any bribe

Releasing the match, that flame took

Consuming programming from the book

No longer held captive to ego’s tyranny

In this combustion I become many

Allowing me to expand to my full size

Journeying inward to self-actualize