WRECK

https://dW R E C K

Post Traumatic Stories

an unknown sitter

Random fractured thoughts/Human wreckage/I’m a wreck/My mental shipwreck is strewn about me like the debris field of sunken ship/Spread out to the ever-evolving horizon.

A look at the horizon is uncertain/It descends upon approach/Its interminable vault proves an impassable depth/A frightening view to witness one’s landscape in such vast proportions/Insanity abounds.

In the time is takes to wink/I turn my back/I flip the switch/All is contained in one swift, self-inflicted blow/Like a lobotomy to the brain/All is forgot.

Chapter One

The Heart Locket

Dear Phao,

I’ve left some very special gifts for you. Please accept this locket. It was given to me by my father. The contents is a loose Celtic cross, which was a charm I bought in Ireland. The Catholic church doesn’t define me, but my experience has led me to be who I am today, so it can’t be [holy] bad. There is one other object you will find there as well. It is a microchip, whose contents is for you only.

My dream for you is that you find what you are searching for there. But I have to remind you, whether you like it or not, that you already are one of us baby! You’re part of the secret society, the club, husband, boyfriend, CHEL, Caw Caw!

You’re so “papal” and intuitively, you already know this about yourself. You are part of me and my locket, heart is so full and open and my love is so deep and without bounds or conditions or at least that is what I aspire to. This is just a fraction of the legacy my father honored me with, in our time together. It was what appeared brief but is in fact, eternal.

The pink watch is for Aelian. I want you to give it to her because one of the multitudes of “ït” girls gave it to me. It makes you smile and I love that. It’s only fitting that Aelian receive this gift from the other woman, specifically me, anonymously. It’s a girl thing. You do understand, right? We’re CHELS, illusionists, pranksters, jesters, CAW CAW. We’re the geek show! Just make up some fabulous story about how you found it from some ordinary girl. I know you can do that!

What I see in the landscape of my eye, which is yours, is beauty and joy and great little spaces in what appears, on the surface, to be only lonely, dirty, washed up places. I’m in awe and revel at what appears to be nowhere. It’s all there in front of us everyday and we deny ourselves the pleasure or we just can’t see it because of the noise and the artifacts in the image.

The world keeps trying to define what we are supposed to perceive and see as beautiful and magnificent and we just have to keep saying, “No.” The world doesn’t define us and we see things differently. We’ve been given this gift to see beauty in everyone and everything. I hope we can always find the beauty. I find it in you and you are me and in me. I need beauty to the point that I can just about salvage it from anywhere. I found it in Philaenis, I am Philaenis and I see it in Aelian too.

Whether you realize it or not, you share this gift with me but I have to remind you because sometimes you forget. You need me to be your eyes when you can’t see. I need you to remind me too. You found us food last night and you fed me. I needed to eat and I forget sometimes. You are so money honey! You know how to get us what we need. We know how to swim together.

Thank God, Our Father, who art in heaven, threw us in our swimming pool and taught us how to swim. He was teaching us how to get along without him. There is beauty, live, love and hope without Our Father” and in places as ordinary and common as a swimming pool.”

WOW Phaon, I think we’ve figured it out. We are the sacrificial lamb and we are a special and rare breed. We are the example of natural selection, in real time, and you join me and all my radiant girlfriends in that pool. We are special, never forget that. We are Kodachrome. We are real and we found a sliver of truth together and in each other that we couldn’t see for ourselves. Of all the places for this to happen, it wasn’t on some island, the top of a mountain or a famous beach destination. It was in the middle of nowhere. It had to be there. It was brilliant and perfect and totally real! Neither one of us could have forged this on our own. It’s how we found each other in the first place!

You know, I’m just driving on this loop and I keep coming back to the same place over and over again but amazingly, sometimes I’m able to get off and get to where I need to be. I’m searching for nuance, beauty and signs of life in this crazy, fucked up, beautiful, ugly universe that I’ve forced myself to survive in. I’m in this lonely, wasted place because I’ve discovered it’s the only place, which forces me to reclaim my vision on a daily basis. I have to forge and discover the beauty that I need and crave so desperately.

I’m like the root of a grapevine that’s been denied water and has to grow deeper for it. It’s ultimately what led me to seek you out again. We had denied each other for so long and yet, to my ultimate surprise, meeting you was like no time had ever passed. And to discover that you are just as amazing and hot to me as you were then, was very carnally satisfying and fulfilling. You met me halfway and we needed each other to make the journey.

And now, let’s do a little role playing here baby…….Ok, so listen, maybe we should consider sharing some cake? We love cake, we need it and we both know we ultimately want it. Albeit, in different ways, but we know it’s important. What would you think about having all of these amazing men and women together? I know it’s a new rule but we’ve already broken so many and who is counting anyway?

We are so papal that it’s rather shocking while I’m mocking it. Don’t you think? Shame on us, ha ha. We are laughing at the devil and I’m ok with going to hell just as long as you promise to meet me there, halfway in the afterlife. We have denied each other for so long that we are likely to dent each other even that pleasure. We could live with it because we have already. We are in it for both life and death, eternally.

There are times that I wish I could just be done with shame. I’m resigned to the simple fact that there will always exist in me, a philosophical struggle and dilemma because it’s a negative that is necessary and useful. It keep me and ultimately us strung together and be love each other for it.

Lastly, you already know John Donne is my favorite poet. He was a Catholic, go figure, lawyer, satirist, and a poet. He converted to the Anglican Church and became a priest after the death of his wife, for numerous reasons, all of which are irrelevant facts to the point I’m trying to make (I’m laughing at myself right now because my mind is in the loop, trying to gather my thoughts collectively into something coherent and provocative).

I’ve just shared with you one of the most erotic poems I’ve ever read. It is written in the voice of a man who is speaking about the eroticism that exists in women and between them. You know the feminists shamed him for it. That kind of man turns me on. Men turn me on and women turn me on too but in different ways. I love to look at beautiful women because they mirror what I want and desire in myself. In radiant, soulful women, I see highly evolved, complicated, lovely, abundant creatures.

I need to be around women. I love women including my own mother. She found and took what she needed to survive. I hated her for it too. I shamed her for it because that’s how I was raised. However, my mother’s choices ultimately gave me the permission I thought I needed to accept and receive you. The women in my life have this incredible capacity to to love deeply. Some of us don’t know how to stop to the point it kills us.

I will always desire in men what I’ve always desired in you: Your amazing, steadfast mind, which can focus so acutely and create in a way my mind does not. Your perfect ass and your, “made for fucking,” perfect cock! You have this carnal, voracious, desperate need and I love it. I want all of it. You’re me and I’m you. I have carnal needs too and for some men, that is too powerful of a role in their lives to allow me to play. You allow that to be part of the dialogue and eroticism we seek and share. I don’t know if I really shamed you for spanking me. You just never gave me a good enough reason to consider it until now!

I found in you the love I needed to find in myself. I discovered that the love that my father had for me was never external; it was inherent and always there. I just didn’t know it and when he died, I buried that love with him. In order to survive, I found that the only love that is eternal is self-love. In the end, we are all on this loop searching for something outside of ourselves, only to one day find it in the most unusual places. It took us, what felt like years to find, but it was always there. We just denied ourselves what ultimately allowed us to find each other again.

We are like this great reserve wine. We had to age a bit. The wine spectators will tell us that we should drink the great wines first and then move onto the lesser ones. We reserve our right and recognize our choice to disagree. We did it different, you and me. We chose to reserve ourselves for each other and we saved the best for the last! We’re so smart.

I’m not going to speak further about this beautiful poem I’ve shared with you right now. Just read it and promise me that you won’t read it carefully. Just read it and revel in it. We really seduced each other when we found each other in what couldn’t have been more apropos and poetic than on a passenger boat, that fateful day. If you are reading this, that means you have found the locket, amidst the wreckage, and you’ve unearthed its content.

Here is a love poem that I wrote for us and it is inspired by the work of John Donne, who is another man, like you whom I’m eternally bonded to:

In the bedchamber of our bleating hearts are we, in whose bountiful, blood, blends for all eternity.

You really do bring out the artist in me. Thank you for giving me the space to radiate.

All my love,

Sappho