Pluto [PROSE POEM]
i.
I don’t know, I like to think I’m lonely because I just haven’t figured out / how to navigate this virulent world and its disguised misery yet but I honestly think it’s more like a divine punishment, like I did something wrong in my only existence / and I must suffer to atone. I like to think loneliness doesn’t exist inside of seashells or within strips of driftwood or in the guts of a fish or in the water itself despite its lack of stability but I know better, I do know better, I know consequence more than my own reflection, blurring in my gaze---a person too lost, burnt metaphorically beyond recognition. I like to think these dreams of stars engraved into walls by the secret moonlight & of soft hair curled around fingers & of anatomical hearts carved into wood with two letters in the middle, me + you, to symbolize the eternity of love—
I like to think dreams like this are viral, or perhaps they are a controlled substance,
high risk. Feeling hopeful, my love? You might as well crucify your
lungs
with cigarettes—-
same reaction, same addiction,
same inevitable cancerous end. Dreams cannot be dreams;
instead they must be yearned for,
the foundation of our desire to be loved, the one universal experience that lies horizontal waiting for everyone in their utmost vulnerability. So maybe
I’m lonely because I am flawed. Aren’t we all? Isn’t hope inherently flawed, its statistics roaring wild, the odds etched against it? So maybe I’m lonely because there is an aspect of my pesonality that bears a demonic body, so maybe I’m lonely because I don’t know how to fix myself, to mold my essence into something that other people can bite into without a shatter or sickness. Yes, it always circles back to hope. I can’t keep it up. I wish I could be proud of myself, I wish I was skinnier
I wish I had light streaming out of my posterior plane, wings that could propel me out of the water and atmosphere, the ability to be satiated
I wish I wasn’t broken, I wish my body didn’t resemble my dyingfrail grandfather in his hospice bed
I wish I could climb up the mountain for you, I wish I could get my body to move in harmony with itself but
I wish I was sick enough
I wish my body was strung across the clothing lines, each limb draped over the cord, bloodless dry, and I wish I could put myself back together, I wish I could reinvent the physical parts of me / like I reinvented my mind’s cycle. I can’t keep it up. I just can’t keep this
up.
ii.
Let me tell you a secret. I don’t know who I’m writing this to. I want to say something fantastical, something that cannot be touched, like: I’m writing this to my lover, to the singular person that possesses my trust, to the craved and crazed.
I’m writing this to the rare stone, to the shining polished presence I’d shell out billions for. I don’t think I say that enough.
In contrast, I also want to carve my words into clay tablet curses: if you’re reading this, baby, I’m dead and I’m going to take you with me, if you’re reading this, you have to get here yourself, baby, and this world is living on borrowed time, anyway, we both know that, we understand the inevitable perishing & we skip through phases of grief like shreds of music. We’re dead already. The moment we enter this world we begin to die, so in a way this is merciful;
otherwise suffering as the one static aspect of my life, otherwise loneliness pounding underneath me like gravel or pulse. There is always another way out.
Maybe it’s multiple people. We talk about dreams of stars but last night I dreamed about
the first person to slither inside my rotting reviving core. We were at a carnival, on the ferris wheel together and I wasn’t wearing my glasses
so the lights in the dusk looked like the entrance to Heaven melting and collapsing into itself & he described it to me, the cityscape I couldn’t see, the imperfect lines of sunset, points where colors met. Then we were at the animal shelter and he held a puppy up to my face & as I looked into its eyes I despised it for its innocence so he guided my hand over its soft patterned fur, the texture reanimating, the feeling of its little budding trust in me enough to hold the jealousy underwater. Then we were in the afterlife and I told him that my love for him was like clinging to the living world but I know dreams are defined as such for a reason.
I still like to think that we can meet in the sunset. Maybe it can be fixed. Maybe he’s the one who can fix me, who can fade my lack of value into something truly desirable.
iii.
Shoot me in the chest and the smoke trickles out. Shoot me in the heart.
Go on,
do it, don’t be scared. Shoot me in the heart & watch the gravedirt
crumble down like a child’s sandcastle, like microscopic shards of fate.
I really, really want to deserve it. I really want to believe
that I’m unworthy and I scathe anyone who dares to view me as tangible, that there is something / in my coding or soul that malfunctioned upon creation because I’m terrified to face the real truth:
I’m just not good enough. I get it -- you’re tired of the story about the outcast, the tragedies of difference. Sometimes people are just not enough to satiate this world’s ancient hunger. Sometimes people have microscopic shards of fate that puzzle-piece together to form something monstrous, some representation of a loneliness that expands celestial. I wish this poem wasn’t about loneliness. I wish I counted as poetic.
iv.
The climax of the movie and she’s tied to the train tracks, they’re pouring gasoline over her bound
frame, she’s dangling off the roof and praying that there’s someone who will save her---a superhero, a knight in shining armor, a cliche, an odd thing to imagine
when you’re about to die but I doubt people are very creative when they’re about to die.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe those few moments before death
do not involve recollection but rather revelation & we finally understand
how to bring forth a peaceful love but we don’t live to tell the tale because—
well, you should know this by now: life can never be balanced with peace. There is a strict line
between worlds like sunset blurs. Have you ever wondered what it would
be like
to extract the light from someone’s body? To watch through their eyes
as the life inside of them
is extinguished? No, that’s not right---to extinguish
implies fire, and humanity’s destruction devours more like a tsunami—
very few structures survive fire,
water suffocates and leaves everything behind whole, the meat
still on the bone. I know most people say otherwise but it’s possible
to push me into the deep end, to force me into evil, and if I am so
easily corrupted—
perhaps my loneliness was injected to keep other people safe.