A muse of tragedy - Part 1

“Maybe I am just another run of the mill sad indie girl,” she paused.

Everything was a blur of motion and sound. I kept my smile and the laugh I wanted to let out to myself. It was funny, but not the kind you should laugh at. It was that bleeding wound kind of humour that you laughed at out of embarrassment or to relieve tension. I was waiting for the sorrow. This was just a test. I would not waver. I would wait. I would listen.

She took the last two cigarettes from the pack and lit them for us. ‘The problem with everything is that…well, it’s everything. It’s life, it’s death, it’s joy, it’s sorrow. I went from inspiring a bunch of nobodies to pretty much controlling inspiration. From then on in, it was pretty much the standard crash and burn, too much, too soon scenario. But when it comes to muses there are no overdoes, or car crashes or murderous junkie boyfriend. There is just eternity and regret. No spectacular end for me”.

She stubbed out the cigarette, half-smoked. She looked at the empty packet of cigarettes. “Tragedy. I became the muse of tragedy. That was my punishment. Every sad faced clown, every overblown ‘everyone dies in the end’ play, every awful pop song about heartbreak. I’m the one behind all of that junk. That’s the real sorrow. That’s me.” Her eyes were flat as a deconstructed cardboard box. She turned away from me. ‘I bet you wish you’d left after the sex, don’t you?’

“Why would you say that? I like being here… with you.” I placed my hand on her shoulder. She shook it away. I did not try a second time. I could have continued, but I had either made my point or said the same thing she’d heard a million times before from a century or two of lovers. Her shoulders moved slightly. I could not read that movement, so I waited. I waited for ten minutes. She turned to face me. There was no smile, I didn’t want or expect one. The muse of tragedy would never smile. It was her eyes that mattered. They were alive and fresh as newly turned earth.

And upon that moment, undetected like a waft of flowers, unexpected like the softness of tranquility in that moment, unsuspected, she entered my heart un-surrendered - to clothe my soul in peace - whilst the world slowly comes to an end.

Excerpts from Bodies Of Desire, an anthology.

Paranoia II

I’m scared that there are people watching me in the dark. I turn my head and glimpse out of my periphery, only to see shadows and paintings of laughing faces. Patterns slowly diminish in the absence of light, but an impending doom resides, burns more intensely. I tighten my pose and clench my fists. It waits in the corner, nose pressed to the cold, while I cover my face and lower my eyes in hate, self hate. Always watching but never receiving anything but judgement and deceit. Nothing ever comes of it.

I’m alone here in the dark, marking my territory with absent eyes and great reprise. No, I don’t feel complete. Absent of any remaining desires, I claim it’s outstretched hand and let It take me. My benefit isn’t loneliness. My sides ache, and my shoulders cry out; sore and weak from holding up the world, the world within, the world without. This is the day I weep, the day I leave these memories behind, or perhaps, fall further into misery; holding the last piece I took with me, a fragment of what used to be; and watch it disperse into ash from my withering palm.

I will wait for better times on the other side and find myself drawn to your gravity, once again, but time has become abstract. Hours and decades are unclear to me, but there is hope beyond this barren place where time cannot follow, only erase. My burdens absorbed. I let it take me. A voice tells me to run, but something inside refuses let go, but fret not! These are the shadows of my mind, my daily chore, nothing more.

Not everything is meant for keeps.

There are things I notice, and things I don’t notice enough. Perhaps, I do not notice the specific day the trees begin to droop and grow old with winter, or how people walking in groups align their footsteps, though I notice mine, or the personality of a child by the way they laugh, a fleeting glimpse into a world yet untamed.

The things one learns about life are not always meant for keeps, like the collage of absurdities, presented to you as norms and certainties that govern our polite society; like tidy categories, or gender binaries, or a patchwork of contradictions like me; or something simple like the hint of an old bruise, or the wild splash of soap in your eyes; like children who learn too early about death and sexual intentions, and are not yours to teach; or how some stains are impossible to remove. Like the nights and days of clutching to my bed because I couldn’t face the world or myself; or how for a moment as fleeting as the firefly’s glow, she looked at me differently because she was just as lost as me.

Or like the powerful manifestations that can arise from conversations, or how one can shovel the pain and numbness, day after day, to clear the driveways of one’s brain, just so one can make it another day; or the way you can move the shine in your eyes to a certain spot to hide your disarray of thoughts; or the way my friends do not know I can hear the sadness in their voice when they say things are fine, when they are not; or the way she doesn’t have to smile for me to know she is happy, but took a tear from her eyes to know I once broke her heart; or like the escalation in my late mother’s voice, when she was alive, when she’d realise that I am on the other end of the line, and I would feel complete.

So what do you do? You turn around, walk away and keep your balance. Some things are just not meant for keeps, because they will rot inside you and make you regurgitate the poison.

Some things I embrace, some things I throw out to the pigeons and lost souls who search for meaning, and some things, I let take me to heights I never knew I could reach.