amber

04/20/21
You will never see this. Across the vast sea and searching, my message to you will be lost in the layers and waves of everything. I wish you the best, and I hope that if you do find this, you won't be mad. Instead, you can remember all the things that made you smile. Pretend everything is all okay, and we won't have to worry about the future because at least there will still be a planet we can inhabit. We won't have to worry about a positive pregnancy test because we won't have to worry if the child will starve to death, or be assaulted, or live a happy life; we will be able to provide it with all necessary nutrients, a healthy home, afford every doctor visit, and love knowing we were able to create something beautiful, plus more.
Life is too short to be unsure if you love me or not. We are already unsure if we will survive the next day, or have a meal for next week, or a job next month. I know that you are pretending to be unsure to hide your fear. The fear that comes with loving another being you have no control over. The fear of immersing the self into another's body of water. The fear of drowning and being lost at sea...

To contain the form before it becomes oceanic
Solitary confinement; isolated violence

I pretended I could do it

My will has been exhausted, and I no longer trust it
Authority to the cancer
I’ll tell you everything; nothing.
History leaves its mark on the body
Trees don’t lie; they can’t

He didn’t do it with me. He did it for me.

There’s such an allure, now, to naming what’s newly wrong with me.
The rest were euthanized, one after the next

Everything gets cancer
I don’t know why I’m crying. I still don’t
Damage, growth, and time are the same thing to a body

God remains dead! And we have killed him!
Who will wipe this blood from us?
They must become Gods themselves

I’m looking for God

Now I die and disappear

The impossibility of killing God
has bled to death under our knives
ritually ingesting him

The omnipotence of thought
I need to have four organs removed

It sickens me to loll about in the wet, dimensionless chaos
Importance of repressing

I’d become unable to maintain that balance

All I remember about it is that I was excited to tell the person
I was in love with about it, and I told him

World without end, amen
“That one is the miracle of Christ”

He had forgotten everything
I miss being able to forget everything
Cancer mimics life, growing by itself
Or is it alive?
It has cells but is parasitic

Ingest what is articulated
Consume the chunks of text
Indulge in the pleasures of language
Spoiled on the emphasis placed on the harsh
Pronunciation of syllables and chilled dialect
Immersed in syrupy fakeness
Laced with permanent inscription
It’s too sweet, yet so bitter
My jaw aches from chewing my own words
Muscle around the throat swells around the sharp corners
Only soothed by the saltiness that comes from being cracked
Open; exposed to be naked; bare to the self
Drink down the condolences
Fresh with a hint of grape and grappling
Grasp the unattainable

(It’s all in my head)
I am so fucking sick
of popping pill after pill
A stale aftertaste and yellow streak stains the tongue

A shiver erupts down my spine
swelling through my throat
(It’s hard to swallow)
What I don't want to accept

How much longer do I force feed
fake happiness
in the form of capsules
for the illusion of stability

(It won’t cure my depression)
Why am I one of the few
who cannot create homeostasis
without the help of prescription medication

taunting my inability to be human

Baby blue to pale yellow
An increase in size
increased dosage
decreased motives

(I will always have a malfunctioning brain)

A shiver erupts down my spine
swelling through my throat
(It’s hard to swallow)
What I don't want to accept

Amber
Freda

I'm Drowning Inside Myself

My feelings have been crashing around inside my body. Your words hit me like a tsunami, and now I am trying to rescue myself out of the depth of the damage. I allowed you to consume my everything, until you destroyed what I had left to offer. To avoid the blame you tell me I should have learned how to swim, that I was aware of all the risks involved. You'll convince me my destruction was my own undoing.Remind me I am too young and immature to understand the abyss that is living and loving. I'm to naive and ignorant to understand the science of how relationships should evolve.
How was I supposed to predict that you'd be the body that put me in ruins?
You were the one person that was supposed to save me from the tides.
Where did you swim off to?

"Cancer mimics life, growing by itself. Or is it alive? It has cells, but it is parasitic. It isn't an organism. You can isolate it and put it on a leash and walk it around. Have you met my new cancer?"
Sarah Manguso "Oceans"

The last memories I have of my father are of him in a hospital bed. I can't see it, but I know his cancer is eating him alive. He can barely move his head to squint at us, and is still. The machines that are plugged into him are louder than his breathing. I can't understand why he isn't allowed to come home. I can't understand the thing that is slowly consuming each of his organs. He is a weaker and smaller version of his former self. All of his hair is gone from radiation. His lips are tinted blue, despite the lack of chapstick. "Daddy, when are you coming home?" It's all I can keep asking him. I didn't know his cancer would come home without him. Fifteen years later, it still haunts the back of my mind. It continues to gnaw at what is left of my father. I think about it every-time I think of my father, so bringing my father back to life also means bringing back the body of the culture that killed him. How am I supposed to kill something that floods my veins, and has become a vast part of my life? How do I stop letting it persuade my perspective and memory of him? How can I learn to isolate the disease, when there still isn't a definite cure? What happens to all the people left after cancer has done its damage? All of the people not diagnosed, but still forced to reckon with it?

I keep finding parts of myself washing up on shore. I step over them, and reject claiming them as my own.

LIE

Desquamation
I watch my skin swirl down the drain
My shell has finally cracked
The water is filtering through as
My layers are slowly shedding
One by One
Flake after Flake
I am invaded

Exposed
Burning off the weight
Of everything dead
Singeing the possibility of regrowth
Drenching the body in salt
To eat myself alive
Prevention of my own infiltration

I can still feel the face mites
Burrowing themselves
Inside my pores
Making a home inside
A shredded exoskeleton
Withering away