Am I Denying Myself Happiness Because I Do Not Deserve It? Or Because I Am Afraid That If I Do, It Will

Spun silk from out my ear, divine ideation risen from a splintered mind.

Envelope your flesh with damnation and dance with me this night.

When I think on 18, and the years that have passed since then, I realize how many little deaths I’ve had in my one life. How many versions of me had to abandon my flesh for ephemerality for me to exist, fettering away. Do they watch me, the way runner up pageant girls watch the winner be crowned with sparkling tears gliding down her cheeks to match her sparkling tiara? Do they envy me? Or do they watch in glum acceptance, the way a parent would as their child draws in spontaneous sharpie all over their orderly white walls. Do they think they know better? Worst of all, do they watch in horror, the way the drug addicted’s partner would as the one they love most spirals down deeper and darker paths? Do they pity me?

Do they think of me at all? How lonely it would be to exist in this world as only one version of me.

If I have learned anything of those who are advanced and civilized, it is this:

New technology is praised even as it wrecks the earth and is manufactured by children’s hands,

Rich men can kill millions so long as they do it sitting in a board room in a suit and tie, but let a poor man kill one rich man and he is quick to die,

Advancements in medicine are available only to those who can afford them, all the brilliance in the world distilled behind a paywall,

In the heat of all their innovation and progress, they have forgotten empathy. And that renders their advancements useless and backward, their intelligence only lets them be more unique in their cruelty.

Fairies are a gentle sort, no bigger than pointer fingers. A little fire sprite burned the tip of mine once. She wasn’t sorry about it neither, she just snickered and gave me a thimble to wear over its ugly little boil. I sort of admired that unapologetic way she had about her. Her nature wasn’t wrong after all, she didn’t burn me out of hatred or malice. She burned because she was fire.

His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, in love with the way his own ideas tasted.

I find comfort in rotten men, with nothing to their name but their love for me. They are corpses of their former ambitions, if they had any to begin with not that I’d care, and I rest my head on their bloated bellies and dig my nails in their cracked old skin until scabfulls of pride fall off. What sour smell fills my nose oh I can’t get enough of it. They adore me you see, and I never have to worry about them running off. Their legs don’t often work, stationary fellows don’t often stray. Good of them not to, for if they ever did I’d put them deeper in the ground than even the most desperate woman would be willing to dig. I can’t help but be the romantic that I am, and what is there not to love in an utterly rotted man. It is addicting the level of devotion they provide, the sort only an abandoned man can. How sweet is the love of a loveless one, untouched and untainted in wait for me.

How does a siren know your song? The proper words, the perfect intonation to pull you from the safety of your vessel into the sea? It is no small task, tainting minds with tongue, but a siren knows this well. Every sailor she devours shares with her his innermost desires, simply by being eaten. His mind is consumed by her, his memories dissolved and swallowed. Internalized. And when you’ve had one man, you’ve had them all. Or so she thought.

-Diary of a Siren

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

What a pretty little lie we peddle children as loves are ended by mouth, laws are written on paper, and wars are declared in ink.

And I am content to keep hurting. I am content to keep pressing my soft body into the recesses of his absence, if it will only bring me closer to his place in nothing.

Why is it light is thought of as good and dark as evil? As if the shadows sewn to our heels want anything more than to be like us.