I don’t really remember it too well having only been less than five when we left it but the big white house, I think it had stories (but I was far too small to say so with assurance) it was warm and comfy and my twin & I shared a room bunkbedded in with 70’s trim and a deer skin on the green pile we lived on a river then and lost a boat in a storm amidst the reeds and trees and marshgrass I remember being safe so safe then and my parents were larger then and taller better then I remember the youngest was a baby then playing with her Fisher-Price mower that had been ours in the tall grass and the tan scratchy couch striped with brown and orange and wood lined panels and the big white, big white house so big and deep and cavernous and safe and lost lost lost in the pines somewhere on the river.

We are the wild things
the dark beasts of the night
gnawing on the moonlight
screaming at the stars
children of deceits

we were scattered to the winds
the monsters
the gasoline-breathing dragons of sound
of shouting, of noise
of dance and destruction

we are the animals
born of fire and joy
feral and free
welcoming the madness
alive in the madness

we reign savage
from dusk to glory
though our time is dying
with so much eating to do
the night is young

It eats away at you, sets all your senses aflame with the knowledge of you, this bitter fire, this evil flame; until eventually like the real deal you are numb to it; your nerve endings dulled to the hardness of it. You still feel it, of course, like a weight on your cheeks and legs, pulling you down into the goddamn concrete, but the pain subsides after a few minutes.

And that’s when its really dangerous.

It makes sense to me, I think nurture over nature, when you take the solemn southern lass and sit her in the northeast in 15 degree weather and see the same kind heart that would make dolls for her confidantes and skip merrily down dirt roads (always avoiding the fire ants swarming nests) turn dreary and brick-hard and just about cut a motherfucker for getting too close to her with his shit-smelling ass on the late night downtown A.

The threadbare lines, hard scowls and dry anger start to fit into the puzzle a little better.

So much to tell so much to tell.

I’m torn really…I have a well-worn path of disappointments and resentments to speak on, the city at once blindly inviting and wide open reminder of absence. My fear though is that they won’t be taken in the manner they are intended…that expression becomes “drama” and hurt equals “stress” or worse, my pain rendered only as “manipulation”. That should tell me plenty, shouldn’t it? That one sentence written starkly against the cold white screen?

But of course it doesn’t. It can’t. Too much left on the table. There are a multitude of things I’m not yet certain of that I’d probably require some sort of knowledge of before I could pass judgment reliably. So in limbo the fears and ancient taunts remain.

Yeah. Fuck. I wish…I wish I had it in me to spill tell dance scream; to paint the cobwebs in the darkness a million pantone hues and light the passage with them.