finding this was as if i had found a dead body in my closet. real and honest writing from the time that i truly thought i was going to hell for no reason. I like it. This remains completely unedited aside from a few spelling corrections.

 

june 24th 2022

I think the round edges of the glass table distracted me

And very few coffee table books to look at.

As my mind so desperately wanders away from the thought of eating. 

I stare at these passing people with opportunity to ask 

If they had any money. 

I’ve always had too much confidence for that. 

I’d sit here and starve before I ask a soul for 

Anything. 

But there’s a night,

I'm laying on my bed and all of this blood is coming from my thighs.

My dead eyes watch me. Watch my hands move autonomously. 

Like I was born to do this. 

The less I ate the more the blood would

Look more like blood. 

The vascularity of my veins would let it pour out

Faster on an empty stomach.

And my starch enemy was this fan blowing cold air all over my fresh cuts.

So work became this game,

Of how sad and hungry I could get 

Before I was surrounded by the ghosts and no-one 

In my home.

I was always snapping in and out consideration 

Of my health, and if the scissors really hurt.

But it was never worth debating for too long. 

I’d always prove myself wrong.

And I was so hungry,

And I was soaked 

Until euphoria allowed me to see you-bring me

Towels and food, walking to me, greeting me.

But I’d just woken up on Thursday morning.

I yelled at this wild and mouthy bum trying to grift a Marlboro from another wandering homeless woman. His eyes look low and his mouth slung open from the wild winds and booze. He has done things to sit at the bus stop today, life choices like numerals, in an equation destine to sit his ass broke, tired and desperate. 

Weighing morality when deciding to be John Wayne is usually diluted by the perpetrator. Actions such as screaming obscenities at the homeless are usually countered by the sentiment of avoiding bringing the lowest, lower. 

But the fucker reminded me of the evil blue collared man. The one who left stove on and the one who shot his own dog. 

Before I shouted, I saw him mouth the words  “Look at me when I am talking to you…”

To an aged and sorrow woman. 

His bus approached as he stood five yards from the stop, he had walked along with this woman, yanking at her clothes and cursing. 

He withdrew from whenever he had last had a Marlboro, now the world was at fault. 

Poor passerby she was, walking right into his filthy Wasp nest of a mind. 

I sat in the left-hand turn lane, right across the street from the whole ordeal and shouted-

“Catch your fucking bus, scumbag.”

He turned to me like he had been caught with his pants down. 

Shouting back,

“Shut up!…Shut the fuck up!”

All I could do was laugh. 

I packed my things today. 

Surely one of the more rotten things I’ve had to do in the vast, wide scope of my life. 

The movers were late, as I was out of bed, the coffee tasted sour and the smoke wasn’t to par. 

It’s just this move, I believe that it has gotten to me. Starting new seems to be this big and wicked way of telling yourself that mortality is real and getting older is inescapable. I find it grandly strange that life has to be the one to deliver me this wretched metaphor; Just about anything is on the table nowadays.

I had plans on writing you this beautifully written letter describing the intricacies of how I perceived our marriage by vastly describing the dense Florida dew and it’s morning dove’s song and amber yellow lit and humid nights, being just so incredibly in love with you, but I am not one to dig up such important grave. 

I had to escape the man-machine moving mindset I tend to find myself in, so I set out to this hill, where I write today. Before me is this blue ethereal sky kingdom and below me is this earthen green and sharp stop to it. 

The whole damned place is alive, right here off of Palomar Airport Road. An eccentric view of the harshly fought battle between the concrete and the dirt.  

I tend to write here when I collect my thoughts, as today wouldn’t be the first of days that I have found myself out in this neck of Southern California. I think the quiet hymns of traffic and the little ‘dinks’ of distant golf balls help me unravel the bigger thought of today, which is saying goodbye to you. 

Maybe the real unshaken feeling of today relies more on the fact that I might be sad about starting over again, that all the quiet and lonesome nights rested on the certainty that you were still here and that adventure’s calling would make some vivid and grand scenario come to fruition once again. 

But unlikely as that is in this restless world, the same sentiment is held by my realistic thoughts; All is put to bed in that way. 

In a few ways, you and I battled conventionality. Whether or not straying from the societal norm did anything other than mental justice for you and I is definitely up for debate, but I can soundly say that today I feel good about not being the same divorced hack my father was. 

The absolutely incredible part of our relationship now, is that among all the relentlessly straight and narrow types—The idea that we could be friends after such a breach in Christianity is completely Ludacris. 

At first I had my troubles stomaching it all, but that was before silencing the utterly shallow primate brain. 

The twisted look any square might hit you with, upon finding out that you and your ex-lover are in connection is worth just as much as the overarching sentiment of the whole thing.

You couldn’t blame me for being emotional about these things, not to shame me for wishing again the stagnant, moonlit discussions held on Topaz Avenue, or the talks from across the table at Stacy’s Diner. 

In this heartfelt case, I am quite emotional, called for by all this retrospective thinking.

Grateful would just be this damn big understatement for being able to justifiably care about you. 

I am unmistakably human and fortunately these so utterly grateful thoughts, couldn’t be mistaken for any other worldly or consuming feeling; a man loving a woman in the best fashion. 

I believe that everything was real, it’s taken years to stomach that. 

As age has taken me fast and dangerously by the neck, time remains this faceless beast with no motive. 

Your father was right.

God did witness two people swear by solemn heart, to exist together in holy matrimony in clear blue sky like today, and dark dreaded gun-metal grey skies that loom on foul days. 

As divinity and faith would know the binding of two souls, as foretelling and foretold, before his peering eyes stretched across the land in our promise, he surely would have known. We would be nothing without that day. 

I believe that God smiled his big rotten grin, the man who knew it all. 

In a world where two crazed and deranged nineteen year old kids pack the house and manifest destiny, God would certainly be the last thing stinging the prefrontal cortex, especially if he isn’t helping with the U-haul fare.

 

Goodbye in good graces,

I’m rooting for you always.

Love

Jackie