Her and Changing / All Dogs go to Heaven

It feels all right to succumb to my own deficiencies, flailing limbs over railings and stooping to my own lover of scorn, dripping cerise bruises and ruining immaculate panties for a weeknight fuck that leaves me sickeningly dampened; and, this is all only what I have set for myself, or rather limited myself to.

After three years living in anxiety, I visited the doctor last month. I took a train, and another, and walked a block too far straight into the belly of the park. Fear, general presence, slipped from my chest and I forgot the time; the appointment was at fifteen after, and it felt like a cop-out. I showed her the mole menacing the back of my skull, and began to cry; I only looked for a mother in her because of a softened eye, and she only reached across the threshold for a thyroid blood test. She didn’t need to diagnose the iron deficiency, but did anyway, with a warming grip of my upper arm that felt matriarchal, no, cowardly, I shied from it in a fire of nausea; I accept the Iron supplement prescription. I will never pick it up.

Ah, man,

I’m speaking with someone,

it feels like I should be changing too.

They blink a bit, they don’t know how to respond -

It’s just, y’know, it’s supposed to be good for you to

change. It hurts to happen,

they nod, they know,

but you get better.

I’ve got to fly home, they’re putting the dog to sleep sixty-seven days after his fourteenth birthday.

I take a photo of myself in the hall, through the mirror, I don’t think I’ve changed much at all. He walks after rabbits, I watch through stalks of tomato vines, and I know it’ll be the last time. I’d look up to the sky, and ask if this was supposed to be it, if this was the moment I got to keep, but I’d forgotten that slivered spirituality and hoped he’d just look up at me once more. I look up now, tilted to the side for I’m genuinely curious, and ask why I can’t remember if he did or not. 

My freckles burn darker and sunburn deeper in May than August, my nose bleeds over her and I wash the paint from someone else’s house from my fingernails. It’s all the same, all of it is questionable ink stains and a predictable drunken pattern; three or four, we’re golden and beaming, seven in and we’re midnight fucking in waterside bobcats, and all of it was far out for what it was. For what it was, for the immobility, how incredibly far out.

I wipe nose-blood to a bare arm, and the wall between rooms separates us further. I think of the if, the one I’m suffocating, the one that set the wall. I wish I hadn’t the need to change, then, I wish it all spun out of control and into loopy hair knots we had to hack at with scissors in the morning, bleached hairs and kitchen shears, I wish I hadn't the need to change. 

I wake feeling older, oh God, I’ve aged - it’s sheer agony a moment, and then

it’s change,

isn’t it?

My knees crack and quiver, it must be psychological, but I allow the seniority to settle in my trunk a moment. I wish for myself a peaceful pass to the afterlife, gentle into, I wish for myself the kindest final change. But then I’m bendy again, and need to crack my sternum to breathe fully, the dementia wanderlust fades and I’m ages from age. My youth looms over, ribbing me in tease, it waits for me to outgrow it only to bend over a chair and wave hips to my face,

you’ll never be young again,

you fucking bitch!

Then, the change is horribly chilling, and I romanticize the act of waking, spun in mundanity and sweaty sheets, to fog the vision of papery wrinkles and fits of despairing cries for youth.

In a passing moment, I hold a baby; I feel too young for it at the same time as my breast aches, and suddenly I can’t let him go. Guests to each others’ bodies, we rest a moment in love. I’m sure we can both understand, despite his limited months of experience, that we will never have this moment again, that we will never know each other like this again. My heart aches for him, for the change I know he’ll face, and I swallow the anger that knocks around him.

I love you, stupid baby,

I wish to him,

don’t ever quit changing.

Art :

‘ Colorful birds and zoogleas ‘ , 2012 , jackbreakfast

12x16 watercolor on cotton

https://www.etsy.com/sg-en/listing/658240275/colorful-birds-and-zoogleas-12x16