The 'You Will Never Read This' Letter

Dear Friend,

I know it's been two years since I last spoke to you. No doubt you still tell our other friends whom I also, no longer speak to; how confused you are about my silence.
I wish you could see inside my head sometimes, and know that it has nothing to do with not loving you. In fact you may never understand how much I still feel connected to you, even though I'm quite sure I may never speak to you again.

Today I was thinking about that letter you wrote me. You know... the one you left on my door, just before I moved away without telling you. I still have it somewhere. I only keep the best ones.
In my heart you and I are still dear friends, and will always be such.
If I could make you understand that your sorrow was just too great for me to manage. You cried every night for two years, and then your mother died the morning I moved. I knew it would be the last time I called you to offer my condolences.

You were so afraid of me leaving you. You told your mother that I was like a sister to you... and she treated me like a daughter. Her death was no less sad to me than the death of my own Grandmother... and yet I will still keep my silence. I will still only write this letter... and never send it.
You remember when I told you I just do this. I just drift away like a cloud. No rain in my body... just wind and sky.
I have said goodbye to so many; so maybe it's become too easy for me. But listen.... I don't miss you. I hardly miss anyone I leave except my Monster. Not because I don't care... because I do. I feel you and I are still together. If I had carried you inside my body like I did my monster, I would feel something inside me rip, like a warn out seam.
I guess maybe that is the only way to secure my physical connection. I have to carry you inside my body.

I hope you can feel me writing this to you. My head is pounding as I thump out the words. My feelings are raw and severe.
I think of all the letters I've written like this one, and all the ones to come. Maybe I will put them in a box, and bury them in the dirt, or send them off to sea. A box the size of a coffin.... the death of all my short stories... a lifetime of memory.

With all my love as ever,
Eden

Collapse

I saw you, a worm... dying in the sun
your writhing body reminded me of love
where is you head worm... I thought
where do you hold your pain?
what is the memory of your life...
I never stopped to look
It happened very slowly
You would twist inside my head like licorice
then something inside me will collapse...
no one else will notice you there
I returned to find you flat against the sidewalk
and the magic spell was broken

The Word 'alone'

Round
the circle in a room full of rectangles
I trace my fingers around your beautiful, invisible lines
I hum a song to the transcendence of my head
Vast
you have so many possibilities
it is an ache
it is the violent need to scream or laugh
a secret fills the room like jasmine
Warm
you are a burning ember of hope and love
I curl up in your open arms
I stretch myself way out, to fill all the cracks of your floors

Climb

Rush... pulse... climb
rush... pulse.... rush
Steady... pulse... love
steady... climb... up

Ready... set... love
rise... up... rush
steady... up... rush
climb... steady... come

Rush me... shake me... come
make me... make me... love
rush... rush... sun
climb until you come

The Obituary

"If some lives form a perfect circle others take shape in a way we can not understand or predict. Loss is a part of my journey but it has also shown me what is precious. So is a love for which I can only be grateful."

These words in today's Statesman... The obituary of Joseph Mackey O'Steen.
He was my step brother. I've known him since I was twelve... and he was a shape I understood well. His darkness and my darkness came from the same place. Is it so hard to understand suicide? My mother and his father want to believe it was murder. I guess that would make it easier. Then they wouldn't have to realize the part they played in shaping his darkness. Or that they spent all of their money, time, and energy on my lost cause of a sister, for whom they both obsess over; but couldn't spend a few precious moments to call a son... or any of their other children to make sure they're still alive.
And so we come to the anger part of my grieving.
The part where I not only grieve for his loneliness and abandonment... but also I grieve because I have not really allowed myself to grieve!
It shows me how many steps backward I've taken on my path to healing my own past wounds.
In the past week since his death I've gotten sloppy drunk four times! Sunday was the most hung over I've been in ages. What does this solve? Even in my sloppiest state, I refused to grieve. I have spent the past two years being conditioned by "The Machine"... on how to not experience or show any human emotion that isn't positive. Fake everything. Look the part. Only talk about the client. If the client is being negative, change the subject to something happy.
Now I find I'm torturing myself once more. Hating myself for feeling grief. For being angry. To be what they want... I would have to cease to exist. I would have to numb my whole being with pills and self help tapes!
Yet on the other end of the spectrum is my journey to understanding a Toltec way of thinking. What a contradiction my life has become.
At work: the secretly bitter machine, who is judged and judges.
At home: the self accepting warrior. Moving away from self hate, towards perfect love.

I am not surprised that my brother killed himself, Mother Earth. I suffered beside him... I suffered alone. I am not ashamed that I grieve for his life, instead of his death. I am not going to apologize for my anger, or hold back my tears. And if I get a little weird or say the wrong thing, I won't punish myself for the satisfaction of "The Machine".
If Joseph had come to understand what I have... I would not be reading today's Obituary. And I will use his death as a reminder....
I must keep going. I must keep fighting to live.

Eden

It wasn't hell after all

It was the chill of the morning air
the black bird piercing the silence without an echo to his cry
It was a sad expression acknowledged quietly in the glance of two passing strangers
the dog that hid under the porch to die alone
It was the old lady waiting patiently by the phone for someone... anyone to call her
the only child left on the playground
The pain is too precious to me
I thought I saw you kneeling at the end of my bed
the blackest wings stretched to the heavens
It was the final breath before you passed into the night
the beauty of birth can be found again in death

Death Whispers Nothing

I watched the sun in its bright orange half orb... going going... then as the last of it went down, I imagined a hiss like wet fingers on a candle's flame; quickly grips the wick.
I know he's in the room with me... patience everlasting; his eyes full of wonder.
The window pane reflects at me, a thin broken woman holding a knife at her side; blood trickling down her delicate wrists.
I gasped when I looked at her... long, stringy wet hair clinging to wet naked flesh.
She was once the shape of sensuality; now the flesh barely covers the bones.
Behind her... he is standing.
He walks with such grace that I am reminded of a slow dance between lovers.
I will dance with you...
I think hes says, and then he wraps his big strong arms around her tiny little waste.
Slowly this dance becomes an ominous thing right before my eyes... it is more like the mating mantis.
Stupid bitch...
I think of her.
You opened your veins for him... so.... dance you stupid bitch!
It wasn't as romantic as I had imagined.
The dance was cold and filled with shallow remnants of an empty life.
His hands against my rattled bones became violent... and he ripped at me with his words like lions tear at the corpse of an antelope.
It wasn't the soothing kiss of a lullaby, or the hush of clouds drifting over snow covered peaks... it was violent.... so violent that I could feel the flames of hell lick the backs of my heels; then laugh.
And then she dropped in front of me... her eyes rolled upwards... violent... screaming death!