stone in my belly

I could vomit, I could heave and hurl all of this out of me. I could take the bottles collected under my sink and heave them into the sea or better yet the pavement. Feel the release of something. Let something crash.

It's anger again. Such a strange building. I've crushed it down because anger isn't proper, isn't loving, isn't right. Right? Or is anger something more passionate and truthful than I've ever been comfortable enough to admit?

From the deep of my belly where it burns to the tightness of my lungs where it aches to the sour in my throat where it chokes- I am consumed with care. With a weight, with a stone and I hold it. I know at some point I'm supposed to release it. That's part of the pretty picture. I'm not supposed to carry the stone, it's not my job. And yet, maybe it is. Maybe I'm alive by knowing it's weight. It's the most real, the most truthful, the most passionate thing I can grasp in life.

It's that you- you hurt my pride and my feelings, toss stones into the basket of the lies I fight not to believe. It's that you are indifferent and I bare the consequences of your blindness- but that for you I ache and sorrow to see your frustration. Sorrow over your desire to escape and to mute and at the same time claw to feel the highs of life. It's that I see you and I hurt selfishly and then I am crushed by your spirit- it is sad. And I want to fix, to mind, to bind, to soothe, to warm you. And I cannot and I know this and so instead I am alive by holding your stone for moments. For knowing your spirit, though incomplete, for long enough to gasp at the weight of it. Your story, your life, with as many sentences and plot twists and heart aches and thoughts as my own.



And in my living room are hearts I love, I love, I love, I love and they are breaking. They are breaking themselves and they are breaking me. I am choking on their stones. My face is hot and my hands are shaking and my heart is tearing and I am overwhelmed by the tension. By the sorrow, by the anger, by the hard pride, by the blind eyes, by the foolish faith, and the ropes they are binding around themselves. I can hear them talking, a word here and there, but mostly I hear the melody of the story being told.

The tension between their sentences, the pauses, then the interruptions. My God, God Damnit why is it so? My God, where is your character are you good? When do I get to break the bottles and throw the papers in the sea? When do I stop choking on the stone, let it kill me or get it out of me.

But then I'd be afraid of the silence, afraid to not feel. This reminds me that I am alive. Because my face is hot and my hands are shaking and my heart is tearing and I am overwhelmed by the sentences being written with their voices. I am dismayed and the turn of the story, who is the author, will it be fiction or truth. My God, God Damnit I am not simple and this cannot be normal.

From the deep of my belly where it burns to the tightness of my lungs where it aches to the sour in my throat where it chokes- I am consumed with care. With a weight, with a stone and I hold it.