“Literature Is The Most Agreeable Way Of Ignoring Life.”

Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

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Self-Portrait Against Red Wallpaper

by Richard Siken

Close the blinds and kill the birds, I surrender my desire for a logical culmination. I surrender my desire to be healed. The blurriness of being alive. Take it or leave it, and for the most part you take it. Not just the idea of it but the ramifications of it. People love to hate themselves, avoiding the necessary recalibrations. Shame comes from vanity. Shame means you’re guilty, like the rest of us, but you think you’re better than we are. Maybe you are. What would a better me paint? There is no new me, there is no old me, there’s just me, the same me, the whole time. Vanity, vanity, forcing your will on the world. Don’t try to make a stronger wind, you’ll wear yourself out. Build a better sail. You want to solve something? Get out of your own way. What’s the difference between me and the world? Compartmentalization. The world doesn’t know what to do with my love. Because it isn’t used to being loved. It’s a framework problem. Disheartening? Obviously. I hope it’s love. I’m trying really hard to make it love. I said no more severity. I said it severely and slept through all my appointments. I clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. I’d rather quit. I’d rather be sad. It’s too much work. Admirable? Not really. I hate my friends. And when I hate my friends I’ve failed myself, failed to share my compassion. I shine a light on them of my own making: septic, ugly, the wrong yellow. I mean, maybe it’s better if my opponent wins.

What has made me speak less with each passing day? I watch the dragonfly escape the lizard by inches and I decide to stay. I want my words and my life to escape death. So every time I try exaggerating my empathy , the insouciance, and the ability to extract only the bad side of my words and my life makes me edge closer to silence. I do not want to throttle my words to death.

I can't make you understand. I can't make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I can't even explain it to myself.

— Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

““I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.””

—

waiting for the sunlight,

sky hangs heavy,

clotted with clouds,

every minute a drip

into the vast puddle

of waiting.

they told to run—

Just run.

how to escape

when the legs are tied

to the same place,

to the same people,

to the same whatevers.

walking in circles,

feet tracing the same path

to more waiting,

more silence.

in the room

where the walls are made of promises

that never came true.

The words, they fall

from mouths like wet leaves,

unraveling slowly,

and I cannot remember

when I stopped believing them,

but now

they stick to my skin.

Expectations—

they were something bright once,

something I could grasp,

but now they are shards

in the back of my throat,

a choking on what I cannot swallow.

I am the person

who fails them,

who fails myself,

and still I stand,

to crack the earth open

and let me breathe again.

The faces around me

are nothing but mirrors

reflecting silence.

They take,

but give nothing

but their own crumbling edges,

and I keep trying

to hold them together

as if my hands aren’t already

full of cracks.

Every touch is a weight,

a slow erosion of my own spirit,

and still,

I stay.

I stay because it is easier

than the weight

of nothing.

But in this stillness,

In this place

where no one grows,

I am caught—

and I wait,

for the moment

to swallow me whole.

What inspires you to express pain so well through words?

Pain

The Bodmer Oak, Fontainebleau, 1865, Claude Monet

Akshay Vasu / Carel Fabritius / Anjum Choudhary / Franz Kafka / Charles Bukowski / Frederick Carl Frieseke / Ray Bradbury