Oh, I Was Happy. I Was So Happy, Until I Looked Down At My Reflection And Saw I Wasn’t Me At All.

There are parts of me, like patches in a quilt, that don’t seem alike at all, that aren’t quite right sitting next to each other at first glance. But I promise they are. I promise my silliness does not contradict my seriousness, I promise that all of me is better together than ripped apart.

'Sunrise Water Nymphs' by Arthur Prince Spear, (1879 - 1959).

I see her far from me. My mother is cool and white and floats like a sun in my mind. But she is a dying star. Her past self pervades my memory but her realness, her fullness in the present is nothing but black space where a blip of sunshine used to be. I cannot reconcile what I reminisce in my mind and what truly exists. I see her far from me. My mother is cool and white and explodes in my mind. The old light she used to shine will keep going long after she stops. And one day, even that false hope will fade. And there will be nothing left for me to peer at from a distance, but a stretch of sky I once called my mother.

Remembering him is like biting glass. I don’t know why I do it, why I keep hurting myself on the sharp details of his shattered memory. His eyes, such a pale blue, had a depth to them you wouldn’t expect like stagnant ocean water. My mouth bleeds as I masticate his face, the way words would leave his mouth; his voice is like rows of pins in my tongue. I can’t help myself but to recall him, over and over again, no matter the pain. I think that’s what draws me to recollection actually, feeling anything again. It’s the numbness that lets you drift into autopilot, living while asleep, that ruins you so much more deeply. Losing a loved one, and yourself along with them.

I’m not going to hate myself anymore.

I’ll figure it out, I always figure it out. Why not now? What’s wrong with me?

Nothing. Maybe this is a problem that can’t be solved. Not even by you.

You would sit by and watch the world burn if you could sit comfortably while you did it. That is the curse of comfort. That our couches are stuffed with the same filling as those in coffins.

I can’t explain the joy I feel. And isn’t that so wonderful isn’t that so perfect to have a problem doppled in sugar and cherries with pits you suck on until they are bare in your mouth.

What use is death to a creature like me?

Well, I’ll tell you:

Death is an old bedfellow, a partner, a wife;

Is there anything so sweet as a union born in blood?

A promise to always be at each other’s finger tips?

Tool the marble into statue, we sculpt the world,

To improve it, cull those unfit for life by scythe point.

A silly question to ask me, what use is death to a

Creature? Without it, I would not have a life at all.

Like a mutant calf, my village shunned and cast

Me out to meet her, Lady Death.

Our screams were never songs. Is that what you’ve been hearing all this time?

-Diary of a siren