He told you everything you couldn't bear to tell yourself, he made sure you knew your flaws intimately. He made sure you adhered to your standards, and he understood why you had them. He was there when you felt no one else was, and he promised he would never leave. Blades always keeps his promises. Blades would never lie to you. Not like the rest of them. He introduced you to Bones, and you felt you were betraying Blades. But Bones, she was a temptress. She knew what you needed, she told you what Blades never could. She started slowly, whispering in your ear, making you spend five extra minutes really looking. Made you see everything you'd been missing for years. Everything you needed to fix, everything Blades couldn't help with. As Bones lulled you into her bed and hung her laundry in your mind, Blades became her instrument. She had seduced him too, stolen you from right underneath him. You were left captive.She would squeeze tighter, her skeletal hands digging into your shoulder blades and clavicle and circling the thin wrists you were always secretly proud of, bruising and mottling with her contempt. She would tap the hipbone and revel in the hollow sound of bone on bone. A job well done.
She made you kneel on bathroom floors. She made you taste the acid. She told you everything you knew deep down was true, what everyone else wouldn't tell. She congratulated you on the pit in your stomach, the knot of hunger that was ever present, the drug of fooling everyone, of having the one thing no one could take from you. Always just a little bit further, always just a little bit more. You couldn't get out from under her.
Until, one day, you did.
You knew they were poison, the two of them. You left them, hoping they wouldn't claim anyone else. Knowing they would, and feeling ill at the thought.
Blades showed up on your doorstep one day, ratty suitcase in hand and wet from the rain. It was like he never left, and you fell for him all over again. He knew everything about you, and you knew nothing about him. And that was just how it was. But this time, no one could stand the lies Blades was telling you--and they were lies. And you were starting to see him for what he really is, and you still are now. and he terrifies you.
You're an artist.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm glad you're seeing the truth. Stay away from Bones too, kay? She's just as scary as Blades.
ReplyDeleteYou can do it.
I'm not an artist, I'm not a poet. I play with words and sometimes they fit, sometimes they don't. I suppose we could think of it in terms of Coleridge's idea of poetic imagination--it's not restricts to 'poets' as we perceive them. It can be held by lawyers, doctors, labourers, carpenters--it's seeing the world a certain way. I'm feeling the Romantics right now, you'll have to excuse me--English major leaps out unbridled, sometimes.
ReplyDeleteIn short: thank you.
As for the truth, it's taken years. I'm pretty sure it's usually like that. Blades, at least, has the decency to put on a slight pretense of understanding and compassion. That's how he's able to stay around so long, that's why I keep letting him in. Bones is a tyrant. She tries. I slam the door in her face and don't let her in.