joseph. d2; fin

fox Graphics 1,361 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen Apr 18, 2024 20:36:13 GMT -5 but a butt ?	joseph. d2; fin Aug 27, 2017 21:24:48 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by fox on Aug 27, 2017 21:24:48 GMT -5 *joseph czerny* so screwed -- cool youth minister type ~~see u in hell pal~~
	Last Edit: Aug 29, 2017 1:09:12 GMT -5 by fox

fox
Graphics

1,361 POSTS

Pronouns: she/her
last seen Apr 18, 2024 20:36:13 GMT -5

but a butt ?

joseph. d2; fin Aug 28, 2017 23:39:19 GMT -5

Quote

Post by fox on Aug 28, 2017 23:39:19 GMT -5

☾

You kiss a girl.

And suddenly you think that's your whole life.

You love her. You kissed her.

You married her.

But there is a heartworm, so rotten – a thought that she isn’t everything. The sun, the air, a body soft as summer ice cream. I touch her and feel nothing at all.

I guess,

maybe in another life, elsewhere in this world, if we hadn’t met in the darkness of a stranger’s room. If she was still her, but I was someone different, steadier, better.

Or maybe, if there isn’t something dying in me, shaking when I rest on my arms and listen to the pulse in my wrists, counting on the beats of an aberrant longing. Maybe if we were reborn, a second chance.

In another life, I could hold her, love her until a thousand suns have died before us.

And things could be different.

I stopped, when I turned eighteen, the wandering, drinking, everything. Not in the way the seasons change, slow and steady and beautiful. I didn't grow. I didn't learn.

But it was like moving underneath the tides of a catastrophe that changed everything it touched. I stopped at a night, a mistake, a name, crashing all the way into her.

Some days, she kisses me and I feel strange, wondering if it’s death or love that’s bleeding in me.

Some nights, I think of a child with my blue eyes, her pink heart, golden in the light of a blossoming field, running through the interstices of my skin. He widens an inexplicable hurt between us. And then in the morning, he’s gone.

I close my eyes.

But how could you miss something that was never there?

--

"This is so boring," Christie pipes up, lying on my legs, and grabs the book of scriptures from my hand – starts scribbling in it with dull crayons, and I’m probably just going to let her. I’ve got arm around her before she slips away, and another on the baby, and I lost her twin a long while ago to boredom, but hopefully he’s not dead or dying or dealing drugs or having pre-marital sex – scratch the last one.

Ahahaha. I’d like to think our God has some kind of good humour and a sense of irony when he makes his choices regarding the afterlife, or else I'm screwed.

Ripred.

"It's not boring, it’s cool," I try –

“Hey Joey, if I do something not good,” my girl says out of the blue, looking up from her doodling at the prospect of floods and famines and divine wrath, “would Ripred also do all that stuff he did to the bad guys?”

I remember ditching Sunday school for extracurricular activities, getting kind of drunk, very drunk, ditching the contents of my stomach on the pavement in the sunrise light; I remember a mysterious tattoo, half-healed scars melted into skin, pretty girls and their kisses, leaving home every couple of days, and the answer was always yes yes yes –

sinner, my dad seemed to think God loved everyone, except me.

What was love supposed to be but rule of iron, a set of intangible laws, singular, unyielding meaning derived from a punishing belief, the politics of piety and things that a dumb fifteen year old could not understand except that this was synonymous to hate. Maybe it was all true, maybe, maybe, maybe he was never wrong and I have always been something unforgivable.

She leans on her elbows, eyes wide, expectantly.

But she will believe in a God that loves her.

I told myself I wanted to be different, even if I didn't think so.

“He’s gonna give you a time-out,” I tell her very seriously. My girl here drops her colours on the floor, looking so super upset as hell that Ripred could do something as terrible and as powerful as time-outs.

I clear my throat. “But if he’s in a forgiving mood, he’ll probably let it slide the first time or so.”

I've been played.

I guess this is a fucking patience test, not a question. Because a devious smile later and a bunch of stifled giggles, I get the book back in my lap, open it up and written across holy text:

“Jesus is cuming.”

Well fuck, she’s like seven?
Must’ve learned that one from Ernest.

“Christie. Jesus is, uh, cumin. That's a spice, he's spicy; there's no 'g,' okay??”

Carefully-more-like-as-fast-as-fucking-possible, close the book, shove it under the couch, bend down and give her a piggyback ride while scooping up the baby in a double maneuver. She holds onto my hair for balance, making a ridiculous pigtail in each hand and I can only suppose that means it’s getting too long, strands curling at my temples from her fingers – and gosh, I can't even be mad.

"Want to go bake brownies instead?"

--

“Mary.” I find her hand in the dim light.

I close my eyes. Feel the sting of a punch, my father’s words moving like ivy around me, my mother’s touch strangely vacant, lost to the space of years undone. I feel the curves of her stomach, her hand in mine, the scratchiness of Sunday best.

There’s the feel of cool halls of the Justice Building, an ache from waiting on creaky chairs, warm tears spilling and telling her everything’s going to okay over and over again, before speaking the vows I trick myself into feeling. Then, there is the night after, so, so lonely. And the months after, monotonous. And then, I don't feel anything at all.

I hold her hand.

I feel a child’s fingers around my thumb.

As if I could feel the future.
As if I could feel loss.

“Let’s get married.”

Last Edit: Aug 29, 2017 2:28:18 GMT -5 by fox

fox Graphics 1,361 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen Apr 18, 2024 20:36:13 GMT -5 but a butt ?	joseph. d2; fin Aug 29, 2017 1:11:21 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by fox on Aug 29, 2017 1:11:21 GMT -5 oh god what even happened here done

Deleted 0 POSTS last seen Apr 19, 2024 15:15:50 GMT -5	joseph. d2; fin Aug 29, 2017 1:24:33 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2017 1:24:33 GMT -5 "sinner, my dad seemed to think God loved everyone, except me." IM SCREAMING THERE WAS TOO MUCH TO QUOTE EVERYTHINGS SO PERFECT ITS EVEN BETTER THAN THE VATICAN