day 17: UGH.

Well. On the days I don't want to post what I've written because I don't think it's up to par, I get harassed by people who love me saying they damn want to see what happened. I feel like Michael Corleone here, staring my wife in her face saying "JUST THIS ONCE YOU CAN ASK ME ABOUT MY WORK."

See because while I wrote a couple tonight I don't like either enough to share, but JUST THIS ONCE YOU CAN ASK ME ABOUT MY WORK. But then if I'm feeling self deprecating and don't want to share next time well darnit that's tough titties.


CRAPPY DRAFT 1:
It isn't at all curious or even, really, significant
that I'm afraid of heights unless you already know
that if I were allowed one wish I would wish to fly,
that my first crush was on one Peter Pan. I hate
the fear, the blind irrationality of it, and so
at every opportunity I try to challenge it.
I ride rollercoasters and when it gets
to the very top and everyone else is staring
dead ahead to see what comes next, I am peering
over the side, looking straight down
at the ground below, piercing my lower lip
with my teeth. I climb trees, I go to the rooftops
of buildings and creep out to the edge, hold on
for dear life as I look over, trying to stop
my spinning head. I'm afraid of public speaking
and so I sign up at every open mic; I'm terrified
of bugs in my house but I somehow manage
to kill them or scoop them into cups
and carry their bodies outside do you see
what it is I'm trying to say what I'm trying
to say is that I will keep coming back to you,
to the idea of us, just like it's the edge
of some building because there's no good reason
anyone should allow something so trivial
as a fear of heights to keep them from seeing
the view because when one finds oneself blessed
with a love like this, fear should get nothing
but a shove.



CRAPPY DRAFT 2:
when she began cutting, it wasn't,
as some suspected, because she wanted
to die, far from it. it was just that
of all of the systems of coping she'd studied,
this one seemed best suited for her own
particular needs. well, to be fair,
narcolepsy had seemed more romantic but
as a newly developed insomniac she didn't
think she could make it stick. the first time
she picked up the blade and pressed it
to her canvas like a brush, she didn't
press deep; she didn't want to see blood.
no, instead she cut into that transtitive,
gossamer place just beneath the skin
where fears and memories stayed. she cut,
and out flowed that rooftop in winter,
the recurring dream of the grocer's son,
the first time a lover had hit her,
the eighth, the fear of never-good-enough,
the simultaneous need and impossibility
of sleep at four in the morning.
she pressed deeper. there, the first time
she cursed at her father, there, the tenth time
she she said she hated her mother to her face,
there, the times she ran away, filing out
in a meticulous line, one behind the other.
a little more pressure and just before
the single drop of blood that made her stop
came the day she first realized her parents
were not gods, the day she first realized
perhaps her lover might honestly be, and the day
she no longer could deny the truth of the canyon
of her own inescapable and utterly trivial
mortality.