by Misti Rainwater-Lites
I’m fat in my purple shower cap and leopard print gown drinking hot coffee from a California mug. I’m such a cliche, a middle-aged woman who gave too much to love and sits on her ass staring forty in the face, wretched with self-loathing and regret. I should not have flashed those tits. I should not have sucked that dick. I should have saved all those Snoopy stamps, slaved over a hot typewriter instead of a stove. Wait. I am Snoopy. I have opened my veins and bled on a lifetime of blank pages. I have followed my bark to the rainbow with blinders on, left the xmas tree to Charlie Brown and his lisping pals. I have been alone with myself. In matters of the heart I have not had dry spells. I’ve had the fucking Gobi. So why am I here now wishing I had run away with the circus. The circus ran away with me. That’s me on the trapeze. That’s me splattered amongst an infinity of peanut shells. That’s me drowning in elephant piss. That’s me the psychotic unicycling clown crying in my cotton candy. I have run I have sprinted I have bled I have given unto death and half-hearted applause. Here I am now black coffee bitter and bitching about my missing slice of American Pie. When you’re on disability for insanity you tend to doubt your role in the grand scheme of things, tend to look up at the sky and envy the clouds and the goddamn birds. I envy balloons, the ones filled with helium, the ones that leave my son’s fingers and float above the trees and disappear. I would like to disappear but that would be rather rude of me.
That would solve nothing. I’m sick of my slobber, sick of my hollow, sick of my ungodly hunger, my unholy strive. What the fuck what the suck what the truck what the buck am I trying for? What is there at the end of this sentence? I am not in prison. I am not Hansel in the cage behind the candy house. I am free to dig wishing wells, feed the swans, collect the rampion, catch the white stag, run my freak flag up the pole and see for miles. Seeing for miles has burned the blue from my eyes. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to touch. I don’t want to feel. I’m back to Rapunzel envy. Give me a tower made of stones with one high window. Put a song in my throat but don’t let a prince ride by on a horse made of cream and sugar no don’t let a horny prince happen to hear all the shit I got to say. I don’t ache for rescue. That never works. I ache for the knife and the stone the quill and the page but I have that I’ve got that and I am still here in my purple shower cap and leopard print gown not sexy at all in my flip-flops not relevant not heavy light as a feather and in the breeze and not wanted not caught not needed not grasped. I’m sending postcards from hell but there is not enough postage and the recipients are lost at sea. I need to buy bread. I need to buy pillows. I need to buy a comb for all these tangles. Oh song my mouth. So strong my south. And long and long and forever my route. I’m about to die if I cannot live higher and better and prettier than this. I’m the crone turned to stone the lone warrior crusty with blood in the forgotten woods. Praise me for my presence, goddamn it. I’m here I’m alive every fucking day is my birthday a miracle of candles and cake and purple and green streamers. I’m not a celebrity. I’m not an American success rags to riches story. I’m rags to rags. I’m a scarecrow. Stuffed. Stuck. I can’t come down. Oh god oh fuck oh shit oh piss oh hell oh damn I’m tired of not breathing not walking beneath the moon and Jupiter with tingling skin and aching feet. I need a new kind of ache. I need a new kind of weary. I need to burn to sweat to be alive and at home in my body. These demons have dragged me down into an idiot sea and they aren’t done with me yet but I am done with them. I’m soaring. I’m out of it. I’m telling you…I’m gone.