Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → A User Guide To My Guts (Writing)

It was a Tuesday when they woke me by banging my temple against the steel headboard, and the skin split, and from under my eyelids one million black widows waltzed out onto the red dance floor. There is a meaning in everything, in the small circle of my wrist bone, in the lamp that flickers three times and dies, in the boy with many secrets that spill like milk at the feet of a woman in black. And every sentence, every word to come out of my mouth is a separate square of cloth, is another beginning. It was not supposed to be this way, I promise you, poetry books where my kidneys used to be.

And if at night you hear a soft melody and mistake it for a howl full of agony, perhaps you are clawing at the same barred windows as myself. Perhaps your nails have bent too far backwards and weep to their chewed cuticles. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps united we stand, and perhaps I should not have fixed the typo at my first attempt. Untied we stand, untied we fall. Laces. Shoe laces. Undo me, unfold me, unwrap me, unimagine me. Say my name backwards. I'll disappear.

I thought to lose myself in the pale skin of another, in freckled shoulders, in eyes blue enough to shame the sky so much it charcoaled its lids. I thought that love would save me, and the bruises it would leave on my arms from pulling me up would fade, and on the other side would be that ephemeral feeling I had often doubted existed. And I would be able to hold it in my hands. And I would be able to swallow it down, until it was inside of me, until it twined like ivory leaves on the ladder of my ribcage.

Instead all I gained was red string. Miles and miles of red string tied around my fingers until I could feel my heartbeat in the purple tips. Red string reminding me of kisses with his hand cupping my jaw, reminding me of nights spent awake and yearning, reminding me of secret heartbreaks -- heartbreaks I kept to myself for fear of losing This, in fear of speaking and being heard, in fear of existing as someone more than this all forgiving, all loving, all believing creature. This creature I demand of myself to make up for the layers of dirt stuck to my skin, dirt that cannot ever be removed, dirt that has accompanied every action, every thought, every feeling I have ever had.


When I was a little girl I used to tuck my limbs under bathwater and sit very still until the heat leaked out to some place I could not name. I used to count the palm prints on my body, and even then I was sorry. Even then I was trying to provide comfort to someone who didn't deserve it. Even then, even then, when I was young I was broken. Even before the monsters became real I was broken. Things just come into focus with age, the way my structure is two inches off, tilting, wavering under the slightest breeze.

I learned to smile by imitation, not emotion. Spent afternoons in front of the bathroom mirror tugging my lips up towards the ceiling whose tiles I had counted frontwards and backwards. Nothing ever changed. Nothing ever changes. And if I were to close my eyes in a dream, and if I were to fall asleep, I would be dreaming of dreaming a dream just like this one. Each detail traced and coloured in until it's so sickeningly perfect in its imperfection.

I just want you to understand. I just want someone somewhere to know. And half the time I can't even unweave the meaning from the metaphor, and half the time my mouth is slack and dumb. I just need to keep trying because I think if I were to sit here for years, if I were to grow a great white beard, there might be something worth keeping. And it would not be beautiful, or printed between glossed hardcovers. But it would be an explanation, or perhaps an apology. It would be something useful: A User Guide To My Guts.

And I spend my nights awake and trying to figure out how I came from there to here, how the path affected me and changed me and left me collapsed on the inside. I don't come up with anything though. And I could tell you what the doctors thought. I could tell you how having my face pushed into a pillow until my neck muscles pinched and breathing was impossible filled me with a fear that has yet to leave, but this kind of fracture is much more subtle, and it must have occurred in a moment so insignificant that I didn't think to file it away for further examination. Like walking home from the beach with sand in your shoes. Like a single skipped heartbeat.

If I keep digging, if I keep writing without thought, if I keep letting what comes come and wash over me, then maybe it will come out of hiding. Maybe it will reveal itself, unbutton its blouse and seduce me with the truth. And I'll know. And the knowing won't fix anything. But it would be something. A reason. That's all I need. I need a reason for being the way I am. I need a reason so that when people look at me with confused eyes I could open up and explain to them what I've spent my life trying to figure out, explain to them what I would've spent my life giving myself similar looks over if possible.


So it was a Tuesday when they woke me by banging my temple against the steel headboard, and the skin split, and from under my eyelids one million black widows waltzed out onto the red dance floor. I was never scared of spiders, only ballerinas and princess crowns and the colour pink. But spiders were beautiful, their webs collecting dew in the mornings, their skin filled with midnight and ink. And there is a boy who has a piece of my heart, and he shouldn't, and I cannot help myself. He is a spider, too. He dreams with a knife under his pillow and wakes up afraid to move, confused, and without breath.

I know better now than to think that love will save me, pick me up. In fact, sometimes I have to wonder if I made the right decision. Sometimes I have to wonder if I lost my wings to its glory, sometimes I have to wonder if I was ready, or if I would ever be ready. Sometimes I have to wonder because something feels a little too much like rubble and ash and from what I've read, it isn't supposed to. And I'll keep bending my spine in shapes foreign to me and hoping I can please, hoping I can salvage some sort of self-worth through forgiving those who cannot forgive themselves, through granting absolution to those who will only continue to hurt me.

This means nothing. I am an overgrown forest and there is no escape, but God how I wish there was.