Tattoo eyes
Wrong goodbyes
So much hidden
Between the lines
Lonely sighs
Panicked cries
Sixty days
Is not much time
Ticking bomb
Devastating songs
It hasn’t been
All that long.
Since you’ve been,
Since I’ve seen,
Your messages turned
From blue to green.
Tattoo eyes,
Inner child,
I haven’t been myself
Since you died.
Starry skies
Sadness highs
All I’m doing
Is getting by.
Chronic ties,
Sickness lies,
In bed with
That devil guy.
Devil guy,
Evil scries,
Not even he,
Can death defy.
Death deny,
Standing by,
All I see are
Those goddamned tattoo eyes.
Staring back,
Squid ink black,
Wishing to God
My skin would crack.
Sickness sells
Like wishing wells
Bifurcated mind
Is under a spell.
Mistaken pride
For this corpse bride
Will she realize
She’s marrying jekyll and hyde?
The two sides of me are often at odds. I am not fully cognizant when I am one or the other. It’s not quite like Jekyll and Hyde either. They face each other in mutual stand-off in the hallowed wooden beams of my mind.
One holds a gun, the other holds a knife. I don’t know who has better aim.
In the hallowed wooden beams of my mind, all of the rooms are painted red. I worry that if I turn around, some soulless wraith will bore through my body with a sinister smile.
The place is a maze. You could run and run and run, and no one would find you.
In the hallowed wooden beams of my mind, reality rots with the termites tearing into its flesh. Gorging on the skin and meat of the heavens. With every thundering rainstorm, the wood is never really dry. The beams were built to last millennia, so therein lies a sanctuary.
In the halls of my head, I open the door to a pitch-black room. All I can see is the length of my shadow through my bloody hands.
Within the most inane stupor is the devastating fear that this will last forever. That everything in view will be tinged in grey forever. Wondering If the featherweight melody of a beating heart will ever return.
The heart of the war between the two sides of myself. They can never coexist. The feelings are excruciating for they are not meant to be contained within a single being.
There is no lightness in setting free a heavy heart. So the heart of the matter is that to be a singular, cohesive being, I can only allow half of myself at a time.
The dichotomy of euphoria and despair has gouged an orifice for the two sides of myself to stand. Managing ground control as my alien vessel wanders the earth in search of secrets.
Nothing makes sense. This is not real. I veer into oncoming traffic.
Lucidity swims back into vision for what seems like the longest hour. I can do anything. I want to have sex. I want to be risque and irresponsible.
Stay calm. This is just a chapter out of the DSM-V. Nothing has to make sense. You are in psychosis.
In the hallowed wooden beams of my mind, soundwaves ricochet off the two sides of myself. That is the ringing in my ears. When a telephone rings, voices answer. I can hear everything. There is evil laughter. The orifice shakes. My vision blurs.
Consciousness arrives once more. I am watching this movie in my mind at the same time life unfolds in front of me like a yellow brick road.
Don’t touch me. I must still be in psychosis.
But these words, they stare through me like jack o’ lantern eyes. They know me. I play them over and over and over again.
I never want to be trapped in my own head again.
In the most desolate times, the most one can do is just string words together until they make sense again.
I am awake, or dare I say, alive for now. The hallowed wooden beams of my mind are still in the aftermath.
I am soothed by the lullaby of silence. Solitude sometimes has a tender embrace. I am the other again. Only the other again, not both at the same time.
Tattoo eyes
For the girl
That death belies
Hidden in creases
Fat that folds
Are tattoo eyes
At the top
Of my once-scarred
Thighs.
Tattoo eyes
Shards that lie
Weeping gently
Unbeknownst why
I hear
My undead mother
Cry.
Trailing tears
Falling spheres
May as well hand me
Bayonet and spears.
Jekyll pierce
Hyde your ears
Nothing can save you
From all your fears.
Unborn years
Rusty gears
Trauma passed down
Is my greatest fear.
Vinyl crowns
Palpable sounds
I wait for both feet
To land on the ground.
Sixty days
Not enough to say
How I wish
You could’ve stayed
Tattoo eyes
Gremlin sighs
I think I really
Have to say goodbye.
Dear Verona,
Your love, your friendship, everything you were to me, was more than anything I could ever buy. You died two months ago today. Sixty days ago. I’ve kept count. I can’t believe you were here just sixty-one days ago, and on the sixtieth, you left us.
Dear Verona,
I’ve written to you a handful of times. It is harder now than it was when I got the call that you were dead.
I can’t keep doing this. I am holding onto you, and you don’t exist anymore. I don’t know how to let you go, because you were just here. You were just talking to me. I was just about to call you to see when we would see each other next.
Dear Verona,
It’s easier to write to you like this, because it feels like a song. And songs have always been soothing to me, no matter what they sing about.
Sixty days is hardly a long time. I think that as much as I try to force you being gone to my periphery, for right now, it just can’t be. It always feels too soon.
So many things I need to take care of feel so insignificant, because you’re gone.
I have to keep saying you’re gone. You’re gone, you’re gone, you’re gone. It feels like the denouement to a terrible Hallmark movie.
Dear Verona,
You and Jordan aren’t here anymore. As much as I say that I wish I weren’t here, the sad reality is that I am and I have to be. At least for right now. It doesn’t feel the same way as it did on my birthday when I turned 20. For some reason, I know I have to be here, as much as I don’t care to be.
It’s true when they say that behind anger, frustration, all those negative feelings, there’s usually something else.
I am so sad. Everything that has happened to me since you died, feels so incredibly minute and insignificant.
There is nothing more or less that I can add. I could tell you how this grief swells higher than the highest tides I have ever seen. I could tell you that every time I think about you, I wish I stayed just a minute longer instead of telling you I had to go to class. I could tell you so many, many things. But that wouldn’t make it any easier for either you or me, would it?
Verona,
Herein lies the root of my current psychosis and depression. My mind is in the netherworld looking for you, but my body is stranded here.
It’s easier talking to you than it is talking to the voices in my head. It’s easier pretending that some part of you exists so I don’t have to confront how loud it is up there.
It’s easier pretending to get by, than it is actually picking up the pieces left over and starting over again. Right now, the world is once again black and white. Light falls flat, just like all those other times I’ve written about. Food has no taste, and my eyesight lies to me.
Dear Jordan and Verona,
There is so much still that I need to get off my chest. This lump of coal has been stuck here for days, and my claustrophobia is coming back to haunt me.
But if I want to keep living, if I want to stop the relapses from happening, I have to do the hardest thing and put myself first.
Jordan, today, I took the earrings I had made for your burial out of my purse. I’ve kept them with me for a whole year. Hopefully, your mom gave them to you before you were lowered into the ground. The matching pair I made for myself stayed hidden in the zipper of my purse. I keep them now with the rest of my accessories, and I will keep them safe.
Verona, I looked at the last pictures I took with you for the first time today since you died. I will try to honor your memory and talk about you without the lump of coal in my chest constricting my breathing. I will let others bring up your name, and I will answer instead of shutting down.
Lately, I feel like my safe spaces have been violated. I don’t feel safe in my home, at school, or at work. Everywhere is triggering, everywhere brings pain.
When my eyes flutter open in the morning, I feel disappointment. I didn’t want to wake up. I am just getting by, hoping for the best. It’s never been as bad as this, and trust me, neither of you knew me when I should’ve died the first time. Trust me when I tell you, I have not been like this in years.
I got these tattoo eyes because they sanctify my inner child. But lately, she’s run away again, like she used to when I was young.
Tattoo eyes
Child cries
Weeping gently
With lone goodbyes
Tattoo eyes
Hear me try
As I sit here
Passing time by
Reality whys
Psychosis dries
Bipolar prying
Spiral spies.
I can’t drag this out any longer.
When I wrote to you two last, I couldn’t bring myself to sign off. If I did, it would’ve meant that you were really gone.
Tattoo eyes
Long goodbyes
Know I loved you
With all my pride.
Shards of glass
Let this pass
And let me please
Retain some of my class.
Tattoo eyes
Wayward sighs
It seems it’s time for me
To say my final goodbye.
Dear Verona,
Dear Jordan,
I’ve sat here for hours, and I can’t bring myself to do what I have to.
Tonight I stand before my Buddha’s altar, and I finally understand why. You place faith in the places where you cannot. You have to find trust where you cannot see it. This is the least, and the most that I can do for you. There is nothing more.
I’m sorry. I will always remember you. I will always love you. You will always
Always
Always
Always
Be a part of my life.
I love you.
Yours,
Ella
Ellamental Thoughts 