Sunday, April 22, 2012

peas

I feel empty of words now.

There is nothing to say. I feel emptied out, shelled, as it were. A pea pod, closed up, looks filled with meatiness. But I am an empty thing, torn in half. There is a stubbornness that is gone. A fight someone flicked from my insides and threw into a bowl for a soup.

It feels good to have no fight left in me. When a soldier surrenders, he sits, places his weapon behind him, and doesn't look back at it. He is done. That decision is made, and there are no second thoughts about overpowering the soldier he just held his hands up too. He just sits and waits for direction. 

The rain started this morning after midnight. First the wind, then the rain. I heard it coming, pulled another blanket out of the cupboard, and covered the boy and myself before it reached us properly. I thought about the meteor shower behind the clouds, and how all those wishes only come to those who see them. 

I can't sleep. My mind races, then I read and grow tired, then I put down the book, and my mind races. It starts again, the racing and reading and racing and reading.What I am thinking about is an unwinnable war. An endless war. A pointless war. A war from which I surrendered, but keep thinking of how much I loved my fucking rifle back when I would use it. So I listen to the rain and wait for direction.

I am sometimes in love with my defects. They are spicy and meaty and get me things I want, even as they come at the expense of others. I am a pacifist now. It feels empty, but I know it is filled with something else entirely. I sit beside the road and wait for an enemy to give me direction. I try not to give into the voice that tells me to turn around and look the man with the gun in the eye. Stare him down, defiant even as I am submissive, my mind saying, "I had a gun once. And when I had a gun, I should have used it."

There is nothing to be said, because I am empty of bitter fruit. I cannot rewrite the recipe that made me who I am. I cannot even say anything about it, because it is gone into the soup.I forget which spices. Which veggies.

The soup is unpalatable. The one made out of me. It contains a pound of flesh or six for a crime I committed lifetimes ago. She is gone. Into the soup. I kicked the witch into the fire and danced in the forest following a trail of bird scat in place of the bread we dropped ages ago. I am home, carrying the cauldron of me. It needs salt, or sugar. Perhaps both. I keep trying to take things away. Once something becomes part of a soup, it cannot be extracted. So, I add counter spices. Chants and spells and a candle for the new moon. It is a banishing spell. But the parts of me are still there, waiting to be shot despite the surrender.

I have no words left. And yet these fall out of me, like the man at a crossroads telling riddles to adventurers. One pathway leads to the beautiful princess and the pot of gold, or the other leads to certain death. I am either the one that always tells the truth, or never does. I don't know why I write like this when I am distressed. This was just about not having peas in me.





5 comments:

  1. I wish I was a pacifist. I am in theory, it being earth day and all. But I need my gun now to protect me because I feel shelled out. I own no gun in real life, but my tongue could slash your throat. I slash and burn the people who have left me on the desserted island of grief and I cry as I tell myself I care for them no longer. I lay here with my 3 year old cuddled in my arms. His head is sweaty, his skin has goose bumps. He is a little damp from being in the pool. It is 94 degrees outside and the air conditioning is on. I think, he is all I need... I wish this were 100% true. The storm ravages me from the inside regardless of the fake blue skies. They are someone else's sky.

    I'm not sure what this comment means. This is just what came out.

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  2. Just want to send you my love, Angie.
    xo

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  3. If your words were edible, I would eat them up in one gulp. You write in a way I can not and it all makes sense to me. I have so many drafts in my box that I have yet to hit publish on. Random words and thoughts from moments where I just have to get it all out but I am not quite sure if I want to share. I am more of a pacifist then ever now. Yet I find myself at times in a bipolar state, angry and ready to fight. Death does strange things to a person. Pulls at the soul and makes us change. As I write this unable to sleep tonight, I send you hope for restful nights and peaceful dreams.

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  4. "It feels good to have no fight left in me"

    I feel that line all the way down to the tips of my toes.

    I'm not sure if I should talk about soup or soldiers here but I think this is a great post. Maybe it's something that everyone should try to understand.

    I'm not sure that I feel emptied out. It's more like I've leveled off. None of my opinions seem more important than the others. My opinions don't really feel different than those coming from other people. All things are equally possible and impossible. It should be unsettling but it feels like the only way to be.

    I wish we all had the time to just sit with it for a while.

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  5. The words that fall out of you when you have no words left. Oh Angie - even your fallen words do not seem accidental but powerful. Maybe they need salt or sugar or both, I don't know but they seem nourishing to me.

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