me, im a liar watching my men like clocks. 

I looked at the journal again. the journal information about sun. this brief nebulous of him but really me, not us but the relation I need. comparison. speculation and mystery.  and also relating. I turn the page. in big letters I had written DONT BE A MARTYR. I saw that downstairs. too late for that. 

“am I always the lamb?”

 

I envisioned myself crying earlier and then I felt the beginning ripple as I stood on my bedroom floor, suddenly up again.  I wanted to stay lying down but the shadows all over my walls moved. I could feel it rise in me. I would think of hecate. this is what you asked for. this what you got. nothing. I started to sob unhinged: loud and childlike. knowing that your parents will vanish and so will your childhood having hardly any remnants left of it living. many things gone too. the structure of your family had been dissolute for years. and the shell of it, me, here. heartbroken. missing so much of my childhood that will never be again or be seen again. the house itself is rotting and falling down. it will be abandoned. it will be torn and something will be rebuilt on the land. I cannot explain or mention these things in passing, therefore I don’t get into them. here I am. only a second has gone by.

I began to run the tub. I needed a change of environment. I could relax here and even if I cried it would feel nice. the tub is a familiar grieving place. when I was a child at my heaviest or weakest, I always took a bath and sobbed. I was a cry baby also. I loved the containment. the colors. I threw a yellow cap in, no wrong definitely looks like urine. I threw a red tab to make the dark pink.  I can’t take anything less than wide open, spacious. all walls were seen as constricting. I also feel the need to be swaddled like a baby at times and with things like pacifiers. something in my mouth, something to hold me. something to press upon me. I walked back to my room unsure of myself. I was trapped in a bad place and a bad place. Philadelphia, America. I grabbed jasmine oil. walked to tub sprinkled. walked back. put it away. I didn’t think about anything while I did it even how steep the stairs are. the ritual was nice. the movement. there is no time.

 

I got into the tub as it started to fill. a habit of mine. I couldn’t wait for it to finish and I wanted to listen to the water run. I noticed my feet first: lanky, bony then my legs, different, bigger. my hands though: young, like when I was a child. all my acrylic nails off except the two thumbs. one of them wavering under water, loose, ready to be pulled off. I watched my hands turn in the water like that slowly as it filled. noticing my calves against them. it looked like there were bumps up and down my shin bone. my legs have changed. my hands have grown. one day, they will be wrinkled. the water on top of my hands felt nice and was pleasing to look at. even thought my nails they were beaten brittle short like when I was in elementary school,  I could feel my young hands grow out of that place. I could feel my old voice say you have to take the pressure off and then I just felt downward till my forehead touched the water. I remembered swimmingL spending days at the pool, hours in the water in the ocean or the bay. waves didn’t scare me.  I liked riding them in the surf. the deep end didnt scare me. I was an excellent swimmer. then what happened?  the male voice says. and me answering without pause, and then one day i developed an intense phobia of water.

 

sometimes I pretend a man is asking me something and it forces it to be truthful, blunt, terse. I don’t lie when I am in my imagination in this way, but I do lie. or rather, I twist things to see them from all different sides and I can land on truths that are more beside me than in me. that are more malleable.  what motivates me? water. i’m always in the water and I always was. swimming. dancing.  I used to love doing twirls and flips in the water. I was a very graceful gymnast at the pool and in the ocean. even from a young age, I could keep up with my brother and Amanda, my friend, two years my senior. I was fast and reckless. I loved touching the bottom of wherever we were: lake, ocean, bay, deep end. I always had to prove I could my hold my breath. my tactic was tried several times like a video game. if you have a ledge grab hold and push, if not, find strength right there in diaphragm. then swan dive, feet first, quickly to the bottom, touch it with force, hard, hit it, really feel it and launch yourself back upwards to the top before any of the other kids.  I especially loved challenging boys.I was very fast. I pointed my toes and I only needed the impact of the top of my feet. I was used to that stance. my dad always pointed it out. that I was always on my tiptoes and prancing, sort of twirling and also flapping my hands a bit. 

 

I was messy too. like my dad. that’s where I get it from. spilling everything. 

“I am my father’s daughter.” 

my father knew me. even when my mom and I painted the same identical portrait at the paint and twist, he was able to guess which one mine was because I “always took up more space.” he saw me. I was seen by him. to be seen by someone and to emulate them and to grow distant from them to then try to get closer. how tragic. I hate this. I turn the water off.