Unbuttoned
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 at 6:22PM 
Unzipped. Unraveling. It was all held together, and now it is spilling, my guts are loose, I don't have enough arms to scoop it up and stuff it back inside. The solid ribbons of self-belief have stretched and slipped, their grip no longer sticky, the silky thoughts of happiness became too perfect, too slippery, too shiny. My knots were no good. Nothing is holding together. Wind is flapping me to pieces, and I float - above myself. Any chance I can get back inside? There is no weight to hold me down, and I can't dive in - I only float up, and up, and up again. Lost in the clouds, threads of me hanging on tree branches like some tangled yarn. What happened? Where is the security, the stability, the iron rod inside of me that holds me together, pinned to the ground, making me unshakable? Could it all have been stolen overnight - and who might have taken it, if it doesn't fit anyone but me?
I try to hold on to passing birds, but they slip through my fingers, and I think maybe they are fish that have forgotten how to swim, maybe someone took their weight too, and now they are floating aimlessly in the sky. I grab at the air, at the fog, at the sun rays - but I catch nothing, I only hear my fingers tapping into fists. Until I no longer have fingers, until they are gone too. My limbs, my body, my mind. Scattered. Sprayed into the abyss of the tall morning. Like a human graffiti - maybe I need to be erased by annoyed neighbors - off of the wall of life - I am mudding it with my image. I am not clean, I am not perfect - I mar their well-being. They grab a bucket of white paint and splash it on me - but even that doesn't do the trick. I'm so disintegrated, I'm morphing into atoms, I perspire into droplets of being, and I disperse - into the air itself. Breathe me in, make me solid - can you? I don't know how much longer I can exist in this shape - without losing the existence itself - and forgetting who I am, what I'm here for, why it makes sense to keep going, to try to pull my inner magnet and glue the bits together - one by one, thought by thought, idea by idea. Wondering if this will do the trick. Or maybe I need to stay with this, learn to breathe without lungs, learn to see without eyes, learn to love without heart - maybe this is the ultimate test - losing oneself and finding oneself in nothing, in the ultimate chaos of life - and being part of it.
After hours of gazing into noting, I'm back. I'm in one peace, but I'm still unbuttoned. My body - it's holding together because it belongs, not because I am trying desperately to hold it together, tying it with string and glue and rags. I realize I don't have to hold anything together - it is together by definition, it always is - no matter how it comes across to me. It's not time to disintegrate for real yet - I'm still alive, and this is part of being. But I feel like I'm in one place and in many others simultaneously - pierced by all the places I have been, all the people I have touched, all the words I have ever said. They're all present at once, and at the same time they are gone. My eyes can't focus on one thing, my thoughts can't stop and hook onto something solid, they float in my mind, my arms and legs move in all directions, carrying me who knows where - and I let them. I notice the ground underneath, all the little stones, dirt, fallen leaves, frozen into one solid surface. I notice the sun in the distance, cold and brilliant, and I stare into it until my eyes hurt. I stand in the street, bare, motionless. It stopped. I stopped. I'm here. Back to existence, after being laundered by distraction and confusion, empty of any feeling, refreshed - with one of those refresher sheets made by thoughtful people, people who like no wrinkles in their clothes, people who like their clothes to smell good - people who take care of themselves. I have been taken care of now, washed and folded together - ready for another cycle of wear and tear. I step forward - my legs make a crisp sound, they are freshly scrubbed. I bend to look and I button up my shirt, one button after another, then I stand up and look forward. Ready to go. Held together. On the inside, not on the outside. Ready to test what it'll be like now - and not knowing what awaits me around the corner - if I will get splashed by a car, passing me, with mud and dirt, or if maybe I will splash others by stomping forward, into the puddles, oblivious to them, knowing my course. Buttoned up. Ready.
Photo by Laura Chifiriuc.
Reader Comments (2)
since writing is healing for you, you need to be more like mayakovski. you have the pain, but you need to deliver it to the audience more focused. let your pain become their pain.
Ah - interesting suggestion. I like this - thanks. Sounds easy but I bet it is hard to do.