Being fourteen in 2009
The sun rises and you meet girls who are more like you than I will ever be.
There’s a tea party in the field near my house but I’m not invited. A birdsong in the distance that I can’t hear. A flower opening her legs wide to the world and it makes my eyes bleed. The sun tries to embrace me but I push him away wondering if I’ll get a tan like she does. I lower myself to drink from Varuna’s fountain and see someone I have never known. I close my eyes and deny myself the pleasure of earth’s milk wetting my tongue. I leave thirsty. Thirst to be anyone, in anyone else’s life but mine. I wear shoes that don’t fit because she gave them to me. Take my P.E. kit to school in a bag from a shop I have never owned anything from. I give something to the Gods I can never reclaim in exchange for a chance to throw thunder from mountains and hope it hits close enough that they might see me, but they never do. I devour you all from Olympus. Plead Zeus but he extends me no favour. I can’t keep up. My limbs too small to reach the ripe fruit hanging from the tree so instead I collect the cores they left behind. Keeping them all. Hoping from them new sustenance will be found but they rot in my basket as they were not meant for me. Never intended for me. I eat them anyway as bile rises in my throat and I wonder if this is what it will feel like when I’ve finally punctured the taught skin of my teenage youth and crawled out and into a life like hers. You let me into your bedroom and I dreamt you were gone and it was mine. I watched you dress and wondered what it would feel like to be you. To unstitch my body unanaesthetised and inhabit yours. You gave me some tracksuit bottoms for free and I offered you a vital organ. I can’t keep up. I don’t say or wear or do the right thing. I don’t live in the right house. They grow more bountiful and beautiful each day and I don’t know who I am. I can’t keep up but I try to learn the words to the music you listen to. The sun rises and you meet girls who are more like you than I will ever be. You get your eyebrows waxed and I remove parts of myself too but not fast enough. My words spit like venom to all who might here. I spoke about you, and you, and you because a relationship built from rotten seed is better than no harvest at all. The land is baron and I find my sister crying that she is too big and I tell her that she is the sun. There is no one waiting for me at school as I wander between restrooms but find no rest. I can’t keep up. I do not fantasise about boys. I dream of reinvention. Reincarnation. That the universe will ask me to open wide and regurgitate fresh un-festering flesh to my new bones that I won’t want to peel off and feed to midnight wolves. I beg to go somewhere else, anywhere else but old eyes remind me that wherever I go there I will be. I didn’t mean to upset you and I am sorry but I was starving and I stole from your pantry. You run towards the social ladder and my lungs burn at the dawn of the climb. My body begins the descent without me. Runs in the other direction as it becomes a conduit for the earth molten core and searches desperately for the shore. I must choose whether to chase after my bones or climb to meet yours. I choose mine. I can’t keep up but I chase her for years. Follow her to the furthest corners because I know you’ll one day tire and when I find you I will remind you that you, are the sun.
If you didn’t find this post too horrific, you can share it with someone who might enjoy reading it too. It would mean a lot to me because I wrote this while I should be sleeping and I’m not fourteen anymore and can’t survive on 6 hours.