Remembrance - Lea

When your sanity is dissolving, you will not be able to tell how long you have before collapse. In the course of long, slow rust, of gradual wear, we cannot predict the exact moment when the compromised structure will fail. Be it a rusted tower or a section of natural rock that shears off the side of a mountain- we know these things happen sometimes, and that when they do, they happen suddenly.

So it is with the fall to despair.

I want to tell you of the forces I hold accountable for the loss of my friend Lea, who died in April of this year, in distant India, ostensibly of suicide.

Swoon Today: Reflection / It Always Was

Hello, open diary to the internet.

Hello, Dear Temptation, when someday you read this, or hear it read to you.

This is a meta-entry, an empty word, a giftbox containing but a few fibres of string, a torn paper scrap, and a coupon to receive the gift promised.

There are things I have posted to this blog which are passionate, vicious, sexy, controversial, revealing and deeply personal.

And there is further extremity beyond these; there do exist things I am not comfortable posting publicly.

Today's Swoon is one of them.

It exists, though. I wrote it down this afternoon, November 14th, around 5:45 PM, in the transitional window of spacetime before taking a big step to make some phone calls on behalf of our friend.

With you, Dear Temptation, I do intend to share the full text of the thought. And as I am using this blog as a tracker of (some of) my thoughts through time, I will leave this pointer to remind us to retrieve it. But what the actual content of the message is, that can be our little secret from the Internet.

The one to find here, the correct referent, is a piece that concludes in this way:

I think back to the beginning, the first memory in my narrative that fits under the label of your identity, and reflect on how little has changed.

Captivated

I feel good.

I feel...

Uncommonly sexy in the prison I wear for you— 

in the bruises you gave me which shift softly over the days— 

(a friend of mine remarked, and I agree, that one in particular has blossomed into just the colours of a ripe peach, that particular contrast between purple-red and golden yellow.

I took a photo of that, and will keep it, in case you would like to see. No doubt it will have faded by that time. No doubt I will miss the spots that I can prod to recall an echo of a sweetly remembered pain. Perhaps I will ask you slyly to give me bruises that last longer next time.)

in the knee-high striped socks I did not even show you I was wearing— 

in the soft words of appreciation and encouragement that hold my anxiety like a tiny furry pet and stroke and soothe it calm—

yes, I am wanted here, wanted now, wearing my invisible chains, my range of custom smiles selectively curated to be compatible with an almost entirely platonic kind of kinship.