There’s something about being in bed, alone, at nightfall, Rachel typed.
I don’t have to be anyone in this liminal space. I don’t have to gather all of myself to verbalize a “no.” I don’t have to call his uncle out for swinging his dick around (like some fucking King from the 18th century) while I watch the wife’s eyes sink in a little more each time. I don’t have to watch their child at the party, carrying the garbage at 6 years old, “do me a favor kid, take all this kid throw it out.” I watch her turn around and tell him to go fuck himself, I watch her 20 years later, being told to go back into the kitchen by the man she lives with, “I don’t know why I do it.”
I wear nothing on my face. I am a cleansed palate. A blank slate.
I don’t even have to try. I don’t have to speak.
I can stay quiet and to myself, all alone.
My name is Rachel but I don’t have to be her, at all. I don’t have to feel guilty or inappropriate for not attending the funeral. I wasn’t close to my niece and I don’t particularly care for my sister. Two reasons why you should attend someone’s death ceremony at all. I don’t have to listen to anyone asking me for anything, because I have nothing left to give.
Leave me to my films and writing, Rachel wrote. Leave me to my darkness where I am no one, where I see no one, where no one knows who I am. Leave me with my bones and oils, to revel in my sacredness, something I don’t have to champion like in the daylight. Because no, I don’t want to fight with you anymore, about why you’ve come here to save the fucking world from their unhealed Christianity complexes. I’ve been liberated by Satan and I eat rules, as Kim Krans would say. And I’m better for it. Even if someone like you thinks that’s bullshit.
I walk over and metaphorically sew her lips shut so that I don’t have to push back, just during nightfall. Where I spread my legs for my lover sometimes - so that they can take me to other worlds. Worlds the daylight could never comprehend. Worlds I sometimes prefer to this one.
I don’t have to live in a box like my parents. We die in boxes! Rachel screams into the night. At them, or whoever heard. You think I want to live at a dead end street never question the ground beneath my feet marry the drunk we always knew him to be have no time for the children I create then teach them that everyone is the same everywhere and everything stays the same every day. You are drowning but I want to swim.
I am swimming, Rachel typed, and she smiles because her hair is not on fire today, and there is no one here. She is alone, at nightfall.
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Thank you for bearing witness to Dark Lord Show Me the Way.
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