Listen to this playlist.
Blurb
the problem is, I want to be saved.
the problem is, I don’t know that I can be pulled from under this water without help.
without a fire bigger than myself.
the problem is, I fear that I am far too gone to feel the fire’s burn even when it is close.
One
What is it?
What is that thing?
Under your skin, over it, that makes you hide?
Do you fear?
Is it the flight? Is it the journey?
Why must you run?
Why must you erase yourself?
Time, and time again.
Why must you convince yourself of your lack of purpose.
You bleed with purpose.
Creativity fuels you. Power is in your words. Your actions.
You are.
You are woman.
A woman whose vision shifts in the direction of her feelings.
A woman with feelings as flighty as the wind.
You are.
But in your be-ing, your becoming, you ache. You bleed silent.
Angry you may be, but not enough.
You need your blood to raise.
Your heart to thrum with something stronger than you.
You need to feel fire in the tips of your fingers before you take to doing.
Your life flashes before your eyes, before you are often able to do.
And what life is that?
The life you can’t seem to –
How do we find our purpose when we are bound by our fickle –
You seek for people like they are air.
And they are.
To feel the fire is in two ways.
You can invoke it. Test blade to skin. Feel your heart race with the stupidity of your actions.
And you can use the fire, however it lasts for, to fuel a vision.
Or you can seek for your fire in people.
You look, and you look.
You want to dance.
Your want your legs to walk on clouds.
Let the rush in uncertainty push you to doing.
In stillness, you want to find purpose.
But in stillness, you find helplessness.
In stillness, you face your ineptitude.
You face it. It stares you down. And you let it. You let the accusation in its eyes keep you limp.
Sitted, laying down, standing, it does not matter.
You have begun to find affinity in its eyes.
Eyes that have been let down. worn down.
Eyes that now hold pity more than it does, disappointment.
You search, you search. You don’t find.
You know the answer.
To be in stillness.
Two
What even is stillness?
You wonder if there is a drug that will jump-start you to doing.
You wonder if the memories that bear down on your shoulders can…let up?
You don’t know what you want.
It is not the memories.
Because don’t you already block everything?
Do you even let yourself feel happenings that crush you?
You crave to feel, but when do you ever let her?
There are bounds that can’t be reached.
Bounds you do not know how to break past.
You are trapped by your mind.
Imprisoned in your inactions.
The meaning you find in people dissipates like dark clouds that shows its presence before a heavy rain.
Easily forgotten, when the storm comes.
That flighty feeling.
Is that what you fear, you hope, would be your salvation then?
You want to work.
You want to push.
Push through what, you are not sure anymore.
Must I relive the memories to be saved? Is salvation to be hoped for in perpetuity? Likely. To live is to unendingly seek for something, anyway. Today salvation, tomorrow, an end.
Are you calm, rational, or do you fear what you must release to reach the pain, and then the peace you hope is coiled at its base?
You hope. But not enough.
Never enough.
Taser (the story).
I was inside a car, and I listened to music in my ears. An instrumental that played on repeat.
Not absentmindedly though,
Intentionally. I hoped to get lost in the beat.
It was just another day. Just another ride.
And I watched a car breeze past mine to kiss itself aggressively to a pillar.
It was at the toll gates, and the car got totalled.
Right in front of us.
I watched in calm, but for the first time in a long time, I felt a buzz in my fingers.
They shook.
I thought about how that could easily have been us.
I wondered about being in the car that got totalled.
I fantasized about being paralysed by a fire that finally made me move.
That accident.
The car bounced from the impact, and it made every other happening in the background dull so that I heard only the quiet.
I heard my pulse race in stacatos till I opened my notes, and wrote, till I expelled all the rush it sparked in my veins. In the tips of my fingers.
And now,
We are back. Here.
Again.
I need to lose this bra.
I cannot breathe.
Fingers crossed the next thing we write isn’t about how belabored our minds are. I’ve had some interesting interactions recently that I’ll love to share.
ỌMỌGE FEMII 