Where did all this past come from..!?
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I can't sleep; I must write!
"the seventh day"
The world is still and quiet, even the ghosts have chosen silence.
Everything seems empty; the only thing that feels meaningful at a time like this is to write.
To feel my essence flow with every drop of ink from the pen, to let my soul pour into each letter.
I'm afraid of speaking; I fear that with every letter that escapes my lips, I lose a part of myself. I've always preferred to lose my soul in lines stacked upon one another, for their sight is captivating and tempting. Everything becomes enticing when I write—sadness, melancholy, tears, and all the things that seem ugly.
When I write, when I document, when I tell stories…
Stories about the forgotten corners of the world, scraps of food, stray dogs, empty juice containers, crushed insects— all the neglected bodies here. But I always wonder… why do I write about them? Why do I create connections between my pen and the trivialities of the world, giving them existence, giving them value? Is it because I dream of someone doing the same for me? To write about me… and revive me?
To have someone get entangled with me, caught in a curiosity that seeps into the depths of their soul, so they rise up, shocked, shouting that they want to revive it! They want to give it value! They want it to exist! Just like it happened to me… with you?
That's what tied me to you—the curiosity that dragged me from my sleeves to you, rushing after the unknown… after the unknown that I thought was my paradise on earth…
But I realized too late that what I thought was paradise is a world of illusion, many worlds! Noisy, resounding, enchanting!
Rina, my blue wings…
Blue is the color of bruises beneath the skin.
But your blue is the sky of my paradise, the sky of my illusory world, the sky of my warm nightmare on a cold summer night.
But did my curiosity truly bind me to you? Or did you do it? Tell me, Rina, you are the only one I believe. Aren't you the one who came to me?
Am I really a devil that resides within you? Draining your soul? Tell me, where are you, Rina? Why did you leave me… Rina?
I threw the notebook as my tears overpower the bleeding of my soul. Rina left me, and I no longer have a soul to read my words…
Wait! I am a nobody; I am nothing. I possess nothing of myself but heavy letters that I glue together on paper. Every time I write, what I have runs out; my letters run out, and my soul runs out. Writing drains me and slowly kills me; this is my plan for suicide!
I stop writing, so I stop dying. No, I don't want that; I crave death! What if you don't leave me, Rina? But you died!
To rise above the truth, to let her pure soul depart from the filth of the earth, to leave me—she is a saint! And that's how saints die; they leave suddenly, vanish, dissolve, without anyone knowing except them, because they alone believe in intuition, in prophecies and messengers. Only they are loved by God, and God does not love devils…
For a while, I imagined myself… turning into a saint, into a pure being, into an angel. I would stitch wings from black goat skin and glue phoenix feathers to them, then fly high into the horizon. But now I'm plucking my feathers, scratching and clawing at my shoulders. I don't fly; I have failed. I am bleeding, and the black goat was nothing but a picture of a devil who drowned my soul in sins. They are right; I am a devil not loved by God…
I stand and press my head; the headache is killer, and life is deadly. And if I truly crave a slow death, I will just breathe, watch the days race against each other, kicking and trampling my body while calamities rain down on my head. But I won't move an inch. I now choose the final path, complete disregard, and drowning in the eternal dark void…
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"We're leaving in a few minutes, and you haven't packed your things yet? You're of no use! Get out of my way!"
She pushed me, and my body fell to the ground. I got up, opened the blue drawer, gathered Rina's lighters into a box, her cups, her sketchbooks, and her blue ribbons. We're moving to another city. Is this a new beginning? Or just a new hell? The song whispers in my ear:
{I can't escape my thoughts, Are they real or dreams?
Sirens in my head, Paranoia screams}
And my mother screams,
"You're of no use; no one will stay with you."
{I don't know if I can survive
Unless I can shut off my mind}
"I've lost hope in you; it's too late for you to change."
{Is it too late? Is it too late?}
"Stop staring at me like that. I don't know who brought you with those ugly features. No matter how old you get, you'll never be good enough. You're the worst daughter anyone could wish for!"
{Is all these fucking voices in my head
Tell me I'm not good enough for them}
"Why are you smiling like that? Come help me gather your witch clothes, or I'll burn them and burn you with them!"
{Are you watching? Are you watching me?}
Do you see me, Rina? You're no longer here to apologize and hug me after all this. It's okay, it's okay. Complete disregard and moving on…
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I take one last look at my room, my narrow safe place in this desolate void. Here I've lived for four years of my life; here I've made many memories. Will I miss them when I leave? Will the memories visit me? But what is longing, what are memories, and what is illusion? Aren't memories just phantoms of the past? Illusory specters pulling me by the ear to places in my memory that I thought had gone extinct? My heart beats, blood rushes to my cheeks, and I scream, "Oh Lord, what days these were!" My senses awaken, and I recall days I didn't know I had lived, and I sing like a captive bird, "Ah, ah, come back, oh days, return, oh phantoms of the past..."
Nothing happens; I don't remember much of what I've lived except in rare instances, and I don't remember how I was, who I was, or anything I wanted to be except that I didn't want to be, and I still don't. But sometimes I suddenly fall, and the haze of memory clears after a vivid dream, after a bout of delirium, after losing consciousness. I discover myself and scream, "Where did all this past come from?" Then I tremble, and I tremble even more when I realize that I don't know myself and that I am afraid of me…
I don't know what kind of woman I am… except that I'm a heap of people, people equal to the strands of my hair, equal to the days that kick me, equal to the tears curled up in the dark—a huge heap piled on top of one another, interconnected, homogenous, then merging their bodies to form a strange creature… called me!
I spread my arms in the air, and the world falls silent for a moment and listens. I will speak, and I will create my own language, and my letters will no longer be thrown in the streets. Then memory, longing, and the laughing ghosts in the corners of the room will bear witness. I will speak, and I will whisper, afraid to stumble over my words, afraid that the angels of truth will hear me.
"Rina, I see you will live without me as you used to before…"
Then i lower my arms, and when the world returns to its noise, I will burst into tears because all the ghosts know that I didn't live before her… and i won't
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"Miss, you've dropped your notebook..."
"Leave it on the ground, throw it from this bridge, burn it."
I feel his puzzled gaze watching my back before he walks away, leaving the notebook on the ground. I stand, cloaked in black, and the air around me darkens. I climb to the edge of the bridge and raise my head to the sky.
"What do you feel, saint… now that I've thrown away the connection between us?
Rest easy; my letters will not reach you anymore… Rina!"
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