eros

I am stuck on the idea of love. I ponder it not in the overly sentimental, femininely obsessive way that you might expect. I refuse to stay in on Saturday evenings with a box of chocolate and a stack of sappy chickflicks, ruminating despondently about love-lost. Rather, I have been examining love in the same method I approach everything else in my life; through the analytical lens of a scientist masquerading as a romantic. I dissect and scrutinize every element, every attribute, and as a result slaughtering the joy that love in its various forms, brings to me as a human.

I desire to categorize and classify, mentally filing away each relationship that exists in my limited universe. I need to understand situations in their entirety, not out of curiosity or intrigue, but rather a revolting need to control. With the goal of protection. A methodical outlook as fortification from all the sharp and jagged thoughts in my head. Cleaning house, to avoid the ambiguities and unanswered question that can fatally wound.

And yet there are still powerful mysteries, dangerous enigmas that I am utterly incapable of explaining. There is the ripping of clothing, grasping of flesh, and lascivious mashing of lips. Caresses and sweaty heat. Whispers of the god Eros in the dark. Erotic love. Interactions fueled by mindless passion. Suggestive movements and serpent tongues are his preferred form of communication, because words and emotions are too laborous.

Eros is the inexhaustible source of my emotional strife, and yet the primary fuel of the lyrical imagination. He makes his rounds, fulfilling the empty sensual desires that rule the night. Selfish and panting, his smirk is so alluring and charming it is capable of weakening the resolve of even the most guarded woman. Once compromised, she will inevitably find herself broken and bruised, discarded among the pile of those who came before her.

photo album

Compulsively, she is drawn to that forgotten corner of the room. Her feet continue in their forward motion, as if propelled by another force more powerful than her own. It is there, tucked discreetly between a flimsy, leather-bound bible and a stack of trashy romance novels. Fitting, really. How many times has she glanced this way, considered taking it out and scanning its pages? Today. Gingerly she pulls the cloth-covered album into her unsteady arms, sliding it through the filmy coating of dust lining the shelf. The flowers and cartoon bunnies on the cover have long since faded into mere dingy remnants of what they once were, the soft pastels of a little girl’s childhood. She exhales, shooting spirals of dust into the air, the light streaming through the partially-drawn window shades catching the particles in their weightless dance. Gently tracing the embroidered MJS on the cover, she fights the rational urge to stash the book back into its rightful place on the shelf. The voice returns, reminding her once again that she has no idea the significance that this moment might hold. Ignoring it, with cautious intentionality she turns the cover.

The first page is a familiar one, the very same photo has been hanging in the hallway of her home for as long as she can remember. The squinty eyes of her newborn-self stare back from the page, full of innocent perplexed wonder, her forehead crinkled in confusion. She turns the page and is instantly struck by the unexpected, yet eerily familiar face of the man grinning back. Holding a tiny baby in his arms. It is funny how our mind plays tricks on us, how our memories become distorted over the years. She had always pictured a handsome man. One with rippling muscles and a serious, stern face and dark unreadable eyes. Bronzed skin, leathered by the dry tan of decades working in the unforgiving sun. Tall, dark and handsome she pictured. Perhaps she wanted him to be this mysterious brooding stranger. He would fit more easily into her perception of him, easier to picture that type of man as the mystery of her past. Instead, the smiling face on the page is startlingly similar to her own. Ivory skin over a round face. The same unremarkable nose, with a speckling of brown freckles, surrounded by full fleshy cheeks. The same impish lopsided grin warms his face, making him both mysterious and approachable at the same time. Dark hair. Full lips. Their eyes are hauntingly the same. Identical, actually. A deep crystalline blue, with the same flecks of turquoise and green. She looks just like him. The spitting image. Almost every physical trait that she has, comes from this man. A complete fucking stranger. Oh god, why does she have to look like him?

She recognizes this moment for what it is, understanding why the voice warned her to stay away. She can no longer detach herself from this part of her past. She is deeply and indisputably tied to this man. The flesh of his flesh. Like salt to an open wound is the pride and joy beaming off his face. He gazes at her infant-self with such unbridled adoration, like a blind man seeing the sun for the first time. His hand is resting atop her fuzzy head, as if to shield her, his precious baby girl, from the harsh realities of a strained life. The love is written plainly across his face. She was once the sole object of his affection. Captured by the flash and the shutter, and even if just for one fleeting moment, his love for her is undeniable. When did this change? When did this passionate fire extinguish from his eyes? When did this girl become nothing more than a financial burden and baggage, holding him back from his more promising future? A future alone, without her. Unhindered by the responsibilities of parenthood. He was not the father he promised to be. Selfishly, he wimped out.

She closes the faded album, her heart and mind unable to continue with the self-inflicted torture. Instead of answering her questions, she is now forced to contend with a thousand new ones. She was sheltered by her ill-conceived notions and the distorted memories she manifested about her past. It was so much simpler to believe that he never truly loved her. That she never lit up his eyes. That he never cradled her in his arms. She could no longer feign ignorance; she had photographic evidence. Her father’s love, was not hers to keep.

favorite

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

"Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath

alena

A friend asked me the other day, “when was the last time you felt alive?” Just like that. No pretense or frivolities or small talk, just a direct and pointed question, one that cut straight to the source of the seeping black, pus-filled infection in my heart. I stalled for a moment, parroting the question back to her, allowing the mental wheels to start their backwards motion. When was I last alive? When? Hm. I probably gave some generic answer, throwing together strings of words and shoving them in her direction, mumbling my way around the question.

But I honestly could not remember.

Her question plagued me for a few days. Constantly in the background of my thoughts as I traversed through my daily routines. Obviously, she meant more than simply existing, waking and sleeping, eating and breathing. The question is deeper than that. Now, I am sitting in my bedroom, gripping a mug of hot coffee in both my hands trying desperately to warm my insides. I have dozens of photographs spread across my bedsheet. I remember now. I remember the last time I was spiritually alive. It was July 13th, and I was saying a painful goodbye. I cupped her beautiful face in my hands, pieces of my heart breaking off with every tear that squeezed from the corners of her black eyes. “I love you” I said, and I meant it. Probably more earnestly and truthfully than I had ever said it before. It was not the sappy love of romantic relationships or the comfortable love of families and close friends. This was a raw, unbiased, unconditional love. I saw Christ in her eyes. Her smile. Her joy. In the way she always took my heavy camera bag from my arms and looped it over her own tiny shoulders, before grabbing my hand and pulling me down the dusty street. Saying goodbye to Alena was one of the hardest things I have ever done. On the walk back to the compound, my own shoulders were shaking, wracked with the sobs that came from somewhere deep inside. But, I was alive.

I saw Christ. We walked together. I held his hand.
That was over six months ago.
I want to feel alive again.

sharp objects

"We needed a lot of room to stray away from each other, to avoid rapacious lust, to wall ourselves away from sticky emotions. Extra space is always good."
-Gillian Flynn

the box

I am the duty fulfiller, you say?
How dare you typecast me in such a way.
You wait patiently. Predatorily watching.
For me to cease my kicking and squirming
Just long enough. A moment. A mere breath.
Pushing and prodding for my very soul's death.
Till at last, the final violent shove.
The reverberating collapse from above.
Enclosing me eternally, in this tight space
Trapping me in the proverbial case,
Built of rules and restrictions and roles.
Only to suffocate here, with my unrequited goals.
Gasping for both freedom and air.
No! I refuse to meet your expectations.
Myopic and limited as they are.
Claustrophobia was never my dream.
I am far greater than your vision of me.
I am unsuppressable fierceness,
Hidden behind this gentle reserve.
I am unbendable and steely strength,
Masked in an unpretentious humility.
I am impetuous and fiery passion
Without a worthwhile direction, just yet.
I was formed in the Image Of My God.
Elohim. Moshia. Yeshuah.
I was created for such greatness.
And you can never confine me.

zackary

Zackary is his name. He has all the familiar symptoms of an awkward and fumbling 6th grader, lost in a new school, scrambling to find his niche in the sea of faces or perhaps to disappear in the walls altogether. His greasy unwashed hair hangs in his eyes, beautiful blue eyes, rarely seen, constantly shifting or glued to his scuffed hand-me-down Nikes. Zackary is precocious, to say the very least. A brilliant and talented child. Yet, he is plagued by this sense of inferiority. He is self-punishing and self-deprecating. You can reprimand him for the smallest thing, and he will completely lose all emotional control, burst into tears, and accept this manifested failure with the most distressing heartbreak. It is as if he believes, to his very core, that he is such a monumental disappointment to others that he should quit trying altogether. He has loving hippie-parents, who never punish him, so this self-belittling attitude is such an inexplicable mystery to me. And yet, Zackary reminds me so much of myself. How often do I come to God with something, and I am struck by such a sense of hopeless unworthiness that I would like no better than to climb under a desk, and wallow in a pool of my own wretched, pathetic tears? Such is the great enigmatic mystery of grace.