Departed trail & Bitter trials.

Vacant of a sassy smile along with unfocused eyes. I couldn’t find any familiarity in who laid before me. Struggling to be still as pumps struck her with some working purpose to keep her alive. I heard harsh breathing from her; where before I knew her laughter and loudness. There was a brownish dye to her body, which made it easier to disconnect with this stranger; however, doctors assure us that it’s her. At the end of all these features, I can’t find what I’m looking for, my sister.

I move a hand to touch her foot, her warmth. Then I felt it all rush in and knew it was my sister. So a sense of guilt came over me as I couldn’t recognize my family. I choke up strength for myself to be here for my sister. Here I also prevent the future feelings of regrets of not being here.

In my life I only grasped on to the dark clouds and not the silver lining in between that prove that I had a few fond memories that haven’t been rewritten by a negative lens. I don’t have the comfort to be easily cruel to her this day, nor have the fond feelings of pride as to give her deceived eyes as it is hard to lie to her. Without excuses I received her through fond memories, called back to reflections, led with nostalgia but hated it without her in the days that are leaving us. I wish I had those rolling days back to live with her; I wish to not feel this way.

Seemingly to witness death unblindly. Blissfully brought up to be only weak. Born to never notice every stronghold in my mind. All small places are sold and filled; so I can’t crawl away to hide any of my pain. I’m living in self harbored shadows with restless dogmas and unpainted seas; give me back those damn days, so I can enjoy her again more earnestly. 

    I prepare a napkin to wipe the foaming spit off my sisters teeth, lips, and cheek. And there I cry out to her that “we’ll be alright” without her, I say it over and over for one last piece of hope for both of us. If it wasn’t for the machines beeping life, I swear she’s passing before me as she closes her eyes. I see the bundle of flowers I bought her, they are sunflowers; her favorite.

All my strength is right here being in the same room of my beloved older sister. She was the first middle child. I was the second followed by a set of two other daughters, to whom one is with me in this room. Blasted Pandemic and cautious actions, they keep only two of us in the same room with her at times, so that we can say goodbye. But what makes this sadder in this second year of fighting Covid, is that yesterday was her birthday to which we couldn’t sing to her. The first holiday will be an empty valentine this month. 

I call the time to my other sister in the room with me so we can leave and let more family say goodbye. So we left and headed down the hospital to outside. On the way down I saw a blur in my eyes that looked like a roach. My brown lashes were drenched in tears so they had that effect in my sight. I had a brief reaction of disgust to it.  

Desperate, I call out wanting to die for her again and again. Aching in my temples as high blood pressure beats its pattern through my laid skin. Pulling a whip of my head straight as it wants to scream up and down the hospital elevator. Finally I’m let out that metal box to walk past some sliding doors to the outside benches and to be in the company of my weeping family. I walked to my mother and cried for a bit before making it to an out of sight pillar.

The stone pillar became my pillar of relief, as I searched my head for words and thoughts from sometime anywhere that could strengthen me, and it acted as a good place for cover. But I gave myself a thought to call my friend to get some encouragement. After calling to him, who prayed to and for me, I felt my mind begin to trip out to a battle in my head. The color in my cheeks burned to the boiling feats where my tears streamed briskly trying to relieve me with some feeble human express that I wish I wasn’t able to, like a machine that never does; but even a killer murder bot from “Terminator 2” wished he could cry. So I guess tears will always fall from me. A pack of smokes can’t last a day like this; because I can’t help but need to smoke when depressed or stressed, this was one of those times.

Nothing satisfies the heat or dries my eyes. I threw away a disposable mask after it collected my suffering tears. I wasn’t particularly or practically indefinite to my family but I couldn’t sit beside them and have a civil war play out in my head.    

>Section:2

“Let form the breaking, destructive, and malice waves; drown me. Not to mention in the waters of my own foolish behaviors and the omissions of wisdom that is still foolish; drown me in it all. Selfishly self righteous, selfishly eager to dream of my sister, selfishly split tongued, and seven times guilty of the above greed. Trampled down, and toppled over in tears.”

“Life in pain, torment, and then dismay. I’ve gone and done it again. Hopeful high then my falling break. Slipping away from the moment I hold my sunflower. Oh why did I never consider or believe I could only have seconds left with such a thing. Always at the beginning and never seemed to leave me at any abrupt minute. Butane flames are quick to accept me if I let them; switch it up, I’m angry in every breath it seems.”

“Treaded not even an inch in this unprotected world because the noise outside is seemingly to be fearful of. I’m becoming wary of sound and bear witness to my servitude, repenting dull light which gives delight, and captures life in me. Damage across my flesh already came in the illusion of sanity claimed. I’m feeling like broken wood held up with nails. Static lies come buzzing in and over my beliefs.”

“Rest and rust are the same end I find myself in. Bear witness what I unearth with my tilling hand; seeds of vanity that sprouts nothing on concrete. Where is my resolve? Where is my sister’s voice besides my head. And something struck several times over in me; I wish I don’t lose this love. And what I wish more is that my memories don’t fade out, by my own absent care of it.”

Section:3

“I’m okay,” I repeat in my hot breath. It seems I have to deal with myself tripping out with time as I wish I could leave and depart from the hospital after saying goodbye; yet I shouldn’t do that to my sister and my family. There is a point I will break, and I’m dancing near it. I take my mind past the folded locks in my head and bust open with the emotional triggers of self loathing. Looking at myself I can talk about the pain but in a sappy poetry of sapphire hearts. 

 The past and present do their best to stay straight instead of curving like round about edges of a monster’s claw that dig and cut out X’s in my head, at the sight of every door holding a dark memory. I want to rip my own hair out to get to them and yank them out. I wish I was a charlatan with telepathy, to lie to myself and believe it after I go bald. The enemies of my faith are gathering, to tip me back to the other side of the world’s curtain; the very world that gave me the biggest reveal that it cares only about itself and never me. The ego of the world is grandiose and worldly, figures. I’ll try my best to not confuse you from time to time as it all makes sense to me.

 School was not an eager place I wanted to be, I wasn’t smart or fitted anywhere. My jaw has a permanent dislocation that cracks like a knuckle when I open it right, from fighting. Pushed around, it felt like in every direction, with no aim it seemed by fate or by bad karma that I was from. I would ditch school and I let the city bus go anywhere it could because I wanted to meet someone who cares about me. Walk for miles to find an end to my relationship with this blue marble.

Seat atop car parking lots and look done. Gravity steps in from time to time and I’m on the right side. But I’ll take myself to God and express our relationship. I’m 30 stitches bonded to him with both arms, done the right way in the wrong way. I have them in bold places that say I was saved by my personal Savior, my personal God, and a more loving father than my dad is.

But back then, I would wake with a heavy yoke on my neck. I took a walk with a battery of music, a full carton of smokes, and the expectation I would walk back home. Black sweater, black shoes, and dark jeans, I wasn’t dressed up for any plans. Nor did I plan for the two months of stress that put my yoke further into my brushed shoulders, they finally popped open with resentment to the ones. Places such a burden upon me. I walked in an instant step from my house to an empty lot of grass by the freeway and riverbed. 

The once box cutter I held from my job at the 99, which was my defending last resort if I had to fight for my life against deranged muggers and drugged out maniacs, that blade became the candy my hand was craving for. I sat under the only two parked trees with shade and contemplated the crap I would be leaving happily, while in a field by the freeway. My family dealt with living in motels, a drunk father as well as a scattered history of brothers fighting sisters and kids fighting parents. So much noise in my head that needed to be silenced for me to just hear my own voice of clearance; but the noise and hurt is what was only appearing. In this break down and feeling all the crap in my life as finally as something I should’ve accepted as my “normal” which I so far off held the expectation that I would live more of the same for the last 20 some years; it be the same over and over.

I was unprotected from the thousands of members of hell’s estate. Unproductive to protect the few incidents that have a 100 thousand more that make me cynic, hopeless, and tasting overfilling haze. People would say it wasn’t normal to grow up this way; but you had to when you were a child not knowing that there were better ways. The anxieties, feeling like I was scared on purpose and ready for the next scare to come, to be on edge, to be taunted by kids I thought were going through the same things since we wore the same dirty shoes. The depression of having to feel more damage than others when broken over and over on the inside; It’s no surprise I was hollow.

Cracks are appearing down my body and I knew I wouldn’t like my descent to hell. You ever had that demon inside suffocating under your thumb with red eyes. You hope it dies but it won’t leave cause it’s just as important as your lungs; is this why i smoke, to smoke out a demon born of shadowy burnt smoke. Afraid of relationships because someone else’s problems might be a vile kiss that is viral to the bloodstream and a vindictive virus that spits not love but hate and anger. What’s the behavior for loneliness and depression mixed with anxiety; what were the warning signs for me and the family to see?

A millimeter of skin, a thick half inch of fat, and drawn across 4-6 inches on each arm. I had done this spiteful deed against all my joyless life, which happened to be occupied by devils. Smoked every last stress, wept every last memory, and left this world without pain. Why was there no pain; hmm, I guess the devils in my company gave me that sympathy to not feel pain, and weren’t so purely evil. Let the demons speak outside my head for once:

“You’re not a coward for not feeling right like your family. It’s because they knew how to live without a nativity scene. No one should live to cry, or sleep as a weeping mess. They might have found what happiness is, doesn’t mean you did. Right?”

“It’s life’s job to punish you with a yardstick. Everything changes but not your head, cause you seem to remember all the filth. You shouldn’t walk the earth holding weapons. You can’t get clean no matter how deep you clean. What makes heaven hold enough reason to keep you under its eye, you’re unimportant; and where is that place now.”

“You could work enough to think you did enough; but no matter what, the fallen corpse inside you died a long time ago. So you died already as a sinner. I don’t greet people evilly, that’s “reality’s” job and his employee of the month for it. The pain is going up, stress is down on the finish line, you’re running last, and you hope to steal the race and track a new pace. But you aren’t strong enough to matter…”

It’s real, I fell asleep with two boar holes. Are you telling me I didn’t come to hell by the hair of my head? Like music flying by the ear, I didn’t catch everything nor understand my own participation. I accepted hot scorpions to the back as whips. I was to be treated like an Egyptian slave building a wall that will never be finished.

I could only see what was before me and not what was coming after that. I guess my hellish stay has a long creative list of experience to torture, torment, and tear at my skin while I’m on a rack spread out. I had a pop culture reference of H E double hockey stickers. I saw endorsements of three headed dogs and blue flames popping the skin of people; it’s as if they were hotdogs being over cooked with sticks holding them up. I felt like granulated sand and was perfectly powered for gymnastic performances in the finals. Rolling in the dark fire with extra excuses to call out that some shouldn’t be here but I know I’m not like them.

 I was under a bridge, I remember, praying to the devil to take my life and I would give my soul willing and damning the Lord I later embraced. I got a lot of feelings, doing a mindless killing, doing what is not appropriate or appealing; so I believed the Devil would accept. But God stepped in and raised me from perdition. 

I awoke in a riverbed and walked from Long Beach to Firestone which had me lurking and hiding my stress. Made it to a gas station 8miles from my home covered in city water. Medics to doctors stitching me up with numbing gel since putting me under could kill me. Two more days of paranoias by my need to force myself awake out of fear that I was going to wake up in Hell. At last I gave in and called my sister Priscilla who had been searching for me for two days. 

What a wicked thing to do to my sister, I’m sorry for hurting her. She wept for me, cared for me, and still looked out for me. My next 2 weeks were me talking to my sister on the phone plus doctor check ups in a mental health faculty. After getting out I would be back two more times from two more breakdowns that my sister was there to take me in and comfort for. I would talk to her and sit in her room listening to her love for me.

So how can I go on without the sister that could take on all my problems then give me solution that she was always going to be there for me. I feel lonely in a world that is greedy and thinks of itself. I need my big sister guarding me cause I’m a selfish sheep needing his shepherd. Here I offer my pleads:

“I shall not give smoke nor pelted meat for favor during the continued battle in my head. Praise by my tongue, praise by some practiced scripture, praise be share with kin of faith. And no bounty of thistle shall be pour out of me, no foolish cloud shall befall here at my breath, no cultivation of skill of hypocrisy shall underlay my vows. So please I pray, don’t treat me like the rest, my rivers faith-full while the others give offense. Jokesters comments thrusted at your chest, and red ribbon moths presented like ruby dragonflies.”

“I’ll follow behind you while gripping your cloth laces because I don’t think I was brought up right. The egregious circumstances would’ve had me tossed in the twisted wind. Let me be by Christ. Please give me that Amen; because this all feels like it was pretentious and imaginative acting when I’ve come down to selling my soul and going back on my Christian ways. Lethargic waters come on slowly and want me to step down in its killing feet below. I don’t think the worst thing in the world is not out of my range of thought or taking up right now.”

“I’m feeling self destructive, smoking weed when it makes me feel helpless but I could sleep it all away, drink beer when it does the same since I’m not the violent type, and lastly cut myself to have some pain I can control. Everything I’m going through is faded out; just like the barriers in my head, so I’m faded without getting faded because I already feel helpless. Dame my mind as it implodes. Come forth the winds that counter the storm I’m in and bring angels out the clouds of salvation; soar down low with warm and right hands of care. I’m lower than hills standing while they are mountains that break all other winds, but yours.”

“Wrap me in the winds and the wings of the Lord’s army. From false hooded waters, let me be fed mana. Let me be healed by the bronze snake that sucks out venom. Picture me beloved, blessed, healthy, sharpened like holy steel. Look on to my plight, look onto the history I have nightmares of, and look at my scared flesh.

“How many times must I prove myself to you? Why do you listen to other men’s prayers but not my own? I couldn’t stand it, the flying time at my helplessly bound hands. All the joy I was pulling back out of my life was being thrusted back into the black vortex of self hate; and I  doubted the moment I thought I wasn’t gonna live without her. I’m a small and helpless child without her. Please don’t leave me, I recount on my lips to my sister and you my LORD.