Stuck

All people have a comfort zone and a safety zone. What they fail to realize is, they aren’t the same.

Smoke

– LRT

6 word stories (various authors)

“I feel profoundly sad and melancholic”

“I don’t have all the answers”

“Yes. Of course I have ghosts”

“Momentos from another era, left behind.”

“I can’t focus. There’s so much.”

“what did i get myself into”

“I wish I was never born”

“Long journeys take cause homesickness. Treatment.”

“i didn’t ask to be born”

“Some day the sun will die.”

“three words: evolution is a lie”

“This is my six word sentence”

“Rip my cuticles, blood at last”

“I think this is based off a challenge that was posed to Hemingway. He wrote: Baby shoes for sale. Never used.”

“Having hard time. Gonna try later”

“Garage closed. Engine on. Just breathe.”

“Oppressive heat sedates… gradient plum salivates.”

“I love costco, monster on sale”

“ah! oh, huh? um… meh. om”

“Time for my role, professional person”

“melt into the couch, Dogs pant”

“return from vacation, dog has cancer”

“my sister pregnant, now its gone”

“Grandpa dying, son reads story aloud.”

“No real people, only telegram cares.”

“Suffer by day, sweet Seroquel sleep”

“I lied to my psychiatrist… Again”

“Smear fingers in graphite, not blood”

“My mom is great, but insane”
“I wish my coworker would leave.

Get the fuck outta here bitch.

Your shift is over, so leave.

Stop finding ways to stalk Mark

You’re both taken, just go away.

Ba boom, i’ll see you later”
(six sentences at six words a piece)

 

“6 word stories” – by various authors

The Person

I

The person.
It needs to be picked up again today.
Rag doll, dead body, upright sway.
Put it in the shower, wash off the smell of sleep and nothing.

Brush the hair and outline the eyes, if they roll back in the head, it is not dead. Open its eyes, like Clockwork Orange if need be, have it smile with metal hooks, made in society’s factory.

The person moves, it talks, it sings! The smile looks plausible. Let’s put it out in the world and label it recovered, refurbished, renewed.

Will it break down again?

Certainly. We can mend it. New parts, new hair and lips and teeth, dress it in clothes to sheath.

The trouble with these things is that their brains just don’t connect, it doesn’t accept the body and the body it doesn’t respect.

It tries to feel, make it arms and legs real, it wants to see its blood. It comes to me with damage, I am the fixer.

So I paint a picture and call it a fool, put in new thoughts and new rules. Tell it to sleep less, wash more and I tighten the hooks. Then with pride I watch it stride with upturned lips and wide eyes.

II

I moved the body to the doctor’s today. He lifted limbs and played with my sin.

He tightened my smile and straightened my hooks and I obliged, just for the looks.

My arms and legs foreign, I don’t feel human inside. I am made of pills and guts, not of smiles and pride.

The blood brain barrier prison forever traps me inside, I will always be held captive. I try to poke holes in it to let myself in or out, a burr hole for my soul, my doubts.

He says, “what have you done to yourself!” Picks up the arm with wide horror eyes and says we can put new parts on it, new skin, new paint and after he says with a hook eyed smile, “now doesn’t that feel better?”

I burn the skin and pick it, peel away the seals, to feelings and memories.

The people around me with connected body and mind, they feel the things inward and on the outside. They stride through life presenting their greatness on the canvas of their bosom and drawn on faces.

I pick it apart, to try and find the thing, that will make me whole and feel on the outside like them.

lll

She won’t stop, I just can’t comprehend, how a beautiful girl has a mind to mend? Her skin she destroys, the pills she takes.

Her smile and skin, is beautiful as a dolls.

There is nothing to fix.

She dances and wears clothes, walks and sings, she can cook and clean and speak.

IV

The person, four days in every two moons, comes together, mind and body and sings and dances like a fool with wings and liquor. She glows with pride and smiles free of hooks, her dolls eyes and smile, real looks.

She feels the song she sings, glows with the beauty only formed by the perfect ring of connectivity and thought.

She provokes, outspoken, out loud, presents this as herself. And as she dances on the street, strangers can’t help but feel her joy, when she is not the doctor’s toy.

The doctor does not like this, her realness, he displeases, for the hooks and wire smiles sit on his shelf, dusty and inhuman, no mouth to morph, and nothing to fix. He needs to control, he brings her in to tighten her soul.

And he lays down the girl, behavior salve applied, and now he finds thrill in washing the sleepy doll, of cuts and stings she used to make feelings.

He paints her face and shines her skin, washes off the love and sin.

And when she stirs, the doctor with the hook grin, declares her in remission, says she fits the look book.

And he says he has made
A person.

 

-LRose

The Threshold

Where do we break? Between composure and infantile wailing? Euphoria and irritability? Comfort and pain? The pain that pushes you to the point where suicide makes sense. The threshold is lower in us. They try to raise it with pills and therapy and sunshine, so it can’t easily be breached, but it dangles over me, just out of my reach.

I jump for it over and over, wishing I had longer arms or legs. Sometimes I’m weighted down and can barely get off the ground. And if I’m lucky it soars out of sight and I am happy to not have it rest so close to my head.

That line, that threshold, the difference in us is that we see it. Discuss the risk and benefit, what society won’t admit. This makes us real. We do not pretend it is out of reach, that breakdown, that violence, that final breath. We know it is closer to us, our eyes are open.

Admitting it’s existence pushes the breaking point a bit further away. But it is still near. There is comfort where there is pain. It’s an angel and devil, not so far away. That lower threshold, some of us reach it anyway.