the future according to the funeral pyre
this publication (formerly Creature//Creative) has a new name. should this railroad begin tunneling underground, we must know where to go to keep warm and safe our tender joys and dreams. times are fucking hard and our care networks are more important now than ever. as the technology continues to gulp us down with copious amounts of liquid doom, i am spitting blood out of my mouth and insistent on being hopeful, goddammit. about some kind of paradise we might build from the inevitable ashes.
The Safe House is not a cute name or a clean brand or anything. it is just descriptive. thank you very much for understanding.
now let me tell you about my winter camping trip.
here for you a loaded gun - my fear. for me, a ritual of self-reckoning. shadow and debt and integration.
cw/tw: religious trauma (christian in flavor); gore
tree branches stretch through glittering stars like dark veins pumping cosmic light down through the shine of my glassy eyes. grief is so close, other worlds so impossibly far.
i offer the fire my words and it accepts them into its belly, devouring my intentions whole. i watch the flames flare against harsh winter winds. then the ash, still bearing the stamp of my handwriting, slowly erases itself.
a single loud crack. an explosion and burning embers pelt my legs. a confirmation: i am purified.
—
but i am not absolved because i have not atoned. i did not overlook this…it’s that the gods told me piss off. to go tell someone who can actually offer forgiveness.
i confess i have not been in right relationship. i have been too tired for the revolutions, inner and outer.
i confess i asked the gods to let go of trials and tribulations; to either kill me or set me free. i believe i am dying. “RIP to everyone killed by the gods for their hubris but im different. and better. maybe even better than the gods.”
i confess i have been a cowardly twat - i will not even show myself to myself because then i might realize i am lying to everyone else for the sake of pleasing them.
i confess to many other things quietly and cowardly (see above): my temper, my judgment, my reactivity, my obsession with BUSY without actually doing, my desire to destroy anything that makes me grieve, and so on and so forth until the end of time.
(i am not christian. i apologize if this language has triggered religious trauma)
—
in my hollowed bleeding cavernous corpse my guts twitch and twist and beat with my heart raw and burning against the air. i wait to be filled up with love and light. its coming soon, i can see the fully realized 3D apple rotating in my head about it. soon. soon. i am sure it is soon.
—
i have been in consumer debt for 10 years. i was sued by a debt collector more than a year ago and i still think how much less shameful it could have been if they had just asked me nicely. it still rots a hole in me.
it’s alarming how many people in my life think i have even one thing together, im strong, im badass, whatever words they choose to put to it on a given day.
i want to shed my body into its parts and show them that i too am made up of skin and bone and an affirm account that will never be lent to again.
light a green candle for me. place a few coins. but i did get a job and a promotion and a raise and pay off this debt and that debt and another debt and got a car loan somehow and a new credit card and have been responsible. not that i wasn’t before, i was just a poor homeless teenager. a sticker of an axolotl below the radio in my new 2017 SUBURU OUTBACK IN PEARL WHITE says ITS TRULY AMAZING HOW FAR YOU’VE COME.
its truly amazing how far i have come.
—
i am in love with someone who is not who i am supposed to be in love with.
i joke that i am in love with everyone at some point but i am not. i am in love with one person, though admittedly the one person should be me and it is not.
i am embarassed by being in love, but simultaneously will tell you that love is the answer. it is the only freedom, freer than the air we breathe. not 4 me tho. because somewhere in my core i believe it is silly and for teenaged girls (team get Bella a therapist in hindsight, someone help her for god’s sake).
i feel guilt circa Rihanna’s Unfaithful despite the feelings staying limited to my head at all times. just a poly girl in a monog world. i may correct this some day, but i am too meek today to ask my partner why he must own me, and so cruelly. my staying is unfair, i know.
and so is the cost of rent for a single woman escaping romantic financial prison.
oh how lowly i can be.
so i eat my thoughts, as i always have.
—
or the fire does.
in the fire’s belly, these words are gone to the forces beyond. into the moon with her lemon peel afloat, the stars drawn down as witches do…
i’ve set a funeral in motion. the gods can’t kill me.
i will be brave.
i will muster the energy.
i will cultivate love, with a glass window to the chest so you can watch and hold me accountable.
one must not beg for forgiveness - i will spit and spit and spit out the poison myself. fill my sore mouth with flowers for myself.
atone. atone.
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