dyne7
03-05-2012, 01:04 AM
Matricide
I was something else when I was young. I hated you,
thought the only way to get rid of you would
be to have a blood transfusion and funnel you
away from me. That’s how much I hated you.
So much so, that I would have thrown myself
from the highest bridge I could find,
my body like a Monet painting coming apart,
the image saturated by the sun. There was a
calling I would have wanted to answer. I felt so much
shame then, the color blooming in my cheeks,
I swore that I could see God throw the daylight
over his shoulders like a sack, convinced that he
stared at my face, horrified at my delirium. It was
times like these that I wanted to die. So many
astonishing ways this could be done. But none of them
good enough—elegant enough. The elegance
was important. Mom, listen to me. Let your skin
stiffen at what I have to say. Psychosis wracks the
ghost body, the vessel used in dream. What can I
say to defend myself? That when I rise every day, I
feel like the Vitruvian Man? That I hunker down,
restrained like the wrecked seraphim of my youth,
wild and gnashing, wild and gnashing…
Over time, the wings train themselves to unfurl, the
heartbeat slows to a crawl, and the head of the beast
lies heavy in the palms of the one ready to tell it
beautiful lies before it is put down. Even the
brute must know tenderness before it
dies. Somewhere, your hands caress and
careen over my neck, and everything is
as it should be. The Romans had a name for this in Latin—
mater they would say. Being a mother means doing
terrible things. Trust me, I know. So does being a
son. And I now know the only elegant way to
die is to be beaten, and beaten, and beaten into
pigment, like Nero attacking his mother, eyes
bloodshot, focused on the early pleasure of her
milk, something unforgivable calling him
to do this, the worn caliga on his foot
drenched, somehow, in the only thing we know.
I was something else when I was young. I hated you,
thought the only way to get rid of you would
be to have a blood transfusion and funnel you
away from me. That’s how much I hated you.
So much so, that I would have thrown myself
from the highest bridge I could find,
my body like a Monet painting coming apart,
the image saturated by the sun. There was a
calling I would have wanted to answer. I felt so much
shame then, the color blooming in my cheeks,
I swore that I could see God throw the daylight
over his shoulders like a sack, convinced that he
stared at my face, horrified at my delirium. It was
times like these that I wanted to die. So many
astonishing ways this could be done. But none of them
good enough—elegant enough. The elegance
was important. Mom, listen to me. Let your skin
stiffen at what I have to say. Psychosis wracks the
ghost body, the vessel used in dream. What can I
say to defend myself? That when I rise every day, I
feel like the Vitruvian Man? That I hunker down,
restrained like the wrecked seraphim of my youth,
wild and gnashing, wild and gnashing…
Over time, the wings train themselves to unfurl, the
heartbeat slows to a crawl, and the head of the beast
lies heavy in the palms of the one ready to tell it
beautiful lies before it is put down. Even the
brute must know tenderness before it
dies. Somewhere, your hands caress and
careen over my neck, and everything is
as it should be. The Romans had a name for this in Latin—
mater they would say. Being a mother means doing
terrible things. Trust me, I know. So does being a
son. And I now know the only elegant way to
die is to be beaten, and beaten, and beaten into
pigment, like Nero attacking his mother, eyes
bloodshot, focused on the early pleasure of her
milk, something unforgivable calling him
to do this, the worn caliga on his foot
drenched, somehow, in the only thing we know.