#8 I WRITE SINS NOT TRAGEDIES

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Why didn't you die?

They all laugh, and my Love lays his head on my lap, just like the first time I wanted to say I love you, before the trouble. He falls asleep easily while I comb his hair with my fingers. My body aches and someone has taken away my eyes. The shadows get inside my shoes. My Friend also sleeps and I caress her hair lovingly. Suddenly, I am a mother with two babies and I feel utter despair.
My Love's Friends play music, drive, try to decipher the map and laugh at the sleepers. It's a long road to the beach. It is warm. I have to take off my long-sleeved jacket and go on just with my blue dress and my scars. My Friend knows them, but she sleeps. My Love knows some of them and I wonder, did he see the others last night? But he sleeps too. And his Friends don't sleep and they talk to me and they watch and will they ask?
We stop for breakfast. I put the jacket back on and watch my shadows float and dance and get inside a square building and stand on one toe and then on another and then on the one toe again, because everybody is walking around instead of focusing on breakfast and if they don't I don't and will they have a croissant or a muffin or should I have only a cappuccino? Fuck. I know I should have only coffee, that is, I should eat, I should have food and be healthy and that's what they'd like, good girl. But I'd like no food, only I crave muffins, and everyone is still just wandering not looking at the coffee sign. My shadows are getting sick and wild.

We get back inside the car and I don't let my Love or my Friend lie on my lap or even rest their heads on my shoulders. It's all bone anyway. I press my face against my Love's face, I rub like cats do. Then I rest my head on my Friend's legs and I grip her knees furiously, scratching deeper and deeper as I begin to cry.

Who do I love and is my love real and am I real and will this ever stop. The tears, they never stop. I'm sorry, Mother. You lied again. Even in this one good memory of you being honest with me, you lied. The tears never stop, they never dry up, I never run out of tears.
I let some moments pass. I have to laugh at my own innocence. How did I not predict this? I, who read hands and the Tarot and the stars and the insides of a teddy bear if they had ever asked me to do something so original, but they never ask. How could I not foretell that they would betray me and fall in love and treat me as their child and refuse to understand and stare at me with pitying eyes? My Friend, my Love. But then I did not foretell that my Love would be my Love again after the months and the scars and the boys and the girls and everything that is not quite buried because it stopped only a week ago. I did not foretell, did I? But again I have my Love, but do I?
Please stop me
Please stop me from thinking like this. Please stop me from being like this. Please stop me from being the monster the creature the panic the blood. Please stop me from looking at them. Please stop me from doing them harm. Please take me away make me disappear burn me with the sun and the sand. Please kill me. Please stop me.
I am the monster and I have come to eat you all alive.