It’s more convenient to look at the mess and point at a different person. Ask them to clean it up, pick up the pieces, probably even scrutinize the way they fix it. Laugh at mistakes, spit out harsh comments as everything crumbles back into a mess.
In my 25 years, I’ve broken a lot of pencils. Newly-sharpened ones only last for mere minutes for I etch every word deep, as if paper is my skin, the pencil a blade holding all the pain.
There’s something utterly melancholic about pencil shavings and broken points. The former describes all the attempts I did dressing-up as some(thing)one new. The latter the moments I thought meaning can be measured with crescent smiles and saxophone sunsets.
As if a new life can be lived in, while the other life stays the same also. Two universes in parallel strings of existence and I’m there to see both.
I strive to make points while constructing frail sentences, but I never reach it. Syntax blockaded all meaning. The undo button was non-existent.
When I walk on crowded city streets, I feel sure that I’m tracing linear points in an infinite plane of hopes and dreams. Then later on find out that infinity highlights urgency but diminishes certainty. The way weather patterns dance across a geography, and we all fail to predict. The sun shines with its middle finger pointed at my rainproof self.
I bring umbrellas on sunny days, a raincoat in summer. Meanwhile, my shoes are faulty inventions in the might of city floods.
I remember trying to make sense. I smoked all the cigarettes in the world and strolled the university on foot, thinking about theory and philosophy, wondering if windows will open. I reach out hands like a drowning man calling for help, but the moment someone was there ready to grab hold of me, I amputate my own hand and let the depths suck me in.
When I wanted to get married, my family told me I completely missed the point. My grandparents said the same when I started asking about my father’s other family. I look at my son and tell myself that I never needed to get the point.
A granite fragment remained in my heart. Each beat a reminder of its presence.
My fingers have become familiar to the texture of sharp fragments, broken shards. I refuse to wear gloves and prefer to reconstruct bare. They say with hemostasis, the skin learns to toughen itself. If only the same applies to soul, then these tears would probably stop.
It’s okay to be broken, because there’s always repair. But if brokenness becomes frequent, how long before it becomes abuse? I never learned to forgive anybody else, let alone myself. I stare at mirrors and imagine a sledgehammer in my hand. There’s a desire to break, but the act of picking up the pieces tires me.
I’m too sore to cry. I’m sick of sharpening all these pencils pretending there are points. I laughed at the world while the abyss stared at me with bloodshot eyes, shaking its head lightly.
I sweep up the mess and tell myself they’re gone. My wife told me she forgives but how can I be sure? How do you feel forgiveness? How do you feel you are forgiven? How do you forgive?
*Title is inspired by the song by Frankie Cosmos
