“Can you keep a secret?” I whisper my question like a prayer into the open arms of the wind. Letting the words hang in the unending silence, I wriggle around in my spot by the window. It is an old, weathered thing, a patch work of glass. Remnants of generations gone by. I do not know what I am waiting for, it’s just me and my notebook. I do not know why I say it or when it even started, but, before I write in my journal, I ask it to keep my secrets. Ridiculous I know, but there is something comforting about it. Recently I have gotten into the habit of waking at midnight to write. The stars keep me company as I scribble my thoughts on paper. Glancing out the window I notice that the walls begin to creek as the wood from of the building bends with raging winds outside. The traitorous cracks in the window allow the biting air inside. A breeze kisses the cold into my cheek, sending shivers down my spine. My fingers are beyond numb, but I keep writing.
Date 18/03/2020
Sometimes I think in another life I was made of fire. Maybe I was an angle, or a phoenix. Last night I dreamt of burning. I was burning. From the inside out, I was burning, but I did not turn into ash. Beneath this skin, shrouded in flesh and sinew, is my soul. My soul, me. My incandescent soul that burns white hot. I transformed into a bird, a glorious firebird; a phoenix. I flew, unbound. I was free.
I saw the jagged scars run ragged up and down my mind. I do not think that they will ever fade with time, but then again, I am not entirely sure I want them to, because how would I ever know what I was made of if they had never broken me, sliced me open and exposed me? They ripped me open and stole my joy, or did it run away? I am not sure anymore. I sit here in the dark and struggle to glue my bravado and bravery back together. They were the first to go, after laughter and delight. Today was another day of silence. In this never ending void, I miss my wings.
Crushing unbearable silence, but like Atlas I endure it. I have to endure it.
-
“Can you keep a secret?” I mumble my mantra to myself; fingers were trembling with the effort it takes to hold the pen. Last night I stayed up till dawn, painting in the garage and dancing. My erratic limbs flailed in the air as I delivered brush stoke after brushstroke to the canvas. I still have marks on my arms and paint stuck in my nailbeds from it. Even after scrubbing away at them, they still will not come off. I suppose only time will reduce them to memory.
Date 01/04/2020
I think in another life I was an angel. I don’t exactly know why, but whenever I hold a paintbrush or a pen, I feel incandescent. Heavy with purpose and light of heart. As though this act of creation is the most sacred form of being. However, what people don’t know is that I am smoldering from the inside out. At night horror rips my eyelids open. I see a different world made of light so bright that it’s scalding. I am both interested and afraid.
Today someone complimented me on how “peacefully quiet” I was. The audacity. How could they ever assume such a thing? They saw a quiet girl minding her own business and assumed that it is peace; but they were wrong. They are wrong because there are times that I crave a chaos so wild and true that it seems almost irreverent to ever imagine that I could have been something ethereal. Angels did not crave chaos. What they do not know is that my quiet is that of a brewing storm, not the eye of a hurricane. However, the howling winds and biting words do not manifest themselves in my actions, they manifest in my mind. Metastasize into a beast that devours me. Half heaven, half hell. That is what they fear. That is what I love. That is what I am.
-
“Can you keep a secret?” I cry to myself. Not a battle cry but a desperate attempt to feel heard. I so badly want to be heard. I cautiously wipe away my tears, careful to keep them off the paper. I have ruined too many good things already; this will not be one of them.
Date 15/04/2020
If no one hears you, are you even alive? Today someone told me about the “the quiet joy of silence,” but they failed to see my withering need to be heard. The unending silence threatens to drown me. Every day I try my best to make conversation, but I forget I live in a house of wolves. They have only ever known savagery and irreverence. They move with the wind and dance in the sun. So, untethered to anything I often wonder who put me here? I am woman amongst a pack of wolves, and I don’t know who will win. In this battle between me and the beasts, it seems as though they are content to do nothing, but that same nothing threatens to crush me. I don’t know which is worse, the silence or the nothing. Time no long has any meaning, it never did. I know this now. Yet it wizzes by snatching the minutes from us. There is nothing I can do but watch as the mountains burn and then blossom, as wildfires wither into rainstorms.
I have always liked the rain. Today the meteorologist said that we should prepare for a hurricane, but we all know the truth. For the next few days it’ll just be grey skies and sheets of rain with some thunder. In all my life a hurricane has never hit this boot shaped island and it probably never will. Geographically speaking we were protected, so it is highly improbably. Nevertheless, I still sit in my bed and watch the lightning dance across the clouds. I watch in awe as the wind lashes against the window, bending the trees to her will, kicking up wreckage in the wake. I have always liked the rain, but I will always love the storm. Storms are incongruous to the stillness of nature. They yield to no one and nothing, but the madness of their aftermath excites me because I am a creator at heart and the fire in my blood will always win. This is my nature; my home.
-
“Can you keep a secret?” I murmur to the rising sun. Golden rays turn into a pale citrine light against my pale white walls. The weather-beaten blue panes of glass are so chipped and worn that they turn the gilded light sallow. I sit huddled in a blanket by my spot at the window as I watch the stars wink out, one by one, as they fade out with the rising dawn. With heavy eyelids that refuse to close, I bleed my thoughts onto the paper. My words congeal into sentences.
Date 29/04/2020
I haven’t slept in days and no one has noticed. There are some days where I don’t speak to anyone at all, and I can feel it smothering me. It’s like I am melting at the seams of this body. The pressure inside my chest is staring to build and I think one day I might explode, because unlike skin, they cannot see my battle scars that plague my heart. They cannot see my battle scars because they do not know me. They see a body and hear a voice but that is not me. They do not know what I look or sound like because the raw presence of me is too much for them. I know this because they themselves said as much when I tried to reveal who I was. I have bottled myself up in this body for so long that the burden of this existence begins to burn me. Loosening a breath, I wonder how does my chest feel both heavy and hollow in the same breath?
I think the wolves are afraid, but I don’t care. They are too busy, too annoyed, too oblivious to notice that my descent into madness has begun. This happens from time to time and I must admit that while I can crawl back to the light, it exhausts me to the point where I consider oblivion. I consider oblivion but that is far too permanent of a solution, because I would miss my art too much. Any goodbye whether it be today, tomorrow, or sixty years down the road would be too soon.
-
“Can you keep a secret?” I ask, suspicious that my voice will betray me and break into the heaving sobs that I’ve been holding back all day.
Date 13/06/2020
Last night I dreamt I was on fire. I was on fire. From the inside out, I was burning. Smoke threatening to choke me. I was a living flame and it scared me. Would I consume myself? Burn into ashes? What was I becoming? Smoke and flint surrounded me, and a thought lashed across my mind; did I light might self on fire? A haze of embers and graphite cover my skin and I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I begin to etch my fingers into the walls around me until I am nothing but dust.
From this dream I have concluded that I am an artist. At least I think I am an artist. I’ve been turning this thought around in my mind for the last week because I was too afraid to say it out loud. I guess this is as close as I’ll ever get. Yesterday my mother told me that I have self-destructive tendencies and my father told me I was loud and impatient, but they are wrong… destruction and urgency are just a side effect of creation. They snarled when I got paint all over my arms, but I smiled. I didn’t care that I wasn’t clean and impeccable, I knew I could never be such an infallible thing. Storm, wildfire, phoenix, angel, or human, I know that whatever I am, I must be an artist. With a paintbrush, pen, and palette in my hands I am unstoppable. The world in mine to shape.
A fatally flawed soul, created to create. I know this because I’ve spent a decade listening to the ache in my bones and I can feel it. I am a creator at heart, I must be, because I feel most alive when I draw. I am most in love with life when I paint. I don’t know what it is about the visual arts, but it sets my bones on fire and I like it.
-
“Can you keep a secret?” I mumble my mantra to myself, my fingers were trembling with the effort to hold the pen.
Date 27/06/2020
Today I told her that I was a storm. We got into another fight about nothing and I screamed my truth at her in an attempt to be heard. Not my finest hour but it was not hers either. I had the lines of this particular battle cry etched into my throat for weeks now. It has come to my realization that the illusion of people is far worse than being alone. At least when I am alone, I don’t feel the eyes of idle wolves debating if to lunge at me. Today I unleashed the poem that had been clawing its way up my vocal cords, ripping for the chance to be let loose. I gave my anger free reign and I do not regret an ounce of it.
I am a force to be reckoned with, wild and wicked and true; or better yet a volcano. Look at a volcano and its magma. Note how it turns mud into molten rock, water into mist, trees into ash. See, destruction is the immediate aftermath yes, but in the long term, it produces igneous rock; the beginnings of earth. This then erodes into sedimentary rock, only to merge with other rocks to form metamorphic rock, which will eventually become magma once more. I have decided that creation and destruction belong together, it is a cyclical nature. You cannot choose which to love because there cannot be one without the other. You cannot love my joy and hate my sorrow. Hate the sin, love the sinner. I am an all or nothing kind of person and I have come to the conclusion that I am a universe bottled inside a body.
-
“Can you keep a secret?” I ask, a conspirator’s grin plastered over my face. Today was a good day, and for fist time in a long while, I woke up smiling. The soft pattering of rain outside called my name. I heard it.
Date 07/07/2020
For the first time in forever, I slept through the night. Last night I dreamt I was fire, and for the first time it did not scare me. I was fire, but I was not burning. From the inside out, all I could see was flame and embers. I transformed into an angel of sorts. I was made of incandescent light, iridescent and bright. A living flame. I was a living flame, unbridled as I sored through the sky. I was chaos and creation incarnate, and I did not flinch away. I reveled in it.
Today I stared at the purplish, blue veins that pulsed under my wrists and wondered if you could ever touch a soul. I wondered for hours if anyone could ever see mine and not flinch away at the sight of it, because beneath this skin, shrouded in flesh and sinew, is my soul. My soul, me. My incandescent soul that burns brilliant. I am a creator at heart, I must be. There is no other explanation. Drawing and painting sets my bones on fire and I like it. I let the revelation nestle into my chest at night, and I feel the jagged edges of that darkness brush against me, but I know it cannot hurt me, because it is mine to wield. I am an artist. I am the maker of my mind. I am a creator at heart.
