yesterday sunny, will, pat, and i played a game in music theory. we made up a story from our super simple music sequence of two measures in 4/4 time consisting of eight quarter notes. (it was about a woman looking out an apartment [.... but maybe it was just me who saw it taking place in an apartment?] window in the rain as a car [...i pictured it as a cab] pulled away from a puddle laden curb.)
for homework we had to write another sequence. after i wrote mine i tried playing it on the acoustic. it was weird because i knew how i wanted it to hear, but i wasn't entirely able to work out the roman numerals.
anyways, afterwards i sat down and tried to write what it was supposed to be about.
speechless, skinless, spineless, i watched my world disappear as though sucked through the cylindrical chutes of a high powered vacuum. Mercilessly picked at scabs now left large open wounds tainted a deep velvety crimson. i had promised myself to never again feel my fingernails scratching slightly beneath the outermost surface... that final slight tug that causes the vessels to redirect their flow, pummeling the thick blue liquid with oxygen, a rerouted escape from the confines of an unrecognizable image. powerless against its forceful, unafraid trek across uncharted oceans, the sleeve of my favorite denim jacket lightly brushed the opened skin, the revealed inadequacies, the terrible habit. usually i curse myself and solemnly swear to never again interfere with the work of the healing process; too many imperfections, stains, scars arleady. usually i frantically scurry for a tissue, a bandage, a cloth - anything to stop the flow (the flaw), form a barrier, hide the habit.
not this time. like everything else from that moment - that moment when you left, that moment when my present became my past, that moment when you became nothing more than a mere memory - the pain was different. i held back tears and i held back words and i held back the urge to pleadingly follow you, but i could not stop the inevitable surfacing of the blood. numb to its pain, i closely examined - through my dry, unsalty eyes and dark lashes - its steady spread in the tightly woven threads of the old cloth, seeming concentric circles of my cells, the perfection of the pattern. (the perfection of my imperfection.) in the least masochistic manner, i sought comfort in its steadfast course. i made no false promise to not nonchalantly pick apart the thin, easily torn layer of temporary skin that i knew would soon be the former's replacement. truth be told i didn't even mind the stain ("dry clean only").
when i see it today, my mind is flooded like the denim's threads, inundated with picked-at memories of you and your similar false promises. and somehow you valiantly return each time i poorly, halfheartedly attempt to break you into microscopic patterned pieces to examine more closely; pick you apart.
i try to cover up the jacket's blot (the reds and blues have mixed, nearly almost faded, a deep purple today), but i wear the scar like a badge.