Posted on by Allison Marie Conway

The Bad Thing

It can’t just be simple, right. Everything has to be sharp edges and jitters unless it’s knocking you out entirely. It’s the feeling that’s the matter and there’s no way around the feeling because you are only human and to be human is to ache. This we know. And yet we fight it with everything we can figure out to give us any kind of relief from the pain.

Taking a bunch of assorted wildflowers into my arms, I attempt to feel happy about their lovely wild purples, blues, yellows, and greens, even though underneath the skin my insides are as pushy as dark oceans in the midst of a violent storm. It’s like that some days, I guess. I pay the old man at the check-out register in cash. I muster half a smile and he does not bother with any at all. The heat is murderous as it soaks his filthy white shirt.

On the walk back to my place, I peer up into the hazy light blue sky, watch the thin fuzzy outline of a few stray gulls hovering on a pale summer breeze. Everything is too bright but the clouds are soft like a whisper thin linen, unfolding for miles and miles into the endless horizon. It is a strange existence when you can’t unthread the loneliness from the rest. When you carry the hurts of the entire world in the middle of your chest. It is a heaviness which seems to increase its burden around the sunniest part of the afternoon.

Into the cool of darkness. I slip the key in the lock and pull the blinds to nearly shut. I should take water but I take wine, walk to the center of the smallest room, lay the flowers on my bed, and run my hands over the spines of the many, many books which line the shelves. We are little shells of hollowed out soft-bodied creatures. We don’t know what we need so we try to act as though we know which void to fill. More is more and more is never enough.

Bring me your words, pour into me your thoughts, that I may break free of mine for just a while. We are nothing in the end but punctured, salted evaporations. Bittersweet desire and the way she curls her melancholy fingers around your heart. Begs to take you far away from home and you almost believe her because the tethers inside are loosening up, coming undone, undone, undone. It isn’t that you do the bad thing. It’s just that something in you which pulses with need is constantly aware that the bad thing knows exactly what it loves most about you.

24 Replies to “The Bad Thing”

  4. My dearest Allison Marie Conway😩❤️. I can’t get over your usage of language!! I was listening to your poems today and hey, nodding at the way you use words was not enough, I ended up feeling colour fill my cheeks…
    You are so damn good with words and I like this, “and to be human is to ache.”😍

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply
  7. Pingback: The Bad Thing

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