Kat's Kradle

Garages seem to be the place where all the excess from life collects and settles. They start out sparse and neat. A few tools hanging in orderly rows on their hooks, a lawn mower, some cleaning supplies, some boxes of this and that that you’ll get around to unpacking one weekend or another. But those weekends slip by and the boxes sag with age. Eventually you never open them for fear of disturbing whatever ecosystem has taken up residence in them. Your interests change and more things pile up. An easel from when you thought you’d take up painting. Terracotta pots and soil and spades from when you replaced the painting with gardening (oh it would be so nice to grow your own vegetables, you thought). A bike and helmet from your fitness craze. Those you regret every time you see them. The cobwebs strung across the spokes and the dust caking the handle grips make you vow silently to start biking again next week. But then next week never seems to come.

More tools and supplies from when the car, the roof, the pipes, the porch railing, the shower tiles, the sink, the hinges all needed fixing or patching or some sort of mending with your amateur hands. The shelves go up so you don’t feel like such a packrat. Your parents ask your help when they move to a quaint little place by the lake. Sixty years young is the perfect time to take up boating. You come back with some childhood things you can’t bear to part with. A telescope, a dollhouse, some action figures still mint in the box. They might be worth some money, but you never sell. Your children’s things go on the shelves next to yours when they grow out of them. Eventually you have to strategically rearrange all the stuff that’s found a home in your garage so you don’t hit it with the car. Sometimes it occurs to you that a garage sale might be a good idea. But that’s a job for tomorrow. You put that on the shelf as well with all the other tomorrows and yesterdays that found their way to here.

katskradlexx:

He wasn’t like I expected—some horned, red monster with forked tongue and tail. He was slick and clean, a tall, thin man in a smart, black suit. Blue pinstripes and silk pocket square, blonde hair slicked back with gel. Every bit the picture of a sharp businessman. You would never guess who he was until you got to his eyes, an unnaturally light, almost white, pale blue color that made you not want to look directly at them. He walked in with immaculate posture, three identical men following close behind, squat and olive-skinned with straight black hair. He sat at the head of the table, his associates taking three seats across from me. They folded their hands on the tabletop and I saw the only thing that differentiated one from the other: a dragon tattoo split into thirds on each of their left hands. Tail, body, and snarling head. 

He cleared his throat and extended a hand for me to shake. “Mr. Spiller, a pleasure to finally sit down with you.” He flashed a bright white smile at me while I eyed his hand warily. I nodded in acknowledgment and he withdrew his hand with a little chuckle.

“Nothing personal,” I said in apology. 

“Oh, I know. Nobody ever wants to shake hands with me. Though, I assure you, Mr. Spiller, that until an agreement is on the table, you have no reason to be cautious.” He grinned again, but I couldn’t find it in me to return the gesture. A moment passed and his smile was gone, all business again. He exchanged a look with the triplet closest to him and a leather briefcase with expensive-looking silver accents was placed on top of the table, even though I was sure I hadn’t seen any of them come in with it. 

He pulled it towards him and sighed, running his finger along the seam. “Mr. Spiller,” he began. “Mr Spiller, I’d like to think of myself as a reasonable man. Logical, rational. Everybody wants something, and it’s been my experience that people simply use others to achieve their own ends.” He frowned for a moment, a little crease forming between his brows as he stared at the briefcase before focusing his unsettling, blank gaze on me. “So I think you understand, then, that this situation… piques my interest,” he said.

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He wasn’t like I expected—some horned, red monster with forked tongue and tail. He was slick and clean, a tall, thin man in a smart, black suit. Blue pinstripes and silk pocket square, blonde hair slicked back with gel. Every bit the picture of a sharp businessman. You would never guess who he was until you got to his eyes, an unnaturally light, almost white, pale blue color that made you not want to look directly at them. He walked in with immaculate posture, three identical men following close behind, squat and olive-skinned with straight black hair. He sat at the head of the table, his associates taking three seats across from me. They folded their hands on the tabletop and I saw the only thing that differentiated one from the other: a dragon tattoo split into thirds on each of their left hands. Tail, body, and snarling head. 

He cleared his throat and extended a hand for me to shake. “Mr. Spiller, a pleasure to finally sit down with you.” He flashed a bright white smile at me while I eyed his hand warily. I nodded in acknowledgment and he withdrew his hand with a little chuckle.

“Nothing personal,” I said in apology. 

“Oh, I know. Nobody ever wants to shake hands with me. Though, I assure you, Mr. Spiller, that until an agreement is on the table, you have no reason to be cautious.” He grinned again, but I couldn’t find it in me to return the gesture. A moment passed and his smile was gone, all business again. He exchanged a look with the triplet closest to him and a leather briefcase with expensive-looking silver accents was placed on top of the table, even though I was sure I hadn’t seen any of them come in with it. 

He pulled it towards him and sighed, running his finger along the seam. “Mr. Spiller,” he began. “Mr Spiller, I’d like to think of myself as a reasonable man. Logical, rational. Everybody wants something, and it’s been my experience that people simply use others to achieve their own ends.” He frowned for a moment, a little crease forming between his brows as he stared at the briefcase before focusing his unsettling, blank gaze on me. “So I think you understand, then, that this situation… piques my interest,” he said.

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I got addicted to that taste, sugary sweet on my tongue. The flavor that comes with tracing the words “I love you” over and over with your lips. Sometimes I said it just to say it, just because it had been too long since I knew the taste. Just a quick whisper and it was back again. I love you. I love you. I love you. Honey. I needed that hit. I said the words constantly until my lips were chapped, my tongue felt fuzzy with them. And each bit of sweetness melded into the other until I barely noticed it. So I had to say them more. And I said them until the sweet turned to bitter and I choked on it in the back of my throat. I still heard myself mumbling those desperate I love you’s, wanting it to feel like the first time when I savored it. And then I couldn’t taste anything at all.

I wake up with parched lips, stuck together at the corners with dried spit and gunk. Open them with a smack, a dry tongue and throat exposed to the air. Eyes sting from the light, body still aches from the night before, and I stare at the ceiling, stunned that this is another morning, stunned that I care enough to be stunned at all. Dirty sheets I haven’t changed in months and a bedspread that smells like urine. My joints pop and my skeleton sits up on the edge of the bed. My thighs are the size of toothpicks. My knees stick out. My skin’s ruined with bad tattoos I got from bets gone wrong and drunken decisions, cigarette burns and scrapes from stumbling, a few linear scars from when I wondered why people do that sort of thing and how it would feel. I think my teeth are rotting out of my head. I think my brain is rotting out of my head. All black and shriveled, I can feel it rattling around in there when I’m alone like this and not all distracted. This is how my mornings are before you call. Before you try to make me better. I smile for you even though I feel guilty looking at your face and knowing that I went back to my same old shit the night before, that I will again later tonight. For a little while, sometimes, you make me feel good. And damn I don’t deserve it. I don’t know why you don’t hate me as much as I do, but I really wish you did. 

katskradlexx:

Poetry,
I’m afraid,
is quite silly.
Let’s break up
perfectly good sentences
into
ridiculous
line breaks.

And don’t forget you must
bemoan your bleeding poet’s heart.
Be dramatic.
Slit your wrist and
let the paper soak up your emotions.
Hear your sorrow in
a lonely howling wind,
your anger in
the rip-roaring scream of a tornado.
The tweet tweet of a bird
will symbolize your happiness
or maybe your imminent downfall.
Never say anything outright.
Always drown it in metaphors and imagery.
Today you felt like roiling seas and
pulverized shells
and the forlorn calls of seagulls.
Perhaps the smell of sewage in the air.
O your destitute soul!

A good rule of thumb,
I always say,
is to assign meaning to things
that are utterly meaningless.
You, the clever poet,
you will always see things in a broader scope.
That vase you knocked off the table
with your elbow while eating Cheetos
is not just the result of carelessness.
No.
That vase is your hopes and dreams
in pieces at your feet.
Your elbow is how your mother pushed you
to be a lawyer of all things
though words sang in your heart.
Misunderstood, you poor thing,
from a tender, early age.
A flower squashed before it’s had the chance to bloom.
A disease cured before it could infect the masses.
I could fill oceans with
the tears I shed for you.

Always shun the temptation
to rhyme in alternating lines.
It’s too much aggravation
so it’s best that you decline…s.
You’ll end up saying silly things
for the sake of being catchy
like “All I wanted were some shoestrings
But the man, he was Apache.”
And then you look back and you see
that nothing makes any sense
but it is so cloyingly twee
you’ll come up with some pretense.

Oh and don’t neglect your structure.
Because line breaks

just

         aren’t

e   n   o   u   g   h

It’s
     ///best
to\
make people wonder
                               why?
Make yourself
                       hard
                to
 decipher
Because you are
-=indeed=-
too
c
  o
m
  p
l
  e
x
to write in anything less
than secret codes
that only the
worthy
readers will
even come close
to understanding, right?

Above all, know that you are special.
You and you alone are the master of the pen.
Other poets? Hacks.
Prose writers? Please.
They are poets that could never be.
You are the most tortured thing,
like that splinter you got in second grade.
That is true pain
that no one will ever get.
So you live your life in verse,
use your meter and your rhyme
to distinguish you from the crowd
and instead blend in
with everyone else who does that too.

I’m still pretty proud of this.

Best lit assignment ever.

katskradlexx:

I don’t remember where I went last night. I reckon the last thing I saw was light, and then I go blank. Nobody else knows either. I asked, you see. I asked and they said they didn’t know a thing. I hadn’t wished anyone sweet dreams, hadn’t kissed anyone goodnight. No late dinners or spontaneous midnight drives with friends. My bed was mussed in the morning, but it always is. Same clothes as the day before but no sign of ever having left the house. I wonder if I just ceased to be. Yes, I think that must be it. I popped out of existence for a bit and ended up suspended in an infinite space of nothing. Like a star or a planet just hanging there, hovering in a void and orbiting quietly around each other.

That’s a nice thought, isn’t it. To be able to be erased from reality for an hour or a day and then reappear as if you were never gone at all. I wonder if people ever suddenly find themselves on the side of a road or in the lobby of the building or the seat of a bus with no idea how they got there. Or something small like when you think you’ve nodded off for a moment without realizing. The faces of missing persons staring down at you from fliers, the abandoned cars and houses rotting away in fields. Crazies in tinfoil hats will give you stories of alien abductions or government conspiracies, but it’s so much simpler than that. They’ve just left. They’re Nowhere for a little while, but don’t worry. Don’t panic. Seconds or years from now they’ll be right back.

katskradlexx:

She’s pale and blue. Something out of the sea. Veins like a tattoo criss-crossing under her skin, transparent for your convenience. To make her soft spots easy to pinpoint, her buttons easy to push. Here in the crease of the elbow and there at the hollow of her throat, just behind her knee and the inside her of her thigh. A quick slice and the blue would spill out to red and her flesh would be empty and colorless. Shadows highlight her bones. The knots of her spine and the shape of her ribcage clearly defined so you can’t miss them when you strike. Hit them just right and they’ll shatter on impact. She’ll crumble at your feet, contorted into the new shape you made for her. She will not cry. She will not moan. She will simply break. Before you do it, she will ask you politely to please not hurt her. She will look at you with that request in her eyes and nothing more, standing before you open and vulnerable to whatever you decide. Utterly defenseless. You know how to hurt her—it’s the easiest thing. Now don’t. 

She’s pale and blue. Something out of the sea. Veins like a tattoo criss-crossing under her skin, transparent for your convenience. To make her soft spots easy to pinpoint, her buttons easy to push. Here in the crease of the elbow and there at the hollow of her throat, just behind her knee and the inside her of her thigh. A quick slice and the blue would spill out to red and her flesh would be empty and colorless. Shadows highlight her bones. The knots of her spine and the shape of her ribcage clearly defined so you can’t miss them when you strike. Hit them just right and they’ll shatter on impact. She’ll crumble at your feet, contorted into the new shape you made for her. She will not cry. She will not moan. She will simply break. Before you do it, she will ask you politely to please not hurt her. She will look at you with that request in her eyes and nothing more, standing before you open and vulnerable to whatever you decide. Utterly defenseless. You know how to hurt her—it’s the easiest thing. Now don’t. 

We grew roots

Winding deep into the ground

Anchoring ourselves to the Earth

Twisted around each other

A thick trunk beneath the canopy

You were the leaves

And I the flowers

Both unfurling

And drinking in the sun

The seasons brought us to our peak

And withered us away

But still we persisted

Sprang to life again with new buds

A tender sapling

To something eternal

And we were a permanent fixture in the world.

You can spot them easily on a bus or at a restaurant. The gray, lifeless couple sitting together. Tired. Immeasurably tired. It shows in their faces, their eyes, too worn out to even be sad anymore. These are the people who got lost along the way, whose threads got so tangle that, after a while, they simply no longer had the energy it took to free themselves. Now they are stuck together out of circumstance rather than love. Stuck together because it would he such a waste to have all those years with each other amount to nothing. They give each other smiles that don’t reach their eyes, listen to each other’s accounts of the day out of boredom and obligation. Sometimes they go on dates, following advice from magazines on “how to keep the spark alive”. The food is tasteless; the chatter from happy couples, annoying. They don’t have sex anymore. At night she reads her murder mysteries and he watches civil war specials on television. Every now and then they share a goodnight kiss, but it’s a peck at best, tight and quick. Routine. They sleep with their backs to each other, the oceans between them so expansive that there’s barely enough room for them to stay on the bed. Neither of them mind. They are numb shells of people who can barely remember a time when they weren’t. They will tell you that all relationships end this way, that it’s simply life taking it’s course. You run when they say that. Run far and fast, because they are toxic people always trying to poison others with their misery. Don’t believe the lie. Run to a lover’s arms and take refuge. Know that this never has to die.

katskradlexx:

Spring in Georgia has a very old southern atmosphere to it. The air is heavy with heat and humidity, just shy of the crushing weight of summer. Pink and white and purple blossoms bloom against a background of bright green and a dusting of yellow pollen. Twisting kudzu vines once again creep along the tree trunks, strangling them quietly while bees busy themselves with finding the dewy nectar nestled between delicate flower petals. Things never seem too vibrant here, though. Barren patches of sand and clay between lush grasses remind you where you are, and you can’t help but get the impression that you’re looking at an old photograph. Like you’re seeing the world through a subtle filter that makes the colors warmer, softer. Come here in the late afternoon and the tone of the light would put you right to sleep. Not too much of a stretch to imagine ladies in hoop skirts and white gloves taking tea in stuffy parlors, gossiping with sweet southern accents. This is a place where things never change. Every piece of a southern spring is a silken thread in vintage lace.