The raw emotions of a woman

by Suzanne Steinberg

  I am the best one. We all hear that same voice that is so small and innocent that has grown to be ten feet tall that has taken on a name and an identity that claims reality even while we stand strong in our truth. It claims solid ground in a non-emotional world we can’t reach but we cling to in thought, as our foundation.

  And we stay frozen inside our houses as the rain pours through the roof. We watch our gadgets and photographs and cd collection drown against the walls of our closet in the back of our mind, we want to run to replace the memories and people, to replace the humanity that remains among our lined lives like the vase we borrowed 3 years ago, we want to keep our trinkets of thought ever so still to collect dust on the inside ourselves, in the winter that have been deeply frozen and untouchable. We want that, to keep something still as the water rises to drown us against the chaos, we want to remain inside the buried down dirt trapped in a corner somewhere so dry it has stuck there like glue. We want to be loved, we want to be needed, we want to be the one no one can walk away from, the irreplaceable you that is everywhere and everyone and everything, that neon container in a land fill that will never degrade, we just want that, that fixed stare in the dark that knows us, which can’t be shaken.

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  Society

  I am stuck inside of a monster searching its inner brain pulling at the threads, reaching at the tip of my toes to see through another pair of eyes, another set of I love you again, another human heart that lays on the table during a family meal that people keep sticking forks into. “I am trying,” say the hopeless even though real hope is constantly out of reach.

  Inside the broken down buttons of an old man’s coat is just another preoccupied thought, it sits narrowly on a finger like a rain drop and eventually it slip its way down a hand on its own path.

  “The horror of another freak show,” we cry like an empty sky for the sentimental wishes of desire that are absolutely imagined. The dark Tuesday when we thought our night vision and a thick lock would protect the thieves from stealing our transportation, out and in, in and out from this life into another. The inside out version as we climb up the flesh again, ontop of another one, a third one, a fifth one, until we lose count of who we were never supposed to forget, who our mothers preached about from encyclopedias of values and womanly responsibilities.

  We lose our minds into our hearts as we fit into the narrow doors that men have painted on the walls of the kitchen and the bedroom, and we sit there in the dark pretending they open to more than concrete as we dream about the other women, the women who have it harder than us, who killed themselves with the weapon of other people’s thoughts. We live like we are heroes in a story that is only an internal struggle and we die by constructive logic, criticism paved on superficial streets.

  There is more than just who what we think we are, as we are nothing but dust and skin, eyes that live in a telepathic universe talking to aliens and walled up strangers.

  “There is another world, inside the foundations we create our cities on,” say the monks who are waiting to die for the rewards of prayer. And we believe them as we sit with them, and wait for the ceiling that is crafted by guitar strings to finally come down and strangle what looks too much like authority, who looks to much like a solid group over-looking the individuals, who looks too much like harmony, and we wait buried underneath the music for unity within.

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  A boy I met with a superman notebook, who lost his family.

  You know me remember, we met during another life time, another human experience of what we used to know by heart, the life lessons of another soul whose reflections of roses and smiles remain in the puddles of our dreams as silhouetted heads watching us sleep. We are the reminder of entire life time together, don’t you remember? When you stepped on my toes and I felt as if I had lost a dream again, that whimsical thought that is catching air as we speak, drifting father and father away on the breath of a Tuesday that we will one day forget? Do you remember when we barely spoke the news-week in your left hand, the loose change of another transaction slipping on your tongue as you waited behind me and yet it all changed already, the yesterdays have lost their hard edges as we count them down, moment; moment, trying to catch up to something in an imaginary land; we are chasing one thought into another again, running away and running towards like this colliding skin attached on a monster’s back. The broken down hero who has found comfort in the middle of another set of common day phrases.

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  Grains of salt

  My heart has a bit of a wall around it, will someone make themselves as small as a grain of salt and drip into my pores, become the film over my insights and fall into the raw gut bitterness that makes me circle around and around the same points on the floor like a dance toy that is broken, wrinkle up between the bones and push my heart back out again, and its drips will be caught by those who watch me, making shapes and animals as ink blots doctor's use to decipher someone's sanity, thankyou. That sticky red gooey guy has gotten stuck somewhere inside of me, afraid of the wild again.

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  Innocence

  Inside of one set of eyes is often another, watching you with a thick skin, pretending it knows, it remembers, the windows and mountains and dripping ocean that has been ripped apart so that its fish jump freely about without oxygen. It is the sour feeling of words and thought and air escaping our last breath of a name we can’t seem to recall, the distant gallop towards another lifetime where we were better once, without the worries fear and dark needs that society can’t understand. The broken hearted glance at a lover who won’t return but we call anyways to hear an old answering machine message or to see a green dot on a gmail account, we return like a lost cause, a drop of water inching ever so closer to a drain and the inner cliff. We wait there timid on the edge of reason and emotion, thinking of rainbows and puppy dogs and the joy of being submissive when we no longer have to take moral responsibility for the world at large again, up-righting and up-rooting the inner perspectives that have grown into us. Like day old bread we can crumble again, we can go back to not understanding life as children, when knowing it all could simply vanish like the grains of dirt.

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  Mindless chatter

  Other people’s eyes are quietly scattered all over my body like pin balls, watching moving circling the wisps of paper that have fallen down from the sky, and within me, are a million I’s they all claim to be right all of the time, the righter right version of a societal line we all causally pretend not to step on to avoid the marks it leaves. I am right claim the higher spiritual angelic perspective of force, forcing us forward into these glee full bodily functions of purpose, as we turn into the dust that rains, as we cover the land like purple rainbow thoughts of eachother yellow and green ribbons, dancing without a thought of money, without a thought of justice of consequence like that woman who is mad at me, because the men around her are belligerent and there is no other way to distance herself from the anger.

  There are people inside the niches of our minds, hovering quietly as they turn us into them, slowly with painted on masks and wardrobes crafted by hand, and we go with them, hand in hand, dancing around in circles singing the same songs they do, we go freely and easily as if there has never been a war, as if there was never a side to choose or a grudge or a deep and a sticky emotion or a profound thought, we go as if we are liquid turning into any shape the water lets us, and as we collide with this world of sunshine perfection, shiny and brand new, every face we give is adorable.

  But in the mist of violence and love we find in the pain there is no perfection, we find the lowest of the low places to be, the unwanted girl who is so submissive that men have destroyed her brain because they thought she was a toy and they thought her care was slutty, because she was so easily bendable and her will wasn’t on fire. Her brain didn’t speak ten different languages of I told you so, her heart was innocent and naive, and she was a horrible person for being that way, a witch in disguise,
a woman that was above them, so she was taken as a bird in a cage, and told to entertain others without the knowledge that all of their hearts had been tied like strings around her neck, that she could never untie, and she would strangle herself to death singing and entertaining and celebrating with others.

  And as others melted into the surface like oil and gold globing up the middle ground and the outer rims of hands squirming to get out from underneath, we hear the soft subtle crunch of a woman who is nowhere to be seen.

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  The inner voice

  What are we doing here, is the sound in the dark, a closed door or a shut voice, that is circling me over and over again. Like a finger drawn in the sand, like a beauty mark that will never go away no matter how it stretches. I am here yells a voice in the dark as we all reach for it, the mysterious eyes of owls who watch us, knowing us since we were 12 or 13, before we believed in miracles and logic, thinking life only changed once we got to be a year older. I am here, says all those who feel alone, they quietly whisper it to one another like they are in a prison with thin walls. I am here, reach for my hands, feel the passion against my beating heart as I run past you again.

  And in a race made for one is a woman, running in the same circle over and over again. And the man chasing her around watches casually as she double passes him with sweat, mud and struggle written on her face. Don’t try so hard, the man says grimacing to trip her, to be on the same level as her, to explain to her as he does to all women how easy sex can be, it is just two people talking, not one woman asking a million people to accept her. And he smiles lightly, reaching for her but knowing he will miss, always getting to be almost there, before she quietly sneaks somewhere else, under another rock in a stream that will evaporate one day. I am here he says as she begins to cry, stark in a black and white world where love has become a nasty word in seduction, used against the weak who don’t know self-preservation. I am too good for you she yells, wishing she wasn’t so out of breath so it would sound better. And the guy shyly smiled, if only I could hear he says, but I haven’t heard a word you have said in years, I am only watching you from afar. And in that dark moment she realizes she is stuck in this never ending loop, always searching for a reason to stop, and all that she can create are the wisps of wind as she passes others like the breath of kisses of an animal who is much larger and greater then it will ever realize.

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  Slipping on intimacy

  I see you, can’t you see me, staring through a thin plastic curtain whispering names of people who we used to know, as if we both see the same shade of yellow, as if we were machines with zeroes and ones and everything could be perfect somewhere, perfect in its language with all its dots and letters, and in-between spaces, with all its yes and no, coming with a timed sense of perfection. I want you, don’t you want me, come the whispers in-between us, come the hearsays and the gossip and the empty promises that return around again, like headless bugs. And we sit there unaware of ourselves smelling up the world with our half thoughts and attempts of conversation that go nowhere put to a strange laugh or a sneeze, or a bathroom pass. And we sit beginning to know life all over again, thinking it could all happen in a split second if we allowed it to, it could happen in five minutes if we pretend to skip over all our tragedies in simple conversation. And we lay there inside of one another, and it feels like luke warm water, hoping for an answer in the dark through a daily conversation about nothing, and we live bleeding but we deny it too easily for an ease of gossip or random passion, avoiding life like seeing our own facial expressions in a stream of water.

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  Hiding

  Inside of another jar of another soul are memories and words and magic thoughts that we all so easily pick up like Velcro, tying ourselves to our dreams through choices and actions, stereotypes. We live like we are children in a zoo of cages constantly searching for the impressions of footsteps of those who have ran away, searching for the worst words in a horrific situation, or the best forms of praise. We look forward to the nothingness of a blank, thinking it is work to write our story, create our words out of plaster from the molded faces of paid models. We think we can fight for a voice in a world of silent partners as we constantly find the easy way out that no one will notice. We are the soldiers of time, living in the after-thought of a monster and the pre-conceived idea of someone’s pain who hasn’t yet been born. Living in another time with a different set of backbones and situations that no one has heard of yet, beginning to find our voice in situations that could be juxtaposed into the right brain as wrong, so quickly with a thought, with a solid step in another direction, with a rain of tears, and in fear we run into the holes we can fit into, not aware of the alternatives, as we wait for the others. But as we sit there alone, shaking in this sweet spot of life, we find nothing but the bird’s eye view of the city we have escaped.

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  Games we play

  There are a million different ribbons inside of me all leading back to you, this strange little point shaped like a locked door, unhinged and inhibited with strange wooden lines. I want you say the strangers as they walk by this door way made for one. But none of them know me outside of the entanglements of sensitivities and outer beliefs that we carry on about, but we pretend anyways that it is enough, that laughter and joy and innocence can be the glue in a house instead of hard work and sacrifice, we pretend because that is what TV commercial’s imply we do. And we sit there me and this locked door and a million eyes, all expecting the small simple movement of a turn of the wrist to let them into this place within myself, that not even I can go. And I lie simply as we carry on a dance, telling them of fortunes and exterior political beliefs that I let lay on my tongue, the ones they teach as lofty principles in school, why hate can be viewed as love. And I cry as I explain the knives I have used to change my words so they are acceptable cascading over an untouchable place, over my naked body and vulnerable inner life, and we all seem to enjoy that a bit better, without the truth. A game of chasing mice and cheese into corners. I am in love with you, don’t you know, says someone casually as I glance away, wishing for a moment that words were curved instead of straightforward and I nod as if I am gambling on slots instead of bluffing, as if human bodies were weak in lust instead of powerful. And we both cascade over each other like the water does underneath waves. I am wrong I say secretly like the prisoners as they search for redemption in a new society where their food and lodging will always be paid for in return for constant submission. And I smile trying again the locked door in my mind, finding that I will always remain on the outside.

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  The women in waiting

  I am loved you know women say during coffee as they gossip about the reason the world rotates, or when it should stop and who is who when the night permits itself to change into dawn. And while they sit gossiping over a table, they remain always ready for adventure by buying dresses and shoes and beauty marks to become someone at another party with a different celebration around someone they haven’t been yet, someone perhaps they are not ready for, the person before the other person knew itself they would say in tag lines of adages to explain why they are the one who socially deserves the change the most, not the other women who have been captured in their parent’s homes, or worse in a societal dungeon. And they will ring true empowerment as they run over men, run towards them in desperation for another person they haven’t yet cocooned into yet, the bite of love that has tickled them to death in a bath-tub. The because I told you so that is why I am in love with you moments when men pretend they are kissing innocent non-agenda children who are submissive to their labyrinthine of emotions and career. She just smiles and does what I tell her to, they say in half spoken lies across locker rooms. I am here you know, the women say casually as they skim the water a man lays in, touching him with soft spoken words of faraway places that might peak his interest, lullabies to the insane as they sit in cubicles typing about the weather. I might be everything and
nothing, the women simply say picking the verbs and adages that sound nicer. And the men in their hindsight keep searching. And the women continue to watch them through windows of coffee shops waiting for the parties and celebration that never seem to come, wondering what makes a man strong, why are they never as gullible and frightened as they are.

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  Walls

  The sing song butterfly that comes around the sick and the hopeless as they pretend they understand one another again, as they dance in the streets and they act as if love was a mystery instead of circle, that five people constantly pass amongst themselves, the five people who are good enough. And the words we exchange sting as we dance along the moments in time, as we pray among the rhythm of a simple day that has stretched longer than it used to, but we remain beside one another, in this paradox of what we used to be but now what we can’t accept, what is forbidden and we walk on tip toes about it. And we talk as if we know love, but we don’t, we only know what other people have brought back from the books they have read and the conversations they have had with angels, but we pretend anyways to get closer, to find the common ground of so, so and okay, and half boredom in a holey temple. We want to pretend to know one another so well so when the ribbons come to tie us together to explain God or whoever or a servant that is brave, that it will explain why we loved one another on a strange day, when the wind had stopped moving and our only dreams were of paradise in a guilt stricken dead end, waiting for the walls to cave in.