Fragments, or diaries, or poems, or prayers
Rae Wayland
December 11
Do you remember when I sat on your lap and sang along to my favorite song and you cried and wouldn’t tell me why? I start so many of my poems with “remember”. I say it like a plea, a proposal, a begging. Remember so that I don’t have to do it alone. On my worst days, I walk around my old neighborhood. Check if the gate is locked, if the light is on through the glass doors. I think about buying a pack of cigarettes and smoking them so that I become something you crave. You don’t love me anymore and I have a hard time remembering that.
November 14
I see my mother when I scrub the sink or feel irrationally angry while I sweep the floor.
Setting the table, cutting my hair.
Dropping glass and fearing the sound it would make when it hit the floor,
Hearing my name outside the door, once calmly, the second time harsh. The quiet was safe.
I wonder what you would say to me now. If we could be soft to each other. I could be soft to you.
I reread my diary and remember exactly how it all felt. How it still feels most of the time. Do you remember crying in my bed, asking me not to go? It wasn’t the same when I came back. We both knew that. We both expected it.
You said something cruel and did something strange and now everything is very hard again.
Have you seen what I’ve done since? The cat’s older. The bed’s colder. I don’t need anyone but I still think of you when I whisk my eggs in the morning.
Nothing is about you but everything is about you at the same time. Don’t hold this against me. You can’t use this against me.
December 16
You, holding your weight up above me, kissing me while you look down. I scoff and tell you I’m emotionally unavailable and you say you know. I didn’t mean it like that. Learning and accepting my cruelties towards you is something that feels like it never ends.
I tell you over and over again that I burned that bridge so I could never go back. If it weren’t left in ashes then I would have found my way across again. You kiss the tip of my nose and tell me that ash is good for soil. Something new will grow there. We are making way for good blooms.
I’m carving hugs and kisses into my skin with a seam ripper and holding my small small cat in my arms. These things leave scars. Remember when the sun stayed out all night and I complained incessantly about the heat? I’m sorry about that. You know I was angry and it was easier to say it was too hot than to say you hurt me in a way I’m afraid I’ll never recover from. I was exhausted and the bed was always too warm with the both of us in it together.
September 6
The first time I went to Southern California, it rained for three days. Maybe that should have been a sign I shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t go back. But the mountains made me cry and I wanted to be loved so I stayed but now I can never go back. In so many ways, I can never go back. I’ve got a jay-walking ticket and too many people say my old name like it puts a bad taste in their mouth. There are so many people I can never look in the eyes again.
I cry harder than I’ve cried in months and talk about how I wish I could help you. I don’t think you are bad, or deserve punishment, or wish terrible things upon you. I tell my mother these things and she knows. Of course, she knows. And you knew but knowing is different than understanding. And you never understood.
I spent a summer in LA begging to be loved then I spent a summer in Chicago terrified to ever be loved again. I lay in my bed and I mourn you still but in a different way.
Everything is different now and we can never go back. There is no one waiting there anyway.
More than anything I am a writer. Or I’m a cunt, a depraved slut, really hard to deal with. Depending on who you ask. But I would tell you I’m a writer. Writing with no audience is proof that a tree does make a sound when it falls in the forest.
But I’m tired. I sleep so much and I’m still tired. I want it to be over, I want to hold someone else’s hand and have it feel right. I keep trying to force it to feel right because I’m terrified no one will ever love me again. I am cold and harsh and often don’t have anything to say and I am so, so scared. You were scared too. Are you still scared? Please let me go.
I hate strange half hugs with men taller than me and I don’t like when someone says they will call or come or go and then never do. I like laughing hard and in a way that is not flattering and I like men who I know can not care for me in the way I need them to. I like to leave my bed unmade but I like it even more when someone else makes it for me.
How do you ask for that?
Isn’t it strange how much time has passed?
August 17
If you asked me how I spent my summer I would say this:
I cut my hair once and then again. I moved once and then again. For a while, I was so manic I could feel my bones vibrating and for a while I didn’t sleep until I did again. And then I slept a lot. I downloaded all the dating apps and deleted all of the dating apps and then downloaded them again. I have matched with a nineteen-year-old named Ben three times and I’ve ghosted him three times. I contemplated karma and repented in an attempt to resolve some of my guilt but I feel just as heavy as I did when the summer started. I changed my name and my address and hoped that would change the parts inside of me that I don’t like but they’re still here, just with new initials and a different mailbox. I said lots of things I shouldn’t have said. I laughed till I cried and I cried till I threw up. I wrote so much and then not at all. I am a spout or a desert. I spent my time missing you terribly or cursing your name. I spent the summer making sure I was not where you left me and it worked. You’ll never find me there again.
May 19
We took turns forgetting to pick each other up at the airport. Me because I overslept, you because you never really listened to what I said.
I think it is good to not expect anyone waiting for you at baggage claim. I have decided I like not feeling reliant on someone else. Being in love has always hurt. I’m tired of hurting so I will not take you to the airport and I will not be there when you come back. When I was a kid I lived at the bottom of a very long hill and when it would rain I always hoped my mom would be waiting for me at the top of the hill with a dry car and a place of refuge. I hoped for that in the same way I hoped you would change. But she was never there and you are a liar so I walk home soaked and sad. Sometimes sad is the best word. Sometimes that is all there is to say.
There is a group of boys on the 70 Austin bus and they are all wearing different shoes (all very typical of teenage boys) their feet are crossed and interlaced and they all laugh at the same thing.
I am thinking too much about my skeleton and the way my bones are digging into the bus seat. I understand my father.
Everything is beautiful and soft and hurts so bad that I am doubled over in pain. I swallowed one of my tooth gems and I nervously tapped my toes the whole time I was getting my blood drawn and I wished there was someone there to hold my hand.
I think the most unifying thing about humans is that we are heartbroken over something. I am heartbroken over every person I did not smile back at and every server I forgot to thank before I left the restaurant and every friend I did not love in the way they needed. Bigger things too, but so many little things. They weigh much heavier on my heart.
December 5
In my dream I hold your soft face in my hands like I am praying and you kiss me and I wake up with a pit in my stomach. It is easy to see you kindly in my dreams. You, the sound of people outside my window, a light in the kitchen. None of it matters or really means anything. It’s just a dream and I wake up and you disappoint me like you always have. Sometimes I mistake my alarm for a phone call from you. Sometimes I wake up freezing and wonder where you are. A lamp in my room, a counter in my kitchen, potatoes that I never bought. None of it’s real. Never could be either.
Rae Wayland is a chronically heartbroken, notes app poet from the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. She’s currently an art student in Chicago, where she spends most days making mediocre quilts and crying on the kitchen floor about things that happened 11 months ago.