I Don't Know Who I Am

[ry0un0suke]

. . .

I cannot will the words out of my throat. Regretful eternally for my foolishness. No person in their right mind should look at me and see wisdom. I am not wise. Ask nothing of me, hope nothing of me, expect nothing of me,

. . .

I have no confidence

in myself

or my abilities.

I have no abilities.

Whatever people think they see

are false images painted by their mind's eye.

Subscribing something to me

which is untrue.

Say one thing,

while I wholeheartedly believe another,

as if in constant conflict

attempting to prove me wrong.

I am not wise

and never said I was.

But I must pretend

because people say I am.

And it is getting worse

by the day.

The colors are bright

in my trial.

The sounds are loud

in my hunt.

The feelings

tear me to shreds from the inside.

I cannot lie to you

even if I want to so badly.

I feel great and for every second I do,

I cannot bear the excruciating pain

on my spirit.

Make it go away.

[ry0un0suke]

. . .

at my limit already, one turn, two? enduring, enduring well. strong, i am, i promise. strong, very strong. i cannot trust anyone. why? i'll let them down, so i'm strong. i cannot rely on you all of the time. i'm strong, i promise. i can handle it. i can handle anything; nothing is impossible, just difficult. you told me this- i'm sorry. i'm incapable, it's showing. i'm no better, i never improved. i'll never improve.

. . .

your attitude,

your need for others,

your craving of attention,

your scrutiny,

your envy,

your inability,

your stupidity,

your clumsiness,

your refusal,

i am determined to hate

everything about you.

your hair,

your smile,

your courage,

your curiosity,

your dedication,

your imagination,

your devotion,

your commitment,

your failures,

your successes,

your accomplishments,

your beauty,

i am determined

to find out

why anyone

loves anything

about you.

[ry0un0suke]

. . .

And it is of my making,

born from my hands

that are incapable

of reaching out.

No longer do I

have energy to plea.

No longer do I

have energy to pretend.

In the dark

I will fall

and never rise

because I know

I am not strong,

I am not wise.

I am determined

to fulfill my own failure

because why dedicate myself

to my success?

I'm scared.

.

.

.

.

I am scared and no one sees.

I am scared and no one understands.

I am scared and it is confusing,

not compelling,

I am no mystery.

I'm nothing.

I should not ask for help.

I should not ask questions.

I should not be confused.

.

.

.

.

What are you doing?

"Nothing."

Why?

"I don't know."

Do something.

"There's nothing to do."

Why?

"No one likes me."

Why?

"Because I hate me."

Why?

". . ."

Why?

". . ."

Why?

.

.

.

everything is alright

i am managing well

nothing is out of the ordinary

. . .

[ry0un0suke]

. . .
I don't know why I feel the way I do. I've come to a few conclusions that it may be best to not talk about my feelings at all. After all I typically do not feel better and it is often misunderstood. So I have been expressing myself in other ways and sitting in Her presence and sitting in silence. At the very least I do not feel misunderstood and unheard... but I do not give people the opportunity to because on the times I do, it comes down to this. I wonder why I feel this way or when it started. Likely it has been there the entire time. I should find my curiosity again... I pray it is not too late. Sixty-two autumns too late.
. . .
The empty mind

clings most

to distant

echoes

conjured

from memory.

 

I remember gaps

that I fill

with horrors

as joy knows

few places

at first recollection.
 
Mother,
I smile a lot less
for reasons I know not
and I try to
some days
now harder than most.

[ry0un0suke]

. . .
Snippets of thought, beginnings of what may be. The journal of Sunsets over Moonlight fills with half-thoughts and half ideas explored partially and ending whenever they please. A new endeavor, such distance appearing even in more fictional takes. They scribble these things usually while sitting, attention divided between it and whoever may approach them as they work.
. . .

The sun woke me up like always and the day begun no different than the last. I sat up slow, watching the rays peek in through the window. Its thin curtains danced in the wind since the air should always be fresh and I never liked sleeping in a warm room. I willed some energy and slipped out of bed, taking time to adjust to standing, holding steady to whatever I dreamed before it slips away like the covers I adjust. Pillows fluffed and straightened, ready for the day as I will. So I stepped down familiar steps and stood in front of the mirror, wandering how I may do my hair, what I will wear today, what I should start on first-

 

My wings are gone.

 

I stare for a while longer, feeling smaller in the mirror since large wings take up no space behind me. I don't notice the horror on my face, dropped jaw and wide eyes and tremble. I turn slow, wondering if the angle tricked me, standing barely on my side, enough to look at my back and nothing is there. Soon my back starts to ache, a throbbing, crippling pain then bends both knees and collapses me onto the floor. I grip the carpet, breathe heavily as its absent weight crushes me, and I cry. Did I do something wrong? Does She test me? No, no... She would never. Someone took them. My sorrow melts as sobs drip into the carpet, leaving me steadily once still minutes pass. Heat consumes me, it pushes me up to a stand and I stare at my wingless reflection like a stranger.

 

"You did this to me." I spit, staring still. "You..." My anger does not last long. I collapse once more.

 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
 

I always fall in love with people who have no time. They spend all of their pieces throughout the day on commitments older and deeper than I, and I receive what is left over at the end of the night. Sometimes a letter or single tired kiss languidly pressed into my cheek when exhaustion claims them. I wonder why. Happily, I take what I am given glad that the final token of strength came at the thought of me; They really do love me.

 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“This is a bottle that makes you fall in love with the first person you lay eyes on.” The salesman played up, pulling every trick to get me to purchase what I already sought. Once I got home, I cracked up the bottle while in the bathroom alone, drank it full and stared at my own dim reflection.

[ry0un0suke]

. . .
. . .Carried off one evening from the city's outskirts and unseen for a time to follow. Days, maybe a few short weeks confined to a bed. The will to rise died and they sank further into the covers. Uneasy, uncertain, unmotivated to continue. Writing, loved, abandoned. Each written word drawing a vile, violent disgust. Painful to write, to hold a pen, to read, to move, to live- so they don't. For a time, perhaps it was only just a few days, they lost track of how time moved or if it moved at all, Sunsets over Moonlight did not leave their home. They stopped crying finally, too spent, and what remained was carved out, hollow, miserable. Food untouched, door unopened, their growling stomach ignored, their parched, dry, sore throat disregarded. First under the covers, then without them, then lying on their side, their stomach and staring up at the ceiling for minutes, minutes, minutes, minutes... A yearning to move was killed by fear that movement meant dying, and reaching meant dying, that speaking meant the eyes of those claimed dear would destroy them in an instance. Crumpled into nothing, meaning nothing, these spiraling, dangerous thoughts turned cruel master with iron chain and low temper. They cannot contemplate whether it is better to die or disappear or both or neither or suffer or thrive, but thriving is frightening because this is all they've known, no? Cruel, baked instances warped by broken perspective forever a part of their nature. Who, then, would love someone who cannot find the will to love themself? They are trying, sort of, maybe. It is why, at some point, their bag disheveled beside their bag lost its journal, and in the dark, slow, messy, without care for structure, diction, meaning, story, intent, feeling, they scribbled an intelligent mess. Wallowing, nothing new. Nothing to note. Nothing to see. Nothing to feel nor share to reach nor touch as none of it is real. Made up, conjured, figments, or truth real and felt earnest and deep in their being, an inseparable part of what makes them, them and they hate it, but to hate it is to hate Her and to Her, dearest mother, they weep wishing they were different, better, normal, model, famous, acclaimed, pretty, worthy, someone different than who they are now because who, in their right mind, would look upon this mess and think anything higher? They are trying and their best is not good enough and their worst deserves nothing. Ancient deaths haunt them, recent deaths unhealed. Laugh, laugh! Mock and berate the failed royal and healer and writer and author and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and.. and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and.. and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and.. and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... if any looked, just maybe, they may find courage. Path dark with no light at the end, until then, they rot, curled up in the dark, starving, scared, lacking voice to scream for help while pining for it in wait to refuse. . .

. . .

Late into the evening, love and hate parade the streets. Streamers and lights and shouts and embraces and anguish built up like boiling pressure. Throughout the path it pops like cheers, roars in celebration and mourning. Held high on flat carts, the twisting, naked, frail and bony desecrated body. Limp, impaled at the joints, strings of yellow and purple drip down from the punctures in holy matrimony of man and self. The beauty in living's sickness, the excitement riled like rising blisters in the throat it beckons an empty bile as the cart rolls on. Thrown up as burning laughs, a mockery on the bareness of men who wish to keep hidden. Twitching, writhing in realized agony and life still lived rather than lost, the vane, pleading motions like a hypnotizing dance by the way bony hips sway and thighs rub and knees buckle and toes curl and digits tight and tight and tight and tight- body unbreathing yet breathless and full, the deflated lungs gasping desperate for an audience of eyes only theirs.

 

Helpless in the crowd, the cheers born from staked, static men stripped and bare. All bleed a wicked or earnest hue from the paled nails and stakes pinning them upright and in place. How the strings twist and curl and pool at the stone, filling the cracks like spiraling veins- many orange, pink, yellow- like the gleaming, gorgeous sunset, followed by white, navy, indigo, the sincerity of bright moonlight. Together, at the parade's center figure, into a massive, consuming inky black that bubbles, boils and rots. Steam so hot it felt biting and cold. The figure sinks, flesh eaten by its own pooling, black blood. It digs through skin, pulled taut until ripped, stripping it down to exposed, soft fat that wheezes underneath the pressure, muscle lean clawed into ribbons and holes, while the bone, strong and exposed, corroded into hollow vessels- left, then, with strings of veiny mana dying without battle nor honor, dimmed.

[ry0un0suke]

Left where ash meets snow and nothing remains.

Dear,

Before you died, I did not think of you. Distant from me building a legacy of branched names and beings. A stranger, in truth. Once we shared tea when you were a bit older than a boy and I explained what I could from a spring's view. I stay home most days now or hide in places I am certain I won't be found, but I know no one looks. That way, it is as if I hold agency over whether or not I am alone, like it is a choice. You did not have a choice, but I could not fathom what it was like to be raised by something more than man and beyond mortal. It sticks with me, how dumbfounded and paused your words left me. Until recently, I think I know exactly what you meant and I hate it. Rather than shrink, you grew, and I cower and curl hoping I crunch into nothing and disperse. Maybe it is not me writing, but the sorrows of the past slithering into the present. All I yearn to lie to rest in resurrection, rejuvenated and healthy.

 

Of all people to write to, I could not imagine it be you. I know in life you might have hated me. Who would not? Or, you did not care for me. Distant, of course, with far grander in our grasp. You, perhaps, my endeavors have not been grand, exciting, worthwhile. Wrought with worry, chased by phantoms. Thinking about you reminds me that I smile less and bury my joys in a burnt coffin so they cannot be revived. My joy opportunity for failure, my smiles something to exploit. Why can I not mimic what is beyond man and mortal? I strive and strive and strive and end up a stranger in the mirror I- again, again, again and again and again and again circle back to the question whimpered from in strained, tired throat 'Who am I?'.
 
...you would not know the answer. I believe this stopped being addressed to you. I pray you are resting. Your passing sometimes come to mind and I hope others think of you, too. You left behind so much that you still yet live just without name, breath or body. I will not lie and say I wish we did this, or if only we could have done that. A truth will be your peace. A truth I can write is that, in the end, everything you strived for eventually fell in line. I am sorry that it is me you receive a letter from all these years later.
 
Sincerely, 
Sunsets over Moonlight

[ry0un0suke]

Would you forgive me? All these years later, a stranger in your eyes with a torn, tired smile faint on my lips? The same as yours, but different. Do you forgive me for being different? Almost twenty autumns, or seventy-nine seasons turning and turning and turning o, did you love me at any point during it?
. . .   . . .   . . .

Sundered and smothered, I contemplate, deep, where in the world I fit. The circles I will run, eternal, comfortable in its familiarity. Miserable, and I lack the strength in my voice to continue my defiance. Perhaps, best, if I stop that cycle by keeping it from view. The land's pain my own, the land's memory long, the ancient and present sorrows all the same and without ending. Like wires; string, and hung, and bent, and spent I stand, or lay, collapsed: Remembered as miserable, recollection haunted by sorrows that shrink all measures of joy. I wonder where my wonder went and wander towards its ghost in masquerade of what I recall- not fondly. The memories grind a grimace into spirit, melting me into an unrecognizable failure.

---

The mirror started speaking one day. First warbling and twinkling sounds unreal. Like sparkling magic, miracles that fall into one ear and burst out the other as if running though a field of flowers. Sometimes, I think it laughed at something funny, but all I did today is cook the dish my youngest liked most. Savory usually and filling- grilled steak with sautéed peppers and steamed potatoes on the side. They weren't home to eat it. They haven't been home for a while. They haven't been home for so long that the meat came out saltier than usual and I realized far too late that my eyes glossed and each blink sprinkled an unintended drop into the sizzling pan.
 

It laughed at me.

 

When I first moved into this estate alone, I brought a mirror from my first ever home. I hung it in the foyer but moved it near the kitchen. Not once did it laugh, giggle, speak, but now it mocks me. I found some courage to slow the spoon in my hand and look at it. Stirring in the cloudy glass, staring at me is...
.
 .
   .

     ......

[ry0un0suke]

And they retracted once more into their journal, sat in the folds of branches. Perched on a sturdy one, legs crossed and surrounded by scattered pens and books, any unfortunately curious about what the lonesome Faeborne wrote might be horrified - or intrigued.

. . .   . . .   . . .

The boy hated his mother so much that one day, their neighbor found her dead in the living room. What alarmed everyone was the spray of red in the wall that branched from her throat like a strong oak. Leaves of crimson dry and hard as they noticed days after, once the stench of that hate became too much for the walls to bear alone. No one mourned her. They were surprised it happened so late. She was a terrible mother. Houses down, people could hear a constant moaning cry. Did she hit her boy? Ignore him? Mistreat him? He had enough, one of the more gossipy ones commented hushed and snickering once the news traveled from one end of the river to the next. An unheard of murder, especially within a city as safe as ours. What woman drives her own son to murder her?

 

I interviewed a few people from the crowd for the Chronicle, but they all said the same thing more of less, like she placed a spell on everyone around her. Charming, but mean. No one had anything to say about the son, almost like he didn't even exist. The knights have been on the hunt since the report came in. Nothing. Was it true that the son killed his mother to begin with? It sprouted sudden, a spark engulfing the entire neighborhood in flaming, ill-willed gossip that finally led me to a particularly chatty couple called the Marins.
 
"She was so nasty that the boy never even spoke." A taller, bulkier husband remarked, swirling his emptied glass of wine that a shorter, stouter man filled. "Gods, she must've been so hard on him..." His eyes just as sad as he spoke, offering me a topped off tip to my glass. Everyone I spoke to pointed me to the same conclusion: the boy never spoke- like he couldn't. I cannot say for certain, but my investigation gives me more opinion than fact. I know the son killed his mother. I feel it in my bones and I need to know why.

[ry0un0suke]

I did it, and he knows in spirit as the letter sits beside his eternal resting place. Immortalized within his own body, one cleaned as it is every rare season that they end up visiting.
 

Dear Jokul,
 
Upon heavy reflection, I came to the realization that, knowing or not, you made up for the horrors your ancestors wrought upon the land. I've returned home with revelation upon revelation regarding that task you gave me. Do you know its irony? It is because [                                                                                                                                                   ].
 
Marveled, enriched, I feel thoroughly changed for the better. In this once pathed journey, I was accompanied by my father and some others dear to me. Its nature deeply, personal, despite its stakes decades past. Does that make any sense? I fear I have grown into a deeply selfish individual, or that few people in the world regard themselves as much as I. Another cruel stroke of irony. I write you so little now, but you've not left my memory. Often when I sit outside my home on the bench where we met, I think of you. Usually, too, when I enter my home as you gifted it to me. What does dying feel like? You shed much in anticipation of it. Did it scare you? I wrote a broke titled 'Even Though Dying Scares Me'. It was supposed to be a fiction horror short story, but I used the title for my second memoir. I wrote another, maybe I mentioned this before.
 
It was pretty, riveting, and eye-opening. I might be foolish and you should be example of it, but my spirit yearns for it and a fool denies themself of life's wants. Thank you for believing in me.
 
Sincerely,
Sunsets over Moonlight