jacktellslies

so, i have these fishhooks all over my body. i like them. i picked them out, each one, and i know what they mean, and i know why they are where they are, and why they are at all. i've two in my lip, and there are others. they are all mine. and i think that i will most likely keep it that way. this is not to say that i would mind being scarred or pierced by a lover. there is a difference. when i change my body, there is metaphor. when you change my body, there should only be blood.

i think that perhaps i am finally learning what it is to hide one's heart.

when i went dreaming, i used to dream of a fox. the things i meet in dreams are not always particularly gendered, but the fox told me once that she was all of the girls in the world. (the fox was a terrible liar, though, so neither you nor i should believe that.) at any rate, the fox and i used to steal one another's hearts. i'd reach into her chest while she was sleeping and i'd hide it away in a cave or in the hollow of a tree or in a crow's belly. and fox would steal it back, or she would steal mine, and we'd keep stealing and finding and hiding. at some point a third heart found its way into the game. she claimed not to know from whence it had come, and, of course, i did not believe her, but i still rather liked the game, and kept playing, and mostly thought her trickeries to be charming.

love does not come naturally to me. it never did. and i've realized that the relationships i've had with friends have been amazing. i have crushes on them that last forever. and i still tell people the stories, excited as if i was just meeting them, about these people who broke my head and changed the world and let me fuck them without ever asking for anything complicated at all. we spent time together, and we wanted the best for each other, and we helped each other, and we listened, but we were friends, and we never demanded that we loved one another, or that we belonged to one another, and we never hurt one another, either. we kept our cores. we were ourselves. we knew where our hearts were. and we moved away from one another, but it was not a terribly sad thing, and it was certainly not an angry or a painful thing. and then there are these other relationships. i do not regret them. but they hurt. and i feel as if there are these parts of them that i never wanted, that i never asked for, but that i was too stupid, and too weak, and i allowed them to happen anyway. when i talk about the people i have loved, i explain them. i show you what they did wrong, and what i did wrong, and why they were, or were not, worthwhile at the time, despite that. and i'm not sure i miss them. if i tell stories about them, it is because of the story, not because of their part in it. it is like i got so very close and involved that i wore them out in my head. or it is like the pain of it, the shock of seperation from something that intense, causes me to fight back, to push them out of my head, to erase. and either is unacceptable. the people i like, the people i will like, deserve better than that.

i do not like to make the same mistake more times than i must. this is especially true where the feelings of others are involved. i am writing this down because i think that i know it now. (although, if you are wiser than i am and see flaws in my logic, please, please, tell me what you think.) i hurt the partners i love, and they hurt me. love is neither something that i need nor desire. i do not like the person that i am when i love. to do something again that i know for a fact will hurt me and anyone that i may, in the future, really like, something that i neither want nor need, something that makes me worse rather than better, would be stupid, and it would be wrong. no more of that.

i decide where the fishhooks go when they go deep. i am the one who hides this heart.