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The Way That We Ache

by DRUSE

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1.
Meira 04:26
You said you felt trapped inside an absence, nothing tasted good in months. You unbuttoned your shirt above the waist, pulled your pants down around your thighs and placed my hands against a scar. I heard you draw in a breath. Shallow, let it out. Preface all the ones you know you’re meant to hold. You tightened your grip: “Can you tell where she was while my body recognized her? This is where she stayed until I had to cut her out.” There’s no cause for guilt in the weight that you carry. I still lay my peace against your frame. You grow stronger in your action, even if you need someone to help stabilize your will. Your voice shakes to draw the crest higher. True bravery is making a decision for yourself, and our bodies determine no portion of our worth. There’s no shame to be found in taking care of yourself; no loss to uncover in the way you survive. We do what we have to do, and that’s all. I made the decision to break the bottle with my fist, to slump against the house, to pull the glass from my hand. We sprawl across each other and never get up again. No one speaks for you. Not me, not anyone. You are yours and yours to keep.
2.
Oh dear god, what happened to her son? They haven’t said who shot him because they’ll never really have to. They’re still piecing things together, still questioning the witnesses. Everything’s a process, the process is a circus. I’m still waiting for his name. I want to recognize the taste. My friend John was there. More of a friend of a friend, but he described the way he went so specifically limp and the way his torso doubled over; his eyes so impossibly ripe. And what he started saying stopped making any sense. But I heard him and I still do. They all make the same agonizing sound. Young bodies all crack and contort the same way when they fall against the pavement. It’s getting harder to differentiate. I’m groping toward conclusions. I’m exhausted, I’m trying to gain perspective on why I’ve spent the last year being moved into the basement. My sister-in-law always has an alibi, a story or a place to be. Of an inevitability her parents warned her of since she could barely speak. That was never me. That will never be. I just want to understand without deviating from my place. I want to be him noticing his shirt sticking to his stomach. His stuttering in disbelief as he falls backward onto the yard. Their friends at school who sprint across the blacktop to reach the safety of their parents’ cars. Their older brothers, swimming coaches, family friends, presents at home, vertical timelines, all the bluest scars. Someone is asking you if any of this is real. Someone is telling you that they love you too.
3.
I don’t think I can see it from your perspective, and I promise I’ve tried. What’s it like to feel the burden of a gift? To take every lesson meant to drive your focus and bury it in front of thousands, break its back, destroy it for an audience of all who will behold you? It’s not about what you can prove, or all the ways you can deny your involvement. Answer to the evidence in front of you. Acknowledge that the absence of fear is a presence, and it’s an absence that only you are capable of knowing. You can find a place to live in a city that accepts you. You can live free of the suspicion that punctuates your entrance. It doesn’t matter if you don’t agree, because you won’t notice until it’s stripped from you. We ask for solutions. This is meant to break you. This is for you to throw away.
4.
Face down, life began anew in the back of someone else’s car. I found a whole world of brinks that I hadn’t lived on yet. A lifetime of floors to pass out on, docile and pillowed in my spit. Pay witness to my craft of confiding in familiars, pleading off all my guilt, embarrassing every person that I came with. Love springs eternal from the wreckage. But even after the fact, I’m still looking for some logic in the static. I’m searching for the structure of everything that breaks. And I have a feeling there’s some sort of reasoning here. Something I can blame for my shortness of breath, embarrassed fatigue, every bone broken, and I think it might be whatever I want it to be. Did you feel different when you woke up today? Do your hands shake every time that they’re used? Does that scare you? Because it scares me. Tell me what you can believe in. I still believe in all my limits. I believe in the way that we ache.
5.
This is the simple weight of being. This is the pulse of something present. Paint yourself in experience. Live a life in full collapse. Feel whatever you know you can. Feel all sensations in your reach. There is a grace in our pressure. What grieves us is a gift. Every day I get closer to something. What tethers us together is a feeling. But you deserve it all, everything you can believe in. Even if nothing’s really there, it’s a comfort worth seeking. We wrap ourselves around an answer. When you’re ready, believe in the physical. All that your language can’t convey. Place trust in the burden of your pulse, in the fantasy of stability, in the sweat that stings your eyes. You and I, we share the same panic. We’re both just finding ways to cope, and I think that’s fine. I think we’re making this up as we go. So let’s feel broken, trauma, purpose, hopeless, feel scared, feel lost, feel a reason, feel present; everything.

credits

released March 5, 2016

Recorded and mixed by Jon Markson at The Gallery recording studio in Brooklyn, NY.
Mastered by Justin Colletti.

Artwork and design by Alex Miracle.

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DRUSE Rochester, New York

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