Hungry Mother

 In most of my writing, I talk about my mother like a sour taste, you just can't shake. I blamed her for my inability to feel fresh or catered. To be the freshly pressed linens with pose fingernails that smelled like Lana del Reys lyrics in the summertime. I forget more often than not my mother wasn't always placed in a home with stucco walls. She too was born with a suitcase and a DIY self-care attitude. She won't braid my hair and she won't care to learn. 

When reading Pamela Anderson's bio. She wrote something i couldn't seem to just skip by, like the usual "my mother, myself. my father, my mirror" hypnotic good parental bullshit quote. 

she said:

"The best advice my parents gave me

was no advice.

They admitted to knowing nothing

of my world,

my journey

My dreams, passions, and purpose.

They had no way of bailing me out.

They listened,

They worried with me at times,

They loved me the best they could

But it was up to me to find my way through.

When

I understood that,

I was even more free to

create my oven life.

It was a blessing.'

This quote sank to the bottom of me and floated around my gut for days. I lost my voice a long time ago trying to force my parents into understanding, I expanded my vocabulary and catered to my cause with any available literature (music, slam poetry, art... etc), and in the end, I graduated from their homes and was gifted the diploma of "I know nothing of your world". Tho they didn't directly say these straight-arrow words I knew they were the only ones to complete my hunger for acknowledgments and I know now they fed this hunger long before I was capable of recognizing other people's uses of metaphors. 

When I talk about my mother, I always remind the audience of her background. I describe her the way all women who dabble in romanticized ideology would like to be described. She the soft mix between a southern virtue and a European tea party.  But I tend to forget she use to need a suitcase.

My mother wouldn't braid my hair cause she didn't want to learn. if you wanted to feel beautiful you had to chase that train yourself. my mother could teach you how to pin curl you hair with pop cans and sew designer logos on to your pants, but there isn't no way shed teach you anything commercial- she's still learning to smile through ads. 

diffrent takes - an old piece i should have forgotten about :>

"We have the same hands" stuttered out of my mouth and onto the floor. My hands crept around my focal point and I sought him to be the type to kill. He was 11, fragile, hurting, and very alone. He happened to be a boy growing up in a shrinking world. He was made to be the type to kill. Bugs, bats, caterpillars, or my toy dolls. He smashed oranges and bee nests. Crumpled paper planes and loved so hard he couldn't stand the sound of static, placed between him and his father's phone calls. I sought him to be the type to kill. The media made him out to be a real monster.

If my mother would have stepped into my puddle of incompetent metaphors. Shed sweep it up, she was always doing things like that. Every issue, every problem shed shimmy into a dustpan and chucked it straight out the door. Collecting the broken bee wings and melted Polly pockets. I sit there shocked by her inability to step in. But she did what most southern women typically do, and she went south. 

“We have the same blood”, this phrase always seemed to soak itself in every whiskey-ridden syllable, with the southern accents ringing behind. It felt like a long car ride, it felt like when I realized fireflies don't come to my town anymore. I was born improperly, the daughter of a Frat/Narscar/Basketball coke head king of the goddamn South. He was a type of romcom that cheerleaders gagged over. He was my mother's, only love. We use to be cool. My mother made him out to be a real monster. 

If my brother saw the mud pies I make today, I think he'd remember the docks. The moldy wood and when the catfish swarmed our childhood Christmas tree. Tied by its stump. I swear it was plastic, I swear we were church-acquired hicks. True Catholics. I knew that church that boy shot up-Anyways he was 10, my brother was stuck on the diving board across the dock in this giant swampy mass called Lake Norman. This lake was the largest man-made lake located in North Carolina. He wasn't the type to kill, that was the problem. Faced with true danger and impeccable speed he was challenged to outrace a water snake. A vicious, unfaithful, gluttonous beast. He did what most people would do, he sat and cried. 

20 years of hair.

I've decided I don't want this, this glorified depressing romantic life. I stopped doing what was best and stopped looking at the floor. I always hated looking up. Said to be holy but I've seen nothing but defeat. 

I can feel my hair stick to my back, I write a lot more about this- in private of course. 

I can feel my hair fall past my shoulders and the memories feel somewhat grand. Like I've been let into a ritual I finally comprehend. Before, a time like this, id cut all inches off and watch them sept into the floor. I'd decorate myself in some closeted-vintage costume couture. I assumed there was strength in confidence so leather and lethal, to know I was looking at true beauty, to know I could take that thing away. 

to feel my hair lay layered and outgrown upon my back.

to feel it fall off and crack.

In church, they talk about evil and I watch my brother compare women to apples. to temptation, to sin, to the quiet girl who sits upon the boardwalk, between the steples, in the alley, across the street. I trace my hand with my fingers and try to remember that taste. If sin was created because of a bite, mine must have been in the summer, when momma's sunbathing hat blocked my site and my brothers and I ran wild through the orchards, skipping stones and making mud pies. back when the air stuck to ur skin like a good woman's kiss. That must have been it? that must have been back when my hair first grew long enough to lay upon my back. at least before the first major cut.

I can feel my hair sticking to my back and I tried to remind myself women are not apples. 

-cut-

The next time he saw me he laughed at how he could now fit all of it in his hand, how it tangled into mountable shape upon my head. I thought he'd hate it. I thought it would free him from sin. I thought this was a tangible curse. I thought I was the only one lethal to know I still lay underneath these strands. 

I can still feel my hair brushing the back of my neck at this point. 

Outside the gas station, sipping on a supersized American-style pop. I won't tell you what we talked about because that wouldn't be fair. I pushed him off of me n readjusted my socks, shoes, and shorts as I often did when we talked. I pulled the strands ever so carefully out of those fraying jeans and we both kinda just squinted at each other through the blazing sun. 

I carry a lot of old wives' tales in my pocket like a gun. and he must have known this one well. he seemed relieved when I told him I only cut off the bad. He pulled on my hair one last time and I rolled the windows down completely. 

I can feel my hair stick to my back, I write a lot more about this because I don't want this glorified romantic depressing life because I can't keep trimming my hair and cutting my ends in protest to this idea that relation is only due to beauty and beauty is only the creation of deception. There is so much more I seek than misfits and miscalculated conversations about Adam and Eve. There's so much more I want to tell you about my growth when I tell you:

I can feel my hair stick to my back

xoxo 

papercut kneecaps  

may 4th 2022

 

I am my father's daughter. I am the addiction that runs through icy-cold veins. I am a cigarette sitting crooked in a fourteen-year-old girl's mouth. I am the things my mother begged me not to be. 

 Hey guys,

it's me, the girl who can't figure out a name. I decided to cut the bullshit today, ridden my riddles..I wanted to come on here and be real about this site, when I first started I was kinda using it in a more personal way. It was my "give all be all", I wrote with curiosity, shame, and excitement and this incompatible amount of genuine belief in myself. Im not sure that's something I'd agree to say anymore, I was 17 then I'm going to be 20. I claim to be a negative romantic- street-smart comedic psychopath, Im witty as I am dumbfounded. But I am extremely stubborn, I never try at anything I can't do right. I am the best GOD DAMN mediocre Artist, writer, server, barista, and cashier that you ever did meet. And this was the time I truly tried. But now writing has become an old hobby I tuck to bed each night and spoon-feed some haft ass chilly too.

This is to say, that I haven't given up on this site, I consistently write and write and pray for the courage to post, but with those 15 unseen drafts, they've become 15 unseen documents of shame. Im not sure how I gathered so much hate but I did and unfortunately it's something I'm going to have to carry around till I learn how to forgive and realize my own faults. I think a lot.

Im just a girl, that you call a blogger. I have so much talent and admiration for justice, I just don't know how to speak anymore, maybe it's because people became more real, maybe it's because I don't stay, maybe it's cause I'm a blogger, and I'm doing this on purpose. Maybe it's cause I'm losing traction. I'll be leaving soon, it feels shitty to take 10 steps back but it's the only option i have.

I'm going to Sedona today. 

can you guess my name? 

female rage

 If I was female rage madonna would hate me.

My mouth would foam green Drano and my nails would curl with yellowing tips. If I was female rage id collapse to melancholy women with guitars. 

I find myself turning inward into this so-called "female rage". I find myself naked in front of self-appointed righteousness. Being female rage is not the act itself- but rather holding yourself back from the urge to be reckless. In my observation of women, I found that the most collected women hold the most resentment from the need to break. They push the brick wall back until there nails are chipped and bitter. The arms feel weightless in numbness. They crack in fragments, they crave female rage. They redo their lipstick. They find themselves turning inward. 

If the female range was my closet, it would be freshly open nylons. press on nails, melted lipstick and a fraying sweater. my female rage would look like a nicotine packet. Yours may look like rehab, church, or your muse. 

ill attach myself to any version I still get from you. 

compostion blog

I've been caring around a composition book that id likes to call a composition blog. I got the book because I was trying to figure out how to untangle all the thread I push into my pocket. Only to find, I wasn't going crazy, I just turned my mother into a notebook. Processed all the things I wanted to say to her, and ask for her help with. Yet the book never talks back. the book just sits there carrying all of your thoughts and feelings and shows you the ends to all of your loose ties. The book does not wish for you to be better and doesn't take a selfish aspect, or tell you how to live your life. the book just is a book, that you call a blog. 

I made the book the same reason I made the blog, I needed something to figure out everything and if I put enough focus into one thing, maybe everything would just work.

7/5/22: a piece from phoenix

During my time away from myself, I went to the mall. The mall is a beautiful confusing place that can make you fall to your knees in complete submission to all of the glitter and carefully placed threads. But the mall also has the power to make you hate everything about yourself. The beautifully hung emerald green silk dress hangs over your body like moss in the yellow flickering dressing room. Not to say moss is not beautiful- it is. Moss just looks bad because it's on your body, and your body makes silk look rough and patchy. I guess what I'm trying to say is I think I finally understand what people mean when they say they "love me", I think they are calling me a mall. I think they admire me for how I stimulate their needs and entertain their free time. Only to find out I'm just a mall, a building, something to hold an assortment of things. I think everyone's a mall, I just think we carry things differently. I think it's valid for you to hate me. I created a false emotion that only left you with a mirror to look at all your faults

hey maybe if this book wasn't a book but rather a person, maybe they'd be a vintage shop. carrying old memories or whatever is important to you.  The Composition Shop. 

7/7/22: waiting for the water to break

there is no worse version of myself than the summer. When I was much smaller, I spent my time at the lake, I spent my time raising ducks and dogs, and fishing hooks. I spent my time casting dreams and jumping from diving boards, swimming away from the snakes. But as small and faithful as I once was. I prayed for the growing mass above his bed to break, for god to induce a natural phenom- to be a child who was saved. 

7/9/22: The bystanders' drug addiction

the fans are getting too loud. today I broke the bystander's addiction and placed him in my honorable robe. he told me over (I presumed shakey hands that cast banner above my screen). That I- have passed him in my drug intake.  Everything is alright, I made myself crazy, this is something I can claim, there are two types of things. I can't seem to remember it. it became sappy soaked and broken. all poets have fist fought w this type of battle. I wish I could play guitar, id wishes you could sit silently n listen. I wish i didn't need this god damn journal. 

signed, 

                     whatever you need

_______________________________

my credits, no good. I'm, not A drug addict I was just worse in the summer, with nobody to talk to but a book. 

mudpies

 The house is being eaten up by dirt and clothes that burst through the god damn door. And all of a sudden the rooms flip inward-turns sideways and this so-called home has a woman from the past, the self-proclaimed mother who lives under piles of dirt. I know she's not really there, but I still feel her pace around these hallways, pushing crumbs to the side with each shuffling step. I don't feel bad, in this house, I feel like my brother, each time a nat swings around my head and a bird nests in my hair. Crazy to the public but rational by cause. The food molts away on the coffee table and I am reminded of all the ways I was taught to improv nourishment.

 Maybe this house isn't really a house but rather a theater, and the people who come and go are testing the cast. Seeing how far each member can take, see if they break, go off the script, and fold into their true selves.  how shameful it is to be anything but pretend. to be a woman who is claimed battered after months of shoving shit into a splitting closet. how rationalized it is to be so pissed for feeling so used.

--------->

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, thought id share. kinda reminds me of when your a child and you try to conince yourself mud pies are more then just dirt and water. ironic. 

church vs rehab

I want to go to church, and not in some summer fulfill my fleabag desires.

redhibition always knew how to shapeshift itself into the family. I always knew I wasn’t bad enough to stay but not stubborn enough to believe in something bigger than myself. and so the punch line remains in unholy tap-water I gulped at the rounds ups. filled with Wolfpack-driven parents and the idea that there is loneliness in communion.

I long to hear the metaphoric roars of the wolf pack as their mouth waters over the survival to the next moon. 

to be part of a community that thrives off the idea of existing and living and doesn’t ask me to empty more parts of this decaying body. because there is no metaphoric phrase that sums up the fact that life can be complete shit.

to be a part of the religion of oneself, to be able to create something with all the bad that looks conventionally good in your resume. to be more than just a girl with a mouth wide open begging for the world to fuck me over once again. 

I don’t go to church the same way I don’t go to therapy. there is nothing more theatrical than standing in front of a series of people and begging them to grant you worthy enough. so I began the session with my legs crossed over and my hair brushed behind my ear. and gloss over the idea that all of this made me stronger. and I know what shell says before I speak these words into existence. the same way the priest had told me.

they pick n choice whether I'm crippled with addition to limerence desires the same way I'm crippled with religious beliefs. as if me asking the world to grant me some sort of affection dealt with sex along. as if I got off to religious neglect and relationships altogether.

I sweat orange juice. my father's drug addiction and my mother's need to be smaller each time I enter her house.

each time I think of it, I am only a stranger biting the inside of my cheek. this is no GOD. this is only upbringing, this is only forgetting, this is creating a need for religion to excuse my need to keep running. God is not therapy and therapy is not god. I am only a serious of memories begging to last long enough for u to click. 

I want to go to church. I want to go to rehab. I want to go somewhere where people can dress up as a family and I can finally stop asking strangers for an extra seat at their holiday dinner. Unless I am all wrong. Unless I am the last of my kind, an orphan, an empty soul. 

Song- Every time the sun comes up

church, therapy, family, and conversation are the times I play dress-up and pretend to be a more put-together person than I really am, 

Kneecaps

Black mold sneaks into your pruning veins. the chalkboard is splitter and her knees will give out any second. You fold into a box and shift yourself to a new persona. confusing days for previous years and lose yourself to the hands of the man in the mirror.  if you were to ask me, I would tell you the end is near and the fake flowers on my dashboard are inching towards wilting. but you don't ask, you don't even have a tongue to mold words together. 

It's a Thursday, and I am dancing to songs you would definitely hate. but this forbidden cure makes a restless body shake. and soon I will be decorated in white linens and you will claim that's just who I've always been. an outgoing ghost who cant find the remote to turn off the god damn tv.  and now the news is playing in record-breaking frequences, and the music is making the people in the town's ears bleed. and her or i's knees will shatter in their sleep. 

but forgive me, i am only as simple as you have always perceived me.

katbird lost her tongue