THIS IS NO CREATION. THE SPINE CRACKS
My sister died when she was one. She died in a pearl-white nightgown - so white, white, white - she need not live to prove herself pure against all odds.
Yesterday was her eleventh birthday, yet I did not visit her grave when my mother asked me to because she was cold and unrelenting to me – she was just so mean – the previous day so naturally, I had to let our relationship die too. I gutted the woman, the woman who is now sinking in her alcoholic stench which I taste. I taste. I taste.
I have barely spoken to my brother for a year out of spite (see how good I am at holding a grudge to derision?) (my sister died and my mother’s remaining two children are not speaking) (I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HIS PROTECTOR) but that is probably too much for you to swallow but I swallow. I swallow. I swallow.
My best friend slices the old brag of her heart in half and offers half to me because she trusts me and so I ignore her for weeks because I think she is being ridiculous. She thought I had died. I gag on my own guilt. I gag. I gag. I gag.
Lately it seems that everything I touch implodes - yet this is not due to a gross ignorance on my end. I am sober and I have done all this. And I am so young. I am only fifteen. I want to be a symbol, living beyond the ages, yet I see myself getting frailer and frailer with every bite I take out of my own life. This cannot go on forever, and I will die before I even reach the end.
Gag, Gag, Gag.
Sure, destruction and Art have an undoubtedly sacred connection. Ruin of the self has bred the greatest artists and artworks to ever exist. Goya dissolved in his deafening solitude so that after his death the most gutting paintings would be found in his home and hung in museums and worshiped by girls like me. Same with Van Gogh. Woolf lived in a bubble of melancholy her whole life but her mind walks on a higher ledge than any of us because of that melancholy. Same with Plath. Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Wilde. Saturn devours his son, and he is Goya’s magnum opus. Suffering turned sublime at the hands of Art.
Gulp, gulp, gulp.
But I’m not an artist (I can only admire). I cannot turn my ruin into the voice of a generation. For me, there is no rebirth after destruction. IT IS JUST DESTRUCTION. I scream and scorch in pain but I lick the very flame. I shatter my wine glass on the floor for dramatic effect. I choke but I savor the taste.
Gag, gag, gag.
My sister - so white, white, white- she need not live to prove herself pure against all odds. I’m not, I’m not, I’m not. Both life and the odds have wholly consumed me then spit out the bones.
Gag.
I am a monster. And monsters who kill just to kill bear no meaning to kill and will never become a God of divine purpose and a God without divine purpose is just the Devil. The belly will rupture, the maggots shall feast, He wreaks hell on the damned creature.
CONTORTION CONTORTION DESTRUCTION.
The spine cracks. I am no contortionist.
Mahogany Grant, 15, East Sussex - England ✯ BACK TO ESSAYS: OUROBOROS
“15 year old girl from East Sussex :) never claiming to be a writer until I cannot hold everything in anymore, usually spending my days in solitude away from friends, and perpetually riding on the stream of Virginia Woolf’s brilliant consciousness (The Waves is my favorite book!). Compulsively self-destructive, but at least I deleted my Instagram.”