I was looking on my Notes app this morning as I ‘body doubled’ with my kid (body doubling is when someone does parallel work alongside another in order to help keep each other on task).
I found this piece of writing that I did last November and really loved it - not sure if that’s just time + distance = loose linguistic morals or if it’s actually ‘good’ but it was interesting enough for me to read it today and find myself wishing that I were able to write from this ‘voice’ more often. Enjoy.
It never occurred to her that it was odd for someone so plagued with disaster scenarios and anxiety to find the thrill of horror and dark, creepy stories so delicious. She ate it all up - from the gothic seeds of Shelly’s Monster to contemporary tellings expanding on Jackson and snippets of Lovecraft (regrettably, after some research) phantoms of folklore, moments in tales - thorned and twisted brambles gathered by moonlight, knitted with bloody hands, pervasive and fecund ground bursting with roots hungry for the living, walls - embued with the whispers, memories, loves and traumas of family, birth and death - her same curiosity that drove her to stare at photographs for hours on end as a child, driving her to read and imagine - listen and gather tidbits like finding berries at the end of summer before the first frost - if you search long enough you find them under leaves, hidden and forgotten by the birds - but still - just at that moment, ripe, full and juicy - encapsulating the entire seasons’ worth of sun, sugar and warmth.
She flirted with translating this love and fascination into something literal or figurative in ink onto her skin. Loving tattoos and forever it seems, delaying the act of getting her first until she was way past her second decade of life. As for many others, it went the same way - delay then the gate is open and the horse is out - this last summer she immortalized her travels and had memories inked on her skin - local motifs and wildflowers grown in the soils
What she had not anticipated was that the one flower had a bee sometimes a spider - it depended on when and how she looked. Never there when looked at directly
But on the periphery - just out of reach
It was a trick of the eye -
As the wildflower stem wrapped around her forearm, a flick of darkness on her pale skin. It was a trick her eyes played
One that triggered the fear of spiders, bugs, things crawling on her that were many legged and quick
Things that in her experience always crawled up - once they were on you - and towards your face, your mouth, your ears, your eyes….
The violation and revulsion of something coming…. Quickly and without ones knowledge until …. What? Too late?