On tv shows featuring ERs and on those featuring zombies, you might hear someone shout, "He's bleeding out!". We all know what that means: he will soon have lost his life with his blood. How much blood is required to be out of the body before bleeding out becomes bled out, dead? My friends in the medical professions could tell me quickly and assuredly; this is a simple trivia question for them.
What if one is writing out instead of bleeding out? It has become clear to me that I must write my way out of this. I must use will and force and desire and turn to my texts, turn this despair into something productive. Yet I don't feel like I can write my way out because I feel like I'm writing out. All of my writing wants to circle back to this, to you, (to) my love. Every morning, as the idea of being awake slowly filters into my mind, I know I am fully awake when I am seized by two thoughts: first, he is there and I am not with him; second, maybe he wrote me? (No, the answer is always no; it's a futile question, but obviously futility hasn't yet worked its magic well enough to stop the question from arising, nor the dull hope accompanying it.)
I am writing out, but I am also holding back...so many texts, emails, postcards, and tweets that I begin and then delete. I know better, although I can't abide it. I know that I must staunch the flow, re-direct the throbbing blood to other veins. I must produce something other than a melancholic stillbirth. I must stop that writing; I cannot hit send, and I do not. You would be proud if you knew how many times I refrained, but, of course, thinking that, I want to write you to share this feat of self-restraint with you. I really do feel like I'm bleeding out during those moments of the day or night when I look up to notice that we are both online at the same time; both posting on some service or another. We are sharing with the multitudes, not with each other. That address is erased. But you are just there, on the other side of the screen; we are mixed in the same digital ether. There are a handful of ways available for us to communicate, right now now now. How much easier it is than waiting weeks for a return letter; how much more torturous it is, too, in its own subtle way.
I honor what we have agreed to as best I can. I try to curtail my inner rebellion; I try to cut off the flow once I see how quick and fast it comes, so eager to escape into your field of vision. I recognize the limits imposed by circumstance and by us; I am intimately familiar with the impossibilities (they are multiple and daunting). In writing out to you I can only say what we both know to be true, although in different moods, different tones, different (or same) words. I can only make professions that have no force (neither illocutionary nor perlocutionary). Of course, that is what I want in some way: to affect you and to see your affect slip out of your keyboard, too. I want to see your blood matched with mine.
I must write otherwise and elsewhere. I must write myself out of this.
What if one is writing out instead of bleeding out? It has become clear to me that I must write my way out of this. I must use will and force and desire and turn to my texts, turn this despair into something productive. Yet I don't feel like I can write my way out because I feel like I'm writing out. All of my writing wants to circle back to this, to you, (to) my love. Every morning, as the idea of being awake slowly filters into my mind, I know I am fully awake when I am seized by two thoughts: first, he is there and I am not with him; second, maybe he wrote me? (No, the answer is always no; it's a futile question, but obviously futility hasn't yet worked its magic well enough to stop the question from arising, nor the dull hope accompanying it.)
I am writing out, but I am also holding back...so many texts, emails, postcards, and tweets that I begin and then delete. I know better, although I can't abide it. I know that I must staunch the flow, re-direct the throbbing blood to other veins. I must produce something other than a melancholic stillbirth. I must stop that writing; I cannot hit send, and I do not. You would be proud if you knew how many times I refrained, but, of course, thinking that, I want to write you to share this feat of self-restraint with you. I really do feel like I'm bleeding out during those moments of the day or night when I look up to notice that we are both online at the same time; both posting on some service or another. We are sharing with the multitudes, not with each other. That address is erased. But you are just there, on the other side of the screen; we are mixed in the same digital ether. There are a handful of ways available for us to communicate, right now now now. How much easier it is than waiting weeks for a return letter; how much more torturous it is, too, in its own subtle way.
I honor what we have agreed to as best I can. I try to curtail my inner rebellion; I try to cut off the flow once I see how quick and fast it comes, so eager to escape into your field of vision. I recognize the limits imposed by circumstance and by us; I am intimately familiar with the impossibilities (they are multiple and daunting). In writing out to you I can only say what we both know to be true, although in different moods, different tones, different (or same) words. I can only make professions that have no force (neither illocutionary nor perlocutionary). Of course, that is what I want in some way: to affect you and to see your affect slip out of your keyboard, too. I want to see your blood matched with mine.
I must write otherwise and elsewhere. I must write myself out of this.
