Tanya Keenan
Summer’s Seven Doors
I found a pocketknife in my trunk today.
Glossy red wood enclosing a sweet sharp blade.
A dark waltz races into my ears and through my head.
The road blurs in front of me.
Tension is building inside steadily
(Everyone feels so far away from me)
Heavy thoughts forcing their way out of me
(Trying not to break but I’m so tired of this deceit)
(Every time I try to make myself get back up on my feet)
(All I ever think about is this)
(All the tiring time between)
(And how trying to put my trust in you just takes so much out of me)*
My mind understands the process and the journey
The transition takes time,
And if I didn’t feel so beaten
I could stand in wonder at this symphony.
Instead, a voice screams from my speakers
The only sound appropriate to what tears through me.
Take everything from the inside and throw it all away
‘Cause I swear, for the last time, I won’t trust myself with you
I move through the aisles of the store
Unable to see the products on their shelves
Incapable of focusing my thoughts enough to know what I’m looking at
Avoiding others who bump into the brittleness of my aura
From four feet away
Wondering why they suddenly feel so uncomfortable.
I expect to watch them stumble away bleeding
Cut by jagged edges
But as it turns out
I am the only one stumbling
And bleeding on the clean produce
I am the only one who feels these jagged edges drag against my soul.
Cut me open bleed me dry kick me because it’s easy I’m already down just end it all and make it stop hurting
I stare at the neat rows of vegetables
As hard basslines roll through my head
Fuck retro anything.
Fuck your tattoos.
I hear it all like it’s playing on loudspeakers
But it’s just a memory as sharp as glass
As sharp as hearing you say you can’t feel like a teenager so you’ll feel nothing
----------------------------------------------------------------------at all
Fuck all you junkies and
Fuck your short memory.
And fuck living richly and soulfully if it means sinking into these emotions over and over
And fuck claiming my soul again in the fresh summer mourning.
Is the wonder really worth all this?
Will wonder survive all this?
I calmly speculate that I’ve stumbled into some dream
Where I retrace Inanna’s footsteps through seven doors.
Seven doors to death all bearing a different name for Love
Seven boys who will someday be men seven boys of many ages seven sons and lovers
The final one with his own small inferno….
And at each door I am skinned and eviscerated,
Stripped of so much of what is meaningful until
Just a husk remains
(I don’t need a bag, thank you. I’m not going far.)
But I am no goddess
So I don’t know if I can be reborn after all this death
After all these goodbyes
But if I’m careful enough to be careless enough
The grille of that SUV might help me figure it out.
I think dully of the scene,
Less bloody than you might expect,
Broken Heart on my chest
Broken back claiming I’m Human,
And I find the image distantly pleasing.
Learn to swim.
I don’t figure it out
Because after the seventh door waits my sister my daughter in her brown softness
Who carries the soul of my first dead son in her eyes and on her tongue
She lifts my head from the ground at the center of death’s palace
And begs me to stay for her
So I do
Even though the dirt in my mouth tastes so sweet
And the earth is warmly welcoming
For her I will learn to live in brokenness, in jagged edges and shattered glass
-- At least for tonight
As I did for my first dead son who kept me securely in this plane of existence when
--------nothing else could.
I wanna see it come down.
Come down.
Suck it down.
Flush it down.•
That pocketknife waits in my car console, conveniently placed,
In case I change my mind tomorrow
And want to try the fast track to rebirth.
© 2009 Tanya Keenan
------------------------------------------------
My thanks to Linkin Park and Tool for providing the soundtrack.
* Linkin Park “From the Inside” on Meteora (Warner Bros, 2003)
●Tool “Aenima” on Aenima (Volcano, 1996)
For more information, see the Thinks we like page