marching

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it is the twenty sixth of march and i’ve got nothing. it is this part of the month that i want to resort to listicles or 'meet the authors' but always shy out. not that theres anything wrong with listicles or 'meet the authors' mind you, but writing without veneer frightens me. without flowery words. without trickery. i can feel how thin the veil becomes, like our shoulders touching.
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i never stopped scripting or fixing my hair. the most shameful fantasy is for someone to be watching so that i am justified, because i will never stop. do we still care about being performative? i love my performance. what is it with the shame? i used to spend hours in front of the mirror watching myself emote, cataloguing my faces, building a vocabulary. when i meet people who are facially expressive i want to clap with splayed fingers and squeal in delight as a baby does to her rattle. maybe they are just normal people and i'm easily entertained. people ask why i laugh so much and it makes me feel stupid.
when i look at cars i see faces in the headlights. its called face paredolia - when your brains facial detection gets all confused - but words are dumb and writing is the mirror without a face but i have been thinking about writers who are beautiful anyway. the well-bred aristocrats in shiny mary janes and crisp blonde hair and the girl-next-doors in perpetual eye bags and i find myself wondering if i would write better. no, no. i find myself wondering if You would think that i write better. a face for writing. maybe we were never meant to know what they look like. i perform not being bothered by lacquered lips and twenty five cent words and it works. can you see me? turing complete.
i cannot shake that most of my work is made up of 'i' statements. i am not sure how to process such a tell of my insecure narcissism. every time i type it it burns red in my vision, this is all i have. we are all we have. i always desire to turn inward further, to stretch in. to absorb things into myself. i curl. i envelope and swallow whole.
perhaps it is for this reason that i lament how reflective i am. when i read i find myself with a small part of the author's voice, in conversation i mimic accents. maybe i am a mirror now too. this tongue not my own, i obey a greater puppeteer. an animal within an animal.
i have explained the obsolete theory of the wandering womb at least four times this past month, i don't know how or to whom. but that is what Aretaeus says - the womb is like an animal within an animal. i don't feel animal nearly often enough. its been so over since the greeks named the uterus hysteria. Hippocrates says that i am not crazy, my body is and admittedly that is a relief. when i first went to the doctor for pills that is what my mother nearly said - i am not crazy, she is. here is a woman not afraid to speak plain. she is the animal within me as much as i am the animal within her. why do they bother cutting the umbilical cord when it grows back?
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speaking of umbilical cords, i realised that i am in a long distance relationship upon hearing my boyfriend use the term. (in person, after twenty two hours of flying.)
i guess i just hadn't thought of it that way, and indeed it is a long distance but perhaps we need a more accurate term for the fifteen thousand, nine hundred and eighty eight kilometres. together we are addicted to cigarettes and together we drink a lot of beer.
i wash the bedsheets while he stamps his timecard at the wework and fall asleep briefly atop the pile of bare pillows. it has finally made way for autumn here,
my year of eternal summer drawing to a close. i started a new moleskine, leaving the last eight months on my dresser to collect dust. i put off filling in the last pages until he got here. embarrassing to speak so plain. i show him my favourite restaurants. i brush my hair four times a day. i think about writing but don't.
i feel sleepy. i re-read freud. i write.