requiem for a blog

What is it about you that makes me want to vomit words? Open the shades at my darkest hour, expose myself to you? I am Mona Lisa, a Shakespeare play; studied, dissected, and – worst of all – rehearsed. Circus clowns escort you past me: “Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing to see here.” I know this, and yet I still scream. Dangling in a cave in a Utah canyon; unknowable, unknowing. I cut off my nose to spite my face.

I sit before you, coffee in hand, and try to think of something to say. Nada. Ziltch. Zip. Void. You stare at me blankly, vacuum tubes pulsing light; we play a game of chicken. Who can make a fool of themselves first? One, two, three…GO! I lose. I always lose. One of God’s gifts to me was never a poker face. A pair of fours may be all I have, and I want to share it with you. I show you my hand before I even know what I have myself. If I had an eating disorder, it would be bulemia: binge, purge; binge, purge. Not to eat at all? That takes real restraint.

How sad, that I should feel this way, when I can hear the whispers of the most important people in my life in the background: Talk to me! they plead. Tell me a story! Catatonic, I keep the life preserver they request to myself. I don’t have the energy to throw it ten feet. But if it came down to it, I would swim for them. Jump in shark-infested waters. Drown, never to speak – or write – again.

In the end, it’s just garbage I give you. Thoughts that cannot translate into deeds. Caveat: Not all thoughts, of course. Some letters strung together (signs) form words that would be too much (signifier) for your pious selves to bear. WITNESS! your soul granted a pergatory pass would scream. A SINNER IS BEFORE YOU! (Indeed it would, because even THIS is too much for you, isn’t it?)

Another heap for these words I should find, lest they continue to bounce around inside me trapped - rotting, stinking, festering – until one day their toxic gases seep out of me, poisoning both of us in the process. Mona Lisa had a secret journal; that’s why her lips are curled.