Soul Mates
Soul Mates
You remind me of my ex-wife from a past life who I committed suicide to escape from when I made myself wings of feathers and wax, and fell to my death when I flew them into the sun. You just laughed and floated over me as I drowned.
They say birthmarks are entry wounds that show where we died before, and dreams are just memories we carried with us from the other side, which is why you looked so familiar the first time I saw you. Your feet never touched the ground.
My opening line was “you look like my daughter,” you smiled and asked “how old is she?” I said, “well if it all works out, five years from now she’ll be three, but I’m in no rush.” It felt like a third person existed between us.
And I wasn’t sure who we were before, or who are supposed to be, but I knew that on the other side of the world planted deep inside a forest there is a tree with our names carved into its side, and written in a language neither of us speak is inscribed
“forever is a pretty short time looking back on it,” and even though we may not be able to read it, we would instantly recognize our handwriting as evidence that we were part of the same tribe that died out a thousand years ago, and we would brace ourselves for
the earthquake as our souls shake and vibrate higher. We were sent here to repopulate so there was no time to apologize for everything we were about to put each other through. You just grabbed my hand and said “I look forward to getting tired of you.”
God don’t make mistakes, but people do. Souls only know wavelengths, and communicate through music and colors and sound; they don’t always remember to leave the key under the mat, or come home before 3 a.m., or put the toilet seat down, or
make sure to hold your hand whenever we’re out in public, because the flesh doesn’t understand it’s just a vessel full of flaws. Soulmates exist to serve as a reflection of how truly damaged we really are, how hurt, desperate and unexamined we are.
I never asked for a soulmate, just someone who hates all the same things I do, and in you I confronted all of the things I hated in myself, like a mirror that reveals the first time you realize you are no longer beautiful. My ugly is going take some getting used to.
I used to fear going to sleep next to you because I would get tangled in your hair and you would roll over, strangling me, leaving gasping for air in one of those dreams where you can’t quite wake yourself up, until I realized that you only hogged the sheets so you could
expose me to the cold and wake up the other side of me whenever my dreams got off track. My arms would always go numb so I could never fight back. So instead of starting a war with you I would just kiss you on your cheek.
Maybe we’re just meant to walk through life trying to fill each-other-sized holes in ourselves. Feeling like we swapped souls at a crowded train stop like two strangers who picked up the wrong bag and were forced to wear the clothes they found inside.
I have that sweater you’ve been looking for, it’s a little stretched out but it still smells just fine. Find me again so we can make amends, or at least swap bags one last time. Everyone deserves a seventh chance.
I guess I’ll see you next lifetime when you and I are butterflies and during our migration we can gently clip wings and create a vibration that causes the tides to rise off the shores of Hawaii and forms a tsunami that crashes into the coast of Japan
and floods some kind of nuclear reactor that causes the world to spin backwards and we can finally rest our wings on the sand and look back on all we destroyed with a smile, and I’ll know that it was all worth it just to be with you when the world ends.
More Posts from Nikrichard and Others
Where Are You? Please Don't Leave Me Here With These People: a love story
Eternal Sunshine
My grandmother is slowly beginning to lose her memory. No, she hasn’t been diagnosed with anything because she refuses to see a doctor, but every now and then she will ask me the same questions over and over again. Like, “hows grad school?” and I’ll tell her I graduated over a year ago and she’ll congratulate me for the 5th time and I’ll just nod my head and say thank you. The bright side is she’ll offer me 4 or 5 slices of pie and serve each one to me like its the first as long as I sit through the same story that she’ll tell to me 3 or 4 times. I try to act just as surprised as the first time I heard them.
Eventually she starts to do things like leave the oven on, and forget who she’s talking to on the phone, and what day it is, and what she had for dinner last night, and how to get home when she goes somewhere she hasn’t been in a while, and everybody else thinks this is a reason for concern. Except me. Because I see the beauty in slowly losing your memory as you get older.
There is a certain magic in forgetfulness that God rewards us with if we are fortunate enough to make it into old age. Because after a few years of the mundane every day is something new. An opportunity to experience old things for the first time as those bad memories fade away. In her mind, there is eternal sunshine and that's all any of us really want anyway. The look of surprise on her face every time I tell her I already got my degree means, to her, every other Sunday is graduation.
Every visitor is in town for a holiday. Every birthday is a surprise when you wake up and don’t know why everyone you know is calling you to tell you they love you and every package you ordered is like a present to yourself. You no longer recognize people in old photographs. There is no more living in the past. No regretting old mistakes or wishing you had second chances because as far as you know, you’re still on plan A and everything worked out exactly the way it was supposed to be. Beautifully.
Until that day we wake up on a beach in Montauk and feel everything fading from our memory we will drag our regrets to the shore and relive our mistakes over and over until we bury them in the sand and treat every morning as an opportunity to start over.
Just don't forget who I am.
We love the beauty of flowers so much that we rip them from the ground take them out the sun put them in a vase and then watch them die. Such an ostentatious display of decadence and decay for one to think they can plant a garden inside. But whatever it takes to reaffirm us that we possess just a little bit of light to make tulips bloom in a dimly lit living room for just long enough to give us a glimpse of all the wonder the world has to hide. For just a brief moment we kept something alive. Even if we knew that it would eventually fall apart, we tried and we held out hope because for that short amount of time it was beautiful and we thought we had something to do with it. We felt we were the reason why when those petals finally opened up despite all the darkness we provide.
On September 15th, 1970 the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panther Party held their ground in the Desire Housing Projects against law enforcement in a shootout that lasted over 30 minutes. At 8:00 am over 100 officers in military gear stormed down on the Panther’s headquarters located at 3544 Piety St. and unloaded gunfire in an attempt to eradicate the Black Panther Party from the State of Louisiana. Miraculously no one was killed in this standoff.
Law enforcement made another attempt to raid the headquarters on November 19, but thousands of Desire residents circled the building in a successful effort to protect the members and fend off another violent attack.
In August of 1971 all of the members were found not guilty.
I’ve been cursed with a vivid memory. I remember everything. Mistakes I’ve made, people who hurt me, that girl in the 4th grade who told me we would get married at 28, all the criticism I’ve gotten, the bad things my friends say about people when they’re not around, the text message I accidentally read when I looked over your shoulder last night, and everything in-between. A vivid memory is unforgiving. The world can be a hard place to navigate when you’re constantly being reminded about all of the things that didn’t go right, or trying to smile at all of your critics. Sometimes I just want to shut down and close myself off, and take a break from pretending. Acting like I don’t remember what happened yesterday, or last year, or when I was 8 becomes exhausting.
WTF?
All that looking and staring and talking and asking and texting and sweating and calling and meeting and seeing and eating and drinking and repeating and trying and lying and promising and touching and hugging and kissing and licking and sweating and undressing and resisting and submitting and letting go and giving in and moaning and cursing and screaming and cumming and going and pulling out and pulling away and questioning and going with it and rethinking and getting dressed and regret and being quiet and accepting and ignoring and cursing and screaming and crying and lying will have you wondering wtf just happened?
Muse
I've never felt so used. All I do is write and paint and say beautiful things about you
and what do you do besides break my heart? Sure you inspire me but at what cost?
I’ll never own you but I feel like you belong to me.
I’ve called you home for far too long
far longer than these transplanted seeds.
They don't have any roots here they haven't grown any trees.
Yea, they sing you songs but they do you wrong, too.
It’s hard having to share you with those who have yet to shed their leaves.
When they come for a visit and they don't stay I'm the one that sweeps your streets the next day
and how do you repay me?
With hurricanes, and apathy and summers that last too long and disregard but I still hang you on my living room walls
and invite everyone I know over to see that you're the one who inspires me even if you don't care at all.
Lovers, Family, Friends + Strangers
We say goodbye, but no one ever leaves us. They die on the outside, but still live within. Once we love them we become them, and all the people we’ve been with become all the people we’ve been, and all the people we’ve been become all the people we are. I know it’s hard to forget about them without losing a part of ourselves with it all. Can I love you and love all the other people you’ve loved? I wouldn’t know where to begin, but I’ve survived hurricanes much worse I’m sure I could weather again. It’s difficult to let go of old people we were when they’re the reasons why we are the crowd we’ve become, but I’ll try to calm the mob in you while adding to your parade, still careful to not let everyone you are come undone.
I'm always here for the people I hurt.
