^{Image by: Yves Monrique}

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

I was impulsive.

In my head, I was always asking questions.

The why, the what, the how.

One moment I was high on dopamine.

The next hour, or the next day, I was not.

My mind was always changing.

There was no certainty left.

I acted like a child,

a teenager,

and a tormentor,

all at once.

I was impulsive.

Whenever I found something exquisite,

I wanted to acquire it.

I tried to restrain myself,

but there was no winning.

Only a mind left longing,

longing for possession,

for ownership,

of that beautiful lagoon.

Displayed in the gallery,

the trinkets I owned filled the space.

Yet it was never a hoarder’s lair.

Only someone who loved to collect.

Only beauty for the eyes to behold.

My hand brushed across the frames.

A beautiful beetle collection.

A beautiful butterfly display.

Masks hung upon the walls.

Massive paintings of melancholy and execution.

Then books.

A library built to satisfy the intellect.

Yet the owner was never called a genius,

only a hermit,

buried within his own lie.

If I had a grand house,

I’d line it with mannequins,

each one complementing the next,

each one pleasing the eye.

Even l’amour had a different taste.

Minimalism, they said.

Whatever was maximalist,

he would never dare.

But perhaps that person was simply lonely,

and had always denied it.

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_{Woman Wearing a Turban (Supposed portrait of Beatrice Cecni), by Ginevra Cantofoli, 1650.}

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

I fell into your palms,

molded in your likeness.

You carried me on your back

and threw me into the darkness.

You tore me apart

and left me to rot.

Our fingers slid through our skin,

so supple, so soft, so ornate.

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^{Image by: Antoine Watteau, "Gilles" (c. 1718–1720). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.}

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

Pierre loves the theater.
He dances with glee,
Keeping his friends in the corner,
Holding them, folding their beings into a trapeze.

“Whoosh!” he said, smiling firmly.

I wondered, he said,
When will the marionette dance with me?

I gathered all the equipment, he whispered,
But nothing ever returned to me.

Pierre kissed the thought of affection,
A luxurious intimacy he could not afford.

Then a month had passed,
And a purple marionette arrived
To perform his charade.

He placed a leash upon her
And held her by the waist,
Dancing and tapping across the fiery stage.

The nymphets shouted,
“What a hideous man!”

Their faces twisted with horror,
Their faces were pale.

Pierre carried the broken marionette
To the stadium
And threw her higher,
Until she reached the beam.

The theater closed with its usual bid,
While Pierre drowned in his banal creed.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

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^{Image by: Cristian Palmer}

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

I dived into the ocean,
Even though I knew I couldn’t swim.
As I was pulled beyond the great abyss,
I felt the bleak pressure slowly crushing me.

I did not fight the water and let it guide me.
We swam across the ocean while my eardrums bled.
The vast deep-blue comfort
Pulled me further and further away.

I could not hear the noise of a sailor,
A madman, or a chatterer.
Only silence remained,
And the waves lived within me.

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⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

“I’m a lab rat,” says the man with no shoes.

“I’m a lab rat, society has tested my sanity.

I’m a lab rat, they stripped away my dignity.”

Loud voices echoed in chorus:

No!

We take the test, for we are no longer the tested,

No longer rats in cages, contained, punished, and controlled.

We take our liberation to the grave.

“No mercy,” says the chief.

“We cast off all your doldrums and your mischief.”

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Nothing really interested me, I mused. Even the people on the beach felt more like ants. Nothing amusing, nothing interesting.

Their loud yapping, their stretched-out lips forming distorted figures, grinning and grimacing, and their little eyes annoyed me. It was like living in the underworld while I burned in flames.

The contempt I felt while staring at this horde of people seemed to gut me like a pig, leaving me feeling like fragmented flesh.

I visualized myself seated in an office chair, drinking a mixture of powdered drain cleaner and water, while my internal organs collapsed and my throat slowly burned from the inside. Smoke poured from my mouth as it turned purplish from lack of oxygen.

I had locked the door to my room and left my cat in the living room. Her cries echoed through the apartment while the grimness of the situation consumed me.

All the dreams of never having been born flashed through my mind in the snap of a finger. I was not angry. I was not yearning for anything. I was in the middle of resigning myself to this hideous world.

After an hour, trapped inside my cold skin, I heard banging. Someone was pounding on the door. Somebody was screaming frantically. Somebody had seen my cadaver, and he cried out, shouting at the sight.

But who was to blame?

Only myself.

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^{That’s what they say.}

^{I’ve found my answer,}

^{Yet words can’t recover.}

^{I once lost the words;}

^{But he whispered once again under the bed.}

^{My spine tingled as the thoughts returned.}

^{His life sucked the soul out of thee;}

^{He stained the baroque-painted corset;}

^{Losing all accountability;}

^{Losing my grip on reality;}

^{Asphyxiated by confusion;}

^{A question, yet no suggestion;}

^{Where’s the unity? Where’s justice?}

^{Here’s what they give unto thee,}

^{No, it’s not linear;}

^{No, it’s empty, I say, liar!}

^{I shouted many times.}

^{Even if I speak,
No words can be heard.
If I use my pen as a weapon of defense,
Maybe, maybe I’ll win.}

^{The battle of the living, they say.
I might correct: the battle of absurd thinking.
Aha—I grimaced. Oh, what a fool!
What a face? I let the covers smother thee.}

^{Women who seek justice, isn’t it?
But where’s the grand justice you preach?
Even the stars can lie.
Notice their mouths collide.}

^{Isn’t it disgusting?
A rotting living man in this state.
You want a name?
Nonetheless, I have no one to blame.}

^{Because invisibility is merely an attack.}

^{No one can defame the women.
No man can put his dirty hands on them.
Their corsets were once clean;
Yet you can hear their souls screaming.}

^{“Justice!” they shouted.
They scarred the man’s face.
He decapitated his arm.
He left the vessel.}

^{Now he changed form.
The shadows bend.
They let him hide.
They stand from side to side.}

^{He felt safe, like a wizard.
Put scaffolds on the line.
Yes, indeed, the culprit is safe.
Once and for all.}

^{My pen is my weapon,
And shall hunt this man
And bring him to prison.}

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Thank you for reading this, I really appreciate your time.

Sincerely,

Mari

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The narrator was lost within his dream.

The satin linens transformed into clouds of saccharine, drifting endlessly and drowning his senses. Beyond them, only a whisper from the outside world could still be heard.

He spoke:

The woman was named Ivy, though to some she had no name at all. She blossomed at dusk and withered before dawn. Her life was a constant battle between poverty and the desperate desire to become someone greater.

I listened to Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies No. 1 over and over again as I wrote this letter for her. The flowers I had picked the previous summer dried alongside her attention.

A Box at the Theater (At the Concert) Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)

Ivy. Ivy. Ivy.

She was a contradiction unto herself.

“Nobody truly knew her. She was never that famous,” murmured a woman from the crowd.

But within her fantasies, she was the Crowned Scarlet.

I ardently admired the scent of her scarlet hair, those long and luscious waves she brushed before the mirror each night.

Once, I reached for those strands, tempted by their softness, yet they strangled me instead, leaving bruises across my skin.

Her sapphire eyes were sharp and mysterious, a contrast to mine, filled only with melancholy and longing.

The night dressed us for the ball.

I bowed before her and offered my head like a condemned man.

Ivy accepted the defeated creature I had become. She held me like an infant while quietly poisoning me with her heart.

Beneath the moonlight, the Crowned Scarlet raised the machete.

The clouds concealed the sky, a subtle mercy disguising despair.

That woman with the scarlet hair vanished alongside the ballet, dancing with nothing but lace upon her stride.

The crowd watched as the crows stripped flesh from bone.

I knelt only to yearn, to yearn for the Crowned Scarlet,

for her mercy would surely peel away whatever skin remained of me.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Thank you for reading this, I really appreciate your time.

Sincerely,

Mari

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