If you were wondering about this character, it is Chikara.
Strength/Power.
Hugo paid to have it tatted on me when I turned 24.
I told him then that this indelible ink on my skin had repercussions of permanence.

He said, yes I know.

Ah, the vagaries of youth. All these years.
Memories like ghosts haunting every part of this City.
Ghosts of so many loves past.

This is my City, where I was born.
This is my City, where in Love I walked hand in hand with boys who loved me back.
This is my City, where I will never feel too lonely.

Plunging heedlessly into chaos is the best way to let go.
What do I mean by chaos?
Loosed of the tethers, free to follow the energy pockets along the grid,
travelling high above the corporeal world.
My course and my aim, to find where I can feed.

It seems that the something I was looking for appeared before me,
blindsided me, fed me, sated me.
Clever, clever, sir.

Patient and calculating was the stranger.
I was not even aware of being stalked.
So clever it sets my synapses on fire.
I was delighted to be so outmaneuvered.

What I was asking for between the prose and the parallel structure materialized in a
terrifying, thrilling and unassuming form.

- Isn't that what you needed? he asks, pointedly.

It was, it is. But I had all but given up on finding it. I cannot go, yet.
I want to leash my battered heart that has exhausted itself with hope,
before hope strikes again.
But yes, yes, yessss.

Playing it out, working it out. 9 or so hours of synergy;
the sirens of a four alarm fire in my hypothalamus.

Like a submissive I will wait upon Desire, not run after it.
For a submissive the waiting is the sweetest pain.
Like a strategist I will wait upon the next move.
I will be still. Meditating quietly on a cloud in the ether.
Waiting for Enlightenment to come to me.

Sibilance again. That sizzling sound.
Hands at my sides. Eyes downcast.
Hair loosed and in wild disarray.
Chaos here, awaiting your next command.

Deliberately staying one step behind
to watch the movement of the steps ahead.

[If this one instance is all I get, if this one instance is a message
from the Universe telling me not to give up, I accept this.]

Someone has poured gasoline on the crumpled paper box where
the freak has been writhing, setting all the desires within aflame.
Someone found me on the grid.
Someone unleashed the freak from her gyves and fetters.
And took her for a walk. Perhaps test drive is a more apt description.

Thirst slaked for now.

(Remember this?)

Message 5 is the post-cum sated afterglow, the snuggling between
rounds, the quiet contentment of bodies humming together,
and where breathing deeply is so satisfying.
Lazy caresses and lazy kisses, and the
time apart that makes the wanting begin again.

(It’s been a long time since then.
How the journey began and where I am now.)

I want desire to be new. I want a new world to wake up to.
I want to relearn kissing, and touching and flirting.
I want yearning and feening.
I want to start at Ground Zero and feel the Escalation.

Pobrecita.

The inner freak lashed like Ulysses to the mast.
The “real me”.

Someone fed the kitty in my head. And she’s been on life support for so long.
Her only sustenance the IV of fantasy and daydream.
She’d become so emaciated and malnourished,
barely breathing, strong only in my subconscious.
Drowning under Freud’s iceberg.
And then, manna from heaven, honey in her mouth.
Rolling and savoring on her tongue.
Solid Food.
Only bloating the hunger.

When I think of this, I do not experience only
that requisite burning between my legs.
But a palpable hunger pang.

Something sinister about the unassuming stranger who tread quietly
upon my consciousness. Posing no threat.
Calmly observing from all visible angles.
Peering in. Taking notes.
Tuning in to the frequency of my desire.

- IT WAS YOU WHO GAVE AWAY THE KEYS TO THE CAGES.
YOU WHO HAVE BEEN GIVING IT ALL AWAY.
- I didn’t think anyone was really listening.
What are the odds of finding me on the grid?
Didn’t I want to be found? What are you going to do?
- WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
- I don’t know. I’m tired and confused and don’t dare hope. I’m bleeding on the inside.
- LEAVE THIS TO ME LITTLE ONE. GO TO SLEEP LITTLE ONE.
I AM HERE. I AM STRONG AGAIN. IT IS MY TURN AGAIN.
GO TO SLEEP LITTLE ONE. I WILL TAKE CARE OF US.
SLEEP AGAIN. DREAM AGAIN. HEAL.
- I’m sorry, I’ve failed us. I thought I was right this time.
I thought if I loved hard enough, was patient enough, tried hard to be a better girl.
- BEING A BETTER GIRL? OR A WEAKER GIRL?
LOVE SHOULD NEVER WEAKEN YOU. PIANO, PIANISSIMO.
SUBSIDE. LISTEN TO THE DECRESCENDO.
- Will you leave me alone? Will I ever wake up again?
- NEVER ALONE. AND I’LL SEE YOU WHEN YOU’RE RESTED.
- Are you the same one? The same as the Dark Angel,
who came to care for me years ago?
- SHE, WAS ME, TO A LESSER DEGREE.
AS YOU WERE, HER. WE ARE THE EVOLVED.
- Kind of like a Pokemon?
- YES, EXACTLY.

Chaos moves quickly and with no warning or direction.

I’m in such a flux, of forward and backward and sideways emotions.
Sadly happy. Happily sad. Tired. Hungry. Quiet. Serene. Dangerous.
Obnoxious. Potentially careless.
[ Ed. note – cannot be careless. In chaos, safety first. Comprenez-vous? ]

But my eyes, my eyes, the eyes I expose to you.
They are turning black and blacker still.
Dark orbs with tightly-leashed, chomping-at-the-bit,
maelstrom of passion in all its flavors, whirling within.
A tempest. A brave new world.
I can hear a howling in the wind, the keening of my soul,
sense the stealth of the fog creeping over the bay,
the tears flow and ebb, my back arches and my breath a strangled gasp.

Inside me, something is silently sobbing herself to sleep.
But something else is laughing.
And rolling up her sleeves, rubbing her palms together.
Tying on a lobster bib.
Getting out the barbecue sauce.

Maybe this isn’t as cataclysmic as it is in my memory.
Maybe it is.

I think perhaps you are not for real.
But I think also maybe, neither am I?

********

Spent most of yesterday in a numb funk.
I’m exhausted and feeling a little poorly.
Too much drugs and liquor.

So I stayed home and tried not to think about anything at all.
Read a magazine. Took a satisfying nap.

Spoke with a girlfriend, also going through the end of an LTR.
Epidemic in the air. A liberation front.
She came over and we played video games and talked
about our respective heartaches, with our eyes glued to the screen.

- I’m so tired of boys who don’t know what they want,
don’t know what I want. Boys who can’t see the goldmine of a woman in front of them.
- Its time to upgrade to the older men, I said. 30+, 40+.
- Why so old? she asked.
- To a 40 year old, I answered, I’m practically fresh twat!
- Could you be any more crude? she said.
- Oh yes, I said.

******

It’s Sunday and I spoke with Hugo today.
I hadn’t spoken to him since Thursday night.
I just got off the phone with him now.
He’s on his way home from visiting with his family down south.

The conversation started alright until it was apparent to me
that even after all that was said
[ including the words, we should just end it then, right? Right. ]
he still thinks we’re “kind of” together and that he was hoping
we could work out our problems, together, within this relationship, with love.

What about my rage, I said?
What about all our fucked up communication issues?
And the fact that we have both sacrificed our own feelings
to protect each other’s feelings?
That in doing that we have lost all sense of honesty between us?

He says he is not as troubled as I am about our communication issues.
He thinks we should go to counseling.

I think, although I did not say this, that if we’re not getting married
anytime soon that counseling is more than I can handle.

He says, I don’t want to be with you if you’re not in love with me anymore.

Sometimes I was in love with you, I said.
On those clear days when we walked in the park, and I almost forgot
about all the things which made us unhappy.

He doesn’t want this, doesn’t want to lose me.
He agrees with all the reasons why I feel things aren’t right between us,
but doesn’t think that dealing with these issues separately, as individuals,
is the right way to fix
what’s wrong.

He wants me, he says. Badly.

You want this girl? I said. This girl that I am? Full of rage and hatred?

What about counseling, he says. I’ll pay for it. Whatever it takes.

I don’t think counseling is the answer, I said,
when my feelings are unleashed, about us, they’re just raw and unedited
and impassioned and all the more volatile
because they’ve been repressed for so long.
And will only lash out at you like a whip.
I can’t control that.
And I don’t want to fight, or hate you,
or blame you, or be angry at you.

At this moment of flux:

I am sad but not sad.
I am scared but not scared.
I am happy but not happy too.

Chronicling my life minute by minute, like an outsider.
In a futile attempt at objectivity.

Feeling very very tiny tonight.
Like, infinitesimal.