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WHAT MAY BE BAD FOR MY SOUL
BY KAREN ASHBURNER
 
I hate you today. I do. Yesterday it was love and the day before it was something in between, like passion, like anger, like something derived from fear, derived from the need to survive, derived without external threat, without you.

I wore shorts today. I did. Yesterday I was holding on to resentment for the moon-shaped scar on my thigh. Today it is more like scorn, like church-centered religiousness or de-institutionalized spirituality. I often can't tell the difference between the two. I have been diagnosed with a phobia that renders me incapable of distinguishing between the two. 

I am standing on a thin line today. I am. On one side is love, on the other side is antagonism, which is tolerant of hate but not completely accepting. I have an intense hostility and aversion to acceptance derived from wearing shorts, derived from the moon-shaped scar on my thigh made with a fishing hook you took from your pocket.

I have a strong aversion to fishing hooks and shorts and acceptance. I hate being away from all three. I hate the idea of leaving you alone all week with a fishing hook in your pocket and a memory of the moon-shaped scar on my thigh. But I put my shorts on already. And I already told you how much I love you. And I was wearing shorts! 

I have disgust for you today. I do. I have emotional aversion coupled with malice. Yesterday it was moral condemnation but then I remembered what I did the day before in a field house behind right field and I think what I have for you today is more like hostility or disgust.

I am thinking of being jealous today. I am. It is petty. It is crazy. It makes me feel crazy and petty and alone but jealousy loves me. It is persistent, it is sympathetic, and it never complains about my bitterness. It doesn't call me broken, only bent. It loves me when I am morally disgusted. It says the moon-shaped scar on my thigh is sexy.

I am standing on a thin line today. I am. I am somewhere between kindness and sympathy and goodwill. And when I say kindness, I mean venom. And when I say sympathy, I mean poison. And when I say goodwill, I mean disease. It is easy to get the three confused. It is easy to be angry at you for your acceptance of my jealousy. It is easy to sting, by instinct, by accident, like a jellyfish, like a bell-shaped body floating in the tide, harmless and only trying to protect itself.

I have a strong aversion to you today. I do. But that didn't stop me from loving you, my bell-shaped body floating, the touch of my skin irritating, not dangerous, not filled with disgust or jealousy. Not filled with hate. Only trying to survive.

I hate doing the dishes, did I tell you? There is passion in my hatred, a feeling of enmity for the dirty water. Like being in love with you. Like being ignorant of the hostility and disgust in your voice. Thanks be to God for destroying those who hate me; like David in the Psalms; like the retaliation against commonly held moral rules, directed against individuals, entities, objects, or ideas; directed against you and the thin line I am standing on today; directed against your kindness and sympathy and goodwill.

I have a love of the inappropriate today. I love sin; I turn to vice. My love is internalized. My love is represented my the half-moon scar on my thigh. The focus of my hatred is a part of my heart, my heart is the sinning self. You are the sinning itself. You are the jellyfish, your bell-shaped body stinging, looking only irritating but being dangerous, being filled with disgust and jealousy for my half-moon scar.

I love you today. I do. I love the passion and disgust in your voice when you tell me goodnight. It is perfect and perfectly horrible, like the half-moon scar on my thigh, like my bell-shaped body, floating and waiting for something sweet and innocent to retaliate against, waiting to destroy the last of your innocence, having difficulty in distinguishing a motive for my love, having potentially equal crime in my desire to have and use what may be bad for my soul.

[Forever after at http://eyeshot.net/ashburnersoul.html]

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Something I Stole From A Child's Science Book, Circa 1964 

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