anything

"Weren't we the stars in heaven?

Weren't we the salt in the sea? 

Dragon in the new warm mountain

Didn't you believe in me?"

-Adrianne Lenker, anything from the album "Songs and Instrumentals" (2020) 

Marc, Franz. The Foxes (1913). Munich, Germany

 

    The term 'anything' is ever-so selective. Depending on the individual wants of the beholder, 'anything' is a force of shape-shifting. For Jane, it may be a pair of pale ballet slippers, where the heel is cracked and pried until it's the perfect amount of being abused to dance effortlessly like a swan. However, anything is not a pair of uncomfortable and pain-staggering shoes for me. 

    If I could have anything, it would be the moment of clarity where I don't feel stuck; it's as if I'm the middle holes within the frame of a button. I feel as if I'm being woven and restrained by the threads of my own choking emotions, to which, I am being stitched into the fabricated felt of tedium. If I could have anything, I would want to feel considerably normal in a haze of contentment and for my feet not to ache, as I creep up the treacherous stairs that squeak with pain, because the weight of my luggage could dig my own grave. 

    I long to exorcise the phantom of honey-suckled toxicity within myself but I fear that the Pastor would vex me and bind my wrists with the burning ropes, that bear the name of blasphemy, for my character effortlessly tires those I love the most passionately. It's as if my subconscious aims to paddle my actual person, out into the frost-bitten winds of the nape, fir forests, leaving nothing but the crusts of my shortcomings. For if I could have anything, it would be to rid my flaws: the ones who don't allow the moon to shine as brightly.