manymistypes:

April 17, 2015 - sidbranca / thisbedisaship

as a girl, my favorite painting was of Joan of Arc
I saw it in person at eighteen and I wept
and it wasn’t just the acid
but the whole thing was so much larger than I thought
she and I were the same size
but she was always a part of something bigger than herself

I guess I sometimes long to believe in something
because I know that I believe in love
but maybe God doesn’t stand you up
or give your cunt a cancer
or leave you for a seventeen year-old on Valentine’s Day
or whatever, hypothetically

I realized in the bathroom I’d been bleeding from my thigh all night
after the show Sara almost set her hair on fire with a candle
these are the things that saints do, because they are too busy looking up

I told her about my current sense of devotion
and she held my hand and smiled
I remembered the morning I watched her body turn into steam
curling up around a mountain
and the freezing waters we plunged into, laughing

I imagine myself in the distant past, a zealot
kneeling and killing beneath the banner of my god
the voices of saints ripping through my thoughts
with the sound of knives through canvas sails
or Rilke decoding the dead

here, now
I have my tarot deck and my love affairs
the sun on moving water
great people, bad habits
Saint Stevie, Saint Malört
and the way these loves I feel
make me try harder to be good