I.

Softly caressing my skin with the winds from the heights “wuthering”— teleported through a period piece I am in pieces… I hear the memories speak as ghosts come alive against my will, whispering what is beyond this thousandth hill.

Seeing faces: all of them reflections of you, in all these characters suffering, willing and unwilling. burning slow, in cruelty and greed, the brightest part of every antagonist you possess, as you do the darkest part of every hero, this mighty heart makes you look like a monstrous young god; yet, your Achilles heel you cannot shake off, for broken is not a part of you, but the whole.

Staining every imaginary piece with your memory, pierced is our reality; through the pores of my expressions, you escape and stain every new page I open.

Our souls carved in hell, from the same burning air; our tears come from the same well— losing my language, my tongue, my religion, as I am watching letters appear unfetched like loyal dogs unloved—tricking me with some vicious spell, reminding me I have not seen rock bottom just yet.

How I had not enough, I must write and dig myself out of this hole— how many more pages are you going to haunt and claim for I am under your immortal siege?

II. Playing Hanging Man

As some hanging man dies in screams;
Still alive I know; will be laughing with
No innocent bone in me;
A child creep I must have been
To be drawn to a brute a monster
In heat. Ribbons the color of my lips
My blood did not save me the ribbon
Room did not save me the skin room
Sucked me in and further until I found
Comfort in my suffocation—
Food of the worms you become
In a sea of in a sea of chains you fall asleep.

If planets were the characters in a movie and our galaxy the sun and the moon, who would you be? This odd disease of recognizing faces in patterns, as I recognize you in all of literature, in film, in the sandy makeup of dunes of hills of heights I have never reached, so I found solace in the brutal storms of the moors, shivered in my rain-covered body to feel your warmth—

My altered memories clinging onto a fictional version of me, of you, of us—I need to heal, and the rivers-of-blood-in-my-body-running-free may my lifeless body cure this inexplicable disease that is love, that is toxicity.

III. (Cathy's pov continued)

On the day of my funeral-wedding, I ask for my gown to drown me in my own skin so my insides can show how this toxic syndrome comes as a shock to some, like a baby growing within the shadows of an alien bump innocent and punished like all other innocents, for I have made this skin my bed: now I can lie in it in eternity in mighty defeat reaching for an abyss from the depths of hell. I can haunt you to fulfill your wishes from beyond the grave— I knew I was going to die here in wars in flames invisible, for my skin was robbed of its usual colours, for my soul was a burning ghost.

III.

May as well be the attempt of my mind playing tricks on me to keep your memory clean, like a photographer capturing you in the best light to hide your rotten deep within an apple with worms dancing inside— yet the red wax shines on…

We cry for antagonistic heroes torturing each other with the sharp tools of retreating, punishing, yearning until pulled back like an unexpected tide.

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. And Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire”, or thorns from a rose-petal, or some mist from a heatwave, and I could go on and on, drawing analogies of our emphasis in differences.

IV. Journal poem entry merging Cathy, Isabella, and me

(Another blurry perspective, for the only common denominator is him and him only…)
Blotches from yesterday’s page sit
Unrecognizable, so I write over them in
Hopeless hope; I haven’t been hopeful for
So long that I forget what it felt like. I forget
The taste of a dish from another culture I
Tried only a few times.

Another universe, as I intend to paint on,
Cloud over everything rational.
Self-abomination stares back at me
In every mirror as if already shattered.
The pieces of me multiply and eat the whole,
All at once. Lulled into a sleep state full of gentle
Nightmares, gentle enough so I welcome them
In and cry on and on—

Deep into a soul with nobody at home—only
Feeling with the nudge of your thunders in heights
I may never reach on my own or with the help of the
Body of my husband on top; his hands mimicking your
Touch but I know better than to fall for it all— and that
Knowing sets my demise, sets the scene, sets the sun—