When you long to loose the anchor
Loosen built up tension
Let it carry you away

Felt freedom for the first time. Friday nights, I’d buy my ticket for the minivan. The 4 hour ride to Bangkok. Me, myself and 12 fucking stangers that won’t say a word to me. The wind from those windows on my skin. Was the first I’d felt in years. Not imprisoned, except in unfeeling. Always alone, those 10 months of weekends. But dusk on those highways felt like Daytona Beach in my veins. Sun in my heart like the city lights of the cascading skyline . As the van would round it’s way into BKK, I felt like me. My blood pulsed the second Sukumvhit’s streets pulsed into my soles. Get in a taxi, throw my Thai around. Decisive. Decisive as fuck. Me as fuck. Years since I’d been that way. I’d thrown the anchor away.

Always wanted to loosen the anchor. But I didn’t know what that meant. Didn’t know what was really fucking me anymore. Literally. Figuratively. In every mind orifice. I was born of trauma. From all the pieces of me that connected–tendon by tendon–when the tomahawk missile hit my trachea. All the pieces that rebuilt, when it tore apart my spine so I couldn’t stand and face the world. They did it, all on their own. No asked them. Self-Survival.

See day by day pass by
Each week another try
Brushing off the way you feel

But they formed when all eyes were on me. Like a whole body version of ‘saving face’, they cobbled together the semblance of a person. Smile out your elbow if you have to. No one has patience for the tragic. A week; and fuck your tears. That’s the biggest life lesson I’ve learned. You get bad habits, from reconstruction that way. Little dark parts that hop into the spot vacated by your spleen, as you search the wreckage for the original. Swirling in your madness in the middle of your daily routine. Angry at the fucking stapler. The copy machine. Your finger for succumbing to an envelope. Little words spoken at afternoon tea with friends. Angry, always angry. Why am I always so angry? Loosen the anchor. I want to dance the night away.

Want to hide; but rosacea has riddled your face, sternum, the follicle of every hair on your body. You’re a poster boy of walking embarrassment. Everyone you know seeing you like that. Getting to re-know you like that. Re-remember you like that. Forget all the pieces that were you. Like you do, as you eventually give up looking for that polaroid of yourself pasted to a part of your patella that was blown half a kilometre away. They don’t know you anymore. It won’t always be like this. Fuck if they care. Loosen the anchor, I want to escape.

See the migrant birds pass by
Taking off to warmer skies
Hear them singing out their songs
Tune in, realize nothing’s wrong

Escape is a luxury. Not without it’s own pain. Threw away my entire life to run. To try to re-tackle myself in Thailand. Throw myself in front of a bus (of emotion). Take what’s left of me. Put it where it’s supposed to be. Finally. Thought I could return. Once I was whole, and all that fuckery. Wrong. I’m here again. Giving life a chance. I think, for the first time in 5 years, I’m not disfigured. They all still know me as the boy with a humerus in his eye socket. A radius sliced halfway through the back of his skull.

Every time I’m around people,
The anchor sucks itself into my thoracic cavity.
Has a thwack at itself.
A wank at my expense.
Blows my heart to pieces.

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