literature

A History of My Mouth (The Short Version)

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Literature Text

--/--/--

My first kiss was in preschool, and I have never held so many cherished things inside my mouth. There was honey, and laughter, and the innocent nonjudgmental ways of children exploring something foreign.

I almost got expelled, but I just sat there like the cat who got the cream; my tongue still remembers sunlight.

--/--/--

I made my mother’s life a living hell after a nobody-therapist took my side. I started cussing when I realized how much it bothered her. She could scream like the devil was in me. I’d exaggerate all the consonants with a shit-eating grin. “I’ll quit when you do.”

My mother announced her quitting the family as I stared up from birthday candles. I watched her form the vowels of “it’s your fault” and didn’t read the consonants. Instead, I watched her track my vowels:
“fuck you.”

She never left. I never apologized, but my pride was quick to point out that neither had she; an eye for an eye, a tongue for a tongue.

It’s all since been replaced with late-night stargazing and tentative fingers with tentative bandages, but I never quit the cussing.

--/--/--

A man asked me to give him a birthday kiss in the backroom of an old guitar shop “one for every year.” His lips were chapped, and there was a snake in my gut when I ducked my head. He wanted 79.

I didn’t cuss him out. I told him I was sorry.

--/--/--

After a meal at a 24-hour diner, I kissed a young man’s cheek when I should have kissed him on the mouth, because I couldn’t bring my own to say
I’m sorry I don’t recognize a good thing
Thank you for being a gentleman
Thank you for being so graceful in rejection
Thank you for showing me what gentleness should be like
I’m ashamed I don’t recognize a good thing.
I’m angry  I don’t see you as a good thing.
I’m foolish for not seeing myself as a good thing.

--/--/--

I sucked in the nicotine and lord knows everything else, while I sucked down the alcohol, and then I added caffeine, because it made me laugh to wonder how many substances I could keep inside my body, like a jar of fireflies.

--/--/--

It only says “I love you” when it’s scared you might be leaving.

--/--/--

I stay up with the moon. I slump my shoulders and dutifully catalogue all my rightful burdens. The list is large because, before, they’d been tied to other names. I could never admit this to someone else.
07/23/17
My mouth is kind of a coward, and I’m telling you: this is all my fault. I’m telling you, because I want you to know. I’m telling you because this, to me, is progress.
listen to it here: soundcloud.com/nullibicity/a-h…

Part of me feels bad for my obvious lack of everything artistic, but I make up for it at least in honesty, and this is still my space. Excuse me for needing to say that in order to quell my insecurities.
Sometimes, I don't even know how the heck I arrive at some of the writing destinations I do. But the confronting of my faults has been a long time coming, and I can't say I regret its weird choice of appearance. It's just boring to listen to unless you're the person making the confessions. But so the baring has begun.
And because I wasn't man enough to add this on:
--/--/--
I asked them if it was okay to die and I had absolutely no right to.
© 2017 - 2024 Nullibicity
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lunar-glow's avatar
Did you remove the soundcloud file, by the way? I clicked on it, and the page said the track wasn't found.