Park Bench Person
Olivia Nyah
I woke up this morning and decided that it’s me. I am the single worst human alive. I don’t think I am the worst person to ever walk this earth though. I can safely say that Ted Bundy was worse than I, but I do know that I am worse than anyone out there right now. I think this is a good decision. It feeds into my idea that maybe I am only this horrible because when Bundy, Dahmer, and Gacy died they left parts of their souls for me. Somehow the gods of all unborn babies living inside hippie moms decided that I deserved these dark and littered souls so they sprinkled in me the worst parts of all of them. The souls had to wait in soul storage for a while because they were waiting for the perfect carrier. So, by the time I (the perfect carrier) came along, there were so many more rapist murders in soul storage that I got some of all of them. This could be a blessing or a curse. I am glad that I am not spiritually 100% Ted Bundy, but secretly I think I only got the bad parts of each of them. All the bad parts that are only precipice to the whole murder thing. I couldn’t kill anyone. Ever. But all the other parts are dfinitely there, and definitely enough to constitute my title as the worst person alive.
The poison that lives inside my brian is leaking out into every river under my feet. Everybody that I love is walking through the creek barefoot, not aware that every step I take in front of them feeds the poison sumac until it is twisting and tangling around their ankles. There is misery in my exhales, and I know that they can taste it. This morning I woke up and saw that my eyebrows are sparse, my skin has pores resembling black holes, my hair falls everywhere but where I want it, and my chin droops down to my collar bones. On the mirror, with a tube of bright pink lipstick, I drafted the apology letter I will hand write for every single person I have ever forced to look at me: teachers, customers, strangers, friends. The apology letters may have to be mailed out though. I don’t want to put them through having to see me again, and I will write an extra letter for the Post Office employee, and maybe a bundle of sage so they can be rid of my spiritual contamination. There's physical contamination too, of course. The way the people around me pace and worry as if I am actually something worth saving. Unaware that I am the parasite and the illusion of love is the ailment.
I have been changed by things that I let happen to me, and now I drive too fast on the freeway. Even when the people I love are in the car. Even when there is somebody who wants me to get home safe. I am the single worst person alive right now because I existed for long enough to be assaulted, and now it is everyone else’s problem. I was the one with the vessel. He just had hands and nowhere to put them. I was the one with the craving. The insatiable need for a father to just be there. Even when it meant he went too far.
I squeeze so tight nobody can breathe because I don’t want them to leave like him. Let people sink their teeth into my open wounds if it means they’ll stay; nothing can be as bad as what he did. I let the fire burn everyone around me when there’s an inclination that someone is on their way out. Push away and then strangle pulling back in.
But, for some god forsaken reason I am still here. A lot of the time “here” is nothing more than stillness. I sit on park benches and pretend that I am the wood. I pretend that I am just purposeful.
That I have one job, and that I am doing it well.
