crazy maddie haunts my wall

crazy maddie haunts my wall

maddie has killed herself at last, blown her head off with that gun she bought, but her soul still is not at rest. her spirit flits nervously through the atmosphere. with a group of mourners i meet at midnight in the abandoned bedding warehouse, like a pack of vampires, where we joined for diego's wake. we are there to put her spirit to rest, i imagine. there's only a handful of observers at this one, and no one is comfortable speaking to the group--none of us were on good terms with maddie at her exit. none of us at this wake can claim she was the positive spirit that kept a smile in our hearts when we needed it, as folks said of diego. no one knows what to say. were any of us really even her friend? at times, yes, we knew each of us was, but in the end, no, not one of us.

i get up to speak and am compelled to describe her like she was. i stumble in words of confusion and turmoil, remarking on her fire and passion which sparked me, her unique nature, her sharp quick-wit, sense of intrigue, and her blazing genuineness about coarse subjects. but let's face it, i break, maddie was on the edge of chaos where she lived with her harsh vengeant bitterness and paranoia. one of the rawest souls i've ever known. she was unwilling to make peace with her skeletons. she'd prefer to slash her flesh open and turn herself inside out bleeding before making any apologies for her caustic hatred. she was too restless to go on at that high-spun pitch for much longer. we all must have known it, but there was nothing to do--her destiny was up to her. and in the end, there's only so many friendships you can burn before you no longer feel at all home in this world. there's only so many fragile psychic masks you can wear and smash through--and then try to re-cement a new one back together alone on your cold cement floor--before your image materials are all too shattered to be anything but charged dust strewn across the concrete.

after the ceremony, everyone looked at me like i was nuts to have said what i'd said. maddie's loose spirit would live in my crux, they all knew, haunt me with razorblades, spit, and twisted affection for my honesty. i wound up arguing with her molester father over her inheritance. i wanted her notebooks and her sketches, not her statues--miniature nude self-sculptures of her body wrapped in snakes, chains, and crucifixes. i especially wanted that coal sketch she'd done with a streaks of purple across the eyes, her wildly tinted, beautified and sad self-image. i wound up settling for a glossy color photocopy of the image.

and now, about five years down the road, her face hangs on the wall in my studio where i do my writing and my own sketchwork. she smirks at the power of my false image of stability, she ignites sparks in my rabid beautiful madness. her dimple shimmers a smirk towards me from that flimsy tattered sheet. her stinging critical eyes pierce me when i need to face the harsh edge of humanity in my works.

crazy maddie haunts my wall by Iggy Sarducci is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.