birthday
today i held a zippo lighter in front of your face today and sang out of tune with a toothy sort of grin on my face. the flame burns for too long until the metal grows hot in my hand and starts to hurt. thatās alright. i like how you indulge me and close your eyes to blow it out, scrunching up your face to think of a wish.Ā
today I sat down in the dark at home and starred at the wall until the patterns bled together into a blurred mess. everything around me is decaying faster than i can make sense of. itās only been five months, but iām already gripped by the paralyzing fear that the end too close for comfort. what happened before wasnāt sudden. it was slow and creeping. too slow and creeping. i didnāt notice my emotional limb had rotted to bone before I met you. a week later i cut it off and asked you out to coffee.Ā
I feel like iām always looking for signs now, trying to avoid another late stage amputation-- like if i catch it early enough, expect it early enough that I can fix it before it gets to that.Ā
i wasnāt like this before. i was never nervous in the service-- shellshocked by every little gesture, word, and touch. im frightened by something that isnt even happening. iām worried iāve annoyed you past the point of it being charming and bringing it up will only get a halfhearted, frusteredĀ āyou arenāt. dont worryā in return.Ā
youāre all i have. and whats worse is i dont have anyone to tell about it.Ā
my family neuroses have reached a breaking point and any friends i had have chewed each other up and spit eachother out. there's nothing viable, identifiable left. just blood, and viscera, and whispering, and crying. any trust ive had for anyone around me is gone since my life has become a fucking game of telephone.Ā
happy birthday
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talk
I dont want to talk about it. i dont want to talk about me. about you. us. to call a dozen times a day when you know i dont answer. ill sit there and stare at the wall and hold the phone away from my body while your voice pours through the speaker, telling me what i ought to do about all of this.
i know where this goes. i know how this ends. the checkout date for the hotel is the 6th of may and iām sitting on the bed flicking tv channels until its time to go. im bleeding out our time and watching it go down the drain. counting the days until its over. until i can breathe. because i know its coming and im done before the end has even come.Ā
weāre watching each other fade away and decay like spirits into the background of our own lives. ive pushed you to it. its what i wanted wasnāt it? is it fair to ask for attention in the dead of night when ive sent you to spend all day with someone else? but you still wake at midnight and murmur into the phone, try to ask more of something, anything just to get me to talk.
do you miss me, do you love me. we parrot back and forth
we are doomed
and i cant help you anymore.Ā
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iāve always seen the best in people, and itās always been to my detriment. i think about it the same way i think of a tsunami, a beautiful act of nature, yet it is also an act of destruction. i say iām working on myself and i am, but in truth i find beauty in chaos, comfort in discomfort. i think i chase things that i know will hurt me. we, as humans, seek experience. wether or not these events are positive we grasp at them, and i am undeniably an adrenaline junkie. i fuel myself with what ifs, and preface my inevitable sadness with the premonition that i know itās coming. i just donāt know how to handle it when it does.
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ode to You who cant remember my name
you lived in shades of fucking cool like no one iāve ever known. thatās all iāll ever think of you. this isnāt a poem, or a love sonnet, isnāt pretty or kind enough to be one. just a letter to a ghost that haunts the dark corners of my temporal lobe. you were the first guy i knew to fly off the handle like that and shave your head into that wild shaggy mohawk when things werenāt going well. foreshadowing to my shitty park bathroom bleach job after i lost my sister, right? i wished i was brave like you, knew how to sayĀ āfuck you allā or even just have the balls to tell them to lay off you. what didnāt they make fun of man. you couldnāt seem to do anything right. you couldnāt even open your mouth without having someone yell at you to shut up. and i remember the way my face would flush scarlet and iād have to bury my head in my arms when you raised your hand in class, because I was already burning with enough shame for both of us. not that youād know. i didnāt like my body or the way my clothes felt on my skin. i couldnāt stand my lisp that i never managed grow out of (it stops being cute after 6th grade apparently). when words left my mouth, i wanted to crawl inside of myself and disappear. you spoke like the world was ending, tearing apart and collapsing around you and you just had to. get. your last. words. out.Ā
and youād smirk and lean back in your chair. arrogant prick. james dean. marlon brando. clint eastwood. i figure we can mock eachother equally in that department since you and I imitate the same men. same masculine swagger that comes off like a living, breathing love letter to old hollywood. swear i saw you in a leather jacket. unless thatās just who you are and iāve been copying you. then this whole thing comes across like a different kind of love letter.
You tried everything. you skiied and played the flute and took karate and listened to metal and read Eragon and Harry Potter and every Tolkien book published. You ran a D&D table and I cleaned cafeteria tables because I didnāt have anywhere else to go. I donāt know how I got it in my arrogant little brain that I was better than you. I was exhausted, ignoring adolescent mental illness bubbling to the surface, had trouble connecting with anyone my age, listened to the same five sad lana del rey songs over and over.Ā
I always liked how you lent me books. it made me feel smart. we were all pretty smart, I guess. top 1% of the school. the gifted class. cream of the crop. but your books were the only ones I read willingly. I chewed up page after page like a starving man just so I could come to you a few days later, give it back and say I was done. and youād sayĀ āalrightā, and Iād nudge my hand a little closer so we could touch and see if it made me feel something.
I always liked how youād tuck your feet in close when I walked by. you were always lounging, feet outstretched while you were half asleep, but you still saw me. acknowledged my presence. like you wanted to make my life a little easier even when I was just a passing shadow. I think of you every time some does that for me-- moves their body to make room for mine.Ā
I feel like such a freak, thinking of you like this even now. itās been so long. we werenāt that close. and i donāt think anyone will ever truly get it and that tears me apart inside. But I wish Iād held you a little longer if iādāve known that was really the last time. first and last time iād ever been that close to you, i think. I think I felt something for you that I canāt ever hope to understand.
and this is sorry excuse for everything i have to say
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they bought the house down the road. deep in the crick, down in the ravine. it sits in this little valley of indented earth, now barren and lifeless.Ā
this little yellow house on display for highway rats scurrying this way and that. to school. to work. or back. the wrap around porch had a blanket of white latticework to shade the little old man inside from the choking California sun. there was a chain-link fence too, these lush dark vines of every kind threaded throughout the gaps in the metal. it was barely waist high, a sorry attempt at keeping anyone out since the gate was always kept open wide. it was mostly for the sake of the fat little tabby cats that wove their way in and out of his garden during the day. iād spy their grey, tiger stripped bodies lounging about on the stone walkways or trotting after the little old man as he hobbled to prune his joy and pride.
the garden. god, the garden. the rose bushes had almost entirely taken over the yard, growing wild and out of control. they climbed up and over the walls of the home and wormed their thorny fingers beneath the roof tiles. the flowers bloomed in agony, pouring every last ounce of love they had for the man into their short spring time lives.Ā
āwe adore you!ā the red flowers, as big as my open palm said
āyouāve been so good to us,ā the pink flowers crooned.
āwe know youāll get better soon. we know it, we know it,ā the white flowers said in shaking whispers, as their petals had already began to fall.Ā
Peppermint had invaded the yard, springing up in every pot and darkened corner of the yard, but it too hid away dormant in the warmer months of the year. It would return in the winter with the slyness of an old, always welcome friend.
But the lavender, the beautiful tangled mass of lavender couldnāt seem to get enough of the heat. It reached its spires of purple buds up to the heavens. ālook at me,ā it saidĀ ālook what I can do. i do it for you, for our home! i love you, i love you!ā. only when sun grew hot enough to create a heat mirage on the highway would the buds burst open into a million tiny, indigo flowers. The woody, sweet, and spicy scent of the blooms would fills the air and drift over to the neighboring homes with the nighttime breeze. along with it I could heat the creaking of a porch rocking chair the padding of tiny paws on its old boards.Ā
the day it happened the grass went brown, from wild and green to a shriveled mass of brown overnight, they figured heād been so sick that he must have forgotten to water. forgotten fertilizer. forgotten something because no matter what they tried; nothing could revive the earth. i knew better.Ā
the garden mourned for a year, bushes and planters slumped over with the weight of grief and overgrowth.Ā āfatherā i heard the ground whimperĀ āfather, father, fatherā unsure of where it was the little old man had gone. it turned to a rainy winter and the tabby cats yowled at the back door to be let in most nights. they wanted to curl up by a woodstove that no longer burned, by the feet of their man who was no longer alive. i watched them turn skinny and feral with wild, untrusting eyes. their shiny coats became matted with burs and underbrush. their dinners came from blood and sinewy instead of the manās old china plates. by the time anyone had thought to do anything about them, they were already too far gone. too wild. too untrusting of any hand resembling that which abandoned them.Ā
a family bought the little yellow house a while back. i know now just as i knew then that the land can hate just as it loves. i felt the flowers cry out in disgust as the overfilled station wagon trundled up the driveway.Ā ānot you, not you. you donāt belong. not youā.Ā
the roses were first to go. the father began amputating the limbs of the bushes that had wrapped themselves around the house. too unclean. unruly. he lopped them off one by one until the ancient giants had been cut down into knee high shrubs. they turned a sickly yellow, wilted, and petrified into a decaying black within the week. they had to be torn out by the roots and burned come fall.
the raised garden beds were neglected and shrived into dust while the family spread their empty boxes and plastic bubble wrap around the yard. the mother came our with a barrel of Round-Up and sprayed at the vines in the fence until they too choked to death and rotted away. the trash only piled up, turning from boxes to old tires and styrofoam blocks and sickly, bulging garbage bags. An ugly plastic childrenās slide. disembodied Barbie arms.Ā the lavender turned pale and anemic when an old, rusted up project car was parked in front of it, next to the abandoned pop-up camper van. the only sun it saw came from the splash of evening light, seconds before it disappears behind the mountains. so it no longer bloomed or spread its sweet summer scent.Ā
Eden has turned to a valley of barren ash and the Millers wonder why nothing will fucking grow from their earth. Wonder why they had to pay thousands for their fluorescent green lawn of AstroTurf. Wonder why no matter how many times they paint the home, how the white always peels away from the walls. Wonder why the animals circle the home like vultures, but never step foot on it.Ā
Shame about the christmas fire.Ā
Horrible
Dreadful.Ā
Hear the family had to move away, the flames burning so high and bright that nothing remained.Ā
But see I stopped by the remains of little yellow house the other day to see a scruffy feline rolling around in the ash. And in the charred remains of the porch, I saw it: a thin sprig of peppermint worming its way out of the soil. āiām home old friend. iām home, Iām home.ā
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Holes
you create small mountains beside you, what was once sheltered from the sky is now sitting right beside you. you get lower and lower. you bore and burrow. you wonder why, what you would say if someone really cared to asked. itās easier that way, itās your go to response. itās easier to kick a pillar when youāre crying, to change the emotions into something physical, for the hurt to travel from your head to your foot. itās easier to bleed. youāre not there anymore, youāre clean. youāre good and you know itās not easier, but it is, so you dig. your body is shaking and you look at your arms, the ones that have always been weak.
youāre thinking about everything except what you should be doing, and before you notice it, youāre at the bottom. youāve gone too far, youāve done too much. you think you can feel the heat of the earthās core, of lava scorching away your history-laden skin. youāve wasted your energy and your time today. you grasp at incoherent nothings, at dirt, stone, and the bugs. you try to pull yourself back up. you couldāve done it five years ago. you were so strong, you did it all out of spite. youāre so dreadfully frail now. you run on nothing. you sit and take it in, you do it to yourself.
youāve dug another hole, and you donāt know if you can get out of it this time. you wish you were still smart. you think that if you were anywhere near the person you were so long ago that you could. gifted, intelligent, beautiful, strong, fast, a real star. where did you go wrong? where along the line did it all become too much? just pull yourself out, you canāt afford to fuck things up yet again.
youāre tired, you close your eyes and find comfort in a grave far too deep. you think about all the times youāve done this before, and you wonder if itāll be the last time. if youāll free yourself from what unwillingly follows, of what seems to haunt you when youāre alone. it seeps into your brain when youāre with friends, and itās not as easy to shake off anymore. your body is heaving, your breathing is faint, and you laugh. itās ironic, youāve never been where youāre supposed to be, where you said youād go. build a future on a shallow base, something from nothing is what youād say. you ramble on about everything to no one, but you continue.
speaking to the bugs that crawl along your arms and legs, you formulate goodbyes and greetings. you plot out a new life, one a billion miles away, and one in the dirt. maybe itās better this way, when you canāt do whats good for yourself, so you canāt expect better. maybe you were right all along.
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itās fatherās day, and iāve been so consumed by anger, by sadness. i think that if things were easy, if they were ideal, some sort of god would come down and smite him. i watch a tv show and a characterās father dies. his dad hurt him, just as mine did to me. he sits in grief, in anger and in denial. i feel like i go through it all every time he crosses my mind. heās still bad, after all that he did to me he hasnāt changed. heās cold hearted, heās selfish, and i fear heās passed it all down to me. i hate this holiday, and i hate that it means i canāt leave the house today without seeing how things are supposed to be. life has cheated my loved ones, and itās cheated me through the form of my dad. iām mad today, iām angry in a way i canāt put to words, so i ramble here. i wish i could relate all the love i give to others to myself, but i think iām becoming more and more like him. maybe when iām older my face will droop in the same places, and iāll hurt people the same. i feel fear, of him and him through me. i wonāt be like him, iāll try my hardest to be everything he isnāt. i wish he were different, and if he were different today wouldnāt be so bad. iād have a full family, but because of him weāve got two less people. fatherās day should be good, but itās a day i try to forget every year as i try to forget my dad every day. things arenāt the best right now.
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youāre in your room and youāre killing ants that werenāt there a day ago. they came into fruition too fast just as things are changing too fast. youāre killing something and youāre pretty sure that makes you a monster. everything around you is a mess. your clothes, artwork, and trash all mix into one as theyāre scattered across your carpeted floor. you feel disgusting. itās too hot and there are ants in your room, and everything needs to change fast, to find a solution before the sun rises. you need to fix it and you think it would be so much easier if you could find a source of where these black little bugs are trailing from, but you canāt. they crawl in and out of your carpet, in your backpack thatās been abandoned for the summer. you feel like they could engulf the room and you in it, consuming years worth of memories and the person that made them. you are gross, theres crumbs and laundry and even more trash. you throw together scattered works of art and itās hard to toss down poetry and your artwork for people that youāll never give them. theres a bowl of noodles thatās been left to mold on your nightstand and everything feels untouchable and uncomfortable. youāre destroying your own āsafe spaceā but youāre silent as you do so. itās ironic, the timing of the bugs. the thought of them everywhere sticks to the crevices of your brain and for a moment they seem to disappear. you think you couldāve imagined it, that you disassembled a months worth of mess to make it new, to pace in discomfort through your cave. they still exist, and you killed some. youāre the reason that they arenāt alive, even if itās just a bother someone wouldnāt bat their eyes at. youāre immoral, and morality and itās connection to mortality is so extremely frightening to you. youāre sitting on the floor and youāre killing something. the fragility of life is trivial in this sense, yet it is large, powerful, and itās terrifying. thereās definitely some sort of joke you could make about it, or some half hearted comment about how itās like two in the morning and youāre this upset over ants, but things feel suffocating and your room is torn apart. youāve been at this for an hour. the thoughts of the passage of time and that something is dead because of you keep hitting you in the face, itās like bricks or a swift kick to the back of the leg. you hate where things are right now, you hate ants in your room and how many times youāve said ants in this piece of writing, you hate time and you hate that you never have solutions. but it really isnāt that deep. you really should just go rest, but youāll probably just stay up and dwell on it. yikes.
this sucks
i hate ants
i hate second person pov writing but i love it
i hate ants so much
iām a bad person for killing ants
wow
it really isnāt that deep
i am so sad
what happens after we die????
ants
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Acuario
I am my motherās bearer of rage. I feel the vase of it in my chest, filling, filling, filling and overflowing up into my throat like bile. Itās the yolk that trauma daughters must wear through their days. You could be the most beloved creature in the world, exalted by the father, mirror image of the mother, and youāll still wear that anger like an heirloom coat you havenāt the heart to shake. If not you, then who?
We wear the same clothes you and I. Same worn in jeans hiked up to our waists to hide the little pudge of stomach, buttoned up menās shirts and keen and sharp eyes. We wear the same perfume, sit the same, smile the same, cry the same, scream the same. I know he doesnāt see me in you, you in me. Somehow convinced I was ripped from another womb.Ā Ā
I think sometimes that Iāll tear his fucking throat out with my teeth when he speaks. He talks about a halcyon, rose colored past. He rescued you, saved the damned dirty red-headed stepchild from a one room house without running water like you werenāt half his. He grins with crooked teeth, all cloudy eyed and hunched over. I look at him and I see you, skinny and frightened and dirty. Youāve got a shoebox of clothes and bracelets of black and blue up and down your arms.Ā And Iāll cry myself to sleep in empty stairwells, in nooks and crannies where Iām sure he wonāt see me. When he saysĀ āShe was so beautiful. Had the most beautiful hair,ā I feel my stomach seize up enough to vomit.
I wonder if pain can be handed down the same way rage can. Like the memory of it is stored deep down in the marrow of my borrowed bones. I wonder if your fear has made a home in my muscles and thatās why they coil up like a frightened rattlesnake in his home.
But heās not my father, not my family. I wonāt cower, wonāt bow. Iāll do my duty for your sake and pretend Iām glad when he asks for his afternoon pills. Iāll answer his questions again and again. Iāll help his wife to and from the bathroom, sing her to sleep while she drools and mutters to herself. Sometimes Iāll even stare at her, chewing on if this is the same woman that chased you through the house shrieking like a banshee with a kitchen knife.Ā
Iāll sit down tonight to break bread with these people, sit next to the other daughters with their hands folded sweet and kind. And I think theyāll never know what heās done to us. That I bear my motherās rage.
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Red Silk
Night is a beautiful and kind creature that covers you, wraps you in darkness and hold you against its bosom like a mother.Ā āYouāre alright, love. No need for all that nonsenseā she seems to whisper. And his lips quirk up in a funny sort of grin, lantern light flickering against glistening of kohl and sweat. His vision swims and sways with the motion of the water and he leans a little more heavily up against the railing.
How far down is it? How long would it take for him to reach the bottom? Live and breathe and die beath the oceanās chill. It isnāt cold tonight though. Theyāve gone south for the winter, uneasily docked near a tropical Haitian island to sell in the morning. The air is warm, sticky and damp. It clings to his skin. Thereās even steam that bubbles up and rises from the water, like thereās some great big creature breathing just beneath the surface.Ā
Only a difference a temperature that causes it. He knows that. Of course he fucking knows that. Heās fucking Blackbeard. But still, it makes something inside of him give an uneasy lurch. At the thought of tentacles and a great, gaping maw down there. Waiting.Ā
Ed, Edward, Edward Teach-- Not Blackbeard who has long since sunk deep down into the land of dreams for the night. Ed runs his hands up and down his bare arms, tracing the patterns black ink just beneath his skin. Heās sticky. Heās grimy. His pants are soaked down to the skin and stiff with other menās blood. He stinks. He makes a face to himself, grimacing as he tries to remember the last time he bathed. His mother would have been horrified. They didnāt have much, but she always kept clean, always kept Ed clean. She never would have let him out of the house like this.
He could ask Izzy. If he asked the man to cut his own throat and bleed into a tub for him to wash in, heād do quickly, cleanly, and violently. And heād thank him for the opportunity to serve him.
Wasnāt much good for getting clean though....
Ed sways uneasily, the warmth of liquor in his body still gently warming his torso and weighing down his limbs. He takes a moment to pause, look around him. He must look like a guilty schoolboy, afraid heās done something naughty to get scolded for. The deckās deserted. It leaves only him and the quiet sloshing water while everyone else rests below.
He reaches into his jacket and paws at the little square of red silk tucked close to his breast. He pulls out the handkerchief and runs it over his palms, feeling the fabric slip through his fingers like water. He runs it around his hands, twines it over and under the bare parts of his arms. It feels fantastically indulgent, something not even he feels like he should be doing. To be touching, pressed up against such a fine thing nearly overwhelms him. A swell of emotion that he blames on the rum flooding through veins fills him, leaving him teary eyed.Ā
He takes the piece of red silk and runs it over his face, careful to avoid the dirty parts. It catches on the stubble at the edge of his jaw and the dry skin of a healing cut. Then he moves it to his mouth, gently rubbing his lips with the buttery fabric. He looks around again, frightened. No, not frightened. Blackbeard is never frightened. Heās the terror of the ocean with eyes made of burning hot coals and a beard made of dark, billowing smoke.Ā
Ed is frightened though.
When he sees the emptiness around him, he can feel his muscles begin to relax, but it doesnāt stop the sharp coiling of shame in his gut.Ā
He holds the silk back to his face and imagines it as the touch of a lover. Someone kind. Someone soft. Heās gentle as he does it, his hand just as careful as he would have preferred it. Maybe theyāre the type of person to wear silk gloves, a velvet coat, other fine things that Ed could feel as he curled up against them in the night.Ā
He inhales sharply, feeling the acrid sting of gunpowder, smoke, and human filth fill his lungs. He couldnāt imagine a lady like that. No, not properly. Itād have to be a man. A man just as vicious as he is beautiful. A man who shined bright and warm and sat in a bath of scented oil to wash the blood and dirt from his skin.Ā
Ed moved the piece of silk to his neck, rubbing it back and forth along the tender flesh there. He would touch Edās neck, gently, carefully. Heād run his hand along one side while he kissed and nipped the other. He could sayĀ āEd, youāre the lovilest thing I own. The finest piece in my collection. Let me dress you. Let me feed you and love youā. Ed let out a whimper, eyes shut tight and damp.Ā
Wouldnāt that be lovely?
Wouldnāt it?
āCaptain?ā
It startles Ed-- Blackbeard enough to make him jump. He feels sick, a cold stone settling in his gut while he stuffs the piece of red silk back in his vest.Ā
āIzzy,ā he responds, equally as gruff. He doesnāt turn around and continues to face the ocean. It makes him seen cool, uncaring rather than startled and ashamed. He knows it does. Izzy comes close, reeking just as much of foul things
āIām here to...relieve you of your watch.ā
āAlright.ā
And he strolls off to his quarters, not saying anything more on the matter. He feels Izzyās eyes burning into his back like pokers. He knows. Of course he knows. He has to. He knows every other idiosyncrasy about Ed, why not this as well?
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iām filling spaces, in classrooms, car seats and pretty soon concert venues. iām palpable in the sense that you can mark me down and figure me out. in that way i am tangible, yet i feel as though iām not. i think that itās because iām still filling spaces in myself, in my heart and my mind. out with the old and in with the new, and itās as though iām waiting in line. iām waiting for people to fill my bowl with substance, something thatāll replenish me in a way that isnāt so literal, to rejuvenate me and make me alive. iām waiting for the love i already receive, the love that i canāt fully accept. iāve got these wonderful friends and to them iām an open book with altered pages, the kind with a billion notations that donāt make all that much sense. iām a poet and an artist and this town doesnāt leave much room for growth and change. itās hard to move away from whatās hurt you when itās always just around the corner, when itās always just out of reach for you to push away. itās jam packed and iām eating up the air around me, iām filling space and taking time. iām true and alive even when i feel like iām not. and although it takes work iāll get better and iāll get out, because i know i can be more than just a body in an all too small town, iām more than the expanses in my place.
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mayfly
Reformatted and refitted and reuploaded and retrieved.Ā
Every breath of air Iāve traded out, every kiss from my father, every time Iāve driven too fast through veins of my city and hemorrhaged out into the streets- a 127-terabyte file. Iām an open document and every day I get up and add another page. Then theyāll plug me in and turn me off and upload everything I am to a silent room, humming and heating up the space with its towering wall of servers. And then itās all turned to numbers I suppose. Every thought and feeling I thought was special, was private to me and me only, just turned to 1ā²s and 0ā²s by some machine smarter than me. When I fell to my knees, shrieking and crying tearing at acrylic hair while my insides began to shred themselves apart- they told me with a funny sort of chuckle it was worth 5 megabyte of processing.Ā
when my mother died they told me it was worth 7. thatās all. the pain and richness of all living things turned into a number.Ā
I donāt feel the way I used to. Donāt smell. Donāt taste. I can see just fine, got the update for that. I wake up in the morning and I swear to god the world reeks of plastic. Itās all in my head, I know that. It doesnāt stop though. I can feel that clean, sterile stench filling up the back of my skull and bleeding the rest of the color out of the world. White plastic. Hard plastic.Ā
A patented soft polymer blend with new and improved SkinTouch technology! It feels just like a real woman! Youāll notice an exponential difference in comfort and aesthetic pleasure. Youāll look just like how you did before the accident!
The accident?
The accident.
It was like nothing Iād ever felt before. I should have know...nothing good burns like that going in. It was beauty beyond beauty. I felt like i was being born again, watching stars live and die. By the time I reached out to touch them, fingers aching and grasping, theyād burn out behind my eyelids. And Iād never felt so loved in that moment; my mama came up behind me and brushed through my hair with her fingers. saidĀ ābaby of mine letās be together. i love you i love you i love you, itās time letās leaveā. And it was so fucking bright it just about burned my corneas up in their heat filled supernova. She held my hand in the dark after, running her thumb over my knuckles āitāll be okay baby mine. iāll show you were we go.ā
They woke me up ten years later in a cold bright room in a cage of silicon and aluminum.Ā
But see thereās this hole in the back of my head at the junction of my neck and my skull. Hovering just between my medulla oblongata and a coolant reservoir. I feel like a fucking creep when I do it. I know what happened. I know I need to clean myself up. I know itās not right. Just cross my fingers and close my eyes and pray that the batch is clean.Ā
But see thereās these little green and black flash drives you can buy out behind the bodega that will fit into the hole in the back of your head at the junction of your neck and your skull. And it feels like sleeping on a bed of water. like you look up and all you can see are refracting prisms of light flickering and pulsing. the water reaches up to greet you, wraps its warm arms around you to tug you a little deeper within it. to love something so much you wish to craw inside of its chest, make room to live there and never return. Or sometimes you can lie back on the earth, feel the sunlight on your face and chest. Iāve always liked that one best because thereās always grass, swaying and rusting around. And you can smell it. That fake scent of sweet, damp earth thatās nothing more than incorrect signals bouncing around my olfactory center. I know. I know.Ā
But see...i can smell the grass around me and its more real that anything I see awake.
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iām so unsure about all of it, everything. i think of what you said, you have small moments of clarity when it all makes sense right up until the moment it doesnāt. i think of us on the couch as i spill my secrets and you listen, you tell me a secret that isnāt really a secret and i feel honored. you donāt tell anyone your secrets. i think that youāre correct, about clarity and honesty and all that youāve said to me. i love you and of that i am certain. you are a constant in what is always flowing and changing. youāre like a rock in the bottom of a river bed, everything around you moves but youāre solid and secure. iām thankful for you to an insurmountable degree. i love you my friend, and i love seeing you grow. thank you thank you thank you <3
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itās incomparable, odd, and strange. i wish there were a metaphor or something i could relate it all too. everything is twisting and turning, iām dizzy. itās nauseating and volatile. god, i am tired. iāve got no discernible direction except out of here, and it wonāt even happen all that soon. i am plagued by inescapable dread about my future, and itās sticking to my head like gum on the bottom of a desk. itās inconvenient and annoying and it shouldnāt be there. oh well!
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i dont own the roof over my head
i bought myself a pool for my birthday. one of them rickety above ground pools held up by white metal poles. id buy a real one if i could. shit, i sure could afford it, but we donāt own the land. i got more money than i know what to do with. sometimes Iāll go out and buy myself a TV, a real nice flat screen, just to beat it to a pulp with my brotherās louisville slugger. hearing the glass shatter makes me feel a little more awake, a little more excited. sometimes iāll plug it in to the outside outlet beforehand, half hoping the batāll get electrified and shock me out of it. hasnāt happened yet but iāll give it another go tomorrow.
But i bought myself a pool. and i took him out back to show him the goddamn thing. my heart just about beat out of my chest. he didnāt much mind that i stood too close, talked too loud and too often. he saw me that day i broke my nose-- smacked my head into the butt of my steering wheel and blacked out. my blood sprayed and dribbled all over his white shirt while he tried to pull me out onto the ground. he cleaned me up, scrubbed the crusted over spit and blood off my mouth like i was a kid again. i dont think anyones every loved me that way before.Ā
it was a fucking mess. asked them to do one thing for me before they ran off again. i just wanted them to keep the pool clean. our ma came home monday, threw herself a party for a few days, and left with our dad on friday.Ā
pabst blue ribbon cans bobbed up and down in the murky green water and crumbling cigartte filters were startling to form a layer at the bottom. chunks of algae drifted along the surface of the water uneasily. there was something furry and dead too, half rotted and waterlogged among the mosquitos making their home there. i just wished theyd cleaned my pool.Ā
he sat there, cool and strange, eyeing the water. he didnāt say nothing. didnāt make no face. just stood there. then he looked at me. when he rested his hand on the back of my neck i felt every nerve in my body light up like id just be shocked. it was just like poking at a live wire inside of TV i was beating.
ātoo cold to swim today, anywaysā he muttered with a shrug
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absurdities in fiction
things are absurd. the world is upside down, backwards, right side up. you go to the grocery store and the shelves are on the floor, the people are on the ceiling and theyre walking sideways. i touch on the same concepts a lot when i write. i hold my arm bent like i did when i decided i wouldnāt scare him. i think too much, i stay too still. iām a statue presenting myself as a person. i put on my mask every day, i donāt tell people anything real about myself. i do not tell enough to ever really know everything about me. i keep a running list of things that are acceptable to share. i donāt tell anyone my secrets. i am made up of secrets, i think. i think iām a bottle full of sand that we chucked into the lake, and the sand is secrets and the secrets keep me tethered to the earth. without my pockets full of sand iād float towards the sun, into the void. iād go for a walk someday, and empty my pockets so i could walk on the ceiling with them. iād be on the ceiling, right side up, upside down from the ground, and iād be like a helium balloon. if the moon were reversed and the tides rushed inward, if the moon took off the roof iād go to her. i would tell her my secrets and keep going. iād tell the moon goodbye for the sun and iād sing to him on the phone like i used to with you. and iād go to the library, i think. iād visit my parents every weeknight and iād say nothing significant. i tell everyone who listens about how absurd it is, how strange i feel. i go outside in the day and i look at the moon, and i tell him heās my best friend. i say to myself that iāve lived enough, i say that this is not a capital N Note, but it could be. there could be something poetic in that. my cat walks around crying, and i tell her sheās mourning. i tell her shes my baby and she agrees. i tell everyone that we will meet again in some way. i recycle people like some folks recycle clothes, and i see them again a decade from now. i stare hard into the mirror and i see the future, and i tell that version of myself that it gets better. i laugh about how absurd it all is and the absurdity laughs at me. i say it will be normal someday, and i lie to myself. i know i do not tell the truth, but i believe it anyway.Ā
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what a stupid name for a cat
youre in the car and then youre not. youre running and youre staring at the ground and trying hard not to notice the blood next to her. fuck, you say out loud to yourself. fuck. you stand there for what feels like hours. time has slowed to a crawl and you feel trapped. youre babbling incoherently about what a stupid name for a cat that was, how pissed you are at whoever did this, and then youre silent. youre silent when your parents come down. they put her in a bag and take her away, and sheās stiff and all you can think about is the color red. it hurts. you ask him how youre supposed to tell your baby brother, and he wraps his arms around you. you think about the bite marks on your neck and collar, how dirty your hands are. you stop speaking and you go inside to stare at the floor and try not to think about bags of bones. you cant stop thinking about her coming back. you want so desperately to leave the room and see her asleep on the couch, or batting at your dogs tail.Ā you have the thought to start sniping cars that get too close to your house, to pull the entire building up the hill a hundred yards so no one gets too close. you barely sleep, and once you finally do, you dream of the color red.
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