I think my stomach twisted into knots.

For the first time, I asked someone what they might do for me.

Me.

I asked if peer reviewing a pre-print book was in their lane.

If someone might be interested in telling me if I'm lame.

Oh joy,

Oh gawd.

I could demotivate myself for a month or more if it ever went wrong.

I stare at this blank page, as I would dissociate on paint drying. The letters blur into what feels exactly like the nonsense I spit up on the colorless white spaces I fill with the dark ink that stain my hands.

Today I feel empty. I feel faceless. I exist purely as a concept conceived in the mind of another, or perceived by eyes that are not my own. I am as tangible as a whisper or as concrete as a thought.

If someone would try to touch me, their hand would move right through, as if I am a digital projection mathematically calculated by computer code. Just a reflection sourced by primary colored LED's that undergo the current of a sea of delocalized ions running around a race track of electric circuits. An automaton incapable of performing the spectrum of human emotion that it was programmed to. Inoperative and malfunctioning.

Perhaps I am just a departed soul that lives in the slightest detachment to the scenes of my material life. The life that feels just beyond my reach, as if the tips of my fingers are grazing the solid surface of the plane of physical reality.

I am absorbed by the dark and vast vacuum in which emptiness does not exist. There is no concept of the expansion of three-dimensionally measured mass. There is no gravitational pull towards a direction that cannot be observed, because all units of measurement are negligible in the state of oblivion.

I wish to buy into the concept of existing as a hologram in a simulation created by some apathetic entity that wanted to walk around with a feather in its hat. Some rudimentary being fed by adulation in an extraterrestrial society of competitive intellectuals. So we exist as an experiment to be observed by a panel of judges within a competition of keen innovation.

Would that not change my perspective on the savagery of this existence? Living in a world governed by overly controlling primates that have experienced the pleasure of testosterone secretion when put in positions of power which allow them to exert authority. Neurochemically, that doesn't seem very evolved of us, but if it's just a result of a prompt designed by some advanced creature that plays with our universe, as one would play with puppets, it does not seem so animalistic after all.

I choose to refrain from further entertaining these thoughts of non-existence.

I would like to live as a leaf, that drinks the sunshine and exhales over the sweet seeking lips of life. How beautiful it can be to live in such magnificent and thoughtless simplicity, yet be more valuable than anything desire can fathom. A leaf that just flutters and sways into the embrace of the waltzing breeze, before it takes gentle flight, tumbling, spinning and meandering it's way to the surface of the earth. The leaf now peacefully rests as its edges curl and color fades, without an anxious demand to outlive inevitable expiration. It just humbly ceases its claim to space in this domain.

By now the paint has dried, but I have failed to notice. The color is identical to the previous shade and there was no sincere reason for it, other than creating an illusion of rehabilitation.

The you can piss off parade

Collective jar of flies

Made its final rounds.

Chew the scenery

If you have a meagre minute…

“I’ve had enough”

The muse screamed

And deaf were the envious

Though she gave up the ghost

Vacating its former lot

Among the plebeian potluck

Spooned out for the naive brigade.

She drew her intake vapours

Through a smouldered wick

Cracked desert spillover

From cracked arrow

And pointed purse lips

For how the colossal truism

Or what have you

(If you’re starved of vocabulary)

Is that the eminent dim bulbs

Overstepping both logic and reality’s fist

Are shrouded by way of turncoat mists

But would you listen to her

Should you stumble upon a poem exiled

To an unflavoured isle

Seasoned ripe

But doomed to obscure plains

With pettiness and pride

The silly culprit

Pulled trickster lobster back

From an even sillier rabbit’s hat.

The brittle hearted muse

Was born to battle

Amongst a sunken halo’s

Blistered starfall

Charged with disintegrating furies

Their bloom blood ballet

Winking above tedium’s crest

Across a charcoal broiled sky.

And this is a pointed message for you

And this is a liturgy for I

When ignoble parasites crawl meekly

And kiss Jesus cheeks

With Judas ire

Best to step on them

Goeth the time ragged rhyme

For the vainglory stride

Crushes the poetic spirit

Because Dassendorf boots

Resound a drill hammer echo

Recalling the collective stampede…

And serves to the discerning

And additionally the wise

That the blind leading the blind

Cursed with quick reflective

Yet cursory flitting eyes

Are a servanthood of ingrates

Becoming the very machine

They once railed against

In a black and blue melee

Or an insider fight

Warring with each other

And eaten by homely pride.

Stepping off the floated parade

Says one who is wise

Because you’ll waste all of your pearls

On the backstabbing swine.

“The moon is beautiful isn’t it?”

I asked you that with full transparency

And despite the minimal distance between your shoulder and mine

You didn’t seem to mind

You flashed me a smile

Then before I knew it

Our fingers were intertwined

No words were spoken but an answer lingered in the air

Finally, you caressed my hair and answered

“I think the moon is beautiful.”

Somehow I misheard that moon as you

But I didn’t really care

my muscles ache

and my soul cries out for you

it needs you close

this body of mine yearns to rest in your embrace

but it is my spirit

that constantly calls out your name

( that has not changed - it called for you

even when it did not know

how you feel

just inches away )

my being always cried for you,

and rebelled against the injustice caused by the lack of your presence

but now it is even LOUDER

singing about you after days spent in the turquoise depths

of the water

that soothed us both.

and after joining in our little sanctuary

by the ocean and sand,

it cannot stand the distance it has away from

your fingertips,

from your skin,

your touch

oh how it HOWLS at the most random moments

I am unwell

disconnected in the world I live in

breathing too shallow, too mundane to suffice

when the only time I can breathe deeply is by your side

this soul is lost even after given the map to its home

its pieces are not in place

I am a dislocated shoulder

constantly throbbing for you

I am unwell

without the warmth of my February sun

a winter's warmth glow

that carries heat throughout the year

I feel how you ache for me

and it's a pain that hits me double

as it is a pain that is also my own

it is the same

this ache filters through every layer of my skin

it vibrates in my muscles

it is a constant cacophony of sounds rushing through my bloodstream,

I do not speak all of this often

actually it is quite rare

but what you say with words

I say with my stare

I sing in the silence in-between that I know you sense

and hear it in a way

I am unwell

I function,

I attend life,

I attend people

the air in lungs is without any damage, that is true

and yet, in the end, I seem to be covered with tiny holes

a stained colored-glass letting in light

but not holding in warmth for too long

where are you going? they asked

i'm going back, i replied

to where i was

before i was

to the place where i wasn't

for i wasn't

before i was

it's where i'll be

when i'm nowhere

i'm going nowhere

i'm returning home

to the undefined lot

to nothing

11/8/2024

“I need to go to a hospital.” is easier to say than “I’m losing my grip on reality.” It’s actionable, simple to understand, and lacks hesitation. However it does beg the question, why? And really, how do you describe it? The feeling that if you reached up you could peel back a corner of the sky like double sided tape. The hour long showers where sometimes you forget your name. Or the eighteen voice memos you have saved on your phone, where you whisper your desire to die like you’re already at the funeral.

It’s a nice day outside, actually, when I try to explain myself. We sit on the porch together, my dad and his girlfriend drinking sauvignon blanc unaware that yesterday I spent fifteen minutes looking up what the best thing to drink is before you overdose. My tongue is dead weight in my mouth, and I can’t seem to get it to cooperate. Instead I start to cry.

In the distance, I hear myself say, “I want to kill myself.” and my dad asking me if life is really all that terrible. Does he not do enough for me? Am I not grateful? It is an uphill battle from here. Because when you’re mentally ill and you need help, not only do you need to gain the courage to ask for it, but you need the moxie to prove you deserve it, too.

Suicide is sticky. Once you’ve said the word, there’s no taking it back. For how long, they ask, have I wanted this. I reply, “A few months now. It’s getting worse.”

I don’t mention the cravings in middle or high school. It doesn’t matter now. And then the penultimate question, “You know I love you, right?” Which is to say, “Isn’t my love enough to keep you alive?” And while the answer to the first is yes, the answer to the second is no. It will never be enough.

Just looking at the shiny blue convertible my dad purchased as his midlife crisis pisses me off, but when he decides that it’s the best vehicle to drive me to the hospital in, I don’t say a word. I haven’t said anything substantial in a while anyway. I wasted all my words on a voice recording no one will ever hear. Instead I slide onto the cream leather seats and let him pick the music. I’m staring at my hands when he asks me, “What will you do if they say there’s nothing wrong with you?” And I respond the only way I know how. “Then I’ll kill myself.” He stares right through me, and for a fleeting moment I wish he would look long enough so we would crash.

I decline to allow my dad to follow me into the triage room. There’s something embarrassing about this, like I’m weak, like I’m broken. In any case, this is something I do alone. It’s all very clinical, this process. I leave behind my soft sweatpants and fuzzy socks for paper scrubs and socks with grips on the bottom. My dad comes in to say goodbye. He asks me again, “Is this really what you want?” I can tell it’s breaking his heart to see me like this, but then I remember–

He’s screaming up the stairs, taking them three at a time, my name like blood, over and over again. He’s slamming open my door and shaking me all over. It’s something I’ll never forget, this look on his face, fresh panic and old laugh lines. When he realizes I’m awake, he sits on my bed with me and holds me, just for a little while. “The school called me,” he says. “They said you were gone, Ed, what happened?” Your courage is a small coal that you kept swallowing. So I do it, I swallow the coal, and I say,

“Yes. I’ll be okay Dad. I love you.” And he leaves. The room they lead me to has a rounded piece of furniture that somewhat resembles a chair, a bed that looks more like a massage table, and a tv bolted to the wall with a plexiglass covering. The bulb above me is bolted to the ceiling as well, dead flies bunched up under the stream of light. The doorknob is sloped, and there’s a large gap under the door the size of my fist.

After I’m changed, someone comes in and takes my vital signs, I sign a bunch of paperwork, and answer a lot of questions about my physical health. They tell me a psychiatrist will be in to see me soon, but by the time that they manage to make an appearance I’ve ripped off my hospital bracelet and started coloring on my gown with half a red crayon I found under the bed.

He’s asking me the questions I knew would come, but it doesn’t make it any easier. Before I know it, I’m floating toward the ceiling, investigating the cheap panels they have up here. I’m still answering the questions, somehow–I’ve always been a great multitasker.

“I read that paper I had you fill out for me earlier, Ed. You wrote that you have been thinking about hurting yourself every day. Can you tell me more about that?” But what more is there to say? When I’m in a car, I want it to crash. When I’m at home, I think about the knife block in the kitchen. When I drive past the river, I think of the non-action required to let myself drown inside of it. I’m eighteen, Doctor, I could just buy a gun. I’ve picked out a spot, deep in the woods behind my childhood home, the first and last place I’ll feel unsafe.

Instead I tell him about my birthday coming up, the way that the fear creeps in. I wasn’t meant to make it this far. I’m living on borrowed time, and God wants it back. But this isn’t enough for him. “Do you want to commit suicide right now? Do you have a plan?” I rocket back into my body with a speed that makes my teeth rattle. I’m in a room meant to stop me from committing suicide in it, so no, I don’t have a plan. Instead of saying that I go quiet, but he takes that as dissent and starts telling me that he doesn’t think I’m a real danger to myself.

There’s a maelstrom inside of me that’s gone electric. Angry isn’t a good enough word to describe it. There is no more drinking of their acid, there is no more apathy shell. The words come out of me at a high volume and for once I don’t stop them.

“I swear to God, you better put me in a fucking room before I kill myself right in front of you, I don’t care what I have to do to make it happen,” I say more and more, holding my life hostage. Begging someone to care that my life is ending and I’m watching it in slow motion. It feels like devastation.

After this moment, time is a blister. I lay in the bed for hours, mindlessly watching Bolt on the shitty tv in my room. I use the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, and stare at my own reflection. It’s distorted in the mirror, which is cracked and has another layer of plexiglass over it. I don’t recognize myself, and every sensation is muted, I’m walking in a dreamland. Someone down the hall is screaming, but I just shuffle back to my room with the door ajar, ignoring the police running down the hallway and the beeping coming from the adjacent rooms.

I don’t take in much after the paramedics show up and strap me into the stretcher. I’m being moved to an inpatient facility, I know that much, but everything has taken on an unreal quality. The next thing I remember is standing in the shower room at the hospital, holding a pair of leggings and the long sleeve that I’m going to be living in for the next week. The tiles and walls are gray, and everything is sloped– the showerhead, the door handle, even the accessibility rails. I briefly consider killing myself, how long it would take for someone to notice, but I would have to put some serious effort into thinking up a plan and I just don’t have the energy for that at this point. So I shower, one step at a time.

The time I spend inside this hospital passes. The doctors put me on a lot of medication– some good, some bad. I’m woken up every hour by a nurse opening the door, shining a flashlight on our faces to see that we are still alive, and then closing the door again. It reminds me too much of–

–a hundred nights, sleeping in the basement and listening closely for heavy footfalls on the stairs. Miranda Lambert is leaking through the door until it swings open to reveal Mom, red bandana and knee brace on, humming with no room to breathe. She flips on the light switch and I squint in the sudden brightness, checking the time on my phone; two o’clock in the morning. She starts tearing through my closet with a vengeance, succumbing to the Ritalin rush. There is no stopping her now, so I just know–

I’m awake all night.

Some of the medication that they put me on is good for me, lowers my anxiety and the shaking and the never ending rush of thoughts, but none of it seems to end the disconnect that exists between me and my body. I can’t seem to come back to it. I count the objects around me, categorize them by color, shape, sound, I distinguish my position in space, I name the streets I grew up on, I ground myself, over and over again. But it doesn’t seem to matter, and I’ve convinced myself it’s not working because I’m not real. In my weakest moments I think, If I say something, they’re going to notice, and then someone’s going to come after me. I can feel my mind sliding, but I just can’t bring myself to care.

Slowly, the people that I’ve come to know in the hospital get discharged. More people come in. There is a never ending rotation of people needing help. The new group who come in are more likely to be on Suboxone than Wellbutrin, though. They remind me more of my mother than of myself. I want to leave too. I’m feeling less like I want to commit suicide and more like I don’t exist, which is good enough for me, so I start to smile more, I attend groups, I tell my doctor I’m feeling better.

On my last night in the hospital, a woman who’s detoxing comes over to me and strikes up a conversation on a couch. She wants to know how I got better, she says. I just look so happy. I give her my best smile and for once, tell the truth. I lean in close, so that I can smell her sweat and her God-awful coffee breath. “I lie.”

"When I first met Anna, hold on, when was that exactly?" I trailed off.

"You've always known me, silly" Anna sat there, knees tucked under folded hands on a yellow floral loveseat, eyes wide and a smile that had seen better days.

I cleared my throat, "Of course, yes how silly of me. Let me start again. Today is October 3, 2024, and I am interviewing Anna, for anonymity we are not sharing her full name."

Anna nods but look away, as if she is afraid, as if... no, we cannot go there yet.

"Okay, Anna, we've known each other for a while now. I hope you are comfortable with me in your home..."

Anna looks at me then, her eyes are a blue that can only be described as bright with white flecks, "Like waves crashing..." I shake my head, that memory is not meant for this interview.

She nods again, waiting for me to begin.

"We are speaking today because of a project I am working on, telling your story, practicing for an autobiography."

She stares at me for a second before saying, "You mean 'our' autobiography."

"I, er, yes you're right 'our autobiography.'" I stammer. "If you had to describe yourself in your autobiography, what would you think of first to illustrate who you are?"

Anna looked out her window then and sighed. She did not answer for a minute, and I knew better than to interrupt her thoughts.

She looked back at me again, "Can I tell you a story?"

"Uh, I mean, yes of course, this is what this space is for, please go ahead." I shrug and wave a hand, motioning for her to continue.

"Well, let's begin at the beginning, shall we?"

Anna became very animated then. She spoke of her early memories in Lafayette, Indiana, of when she first remembered being truly afraid and then when she first remembered feeling truly safe. I noted how fear came first.

She went through her childhood in a sweep of words, painting pictures of a stout little girl with a blunt bob, barefoot and always in motion, chasing her 3 brothers around their yard, and "making friends with the night" as she put it.

Then she paused, "But as you know, this girl could not keep her innocence for long. She had to grow up very quickly."

I nodded all of a sudden feeling choked up.

"Little girls... well we don't really get to take this girlish/wide eyed view of the world with us into adulthood. We pack up these little dreams and pretend they will come back to us, and maybe they do, but only in our dreams." She looks out the window again, her eyes glazing over, "I am ready to tell you the real beginning of my life now."

I found her eyes then and said, "We can be ready together Anna, after all we were there together."

Anna looked at me sadly, "Yes, I suppose we were." She paused, "Then you know there were many years where we were right next to each other, but always out of reach, right?"

I looked away, "That would be my fault, I did not want to see you during that time, it was... it was too much."

"I know. It was tough for both of us." She smoothed her hands over her legs as if it soothe the churning emotions welling inside her. She looked up again, "It was when me/you were raped." She paused, letting that sentence seep into the air. "I remember you were above it when it happened. You saw it all, I can't attest to anything more than what was through your eyes."

"We don't need to go through the details," she trailed off. "All they need to know is that after, well after we were separate. I became the old Anna full of hurt, and you got to move forward. I will be stuck in one place for the rest of my life, but you...

you get to move forward."

"Anna, wait no, they are not ready to hear this."

"No, you aren't ready to hear this." My former self looked at my fiercely.

She seemed to vibrate an anger I only sometimes still feel. As if she is trying to claw her way out of my subconscious and burn the whole world down.

When I imagine a conversation with this former Anna, it always seems to go like this.

A past and present me converging, and always it feels messy and dark, and I end up wondering when it will ever just be simple.

I am sitting in a Cafe, as I write this. My mind, so good at disassociating, went far away for a little while, my fingers typing faster and faster, thinking,

"Maybe this time I will write my story out of the tomb of memories it seems to be lost in. Maybe, I will be able to find that Anna again. All of them. Maybe I will get to meet them again, greet them at my table, hug each of them, tell them I am so sorry. Tell them you did nothing wrong, and when you did you always asked for forgivingness and that counts for something.

It has to.

Right?"

I was born on a sinking island under a waning moon. They shrouded me in galaxies and fed me broken stars. I was woven into constellations and named after love.

My fate was etched into the universe and written by the night.

And although I sometimes wish I had remained in the nebulae to be cradled and embraced forever by the moon, I know I am not just another star in the sky.

I am exactly where I’m meant to be; besides, I can always look up and feel the comforts of home.

My parents had me in their early 20s—not too young, but young enough. I once asked my mother if I had been unwanted. "No," she replied. "I wished for you for a long time." She thought she'd never become a mother, but she did—four more times.

I was born first, and the eldest children are the experiments—especially daughters. We're the role models; our job is to teach and guide our siblings through life.

I don’t mind being in charge—sure, sometimes I get called bossy, which I pretend to hate but secretly love. It reminds me of Kristy from Ann M. Martin's The Babysitters Club. Kristy is the head bitch in charge—and like her, I relish it.

Life was simple back then. I have an enormous family and was always surrounded by love. When I say huge, I'm not exaggerating—both my mom and dad have eight siblings, and as a result, I have countless aunts, uncles, and dozens upon dozens of cousins.

When I wasn’t with one side of the family, I was with the other, playing, laughing, and annoying each other, as close family does. We were so close we didn’t consider ourselves "just cousins." We were siblings, and we still are. Some bonds never break, no matter the passage of time.

Nightfall

When the rolling waves do come in

So do my steps fall back into infinity

This moonless night befalls me

The only light—the glimmer of my tired eyes

The ribbons have frayed

The papers burned away

The fragments pierced together

Crystals—

Time has pressured them as they lay

So I thought that can only be the way

But alas

This last puzzle?

A meaning trapped in paradox

———————————————

Midnight

No questions nor answers tell

The moment of its trigger relinquish

No tears nor silent scream

Register when the bell tolls

Of gears and cogs

This heart of issue

Rolling around

Can emotion ever be divined?

Toy nor prison

This last maze of mind

Attempt is failure

But failure never tried

No entrance nor exit

But victims all the same

What shall I make of this

Am I even sane?

Does the threads of my tapestry

Begin or ever end?

Do the patterns of this flat painting

Ever storybook the frame?

———————————————

Late

Each rounded layer cracking

In the edges of this black stone

Do the waters cry through

Summons of the past fading away

All blank canvases now

To tell no more of you

No traveler will find me

No weary hero will see me

No specter of the future

Shall haunt me

It’s just me now

No stars to guide

The whispers of the gardens

No longer sound as sweet

The monsters of my childhood

No more than anger seethe

What trails that I walk

Now have me as lead

Lonely frontiers

I understand you now

So too does the silence speak to me

———————————————

Asleep

These last years shift the seconds of dreams

No edge nor boundary

The brushstrokes blend

These bitter hues

Turning back time

To where I began

Meant running toward

Frail eternity’s land

Struck—

The hymn codas once again

But the notes carry no heavenly repose

My own voice carry the lows

The lonely and final repeat

Weaving these impossible measures

For some grander symphony I will never know

Stepping in time to this mad waltz

I thought I was doomed

To this

To me

Suffering fate’s loom

———————————————

Dawn break

But fate and faith are a duo

Light and life within

Darkness divided

The rays come true and through

It’s just me now

No stars to guide

It’s just me now

The dawn burning eye

Never will I know the truth of this

Even as the puzzle falls apart

Beneath it lies another mystery

Layers of perpetuity

But as I sing the memories of the past

The future so faithfully comes forth

The Harmony of the End?

No—

Of Tomorrow

Not for me nor for you

Of the days of all of us

———————————————

Mourning

Acceptance of the laughing tragedy

Are smiles so bitter

Sweetness in lieu

But once began

Even with no end

Do the kinder words

Come falling through

Paradox me this

In the deeper waters

An answer in riddle

So shallow but so simple

But all the more true

Even as the silt did rise

The waters never did forget

Of the darkened stone

Do fall apart and drag away

Did the clearer rivers flow

For another today

A bygone conclusion

A solution so absurdly obvious

For happiness, for peace, for serenity

For me and for you

All of us

Humming within

———————————————

Zenith

The story shifted

The narratives transforming

The past ever so gentle

The present writing

The futures of blue

Where the sun shines

My brighter eyes

Goodbye nevermore

As the stone rolls away the waves

I do say

Hello to another form of you

Even when all is lost

We never do lose

The permanent junctions of

Crossroads formed

Where others came to you

And you to them

Where the path taken

Is a thread woven

Perhaps gold and green tomorrow

But never without its true hue

Our histories speak

Of the words of the present

Showers of wisdom

Brought colors of yore

For Hope

Of wings and feathers

Aeternus Deus

From me

From all of us

I’ll never forget

My promise to you.