Float little drops, fast as you can.

Find a canal in this sexy woman.

For she will carry me and create me unknown.

She will honor me and brag until my gender is known.

Inside the softness, I will grow from a spot.

My body will form starting with my heart.

I will grow in her near organs and more.

I will feed on her through her umbilical cord.

I will float around kicking everything in sight.

I will push my way around until my cord gets tight.

I will stretch and play with my fingertips.

I will cry inside and way heavy on her hips.

I am almost seven pounds nine to ten months later.

I am being pushed out now by My Mother, My Creator.

life gave you lemons

you made lemonade

you poured it

on my eyes

on my wounds

on my broken heart

the juice

invaded every crevice

the pulp 

clogged my soul

the seeds

scraped my throat

and it burns, burns, burns

When we were young, and a storm came, we cut holes for our heads and arms in a big green garbage bag, and we ran outside to splash in warm puddles of rainwater while we counted the seconds between the crash of thunder, and the flash of lightning.

We tore the cherry tomatoes off the vine, and ate them, crunching through summer sweetness, washing that down with a swig of garden hose water.

We ran through the sprinkler and rode our bikes barefoot. We did most everything in bare feet, feeling the heat of the sun under our soles, stubbing our toes on rocks, and spokes.

We played baseball, and football, and army, and school, and we loved and hated each other like brothers and sisters. We paired off, and broke up, and made out, and grew up and nothing was ever the same once high school came.

My children will never know there was a time when I was fearless. There was a time when I was not shackled to a career, a mortgage, the bills, all the trappings of the American "dream." There was a time when I was free.

Without my medulla oblongata,

I would not breathe,

and my heart would cease to beat.

My amygdala reminds me of the hazards everywhere,

without my hippocampus,

I wouldn't even be aware.

Without my cerebrum, I'd be a mannequin.

Without my cerebellum I ....... sorry can't recollect.

Without the prefrontal cortex, well I have no emotions about that.

Without my encephalon,

I wouldn't have a soul.

Without a soul,

I would never have been a poet.

Stuart isalittlebroken Johns

Are you comfortable in your skin?

Do you relish who you are?

You are like the wind on a pluvial day.

You blow the victualing waters away.

Do you relish the things you have done?

Quandaries arise and all you do is run.

I cerebrate you're a dream killer.

"oh look, there's dirt on my mirror"

Stuart isalittlebroken Johns

My name is Harper and in six months I am going to die.

I know this because I paid for the privilege. You can do testing for anything nowadays, and apparently your expiration date is one of them.

I had money to spare, I was bored, and yes, I foolishly thought the test would tell me some distant faraway age like eighty-two or maybe even one hundred and two. When I found out my expiry date was in six months, I began to have a really, really bad case of buyer’s remorse.

I went through quite a lengthy denial period, where I thought I could go through the rest of my life pretending that if I just do things exactly the same way and not change anything I would conveniently forget and everything would be fine and dandy. (This was by far my favorite coping mechanism. But it didn’t last. Eventually my anxiety bubbled up and exploded like a shaken champagne bottle.)

Next came an obsessive, defiant, planning phase. Everyday I would think of elaborate plans to avoid death like I could somehow scheme my way out of it. I mean, theoretically, it seems doable. Plane crash? Don’t go on a plane. Car accident? Just stay home all week. Heck, heart attack? Pop three baby aspirins and hang out in the hospital lobby, right next to the crash cart ready to wave a big sign that says “I’m having a heart attack.” Unfortunately the test didn’t provide the cause of death, just the exact time, so I couldn’t really plan in specifics.

Eventually all the planning became incredibly exhausting and I settled into a kind of defeated acceptance. My plan was still not to actively put myself in a situation where I could die, I was not quite ready to submit to my annihilation, but if I somehow still find myself in that situation anyway, I figured I should really work on trying to be okay with that.

So then I commenced on a hedonistic three months where I blew half of my life savings and did literally anything I could think of. I ziplined through the forests of Peru, skydived over the French countryside, drank the best wines and indulged in rich Italian food, snorkeled off the shores of Bali, shopped with abandon while perusing the streets of Tokyo, London, Dubai…

You get the idea.

The most pathetic part of this whole thing was that I didn’t have a family to spend my last few days with. Or close friends, really. My impending death would not be filled with earnest mourning and last minute tearful proclamations of love and reminiscing. Oh sure, my funeral would be packed, but nobody would miss me, not really. As an orphaned twenty-two year old who inherited too much money at an early age, not only was I kind of an entitled asshole, I also haven’t really lived yet. I haven’t fallen in love or had kids, wrote that great American novel, won a Pulitzer, or experienced any of that syrupy sweet stuff life is supposedly made of.

Anyway, that’s why I’m hanging out in the hospice ward.

My friend here is Lucas. He is twenty-nine and has end stage heart failure from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. He described it as his heart being too big - literally but I suspect it's also an accurate description of him figuratively. I befriended him five months ago when I found out I was going to die. And no, surprisingly, he does not have any wisdom to impart about acceptance and healing and the meaning of life. He is very not okay with his young, awesome life being cut short, thank you very much.

He did have some useful information for me though.

“It’s quite experimental.” Lucas warned in an ominous tone.

“Obviously.”

“They usually only accept terminal patients… you know, because of the ethical issues.” He eyed me warily. “But in your case, they made an exception.”

He was adorable. He said that last line like a late night infomercial. Or maybe a used car salesman.

“This is not some elaborate black market scam to harvest my organs, is it?” I raise an eyebrow at him. “I mean, no offense, but you look like you could use a new heart.”

Lucas had to grab his oxygen mask after laughing so hard at that one. The nurse at the station gave me a dirty look.

After Lucas recovered he looked me in the eye. “How much do you have left?”

“Time? Or money?” I joked. The look on his face was not amused. I cleared my throat. “One month. And as you know, money is not an object.”

“Well, one month can give you… at least eighty years in virtual time. So pretty much a whole lifetime, if you decide on it.” Lucas shrugged. “Once you jack in though, there’s no going back. Your clock will end as scheduled and that’s the only way out. Also, it’s totally immersive, so you won’t even know you’re in virtual. It will be like… you’re in a dream but you don’t know you’re in a dream.”

“So I would really believe everything was real? Like I would grow up to be ninety years old and I would actually think I lived all those years even though really it will only be one month?”

“Mostly, yes.”

“How many of the other people will be real?”

“Most will be computer generated. You might meet some real ones, if they are in the same time dilation settings as you. There are very few people with the resources for a whole month, you know. Most people can only afford one day.”

“So there’s a chance that I will marry a program?” I furrowed my brows. “And then if we have kids, they will also be programs?”

Lucas cocked an eyebrow. “There’s a high chance, statistically. Like I said, there’s only a few real participants at any given time. Not that it would matter to you, you won’t know the difference.”

I thought about this. Would it really bother me if I didn’t know? I bet my computer generated kids would be adorable.

His expression suddenly turned serious. “There’s something else. It’s rare, but there are a few cases of people noticing little things not quite right and they become increasingly convinced they’re in a simulation. Which of course is true, but when you’re jacked in and you’re not completely sure if you’re crazy or just being paranoid, it can be terrifying. They call it Simulation Induced Paranoia, or SIP.” He paused. “Participants become really…. distressed.”

I chewed on this for a second. “I still want to do it.”

He looked surprised. “Really?”

“I really don’t have anything to lose.” I replied nonchalantly, like I just decided on a dinner entree. I should probably be alarmed that I was acting so cavalier. Lucas wasn’t exactly giving a stellar sales pitch. Then again, it was true, I really had nothing left to lose. I’ve done what I could with my twenty-two years. Might as well have another lifetime to try again.

Lucas stared at me for a moment then sighed. “That’s the thing. The longer you’re in virtual, the higher the chance you might experience SIP. Remember, Harper, a month is a lifetime. The chances are very low of course - less than 1%, the virtual worlds are very meticulously programmed after all. But if you experience SIP, there’s no cure, no safe word, you’re stuck until your clock runs out.”

“I already decided.” I said resolutely. Once I’ve made up my mind on something I was usually unshakable. It was one of my many flaws. “In fact, let’s do it tonight. I want to get my whole lifetime, not a year less.”

—

Everything was too bright, the sounds too loud. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. Jacking in was a very jarring process, it felt as if all my neurons were firing up all at once. Somehow I felt tremendous pain and the heights of delirious ecstasy simultaneously. Like I was feeling every possible thing all at the same time. There was a terrifying moment when everything went black, and for what felt like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds, I truly wholeheartedly believed I was actively dying.

Maybe I was supposed to die on the table during the procedure. Or maybe I really did unwittingly offer to have my organs harvested for the black market. Damn it, I probably caused my own death in my extreme efforts to avoid it...

I blinked twice. The room slowly came into focus.

“Hey, sleeping beauty.” A familiar voice.

It was Lucas. But also, it was not Lucas. He did not have his portable oxygen tank close by. His lips did not have their usual bluish tint. He looked… healthy.

Everything came back to me at once.

“Oh shit, Lucas. That was nuts.” I shook my head, clearing the cobwebs. “That felt too real. I really felt like I was in there for twenty-two years.” I checked my watch. I’ve only been in Virtual for twenty-two minutes.

He chuckled, swiveling back and forth on the expensive office chair I bought him for Christmas last year. My boyfriend never could sit still. “You’re a champ, Harper, you were the one who wanted to push the time dilation to a year per minute. I was worried pushing it that far would compromise the world building, but your mind was amazing at meeting the program halfway to fill in the gaps. You made yourself a rich orphan, really? Money is no object? Hah!”

I disconnected my neurojack from the surgically implanted access port behind my right ear. That rich orphan stuff was my subconscious free at the wheel. I didn’t intentionally decide on it. I turned back to Lucas. “Why did you add all that stuff about Virtual in there, and SIP? Don’t you think that was a little too… meta?”

Lucas suddenly broke into that grin that melted my heart so many years ago when we met during undergrad at MIT. “Well, since you wanted to put the expiry dates into the program so people would know how much time they had left, I thought, what the heck, why not make it interesting? Why not make a virtual game in Virtual?”

I was not amused. Lucas had a penchant for bloated code and unnecessary side doors. Also, for not telling me about an adjustment until after he has done it. “That’s messed up. You should have run that by me. The expiry date was a suggestion from the beta testers and we all agreed on it. We didn’t agree on putting the game into the Virtual Universe as a side door..” I paused. “Also, what if I didn’t jack in? I would have died in a car accident or something?”

Lucas turned back to his computer and typed a few lines of code. “I had carbon monoxide poisoning ready to go, but I was prepared to improvise. And anyway, I didn’t actually think you would gravitate towards the game during the beta test, I just put it in there as an Easter egg of sorts. I figured most clients would only think about jacking in when they were close to their expiry dates, if they do at all. But on second thought, maybe I should take it out of the programming, it’s too much work to keep up.”

I jumped off the table and stretched my legs. My entire body felt stiff like I haven’t used it for months. “Yea, take it out. You’ll have enough work as it is when we start accepting our first commercial clients next week. We have four people scheduled on our first day which I already think is too much.”

“We’ll be fine.” Lucas was now typing more purposefully. “That reminds me, I need to finish debugging this before Monday. Do you mind picking up dinner?”

“Sure.. from that new Thai place again?”

“Sounds good.”

I smiled as I gave Lucas a quick peck on the cheek before I grabbed my purse to pick up the take out. Everything was going well for our start up. It was hard to believe that only two years ago Lucas and I were broke PhD dropouts who took a leap of faith building Virtual from our one bedroom Boston apartment. And now… well, let’s just say our first official month in business is projected to generate six figures in profits even after subtracting overhead. Mid six figures. And as soon as we open up our second and third facilities the growth would be exponential.

To top it all off, I was pretty sure Lucas was planning on proposing to me next week on my birthday. I saw a charge from some jewelry company on his credit card statement while I was doing some filing last month. Judging from the amount, it could only be an engagement ring. Lucas never would have spent that much on a piece of jewelry otherwise.

I sauntered out of the elevator from our high rise office with a pep in my step. The weather outside was just the right amount of sunny. Even the Boston air didn’t feel as suffocatingly polluted. Yes, everything was going well. Perfect, even. I eyed a meticulously trimmed bush suspiciously as I walked by. Maybe too perfect.

I felt a sudden stab of panic. The smile dissipated from my face.

Oh no.

It’s inside me, benevolence.

Behind aged bars, in a prison cell of my methodical design.

Hope, love and humane concern in a locked cage while the world burns.

I am my own malicious jailer.

The warden of woe.

Harsh consequences, under the self-imposed draconian rule.

Set ablaze my soul,

I don’t want it anymore.

So many wasted words spoken.

Now my mind has collapsed inwards with a medicated intrusion.

It is a little broken.

For the truth of this poet's life, is I have over one persona and recollection of none.

I am a soul hoarder, diagnosed with

Dissociative identity disorder

I am them; they are I

This is my truth.

Stuart isalittlebroken Johns

Pop in. Catch a story. Or go for glory. Telling one too. Ain’t no fiction our imagination won’t entertain but a few.

Strike a nerve? Miss ones cue? When it’s drowned out by laughter. Here’s me looking absurd to you.

Or my words can’t escape me. Drowning there under my tongue, coughing them up, and a lung at the urge to speak. On the verge of an acrid venting. Only deep breaths helped preventing.

Either way overcome my wishes I fail to mention. Once again its stolen the breath meant to herald my intentions.

The tension makes ones brain ache. And the shakes are sure to awaken in you. Trying to hasten won’t do. Outpacing any good taste. Face turning a colorless ghostly white paste. Any poise replaced by the shame and sweat in which you’ll baste.

Held in restraint by angst, shackled by anxiety. Envious of. Not angered by. Free spirits. I hear their banter an seek out an earful. Anchoring in a shady place. Ear hustling for hope. Ones own thoughts might be replaced. Waiting on the conversation to be served up on a plate. All the while shrinking further and further away from that very fate.

Tearful I peer out at the limelight recognizing its invite. And I’m again speared by the fear. I’ve yet to steer clear of. Not until my hands leave the wheel is the shuddering subdued. Microphone check! One two! Screw who?

I make note of that clue. Closing my eyes. Miyagi style. To think on it a few. Look mom! No hands. Driving blind behind the wheel. Askew! I guess muscle memory will do.

The words you know. Rehearsed perversely? If in truth this should show. Once my mouthful gets out there. I’m yours to know. You know? Call me on my bullshit. If only I could have said more of it myself who knows? Ponied up over piped down. Put up instead of shut up. From my very own pursed lips.

No I sneeze uncontrollably. Some phobia consoling my thoughts I presume. As terribly tepid quips. Stripped down just lukewarm droplets from a drip. Are rife amiss amongst a forceful mist. It would have pleased anyone’s moist lips to miss.