A Necessary Drawer for a Broken Ego.

While the old words of now-broken hearts can be cozy, my intention in keeping a drawer of stale compliments is questionable.

It started as a way of having kindness and comfort and confidence easily accessible. To read reminders of all the ways people have loved me is the easiest route to subside my doubts and grievances.

A necessary drawer for a broken ego.

So why keep this weight among the feathers meant to tickle me? Why hide a sword in the sandbox?

Why do I swallow her long-dead sentiments like a necessary poison?

...

Though most days I am fine, it’s on nights like this that I hurt myself with the pain of having hurt another. 

She’s gone in the wind, thriving where she is, the feelings I clutch to my chest are held only here.

Holding no feelings for her in my heart other than regret, I’m home to a never-ending apology that even if accepted—even if she had forgiven me—would remain eternal.

...

I am incredibly unskilled at letting things go, the good and the bad. I keep these remnants of old friends, old lives, old impressions, because I don’t want to forget my good. But I keep this dagger because it’s the only form of self-harm I could ever bring to myself.

The greatest punishment, the grandest injury I can sustain at my own hand is to remind myself my murders; not of people, but of possibility. I am plagued with a great dread of decision, for fear I’ve made and I make the wrong one. To kill a potential future is to eliminate Schrodinger’s answer. It is both correct and incorrect until proven one way or the other.

Of course, I understand there is no correct or incorrect answer. There is no question. Life is not a series of right choices or wrong ones. It is a series of actions that must be taken as they come, and lived with once they pass.

And maybe once I accept that, I can finally burn this wretched weapon.

...

I am not haunted by spirits, though I have always longed to see one.

I am haunted by the crumbs of my emotional spillings; these half-intentional messes I have left on my path to an allegedly perfect future. They follow at my command, ready to guide me back to my manor of mistakes. And until I forgive myself, I shall always go along.



The Creek.

Memory lane is not a paved street

It’s a creek. In the nature of night that we claim

Thick, dark, mud lines and makes the bank

Trees on all sides, the creek runs through us all

The fugitive breathes heavy among the salamanders small

The same ancient amphibians watch the kid who cries

Her tears join the waters, running between the toes of the new humans as they cross oceans in their minds

It is the creek which babbles to keep us awake

And the bed which carves our path to away

In the back of every head ever heard there is healing in the stream

The homo sapien memory bank is not for wealth but well-being

The creek begins at midnight and ends when we are better

Listen for the moon and the water when you enter.

The Station, Part One.

There exists a room. At one end, a door; at the other end, a window which leads into a much smaller room. This room, the larger of the two, is a station. You cannot reach this station like you’d reach any other; it only appears to those who have nowhere else to turn.

Do not be fooled, however. This station is not a force of good in the universe nor is it a force of evil. It is instead a force of consequence, and not one to be reckoned with.

Unfortunately for today’s soul, Abraham was not one to have such knowledge; nonetheless, he entered the station with overwhelming hesitation. The heat of the surface world was awful, yet something about the station’s grey, carpeted walls and dirty, white tile floor was much, much, worse. He desired to leave. He wanted so strongly to run home, and yet he no longer had a home to run to.

Like all souls who’d entered before Abraham, though unbeknownst to him, he was lost. Lost in the world. Lost in life. Lost to himself.

But the station had found him.

He walked slowly between the crowd of plastic, folding chairs which filled the chapel-size room. At one spot, the tile was peculiarly sticky. The bright, beaming LED lights hummed above, relentless in their sterilization of the shadows. Abraham reached the window.

On the opposite side sat the Interface, a gaunt portrait of humanity crammed inside a dark, rubbery box. Its pale latex features stared vacantly. Abraham cleared his throat, and it came to something close enough to life. Its words more or less oozed out of its thin lips, asking its customer for a directive.


“I--I’d like to purchase a ticket please...” Abraham said, looking anywhere that wasn’t the Interface’s excuse for a pair of eyes.

It wasn’t enough. More words spilled clumsily into the air, looking for elaboration.

“A ticket to yesterday...please--please,” he stuttered. The sooner this interaction was over, the better Abraham hoped he would feel.

The false human repeated his words, thick like molasses and just as slow. Several servos began operation, and the Interface’s mechanical arm slithered out of the dark; gripped in its digits was a black rectangle, only slightly bigger than a face card. Abraham plucked the ticket free with his first two fingers and thumb. The card was barely tangible and cold to the touch like the fog of dry ice when placed in hot water. As the ticket entered Abraham’s possession, he noticed a second door had appeared in the station a mere five inches from the Interface’s window. Turning to thank the face, he found the window was gone. Looking back, the seating was gone as well. Even the entrance had vanished. Abraham had made the decision and now, with ticket in hand, the only way back was to go forward.

He stared into the door in front of him and he felt the door stare back. Drawn to the silky black void ahead, Abraham was barely conscious of his actions as his feet took him closer. The door vanished behind him, and Abraham was suspended in a space outside of spacetime. For what could have been an eternity or a mere three seconds, he waited. And then? The colors.

Bright flashes of red and orange, green and lavender. Blue, violet, chartreuse and sarcoline moving before his eyes like watercolors made of light. The visible spectrum rained down before him like a waterfall of energy. Sounds like laughter, thunder, the crackling of the ocean. All of it beautiful music rushing to his ears; an orchestra on fire.

Then, all at once, it was over.

Painted before him was not an image, not a memory, but a moment in time.

The day before.







The Old Clothes.

I put on the old clothes today...

I hadn’t thought to check for any lingering emotions before putting them on.

What a surprise it was when I slipped the shoes on and felt every step we took together.

In the pocket of my jeans I found our favorite places; they’d been through the wash, and were a little worse for wear. Bricks in the cupboard, water as windows. Still recognizable, just...confused.

I buttoned up my once-favorite shirt to find joy folded up in the breast pocket. Faded, creased, torn in a few places. But hey, what would joy be if we had not worn it well?

The jacket was the last piece I put on. Dark as the day we departed; but something was different this time. The pain was gone. The frustration, the rage, the smoke...gone. I guess it got bored. Perhaps all it needed was some time. Maybe that’s what we needed, too.

Couldn’t wear the hat anymore, though. That’s what happens when you grow up. You change your mind.

I wore the old clothes today...but today they felt new.

On God's Porch

The moon has risen to my left as I lie on a patchwork of time.

Foamy puzzle pieces rest elegantly on the glass sky; beyond it all, celestial bodies loom, gazing down at me.

Challenging me.

I’ve a self-important soul and a self-conscious spirit. I’m both eager to perform, and dreading of their expectations.

I think of the girl who took a ring as a ticket, and how easy optimism was before this all-new same-old.

I exit the memory and wander the desert in search of my purpose, too stubborn to follow the map laid out for me. I find myself on God’s porch in hope of an answer. It’s the first time in a while that I’ve been here before sundown.

I should know by now to never ask a gift horse for the same gift twice, but when the King tells you your dreams are misplaced where else does one look?

I don’t leave my box. I stare up at the motion-sensor light, unmoving out of fear I’ll learn something I’m not ready to hear.

I fell out of love in June; turns out a three-year-battery just isn’t enough anymore.

Now I need someone to show me I still have a future.

“Who am I supposed to be?” I ask, now that the old guard’s gone.

The glow from within doesn’t just look warm, it sounds loving. It calls to me. It shows me the future I could have if I only come inside.

I grow tired and slither back to familiarity, but being familiar and being comfortable are no longer the same thing.

The Nostalgian.

A once-king sits on an aging throne.

He’s too blind now to see he’s alone.

In this castle of glass, its people are gone.

And a king without friends might as well be a pawn.

He speaks to no man, left with only a shrine

To days gone by; an asylum of his own design.

What was once about his sentimentality

Is now a guardian, a shield from reality.

A once-star rests in the dark of his room.

Crashing and crying, as he starts to feel the gloom.

His palace of sentiment, long past shared.

He asks time to stop, but time never cared.

He speaks to no one, left with only a screen.

Scrolls for miles and miles, through captured feelings.

Surrounded by images, videos, and relics,

Left with thousands of notions and nothing to relish.

“I tend not to live in the moment anymore.

Caught in my hands, I lock it away to be awed at.

Kept in jars, in frames, in the corner of a cave,

I watch them twist and turn, I watch them change.

Astonishing, the sea change from moment to memory.

The rose-tinted glasses fall to the floor.

Waves of remorse and regret wash over me,

I’m the Nostalgian with no one left to remember me.”

They say that pictures are worth a thousand words

But no image is worth never seeing the world.

A once-love is stuck on his heart and soul

She wants to move on, he has no control

“My new darling is out there, I just need to find him

But first I must let go of you, my eternal Nostalgian.”


11:42.

New eyes, first steps, still making regrets.

Exactly 400 since the 600 named me.

Most dramatic.

My strides aren’t long enough to take it.

White tux, pink stain down the front.

Jack says ‘Be better’, I scream ‘I want to’.

Still dirty in a ninety-minute shower.

Bury your weapons, I’m missing a peace.

That first cut when I was twelve.

Pre-post-traumatic.

Midnight and tears beneath the pine trees.

Eleven, can you get a new month.

My endless notes, all addressed to you.

Impossible cosmonaut, I tally the hour.


Lavender sunsets, legion vocabulary.

Season 3, Episode 4, Roll 5.

Ref. automatic.

The hypo critic on the contrary.

Blacklist made, we changed the font.

Unseen history: the drop makes it true.

“Seeking advice,” spits the coward.


The Third face, I wish the middle.

Barnes never marrowed for the lofted.

Thoughts erratic.

Unsanctioned like the dinner riddle.

Heartbreak dishes, the new kids won’t.

Someone for rambling, ocean rain view.

I finally know my favorite flower.

...so do my eyes.

And as the Universe opens, so do my eyes.

What remains in front of me is hardly similar to what flies behind me.

I used to look to the stars for experience, for joy, for an evening well spent; now I look to that which flashes not from the cosmos, but from the common.

And yet, is there such a thing?

That which is tethered to the fibers, which tether anything, is itself a part of the everything. To see these fibers is to see what lies beneath you, around you, within you, beyond you. To see your tether is to be self-aware and also to be free. Recognize that which grounds you to the jacks, that which pulls you amongst the winged, that which strikes you to your stance.

What frames me and what calls me can be as connected as we can.

Still, the streetlamps of the sky and the constellations of the earth do not mirror each other.

A star doesn’t burn with intent, it doesn’t expand with a motive, it reacts to enact reaction; it fuels itself until it can’t, then faces the consequence—not of self-preservation, but of its own existence. Though we come from the stars, we are blessed to be otherwise: we rely on more than our individual. We rely on the beauty of humanity, on the conflict of society, and the purpose of reality.

We rely on each other in a space of constants and crises.