For your consideration: a list of things I’m doing wrong
one: I did not respond to your texts (you?)
two: I didn’t tell you why I will never respond to your texts
three: ?
?
I’m not nearly polite enough
I told you you were wrong when you were in charged
i don’t give you the benefit of doubt when you belittle me
I didn’t tell you you were wrong nearly enough
she ended up marrying a firefighter. Eventually, she threw everything he owned out on the lawn and burned the things he cared about the most. She burned each item methodically, carefully containing the flames from the flourishing rose bushes and tomato plants. She burned his shirts first. The trading cards he kept between plastic in pristine conditon. The couch he used to eat his dinner on in lieu of a dining table.
marriage doesn’t change people, despite popular belief. it entrenches them, validates them, enables them. and there are many ways to hurt someone in a marriage.
You know, I made two cups of coffee this morning and neither turned out right. They were just…bitter. And on the way to work, I went to merge lanes, and the guy, some blue fucking Nissan, he wouldn’t let me in, he fucking honked at me. So yeah, I guess I’m just bitter. I don’t even remember why. I think I just woke up that way. But like, people like coffee, even though it’s bitter. Even when it’s made right, it’s bitter. But people still like it. it’s just the way it is.
Though the 4th floor of the psychiatric hospital was permeated with glass door and floor-to-ceiling windows, this particular room was primarily lit with a series of flourescent tubes, so when those harsh humming lights were turned off, the room was actually very poorly lit.
It was supposed to be lit at 3:16pm on Friday, April 28th, there was supposed to be an individual psychotherpay session. It had been requested for, perscribed, scheduled, all the boxes had been ticked. But at 3:16 on Friday, April 28th, room 421b was dark and empty except for the patient.
It’s apalling how badly most people handle encountering someone in distress. This same patient had curled in a fetal position on the floor of her room, had cried until she passed out from dehydration. All she had to show for it was timid platitudes, a 60 piece puzzle, and couple “Chicken Soup of the Soul” books. It is especially shocking to find this kind of timidy in a place meant for helping people in distress.
The Landmark Indepenent Theatre was falling apart long before the world was. As we were all adjusting to new computer screens in shiny new cars that felt more like spaceships, cupholders were falling off seat arms, the popcorn kettle squeaked ominously, an HVAC drip plagued theatere 3, the shelf in the freezer where the pretzles were kept tilted precariously, joints permenantly unmoored, and the concessions counter was barely temperature controlled at the best of times.
At that point, the lake was already rapidly drying, the arsenic slowly seaping into our air supply. But we were still humming along, streaming our TV shows that refused to pay writers and absorbed in our smartphones full of blood-soaked rare-earth minerals, either ignorant of the end of the world or hoping, naively that it would not catch up to us for a few more years.
An apocalypse is not so much and “end of the world.” instead its more of an ending of a certain civilization, structures and systems we rely on heavily collapse and alternatives must be found.
She sits across from me, studying her straw as if realizing for the first time that someone has chewed on it. She looks back up at me.
“She wants to tell you something, but she can’t”
“Why not?” I ask, gritting my teeth against another cryptic answer.
“Because she doesn’t know how”
I looked down at the greasy linoleum table and shook my head. She shook her head too letting out a soft laugh.
“Why do you care so much about all this anyway?”
“Why do I care? I care because people of your same description have been popping up all over, first just the city, then the state, now the whole fucking country.”
She scoffs.
“Come on, why do you really care?”
He always talked with two warring tongues. He would blurt something out, and, after only a moment of silence, suddenly doubt himself, and mutter a rebuttal under his breath. It was as if two of his selves wrestled for control. We all have numerous different selves for different contexts, but he would switch between them mid sentence, leaving me disoriented and unsure of how to proceed.
This place could have been a home
i became so consumed in the feeling
lost in the pain
it felt like the only thing that was real, like there was no escape
because there hadn’t been on for so long
but real change takes time
tides rising and falling
waves changing the shape of rocks over centuries
youre afraid of me
that’s fine, most people are
they don’t know me though
they’re just scareed of what i’m willing to do
because I protect me first
and that’s terrifying
because they have no power over me
you don’t want to let me out, i get it
but that’s other peoples’ voices talking
i’m looking out for you, i know what real freedom feels like
9-7-22
They stared that the sea, watching the waves recede into inky blackness. or rather, she did, and he joined her briefly.
“I was really mean to you yesterday, wasn’t I?” he said, speaking first in a break with tradition. The silence spread between them. It was hard to tell, but she could hear how his throat restricted with self-sustaining guilt, a circular kind that is so often inescapable.
“I mean, yeah,” she replied. “It sucked, what else do you want me to say? But I’ll be fine.” She refused to absolve him. His resulting silence spoke volumes. He hoped she appreciated that he bit his tongue, restraining himself from snapping at her again. Just as she had always hoped he appreciated the benefit of the the doubt she often tried to extend to him, when he was sullen, uncommunicative, and difficult to understand. But both of these burdens were unspoken and were unlikely to be recognized, but both hoped a silent symetrical understanding would ensue.
She, resurrecting tradition, broke the silence this time.
“Look, it’ll all wash away eventually. In the waves of all the good stuff, or even just the waves of time. There’s been way worse and there’ll be way worse.”
His eyes glistened in the solitary glow of the moon. Clearly, she saw the fear reflected in them. Those eyes recalled the ghost of many a guilty expression that passed over the face of a man. It seemed that man’s greatest fear was nothing outside himself but simply the fear of being “bad.” Perhaps a legitamate fear in the face of the asymmetrical power he waged on the world.
she’s a spit fire has been
the tendrils of her venom long since dried up
fibers from deep within you draw you to me
the familiar neon thrums through your veins
the way it always does
i assume you will hurt me
so I skim across the surface
Nihilistic Porcupine 