rigidly dead inside

“I feel like hacking at people.”

“Hacking at people… What?”

“Yeah, hacking. I want to carve out their carcasses and spread them out like spaghetti.”

One blink.

Then two.

A few more and a couple of gulps in between.

“Uh… let’s save that for therapy, shall we?”

A slight sweat starts to line their forehead.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever,”— they wave it off— “that’s all it’s meant for lately.”

---

I’m trying (somewhat) new things lately! Not really that new, since I’ve been writing short stories this past year. I don’t have the heart or confidence to share them anywhere near here at the moment though, but it feels good to dump this here.

Tight

I almost always operate with a weight in my heart these days.

It’s suffocating, it’s deafening, it’s rumpling my skin.

It scoops and carves out parts of me that just doesn’t sit right.

I fight, I fight, I’m falling against the blight.

stranger than fiction

the paper, the bills, the plastic cards

in our wallet.

an addiction.

an affliction.

a premonition that we’ll fall without it.

how peculiar

that life has revolved

around it.

underneath it.

through and through,

we are buried.

let’s not haste,

let’s get married.

unbelievable.

i feel weary.

stranger than fiction.

it’s uncanny.

Two voices— no three. or four.

I said I was gonna finish that.

I was gonna do this, gonna do that,

But I didn’t.

But I still wouldn’t.

Why?

I’m tired. I’m downtrodden.

I feel forsaken, forgotten,

I feel left out.

I feel rotten.

How am I supposed to feel?

I feel like I ask myself this so much.

I feel like I’m asking for so much,

Yet still not asking for enough.

From myself. From others.

From the world.

It bothers.

Me.

You.

We.

No, there is no “we.”

Yes there is.

Floating underneath rocks

When do you know if you’re preserving your peace or if you’re truly just being a coward?

When do you know if you’re giving yourself rest or if you’re just denying reality for as long as possible?

When did you want to come out of your rock? Out of you’re encavement?

Out of your whisper of a reality full of fakeness?

It’s clenches your heart to write about this. You know it. You agree with it.

But what are you going to do?

You’ve threatened yourself from living fully, from experiencing fully, from being together with others fully.

I think you remember when you started doing this to yourself.

The times when your eyes started to glow when talking about the future.

The times when you stopped wading in the waters of the present.

The times when you started paddling for the crest of the wave,

only for it to crash down wildly at you.

But you accepted it anyway.

You masochist.

Shivering simplicity

When will the day come where I don’t have to think of just my survival? Of other people’s survival?

Is there a moment where I am allowed to dream freely?

To truly see all the possibilities?

To be open to dreams I could never even fathom by myself,

because it’s just that free-willing?

The kind of fantasies that dance around each other,

creating new dreams with each step and movement.

They’re so free that they create dreams upon dreams upon dreams,

compounding across realities that you thought you could never reach.

I’d like that someday. somehow. anyhow.

However that could be possible.

I’d gladly fall asleep to that.

Icy fragile fellows

There’s a terrible tornado happening inside my head.

I don’t know what it’s doing, I don’t know what’s been said.

I am drowning. I am floating. I am greeting the dead.

I play with parasites, yet act as host.

Simultaneously, death isn’t my enemy.

How ill-timed it is to be walking around with the spirits.

Let go of that. Let go of this.

Shroud me in detrimental bliss.

Elementally changing

Autumn’s blossoms are combing through my hair.

Getting tangled in my thoughts,

Getting tangled with no care.

Every day I sit perched on the balcony, watching.

Anticipating the sunsets of the trees,

Trading their greens for oranges, as they please.

What alchemy! What sun! What cool-weather rum.

Fall weather can’t get any better,

Than a knit sweater longing to be together,

With you.

Lackluster lunar lavenders

I. Am. Death.

I’m dying.

No.

I am death-defying.

Palm up. Palm down.

Trace the fingers where the blood is drawn.

Retry.

Redo.

Remake it again.

You can make it again.

Keep faith.

Keep above.

Don’t let the morning come without your love.

Midweek serendipity

The sheets smell like burnt popcorn— soothing, yet confusing, a real anomaly of days it has been.

I wish for Tuesdays to be my extra Sunday. Or Saturday. Or maybe just remain a Tuesday, like its ordinary self,

but declare itself to be free to do whatever it wants in the middle of the week.

Free— freeing as can be. That’s what I hope for, that’s what I strive for,

but I think I forget the possibility of it at times.

For every day I feel like giving up on myself, I ought to give two days worth of trying it again and seeing how I feel.

Seeing how maybe the reason I don’t like getting out of my sea of sheets on some days

must be because I make up some idea that lava is underneath my bed itching to rise between my toes when I finally stand up.

That’s not true. Nope. No it’s not— I mean, it’s not true all the time.

Just Tuesdays, really. Or at least lately—the past couple months that is.

I need my midweek serendipity.