Inexorable Occasions

There are spells when I'm sitting for full hours, and time doesn't seem to move, or exist even, and I think I hear things and they're all just a dream, or I think I've dreamt things before, and really I've heard them. The scary thing is, you don't know what's real and what's delusion, consequently losing all touch with reality, and before you even know it, people seem to notice and ask, "what's on your mind?" And you can't say "oh, just busy questioning everything and nothing at the same time," so you describe an object in the room, like, "isn't that light fixture stunning?" It's all just blending together; different drunken nights spent at bars with "friends" that don't know you, going to the same eateries for lunch and ordering the same meal you ate last time...

So you close your eyes and it hurts so bad, physically you feel it, though you have no marks, no bruises. The pain is more than you can bare, but nothing comes out. You have nothing to show for it. And I laugh, and jot, "what a horrible time to be alive."

Everyone's voices float airily about you, and they're near, but they feel so distant. The bullshit and game fuckery that you see through, because your heart's beating too fast, and your eyes are watering too much, and no, you're not crying--you know the trick to this game. But they tell you you're wrong. Do you acknowledge something someone says with a comparison to your own life, or not acknowledge them at all? Time for a cigarette. 

I have surpassed the idea of black-and-white; the belief in impossible; the idea that everything can be so clear-cut, concrete. It's much more complicated than it all seems, even when I make it that way, it couldn't ever be as simple as everyone makes it out to be.

One Flew

The computer hums behind my chair on my desk in the office. In addition to the mild buzz of the fluorescent lights above me, and the steady click click click of the baseboard heat, and the radio making its way underneath the door in the shop, where no loud tools are being used, not at the moment; it's time to shut it down. I check the program one more time... No more updates to be made. Shut down. Less than an hour of work, that means. The computer hum fizzles out. 

Now the lights sound louder, the clock comes alive and I can hear it ticking, too. I tune into all of this, and tune out of my book, eyes still scanning the lines, but not reading the words.

People actually had to lick stamps, remember that? I was confused when my boss sent me to the post office earlier, where I avoided a former high school classmate, pretending I didn't notice anyone standing there, let alone recognize her. Boss said, "make sure...well, I guess they're all self-adhesive now." And now I remember, didn't I used to have to lick them? Or was that phased out, and grandmom just kept them for us with the stickers and markers in the little desk in the corner of her dining room?

On the way back from lunch run, I feel like i'm dying... I'm talking to myself and I feel like I'm dying. I actually say that out loud, and laugh at myself. I tell Taylor that I feel strangely peaceful, yet chaotic. Like maybe about to die, like this is how people feel before they kick the bucket or something. I had to text her that, that I'm in a fog. She doesn't have much response. I wouldn't either. 

Less than an hour left of work. I just want to go home and take off my bra. I'll read for the rest of my time here, if I can tune out the sound of the light and the heat and the time again. But something feels good about my heightened senses, and I sit, concentrating on the murmurs, until a coworker's cell phone's full volume ringer disrupts my reverie, and I pick up my book again.

My Soliloquy

"KEEP WRITING.  You have a gift and you need to use it.” 

She’s said it to me several times, and while it used to motivate me, now it aches. The inadequacies fuel my complacency, and I don’t wear my seatbelt anymore.

I’ll start something with you just to get out of my own head. It’s too fucking tight in there, I can’t breathe, the same damn thoughts, relentless. 

"I don't ever mean to upset you, though it seems I do when I'm trying to express these things (this is not meant to be an argument or point of contention, just an assertion of the inevitable,) but I think we're both far different than I thought. … Like I'm telling you all this now, for what? 'Cause now I don't vent to anyone else, not ever; oh loyal me, abstaining from every opportunity that will leave me feeling anything but guiltless.” 

Jesus Christ. Wrote it all down, every fucking thing, months ago. Those feelings never left.

And… we’re off! First 20 of 40 oz down, only half a bottle left to go. I already know how bad tomorrow's going to be, the tingles of tonight's intoxication wearing off, and total disregard of reality, a blur like every day for the last 3 months. Restock the printer paper, press "okay.” Take lunch orders. Delete Twitter. Re-download. 

Someone once said, "gag me with a spoon”—it’s stuck in my head every time I hear someone talk about love, or Snapchat, or what they’re doing this summer... Anything at this point. Still wanna jump off a cliff; not to hit the bottom, but to feel the sensation of falling, forever.

Random sentences bar my sentences, barred by senselessness. What? What makes sense about any of it? 

It’s Taylor Swift and Lorde, Hamlet and Yorick, but the only skull I'd like to clasp and address is my own. 

It’s Friday… If I don't go out, something's wrong, right? I'm sick, but it's all in my head.

Nostalgia for Zack

My heart aches for the mornings when I’d wake next to the window in my room with the old boarded-up fireplace, in my hundred-something year-old house, a yellowed tapestry billow-ly hung over my television, waiting in anticipation like a kid on Christmas morning for my best friend to come down stairs. We eat, I get dressed, do my make-up.

“How does this look?”

“Do these shoes match?”

We drive to campus together in the freezing cold, exhausted if we didn’t bump adderall, chain smoking if we did. We part ways, but meet up to go to the newspaper office, where I’m an assistant section editor—unimportant, yet qualified enough to sign out a key at the front desk. 

Me and the best friend talk about moving to London in the spring, and applying for jobs, and spending the summer in other countries, and applying to different schools. He’s done those things by now; I haven’t. We part for the moment, and meet at the days end, after a long shift, littered with questions:

“How do you say this name?”

“How much should I ask for? I know it says…”

“How are you doing in Public Affairs?”

“Do we get paid this week?”

I come home to my best friend studying on the couch, my brother cleaning up dinner he cooked for us, before we pack a bong, prepare for our nightly television repertoire. We won’t go to sleep when we get in bed, but we’ll tweet back and forth, he upstairs, I, down, joking about the ghost we’ve named Herb that never actually existed.

I didn't see it then, how good it was, how well we meshed, how much I actually loved my roommate, my best friend. I didn't realize he was even my best friend, though he could say exactly what I was feeling in a look, and I'd know he knew. Things are changing for the both of us now—me, a graduate without a full-time position, looking into grad school on the west coast. Him, a student at a privet university, pledging a fraternity. I was miserable then, unlike being miserable now though, because we were miserable together, and now my best friend is 300 miles away. I just want those 9-months, filled with all the purpose and hope and excitement in the world in that drafty old house back, where the person who got it most lived just up the stairs to the left.

Tempest Peace

Lipstick stained cigarette butts

Lace all of the unsolvable

Indescribable 

Endorsed checks verse hymnals

And all of the scripture written

Can not make sense of this

But fear not the suits and cameras

For in the end 

We have nothing but thoughts

Until the light dims

And they wisp like ashes