A Game Called Thursday

It was a curl in my habits which caused a thought to cement itself to my heart. A tie to the tracks which I wanted so desperately fulfilled.

I got lost searching for myself - and stumbled back into a world I want no part of. I think I would have let it run right over this neck and these thighs, and I'd have embraced every steel wheel.

It is now all long gone and I'm here, right where I started. My soul just keeps curling, and the thoughts in my head settle and then churn, and they all leak into my chest. Ever word and ever sight, ever taste and every smell, seeps straight into my chest. I do not control it. It just is.

Friday hysterics led to Sunday salutations. A run led to a shower where I let everything curl out and away. It all simply burst and crawled down the drain after clinging down my cheeks. The salt and the tears made everything, seemingly, very clear.

And the railroads, they just seem so perfect. The perfect spacing between, the perfect level, and the perfect feel. Something about... lines.

Something about finding yourself and not seeing anything there. And that will take a long while to ever seem real.

only in corners can love
find a heart

only at the edges can
faith ever be tested

always in between
is where a faithful heart is found

Snow Scratch

If I could be so happy, my eternity would be frosted to this scarlet snow-land, my portrait married to a bush knotted around an old tree stump. The void in the air would push against me on all sides and it would scratch me again and again. The hill and the shack and the bush and the stump and all the still trees would look back through the void, scratching me too.

Time has passed, they say, but I'm not sure if I have been able to pass with it. It feels like forever has passed since I have done anything; forever has passed as I have lived. So it does not matter when I write, since all these moments will come around once more, and forever once more after that.

I woke up early for a doctor's appointment. I had left my phone at Garrett's house the night before, so I had to run in to grab it. I then went up the hill with my mum to the doctor's office and waited for a while. There were no new magazines, in fact there were magazines from two years ago, from when I used to come up every day for allergy shots. The waiting room didn't seem as clean, not as tidy, and it seemed emptier. I finally went in and the nurses were happy to see me. I stepped on a scale in all my winter furs and weighed 212. I waited in the examination room with my mum until finally the doctor came in. We talked and I told him some stuff, but I'm not sure if any of it was true. I tried to tell the truth, but sometimes I'm not very sure of the difference between what I try to be and what I am. He told me that I seemed depressed, but I thought I was over that, a little bit. Who knows what I was expecting. He recommended I should see a counselor, or a psychologist, or a psychiatrist. I recommended he look at my armpit. I've got a bump on my eyelid, a bump on my ear, a hair on my forearm, and an armpit.

Finally they drew some blood from my left arm. I laid it out all nice on the examination bed, and the nurse searched for my vein. All needles go into my left arm, even though I am right handed. I believe I am left brained, but act like I am right brained. It shouldn't be like that. I watched the blood sputter out through the needle, all looking like motor oil sputtering out of an old engine, and felt very relaxed. I don't remember feeling that relaxed since my last deep opium-sleep. There was nothing to feel, and that's all I've wanted for a very long time. I think I know why they would drain blood from such sick people. They liked it. I have a needle back in Cleveland and I could drain the blood myself, but I don't know where I would put it. Maybe I should just donate blood as often as I can. They'll do it right, and it will be sterile and sanitary. It won't be for other people, God no. Just for me.

I came home, went over to Emily's house to finish watching Be Kind Rewind, and then went to Barnes and Noble with her. Too many fucking people. She paid too much for some books, but finally left. As we left, she bumped into somebody she knew, and Emily told her about school, about her psychology radio talk-show, about the boy back at school that she is dating, about everything she has never said a word to me about. I don't remember ever talking about anything outside of me and her before. Not casually, not ever. I hate it, I can't stand to be around her because of it. I don't know why she calls me, I don't know why she talks to me. She could just stop, and maybe I'd be able to feel even less. It'll happen someday, but maybe not.

That day will come probably many years from now, and one of us will have to be dead. Let it be me, and let me stand for eternity with the void and with the hill and the shack and the bush and the stump and all the still trees. Let them scratch raw down deep below my veins, let them scratch inside my bones, I will not feel a thing.

Wild Ass

Wild ass dreams, landing in a house from long long ago. I'm always quite left alone, don't know if I do it to myself. Curly hair, full moon lamps, ovens and heavy shades over all the windows, only orange glows, only old beds, only waking up alone in every damn dream.

Two Dreams

I had two dreams last night. In the first one, one I have had before, there is an obscenely tall couple, stretched and distorted to their towering heights. They appear more alien than human, and although they are both naked I cannot make out any features besides limbs and flat faces. They are friendly, yet may as well be in a modern interpretation of American Gothic.

In my second dream, two muggers chase me around university circle. Eventually a store owner comes out wielding a baseball bat, which I grab from his hands and use to chase after one of the muggers. Finally I corner the man, and I begin to beat him. But as hard as I try to swing the bat, my arms only can barely muster the strength to nudge him with the bat. I try and try, before my arms fall limp from weakness.

Yep, this is me.

Thin Nails

Without a pick, my nails get thin and crack. A little jagged and then I have to clip them, and I can't play again until they grow back, or else they wear down to the skin and sting. I couldn't bring myself to write anything these past couple weeks, it was too late or too early or I couldn't imagine what I would write. But in the hundreds of minutes I spend trying to fall asleep my thoughts tumble, gaining momentum and going faster, harder. I try to connect ever fragment of the day, every mini-moment from childhood. The sand of my thoughts heaps up and up but spreads wider and wider before I'm buried in a cool tomb. It's nasty, but it's the only time I get ideas.

There are two weeks left of school. I'm... not going to be okay.

But enough already...

Today I woke around 9, and lay in bed listening to my mum and dad talk. Something about broken light bulbs, not broken. I've had eerie dreams lately, and listening to my mum and dad reminded me of them. They ended up leaving for the botanical gardens, and after a while they called me and told me to come. I smoked a lung-full of charcoal, and followed them. We went inside and they loved it, but I had been there at least a dozen times before. We saw the chameleon, he had been carted out and put inside a cage. I overheard the reason for this, but all I could gather were two words, "teenagers," and "plastic bag." That couldn't have ended well... for the chameleon.

Afterward we went to the art museum and my dad got some soup. The place was really packed, everyone was eating. It made me all jittery, being around so many people. I lost my mind after a couple minutes and had to go outside. There was an obese woman wiping sweat from her face with paper napkins. She'd wipe, and then she'd wipe again. I could see her butt fat rolled with thigh fat, rolls spilling over into two great lumps on either side. That's me. Shrink me down from 6.0 ft to 5.0 ft and that's me. The sweating and the spilling, the panting, the exhaustion. My anxiety builds up beneath my skin until it spills out. The sand in my veins swells up my legs, my thighs, my belly and it coarsely courses through. I can't stand being around anybody. When my mum touches me I jump back. I can't lay next to anyone without going mad. It's just unbearable to feel anyone or be close to anyone any more. Or maybe I'm just telling myself that. It feels real though. I can feel the build up, dozens of weeks, days spent all alone. To feel another body would make me melt from comfort, but I won't let it. Just, no.

We walked home and my mum and dad tried to talk to me about something. What my school offers to the mentally unhealthy. Surveys and numbers, clinics and counselors. None of it makes any sense though, and I just told them to stop. Just, stop. They never do though...

We ended up driving to the headlands on the lake, east of here. We walked along the marshes, golden in the gleaming sunlight, seventeen foot tall rushes feathery and blissfully bound by golden threads to the ground. It was muddy and one of the first times I remember in half a dozen years that I walked in a flat forest, nothing but trees tied to the realist's perspective plane. Everything seems to belong to someone, something. Nothing in this world is of itself.

Eventually we reached a crossroad, and I walked down to the lake shore alone. The sunlight was red-yellow, perfect for evaporating feelings. Perfect for putting myself into the possession of the reeds and the beach trees, the sand the shells the steaming deer's breath. I could be touched by the deer, they weren't frightened by me. Their breath steamed in the cold lake air, and I didn't even see them for a while as the low sunlight filled my eyes. The reed tufts glowed against the sand, like a hundred little licks of flame littering the shoreline, spreading out for half a mile. I walked along the shore by myself and it was perfect. There was nobody else, and I was very much alone save for the deer and the sun, the waves the driftwood the sand.


Finally I turned back, and walked back alone. As it got dark and I wandered through the shadowed woods I started to feel paranoid. Without the steady beat of the waves I lose any sense of peace, any feeling of tranquility. Each crackling leaf cracks my skin and the sand weeps out. I salted the forest with my anxiety.

We went to the Korean restaurant next. I couldn't decide what to order. My mum ordered bi bim bop and I shared it. I wish I hadn't eaten anything. They tried talking to me again after dinner, but what could I say. Just, stop.

Grey Scrapes

I had my first falling elevator dream this morning, and I fell awake.