O My Soul

It's uncanny, your living crux a mirror of mine with chilling synchronicity, like two symmetrical halves of a crumpled life unfolding roughly ten years apart. I suspect you read the same books as me, but if not then certainly the books that inspired them, and if not still then I'm finally convinced there's some form of truth that's ironically formless, drifting paradoxically through ages of language, occasionally recaptured by a sightless eye and forced into words with as little irreverence for the perpetual reincarnation of the present as possible. It's futile, I know, but what else to do?

Heart of Chambers

Everyone likes your friend more than you, but you don't seem to mind. Side by side, all eyes on her. Her hair is blonder, eyes are bigger and smile is wider, but you both look happy. You're happy with your place in life. Or so I thought. You were explaining curse words to foreigners, and everyone was laughing, and as a final disclaimer so they knew you weren't normally this vulgar, you said, "I've never even had sex before." Between your closing lips and your friends' disbelief was the exact moment I saw your heart. I saw you in its deepest chamber. I'm sorry you're so alone. I'm sorry that we're alone.

My Heart Is Forever Collapsing

I am still breathing, but it's hard when I feel like my chest will explode. There's beauty and life in the drum of a beating heart, but mine sings a war song. My body is an adrenaline mill. My sympathetic nervous system never sleeps. My hands don't stop shaking, my legs are stuck in a nervous loop, and my head feels like it's cracking open.

I am still thinking, and I'm afraid I'll never stop. I'm beset with negativity. My amygdala feeds me fear as if I were its child. Any frightful thought you can conjure will seem real and immediate to me if I can't recognize its irrationality first. I'm living in the wake of a soul-sucking vortex.

This is my panic, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst of enemies.

Liza

Sitting in her toy bin, surrounded by a new family and warmth and kindness. She stares at the wall, but her head is high and proud and confused. Cold cement and those goddamn bars. She went blind behind those bars. She will never see anything else again. She will never forget the horror of cold steel in her uterus.

Untitled Prose 9

Warm breath crests over my neck while dead fingers dig under your shoulder blade as if to rip the bones from your body. I just want a piece of you when I wake up.

5:43 AM

There's no sleep for my lonely face tonight, back hunched in the glory of my radiant screen. The light is white, seemingly pure, but I imagine it's a stale yellow on my skin, dirty like the brown soot of a smoker's wall. My palms itch from my stubbly chin, and my elbows ache from holding it up. I don't know what keeps me awake, but I like to think it's something insatiable. More likely it's a sad cry for help, but still, it could be something special.

My Damage

I can see myself many years from now on a shortcut 'cross campus. I can feel the rain and the warm mist emanate from the trees. I can hear the water splash all around. I can taste the sweet condolence wasting on my lips. And just at the edge of the clearing, where beauty meets progress, I can see past the black drapes and frame into an eye I've always longed for, an iris full of angst. The meaning of her clothes and thoughts juxtaposed to the contrast of her face and hair; life's grand struggle, that of good and evil, is laid out on her bed when she succumbs to the night. If I could just be there... if I could fall beside her and wither. That's all I want.

Rushing Green and the Dripping Blue

I remember what I said, confused short-stander. Now you're uplifted, held in the hands of your two favorite men. Savor it. This crisp time of joy won't last. They will let you down. You'll find them out, and they'll let you fall.

But I'm here at the bottom of things. I'm waiting for you.

Untitled Prose 8

The sound waves shot from my throat move swimmingly through the clutter of trillions of atoms in the air. They climb toward the light of distant stars, carrying my voice in urgency. But the air grows thin, and my words disintegrate as the ground crumbles beneath my feet.

Space

Sometimes you look back and feel pains that were hidden from you, and your face becomes soiled and hard to bear while hers is warm and glowing, but you know that no one's good, and no one will ever be who you want them to be, and then her face takes on yours, and the only good memory left is the one of your dead dog.

Untitled Prose 7

Young and warm bodies bending, better thoughts and "no-no"s hanged by the door, you let me in with your chest and your feet, and the drab of your midnight parting left me pinned to the floor.

------

You ruled my hand with rebellious stupor, led it straight through your chest. Your love stained my sheets, and your heart bled through to your bra, that crimson memento still warm on my bed.

Untitled Prose 6

You always come up, the girl I don't know who's out of my league. What ties of heart you have here or there are swept up and away. I'm left to wonder what you're doing and how you feel, but your thoughts I know. I know them from your eyes. You have the same longing eyes. They're searching, and nothing can stop them. They host a fire that will soon be ice. They are destroyers. Nothing can stand your tragic gaze. Everywhere you look, the world falls apart. There's nothing to see, and that's all you want. You're alone, and you think love is hopeless.

But it's not. Look at me. I can bear your heat. I have your eyes. I know your thoughts. You can't expunge me. Just look.

Winter Retrospective

There's all this tension between our quiet hearts, but we're too caught up and worried and shy to sit down and talk about it. Then when I can't keep up and fall behind and start to cough from all the dust, there's only arms half extended and short glances to reel me in, but at that point I've usually had enough. What was bursting on my tongue has finally collapsed into the dire pool of my belly, stirring and sizzling and violently eating up my dreams.

Charade

We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and be real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouth are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half: neither having achieved being nor actors.

Rilke, The Notes of Malte Laurids Brigge

Dragging Afloat

You're smiling like you're happy, but you're really smothered and hopeless, worried of being alone for the rest of your life. Know that I'd take you and your thoughts and your aberrant moods... I would take you and be with you and talk about confusion and purpose. I'd show you my darkness, and I'd look into yours, and if we couldn't find any light around us... I suppose I'd hold your hand.

Untitled Prose 5

What happened to that glint of darkness, the sad shadow always tugging at your shirt? Where is your struggle, your intellectual grief? I can't tell if it's raining or not, and you don't care anymore. You've finally given in. Is there anyone honest enough to commit to a lousy existence?

In An Instant

In an instant the world fell silent. No murmur of birds or meaningless chitchat; only the sound of life squeezing itself out of me.

Resent

At once you seem perfect and flawless and contrary to every worldly thing, but you make wind feel like fire, surrounding and burning but never consuming. I'm wretched and fallen and lay melting at your feet, suffocating and reaching for your hand. Eventually I dissolve into the dirt beneath me and decay with the others fortunate enough to have lived this long. I wonder when you'll die, how and why. I think we'll share a fate of endless gloom and self-loathing. Hope is a trick of the devil.

Untitled Prose 4

It was embarrassing, that moment of the night where every spree of independence and newfound freedom ended with one act of divine rebellion. The wine glass danced from star to star as you twirled with eyes shut against the twilit sky. So much for a revival.

Untitled Prose 3

What is this endless blur? Everything conflates into a violent wind of nothing that cleaves and tears at your naked face as it rushes by to assail the next defenseless person unwillingly thrust into this vicious cyclone known as thought. We are eternal, cursed and afflicted; not one is left to die.