how nothing feels

have you ever woken up to a day that feels like your last? not in a morbid way, just in a way that everything feels off, like lingering fog, a brain scrambling movie. you have this feeling, almost a comfortable agreement that this is the last day. and then your brain plays a reel of all of the things you should have done. in slow motion i’m seeing the life i could have had, the places i could have gone

•••

the july sun beats down on us as we lay in the cool grass one weekday afternoon. it’s one of those days the heat doesn’t bother you, everything seems okay. fruit tastes sweeter, the sky looks bluer than it ever has before. i’ve got my favorite sunglasses on and my eyes closed; just absorbing the warmth. i can feel you next to me, your warm skin lightly brushing against mine. there’s a pond nearby and i suggest we cool off for a bit.

i help you up and we run off toward the relief of cool water. i can’t help but enjoy the view that is you. your eyes radiate a sort of energy. i can see a fire that lurks behind them. i can feel it, the warmth. like sunshine, but less harsh. it keeps me sane, but it also flips a switch in my brain that makes me feel like i’ve lost my mind. in a good way, like i am alive, warm, vulnerable, soft. you are simultaneously gentle and chaotic. a campfire with a green tint. we are numb together, we are alive together; as if we were connected by a string. it is knotted or fraying in some spots, from the wear it has endured.

the cold water shocks us as we run into the pond without even thinking. we’re laughing so hard we can hardly breathe, the painful kind of laughter that makes your stomach hurt. after a few minutes of pretending we can tolerate the unbearably cold water, we run back to the patch of grass we’d claimed with our picnic baskets and blanket and try to catch our breath. the cold beads of water are dripping off of our goose-bump covered skin and pooling on the blanket. it’s getting late now, and we’ve got plans to crawl into bed early and watch movies and waste away for the rest of the evening.

i can’t help but think of your soft, warm skin on days when i feel numb. days like today, i can feel your end of the string, pulling softly.

when the blue finally came

i’ve been asleep for 5 hours, but i’m suddenly wide awake at 4:38 am on a tuesday. i toss and turn desperately trying to return to a dream state where i don’t have to think for a second. by 5 i decide it’s probably better i just get up and make something of my early rise.

i measure out 3 perfectly rounded scoops of dark roast coffee. i wait for the water to boil. in 5 short minutes the temporary relief of coffee is in my favorite mug in my hands. i take my coffee and a banana into the living room and turn on NPR, and i listen to all of the woes of a world i don’t feel welcome in.

i’m a stranger in my own head, in the mirror, on paper; waking up each day feeling like a different person. some days it’s great, tremendous actually. the person i wake up as is glowing and confident and wants to dance. and then i wake up again second guessing and holding onto every word i’ve ever said. reliving conversations long forgotten by the other person. how nice that must be to forget. i don’t want to feel like this, but i know that i have to right now.

i know stuff like this controls our lives and debilitates us everyday. it sucks. there’s no over-the-counter 123 solution. it’s a conscious decision you have to make everyday to not let it kill you.

i wanna swallow the sun

i feel bad for the person inside my brain; whoever, whatever it is, it’s spitting out word salad and making my mouth dry. i feel every emotion at once for a week, a month, etc. emotions go dormant for so long, and then spring up all at once, amplified and out of control. this is the time i feel most like myself. my brain vibrates because everything inside of it is is rolling around and knocking into everything else. different emotions bleed into each other like watercolor. amplified, ambivalent, april

broken statue

on nights like tonight when nothing feels right, i dream–no i desperately dig and dig and fucking claw at my brain searching for the thought of the upcoming fall when the light is golden and you’re walking on the crunchy leaves next to me. it’s fucking january i know, but when i need a glimpse of peace i think of fall. the briskness of it all, the colors blending together to appear as a painting; hung on a dark back wall of a museum.

i think of that first cold breeze that hits you in the face and makes you feel it all. all at once you feel joy and happiness and a wave of butterflies and you can’t help but walk with a little skip. i feel this when i walk in the park by the river, when i grab a coffee from the bakery, and when i see the trees being pulled here and there by the wind.

i feel it in the summer too, when the warm breeze blows my hair in my face and i’ve got my favorite sunglasses on, a book, and cold water in hand. it’s a feeling i love to describe. it feels like love. warm, inviting, comforting but not constricting.

it pains me to write this right now, in january. i love winter. i love the darkness and the cold and the cabin fever you get from not wanting to be out in it all. i love it but it crushes me on nights like tonight. it builds up and feels like a dumbbell glued to your chest. soul-sucking, exhausting, purely torture. it creeps up all day and you know it’s coming. i always know it’s coming, but i’m never prepared. i don’t know how to be.

i take my vitamins, i drink my water. i eat a healthy snack, take a shower. but here it, (or they) sits, in the corner of my room that’s covered in dust and forgotten letters and clothes i can’t bear to get rid of. sometimes it wakes me at midnight, sometimes it doesn’t let me fall asleep at all. tonight is both.

i have to be up in 4 hours.

how to comfort a black hole

you will never satisfy it. you will throw love and food and poetry into it and it will spit it out mere moments later, shredded to bits. you will spend an eternity trying to comfort the black hole only for it to steal your words and spin them into something more elaborately evil in return. it will never comfort you back, it will always think it’s better than you, and it will eat you alive with no remorse. it sucks you in and holds you hostage for as long as you let it. what happens when two black holes fall in love? they feed off of each other endlessly; night after night they take turns spinning each other around in the kitchen at midnight. they dance in secret, they fill each other’s void and they take a piece of you each time they leave. you’ll never comfort a black hole. they will swallow each other’s darkness until they form one giant, gaping black hole. unsettling jitters. ambivalence. utter chaos. 

act II, scene 4: the greatest vanishing act of the century

take me to your desolate childhood town you swore you’d never return to. we’ll haunt your old bedroom like ghosts who didn’t find what they were looking for while alive. we’ll slip through the walls and laugh at the drawings and letters you made as a teenager, we’ll play all your old CDs and feel nostalgic for pain we thought we’d feel forever. you’re vulnerable here, and it physically hurts me to see you touch the walls and see a memory you thought you’d never have to live again. I think our brains are connected by a string.

It feels like a Sunday night in mid September, you’re 10 years old again and your mom is yelling at you to get to bed, you’ve got school in the morning. we creep our way down to your living room, and see the fuzzy glow of a television set left on for no one. we sit in front of it like children on a rainy day, our legs criss-crossed and knees slightly touching. some infomercial guy is barking orders at us, call now! call now! call now! he repeats a dozen times. I can’t help but feel a warm buzzing in my stomach when I watch your face light up as a cartoon you loved 10 years ago comes on next. you’re practically jumping up and down with excitement, telling me that you used to watch this when you stayed home sick from school. I write this down in my book of things to remember. I want to remember your face right now, filled with nothing but pure, incorruptible joy. I want to remember all of your freckles being illuminated by the soft glow of the television. the way your mouth is curved right now in that half smile, the way your hands are clasped together in excitement, i can’t bear to look away. ambivalence. 

the sound of a thousand clocks ticking

I picture your eyes after midnight; simultaneously wide awake and heavy with the desperate need for sleep. instantly I feel that wave of calmness and relief spread so warmly from my brain to my feet. I think of stormy waves crashing violently against the rocks, and feel light and empty of worry. the screen in my brain goes static, then focuses on your face; I feel the same lightness, completely serene, still, and warm. ambivalence, ambivalence. daydreams haunt me, many of which I picture the countless parking lots we’ve spent hours in, talking of the year behind us, how much time we wasted, our fears, and the futility of it all.

this particular night, the air is warm and sticky, almost hazy despite the darkness. it had been one of those soul-crushing days for both of us, leaving us exhausted and seemingly out of motivation and spirit. we seem to have those kinds of days together, as if we’re connected by a string. realizing where we were a year ago, together and separate is like fuel to the fire of time we’ll never escape. it doesn’t do to dwell, I know. but so much we could have done in a year, I bet we’d take over the world together! we’d haunt the planet with our pessimistic optimism, our shared love of words, and our endless search for simplicity. 

days and nights like these are when I need you the most. your wild eyes glowing in the orangey street lamplight fill my head with visions of chilly autumn days where we drink far too much coffee while getting lost in each other’s presence. I get so caught up in you, year after year. I think you permanently occupy this part of my brain; the part that holds my inspiration, my art, my fears. each late night rant of thoughts, ideas, and those fears again, they’re all sat next to you under a flickering street light.
I’ll keep changing with the seasons, but as each one passes and new leaves grow or fall away, you’ll be with me, in that blissful place; flickering on and off as we both know how to do so well. 

the sun swallowed me

a breezy warm day; your brown curly hair is tied with a scarf, but it’s still being whipped around your face beautifully by the wind. you’ve got those sunglasses I love on, you know, the tortoiseshell rimmed ones from that vintage shop downtown. your scarf is bright orange, like those tulips in California. it seems to perfectly fit in with the warmth of the sun and all of the fresh colorful blooms against the blue sky. it feels like the whole earth is bathed in that orangey vintage tint they put on movies set in the 70s on days like this. when the sun feels just right, and the heat doesn’t bother you; your skin is dewy and glowing as the day gets hotter. the sky is so blue I swear I’ve never seen anything like it, and the grass! oh how green it seems to be today. I’m in a euphoric state staring at the coastline and seeing the chaotic waves crashing on the rocks. we pick a spot in the middle of the dandelions on a hill, despite the buzzing of the honeybees merely inches away. the plush yellow weeds compliment you so softly I want to lock the image in my mind so no one else can experience it. you’ve got a glass of lemonade in one hand, and in your other a half smoked cigarette burns slowly. you look so goofy as usual, but so cool. you always looks cool, like you’re posing for a photograph. after a bit we move our blanket down to the beach. I swear you invented the beach. just thought up the idea of a beach and then handcrafted every single one yourself. there are shorebirds above us, hundreds of them i swear. they look gorgeous against the sky. the kind of beauty you can’t ever seem to capture in a photograph, it never looks how it looked in person. you just have to see it, you have to smell the salty hot air, you have to feel the warm sand under your feet mixing with the cool tide when it comes in. you’ve got to see the rosey tint the sun has given your cheeks. you look cherubic, in a good way of course. you are warmth, you are warmth, you are warmth. you are the sun. 

where you’ll find me

deep below the surface of the earth: first you cut through the dying, brittle, brown grass and then comes the cool soil. you dig and dig, tossing the dirt behind you carelessly. a hot gust of wind blows it back into my face as I wait for you to stop digging and look at me. you’ve hit the rocks now, but keep going regardless. it’s getting hotter as you get deeper, deeper, almost there. 
you’re trying to put me away, somewhere, anywhere you won’t be able to reach me. if you could only dig deeper, faster. sweat beads drip into the massive hole you’ve created. faster, faster you dig! it feels like we’re flying toward the sun, so you must be getting close. you must be nearing the place I’ll lie. I’ll lie here away from you, out of sight out of mind, right? I bet I’ll still try to write you from here. I’ll send letters in the form of rain and you’ll know when they’re from me. I’ll only send you things that put that pit in your stomach, the one that feels like it’s filled with bees. I swear I’ll write you everyday I think of you down here, in this place you made for me. 
maybe one day you’ll forget where you buried me and you’ll walk right over me. when that happens I’ll make a flower grow right before your eyes. it will be the most beautiful flower, and you’ll have to pick it. when you bend over to pluck it out of the earth, it will crumble at your touch. so out of place it will look, to ashes it will return. a baby bird falls from the tree that grew above me as you walk by me. of course you rush over to save it. your stomach drops when you discover the innocent little bird did not make the fall, so you start digging. all these years later. you only dig a few inches down to bury the bird, and I am envious of its lifeless little body. why did you bury me so deep? why did you drop me down to the hot core of the earth and scoop the dirt back over my head? 
I’m still writing you, long after the bird you buried next to me decomposes into soil. like being pricked by a thorny rose over and over again, I keep salting the wound you left. can’t you see the rain im sending? can’t you smell the salty ocean air mixing with my lavender perfume? deeper, deeper I sink into the earth, I am turning to ash. 
you’re smoking cigarettes under the tree again, feeding the shorebirds stale bread. I can hear them calling to you, I can feel the ashes falling into my hair. it’s burning all over my body as you stomp out the cigarette and throw it at the tree. as if that will bring me back. you start digging for me, sweat and tears mixing into the soil; I can feel it. deeper, faster you dig, calling out my name as if I could hear you. but I have sunk too deep now, I’ve finally reached the place you can’t get to me. you put me here, this was your idea! why are you still digging? what would you say to me, after I have sent rain and flowers and shorebirds to you, only to receive nothing in return? you must go now. you can no longer find me here

masochistic coffee thought

green eyes, glittering against the red neon lights of our city. 

soft and slow, soft and slow 

keep me waiting, I’m waiting

green eyes, growing twice their size when they look into mine.

soft and slow, soft and slow 

keep me waiting, I’m waiting

green eyes, gently giving in to sleep.

soft and slow, soft and slow.

keep me waiting, I’m waiting

your head on my chest, soft and slow 

I’ll dangle you from a string

soft and slow

keep me waiting, green eyes