fuckatherine

You are not a violent man. Look at your hands. You say this movement is violent but look at you. I don't care to hear about pain you have endured, not when it has grown to be a mythos. It has no relevance to me. My apathy is a wall that your pride has helped construct. Simply put, I don't care.Dead squirrel on the road, so dry it's desiccated. Hide so sun-tanned it looks like hay as we approach. Something about it is funny to you—you're laughing. I think about your ribs meeting your stomach meeting your brain. I'm praying not to God but for nature to reabsorb the prolonged suffering attached to these square inches of asphalt. You're turning the wheel to run over it again. What's even the point? The thing has already become dirt.
Playing nice—no fighting. Disclaimers, disclaimers, just in case it sounded like something I didn't mean or just in case it sounded like something I did. What's even the point? The thing has already become dirt. 

Yeah, you Rimbaud, the one laying on the filthy mattress ostensibly somewhere in NYC, some burrow, somewhere. It looks cold. Can you tell me how the spring feels on your back? I don't think I understand desperation like that. Yet...?

And do let me know if it was worth it. I don't know what decision you've made and you certainly won't and can't tell me, but no one spreads themselves out like that unless they're immobilized by the afterglow of a choice. 

Do write back.











David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York (laying on a mattress), 1978-79

It is so good to touch grass sometimes. And gash your knee on a rock. Minnesota feels so, so far away from Providence—because it is—and the emotional lock of the city's geography is, at least temporarily, undone. There are decisions to be made when I return. Well, actually, I guess I've made those decisions already. I just need to execute them. But a choice holds no weight without an accompanying action.

I feel more jaded lately. Or maybe distance has made me bold. The heart has not grown fonder, it has grown weary and honestly a little resentful. My turn to be the asshole?

It's the first truly hot day of summer. This observation is true if you discount the odd sweltering day two weeks ago, but that was two weeks ago, and things that happen such a length before now might as well not have happened at all. I'm stiff. It feels like the heat is swelling my joints and pushing all the fluid in me to the surface, expelling it. I'm bleeding (blessings of my cycle), I'm sweating, I'm sticky, but I'm holding off on the customary shower until we return from the beach. No use in rinsing just to rinse again. 

Every morning I open my inbox and it tells me this country I live in will go to war. Wants go to war. As if we haven't continuously been in one, or many. The email cannot reach me through the heat today. I'm thinking about the ocean. 

I think about the walk home, the experienced eclipsed in the present of my cool shaded room. Hot air likes to compound upon itself. If I stood very still the humid pressure felt almost nice. But the second I started moving its impact was immediate and unrelenting. I veered off concrete roads into grass as much as I could. I think about the turkey sitting in the grass. I veered as far from the turkey as much as I could without entering car territory. I hated the idea of startling it into movement when it looked like it needed the rest so badly. Feathers must be stifling. I don't know if that's biologically correct. The concrete must also be hot on bare feet. Talons? Turkey anatomy...Google tells me their feet are called shanks. There is a lot I don't know. I'm probably fine off without knowing that specific detail, but I feel embarrassed anyways. 

Sophia told me I give off an air of stability. Like, that I look like I can answer your question or give adequate advice or something. I wonder how you sense that from someone and I wonder how on earth that is emulating from me. For one, I am full of questions right now. When did that hair grow on the backs of my fingers? Will we need to install the AC unit? How much money does an average college graduate have in savings? Does this haircut make me look stupid? Does anyone even care? Maybe I am better at answer other people's questions than I am answering my own. That is probably not good. 

I'm rereading Asher's writing again, because all "writers" need someone to idolize and cannibalize. Her 2019 essay "The 50 Best Albums of the 2010s" puts me at ease because I recognize almost every album on the list. She's included many from artists that I've begun to disentangle myself from in attempts to grow more worldly in my taste and vantage. There's no need to consciously do that, I'm realizing. There's always an in, you know, and I feel better about myself and my trajectory seeing the same ins in Asher's list. 

I want to write about music more. I used to feel so stupid because I could never make or express things without tying it back to a song—what's the point in repeating lyrics that aren't even mine, that don't even have to do about me. I am letting They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us prove me wrong because I want it to. I want to talk about how Oklou sounds like Enya and how I am in the wilderness and you are in the music. I want to tell you how there is a child inside you who is trying to raise a child in me and did you know that Aspartame is maybe bad for you but they haven't proven it but regardless it's also the name of a great band? What's your prerogative (mm)? 

Aylin's on her way home. I guess we will be going to the beach after all! Half an hour is nothing in the maw of long summer light. I'm going to get changed and find sunscreen that hasn't succumbed to expiration dates or the intense weather. I wonder if my nipple piercing can go in the water yet. I know I will try it anyways, and I know it isn't healed. It always takes longer than I think. 

April arrives in a flurry of unabashed and unconcerned rain storms. I'm not quite under the weather, but I'm fighting. I'm also rotting. As much as I hate that word, there is no other way to put it. Bruises all up my shin, red marks settling in my shoulder, a long tear down my calf, scrapes galore. The palette of hurt deepens. But I heal nevertheless. The glory of the body! It's not all bad, though. I think? I don't have the time to assess what exactly it is.

This word "deserve," it follows me. My specter of hesitation, burden of uncertainty. Is there something inherently wrong with me? I need someone to tell me if it's me. It doesn't matter, I'm sick of it, it's not a big deal, I want to stop thinking about it, get over it, the weather is so nice, I am always thinking about it, it doesn't matter, I don't believe you, it doesn't matter, the sun is out, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.

What do I even deserve? If I get what I "deserve" will it even be what I want?

Perhaps this marks the inception of a tired dream of mine: coding and making my own website. If only I had discovered glitch.me back in freshman year...maybe by now I would be a web design wizard. It's okay! Life is long. And I have made the simplest page for my Digital Poetics homework tonight. Maybe old dogs can learn new tricks! Woof woof. 

It's getting scary. The pressure of time begins to creep down. Is it worse that I know how long I have? The calendar on my wall is sad right now. Empty. And the sheets in my planner are sad right now. Full. I want things to work so, so bad. I need to work again, soon. Now is not the time for fun. But then when do I get to play, in this body and as the person I am right now, ever again? The work will get done. Soon. But will it be good enough?

...that grows fat in the soil of resentment tilled with the thing you said yes I said it too we tilled it we said it two times two ways Yes that difference was enough