Soul on Display

I’m trying to write a zine I genuinely don’t like. I like it in theory, but every time I work on it I think it is a worse idea than the last time and the writing I’m doing to fit the “theme” of the zine is largely not anything I am proud of. I keep wanting to try to put whatever ideas I have bouncing around in my head into the form of absurdist fiction, but I keep trying to write about this idea I have which I don’t think works when every piece of writing is fitting that criteria. But anyway, I decided to expand my nonfiction a little bit for the zine and not have such a specific box so I just wrote something that was closer to an essay on the topic I had in my head about having a probably overly intimate connection to music. I pretty much accepted it was going to be a little bit more straight forward when I was naming an artist and albums at the beginning, but then I got into the milieu (I think that’s the right word) as I went on and I probably should kill that habit of going into every little detail or rambling or however you want to describe it, but I think it’s kind of funny and I think it is a good way to sort of illustrate the way my brain works at times. Anyway, the point is that by the time I was done writing it (actually before I had finished writing it,) I knew this wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to put into my zine (even though I need content) and then I thought “I have a website” so now I’m posting this here even though the writing format really is making it seem like this website is a blog which is an idea I keep trying to not succumb to even though the last post I made on here is a blog post about this website’s existence. Anyway, I am sure part of the way this turned out was a result of knowing I wasn’t putting it in my zine so I really indulged myself with all my bad writing habits, but when I’m trying to get into a better writing habit I really shouldn’t worry about if I want the end result when I have an idea that is actually influencing me to write as opposed to other stuff where I’m sitting for five minutes picking a word. So here’s a brand new piece of writing and if you see it in any of my zines, unless it is changed drastically, you’ll know I was super desperate to fill my zine (which is an absurd idea since I’m making my own zine so it’s whatever length I want it to be, but I have a sort of “template” based on previous zines where I just deleted all the contents that sort of has become what I am trying to fill.) Anyway, without further adieu….

Some songs are meant for headphones. The best songs are meant to be listened to in your room. You can’t share this shit with anyone even though it’s publicly available for all to hear. Their ears don’t work right. Pearls before swine.

I remember being younger. I had some sort of opportunity to request songs for Joey Cape to play at a show, perhaps a MySpace blog in which he asked? It wasn’t spur of the moment, shouting at the man on the stage. I gave it some thought and forget what I came up with, but what I recall is intentionally avoiding songs off Resolve and 12 Small Steps, 1 Giant Disappointment. I didn’t want to ask him to play songs off my two favorite albums because it felt cruel to request him to perform songs that came from so much pain. After some time had passed, I thought back on it and wondered if it was rude to not request those songs. Did Joey feel like I didn’t appreciate those album when he saw them absent from my requests?

Years later, in fact the year I am writing this, I am still trying to be more confident at age 31. Reflecting back, its highly likely that I will determine that I was not acting “confident” or in any positive, improved manner, but that I was actually acting weird and obsessive or potentially creepy. But at the moment I’m trying to be slightly bolder. I think I saw a video of L.A. Witch playing “Heart of Darkness” in Los Angeles and that’s how the idea popped into my head, but I decided that I wanted them to play it when they came to Portland on their upcoming tour. So I tweeted at them and got a “like” which is a little bit unclear as far as responses, but I want to be confident and I also want to be chill and definitely not unhinged so I don’t demand a written tweet reply. I go to the show and feel sort of weird because it’s still a pandemic and literally nobody does exactly what I want which is to definitely not walk within 10 feet of me and also to definitely not drink because it’s a pandemic and you should keep your mask on. I have a little bit of excitement in my gut that they’re going to play the song, but I’m not sure if my request was even actually acknowledged so I’m tampering my expectations. But also I’m thinking in my head about how to react if they do play it. And I wonder if they’re dedicate it to me since I’m the one who asked and I’m kind of shy so I don’t want that, but also I have a big enough ego to think they will dedicate a song to a complete stranger for tweeting at them. But also, why not?

Each time they are going to play another song, I wonder if this is going to be “Heart of Darkness.” But “Heart of Darkness” is not a normal song. Part of why it’s my favorite L.A. Witch song is because it’s unique in their catalog. It’s very stripped down. So I am watching the show, waiting for some sort of transition to maybe an acoustic guitar?

They finish their set, but people wait around for an encounter (as is custom) and it really feels like this is the moment when it might happen. They won’t need some weird mid-set transition. They come out as a three piece and I think this is really the moment. They don't dedicate the song to me, they don’t introduce it at all. But they are definitely playing it: the moment I waited for all night.

I’m really enjoying the song, but it feels like I’ve been stripped naked. It feels far too intimate. Does everyone else in this room appreciate what they are hearing? Does anyone else in this room appreciate what they are hearing? Do they love this song like I love this song? I don’t want to listen to this quiet song with these people. I want to watch the band the way I listen to the albums: alone. Singing along if I feel inclined.

The band follows it up by bringing back their fourth member and playing a louder song which seems like it gets a better response from the crowd. I feel like I may have ruined their set by asking them to play the strange, quiet song that only I understand. I stick around for a few minutes. I’m not sure how long they would want to decompress after their set, probably longer. But I don’t want to stand around awkwardly waiting so I leave. I tweet thank you to them and I receive a “like” and a part of me doesn’t know if they even knew I requested the song or if they have a social media manager just liking any tweet sent to them, but I try not to think about it too longer because I’m trying to remain confident and not become unhinged.

Grief

I’m having trouble distinguishing

My anti-social proclivities

From the natural response

To death surrounding me

I feel myself decaying

But it’s not fast enough for my liking

And the news

I cannot stomach the details, the headlines overwhelm me

Forgetting, pretending otherwise

Feels sacrilegious

But bitter feelings result in

Counterintuitive treatment to those who remain

As it creeps into my home

How could it not?

It’s in my city, it’s everywhere at once

No one is impervious, untouched

My mother likes to not think

About the ills of the world

But it’s all my head is filled with

As her mind is full of more personal sorrows I cannot bring myself to acknowledge

Reason

With the rope around my neck and the chair moments away from being kicked out from beneath my feet, my neighbor knocks at my door. Naturally, I do not answer. If I were going to be alive tomorrow, it could create awkwardness between us. But I am not. He may ask me where I’d be the previous afternoon. He’d seen my car was still in the driveway so I couldn’t have gone far - as if I don’t have friends who may have picked me up in their car! Of course, when he asked me, I would have my brain working to figure out the unspoken communication. Was he asking me these things out of genuine curiosity or was he asking me these things simply as a way to break the ice and bring up what he had initially come to talk about this afternoon or… was he asking me to see if he could catch me in a lie? Was he asking these things knowing that I had been home and simply hadn’t answered the door when he’d knocked because I am an anti-social asshole? Was he the bigger asshole for passive aggressively confronting me or am I the bigger asshole for forcing him into the position where he would be able to catch me in a lie? But what does catching me in a lie do to benefit him? He gets to feel good about himself because he would never - and he is also smarter than the asshole who would?

There is no reason he should need to know where I was this afternoon, it’s not his business. All he needs to know is that I didn’t answer the door when he knocked thus he did not communicate what he wanted to communicate to me. Was I home or was I out is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not I was in the doorway while he was on my porch and we interacted. Have you ever had your doorbell ring while you are on the toilet? What’s the protocol there? Yes, of course I am home, but I should finish shitting and if I am finished shitting I should properly wipe my ass and wash my hands. I should not rush to the door with a half-wiped ass and filthy hands like a nuclear alert just went off.

My neighbor, I see him trying to look in through the window. What’s that about? If he sees me inside, then what? I didn’t answer the door, that’s all he needs to know. Oh, I’m inside? And I’m not answering the door? Great, now what, dickhead? But I can see him trying to look inside with his hands cupped around his eyes to block out light causing reflections to get in the way of him looking through the glass. I don’t think he can see me. But that’s exactly what a person who hopes they aren’t being seen tells themselves. He’s popping his head into a few different window frames, trying to get the right angle I guess. I’m not sure if he intends to view my entire house this way.

Now he’s back at the front door. I hear him banging. Hard. He hasn’t used the doorbell at all. I don’t know why. Maybe he thinks it is broken. Maybe he comes from somewhere or he is of a culture that doesn’t have doorbells. But it is there. He has to have seen one in a movie or something. I don’t know. He’s knocking very loudly. It’s probably louder than the doorbell, but the doorbell is simple and the knocking sounds like it would hurt his knuckles. They’re his knuckles, but it just seems ridiculous to hurt your knuckles when the doorbell is right there.

I hear him shouting something. It’s kind of muffled. I am hearing it through a door. I don’t know what his deal is or why he’s pounding on my door and shouting like that. It’s like his house is on fire or something. Maybe he locked himself out of his house, that would explain why he’s still out there instead of going home. But you would be a little more calm about being locked out. You would accept the person isn’t home and you have to wait. It’s like his family has been murdered or something. Like I said, it’s like his house is on fire. But there are other people. On the street. In the world. If his house is on fire, there has to be someone else’s phone he could use if he is at my door because he wants to use my phone. I can’t help him if his house is on fire. I would wait for the firefighters so all he could come to me for is if he needed to call 911 or have me call 911. I am not going to put out the fire.

“Crow and bird"

“Cowabunga”

“Crowded bar”

“Die in crowded bar”

“Knew rabid crowbar”

What the fuck is he talking about?

Then… it’s like when you ask someone to repeat themselves and as you are asking them, your brain processes their unintelligibility through context clues and you know.

“New David Cronenberg”

I take the rope from around my neck. I pick up my smartphone and go to my Google News Alerts for David Cronenberg. It looks like filming will start in Greece soon. This rope will still be here in a few years.

Participate

I refuse to participate. The world is rigged and you all started this before I could agree to the terms. Once I was born, I was never formally approached and I suppose you all thought that everything should just be grandfathered in. And I suppose that you believed if you stayed in motion, the years would pass before I figured out the scam. But here I am. It may have taken a few decades. Perhaps I should have called your bluff when everything became obvious. I am not sure why I waited. In an odd yin to your yang, I did not formally approach anyone about my decision. I just quit and thought the years might pass and soon you all would have waited too long to notice I wasn’t taking part. But the thing about an unstoppable force and an unmovable object is that if they don’t actually meet the force keeps going and the object being unmovable doesn’t mean much.

Hollow Man

When your Amazon package finally arrives, the thrill of the wait is over. You could check your phone a couple times a day to see if there were updates on the tracking. Maybe it would get ahead of schedule or it might fall behind if an unexpected event came up. They removed a lot of that with their two day shipping option. You can still track the package, but there’s not as much time for it to get delivered faster than expected and there’s a shorter period of time that it’s traveling for you to check for updates on the status. You could check the status after it arrives, but the status doesn’t change and you know it isn’t going to change so it loses its luster. Plus, you have the package which is what you really wanted anyway. You order whatever you ordered because you wanted the item, not to simply track it. But now the package has arrived and you aren’t looking forward to it anymore. It’s here. Maybe it’s a new piece of clothing and you can look forward to wearing it out in public for the first time and then when no one comments on it, you can put it into your closet and sometimes put it on again, but it’s not new clothes anymore. Maybe it’s a CD if you’re one of those people who still buy those or a vinyl record and you can listen to the album and hopefully you haven’t hyped the album up too much in your head so that it lives up to your expectations. But you probably checked it out on Spotify first to make sure you weren’t wasting your money on the physical album. So you already know what it sounds like. So the record arrived and you could listen to it and dive into your inner audiophile and talk about the warm sound of the vinyl itself - but you already heard the album so it has arrived and the thrill of the record coming is over. Or you might have bought something ornamental and you get to hang a piece of art on a wall or you have something to put on the mantel. Hanging art is surprisingly a lot of work, but once its up, you get to look at it. You can only really look at it for so long, but now that’s there. Maybe when someone comes over they’ll comment on it. Hopefully they say more than “new art?” because that kind of sounds like what someone would say to acknowledge art they don’t like. But your package arrived, the wait and anticipation is over and now you have the thing that you felt like you needed when you didn’t have it yet.

Hide the Body

Watching an old video of Henry Rollins telling some television audience that being born in a body that functions is a miracle. Still feel the urge to destroy my own. Referencing myself in the same sentence as Thích Quảng Đức would be an insult to him, but it’s something in that realm. Self-immolation is too frightening, too painful, and also too quick - I need to ease into it. My own views are also a little hard to sort out, but they feel more self-absorbed. The pain of the world weighs heavily on my mind, but when it’s all said and done my concern ends up being largely about the emotional anguish I experience as a result of others’ suffering. I know you’re not supposed to admit these sort of things and it’s even possible I’m being too harsh in my judgement of myself, but there’s nothing more American than an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude toward the rest of the globe.

The destruction I desire toward my own flesh and bone is some sort of primal scream I cannot emit. I’ve never been capable of the wordless shout. It feels immature, ‘use your words.’ But where words are lacking or rather they feel out of reach - no order seems to convey the meaning intended - what’s left? I am not sure if I want to explode or implode; I am not sure if I want any of this to be noticed - if it’s some kind of cry for help and if a ‘cry for help’ is inherently a person falling short of death because they don’t truly desire the end of their life or if that is some misinterpretation of the phrase I picked up in my life.

I feel everything. I feel the callousness of the world and whether it’s a result of my inability to believe what we have allowed to be done to our fellow human beings throughout all of history up to this very moment or if I simply feel that the fucked up societies we’ve decided to create and maintain are an affront to me by forcing me to live within what is clearly an evil place and the toll that following the norms of such a place takes on one’s mental health, the feeling of complete helplessness to fix or improve anything even if it’s entirely so I can feel less bad about myself and what I have grown accustom to accepting makes me want to destroy my body. Or at least I believe that to be the case. I am not clear if I want to destroy my body or if I want to not exist - at least not on this plane. I do not want to be perceived. I want to disappear. I am not sure if destruction of my physical being is my ideal method to reach my end goal or merely the only route I am capable of enacting.

Henry Rollins told the audience not to do heroin and ruin your healthy body. I spent years drinking as much as I could get my hands on. Like much of this, I am not entirely clear on all of the details: was I attempting to drink myself to death? Was I simply trying to put some wear on my body for a slow destruction of what I am trapped in? Was I merely trying to feel something that I thought I could reach at a higher state of intoxication and I am not trying to revise history to make the drinking about destruction of my body? As I continued drinking I occasionally thought about how alcohol was poison. I tried to wrap my head around why we drink it at all. With too much in the system, one vomits it up. I guess the same could be said about all food, but alcohol seemed like different beast; drinking a little bit give an effect of impairment. It was hard to not consider that we were poisoning ourselves regularly while trying not to not go so far as to make it deadly - not that the thought ever crossed my mind while I was drinking that I needed to not poison myself to death. On a few rare occasions, I had the thought that I felt way too drunk way too early - sometimes because the sun was still out or sometimes because the people I was with didn’t appear nearly as intoxicated. Though that judgement was rare and my decisions to cut myself actually resulted in a few of my worst nights which I won’t detail, it was never a matter of concern that I might be about to give myself alcohol poisoning until I had already gotten to the point where I could feel the vomit coming.

I want to destroy my body because I do not want to exist in this world created before I got to decide if this is how anything should be. I do not want to exist because existing feels like a passive approval of famines and genocides and so many other atrocities and unnecessary sufferings and I do not want that on my consciences. But I am too much of a coward for anything obvious, anything anyone would notice. I do not want attention. I do not want to cause a scene. But I am also scared to do anything too drastic even out of sight. I have watched all the PSAs and I have bought into all the generic advice and talks of right and wrong. I am too much of a goody two shoes to do something I know to be “wrong” so I work on the edges. I find things in the grey areas to do.

I want to not exist. But all I have to show for it are shirts that don’t fit like they used to and scares I had somehow convinced myself would go away, abrasions I am too ashamed to let anyone see. The damage I’ve done to my body was done with unclear thoughts about what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it. I cannot explain to anyone what they may see because I do not know what happened by accident and what was done with intent and if I still feel that way or if I can still justify these things under a newer ideology.

Broken Record

I’ve been writing the same words in different orders repeatedly for the past few years. I’ve looked in thesauruses and tried finding new perspectives, but the topics aren’t changing. I’m all out of romantic longing and my observations mostly embarrass. The desire to shield myself behind fiction has never been more alluring, but the words come so slowly. Masking what I need to say within a story only adds another dimension to a task I fear I am incapable of handling.

I want to write purely from a place of love without it all coming back to two bodies curled together under sheets. I want to give back, to follow in the foot steps of the creatives who raised me. I want to make someone feel the way I felt listening to Alkaline Trio as a teenager.

The world can be so cruel and I’ve let it make me feel the need to match its energy. I don’t know if I’ve grown to be the way I out of a guardedness or an issue with my brain chemistry. What I know is it’s a challenge to be warm, but it’s a challenge I want to face unlike so many others. To be able to do both is the dream. But for now I just want to create something that means something to somebody and I know I’m not getting there writing what flows naturally from me.

So every time I sit down to write something new, I see the same words laid out before me. The same sentiments and the same missing piece. Writing is easy; writing something I care about is not.

Beast of Burden

Utters hoodie, woods shirt, all black. Obsession will be the end of me, but it’s the only way I’ve made it this far. I think I can crack this code. Emulation. Empathy or mirrored behavior. But a Machiavellian worldview is beyond me. Faking interest strains me. I’m incapable of “til you make it.” Life is as serious as a heart attack. Where do you think my hair went? The only thing keeping the stress at bay is day-by-day. Estate planning is well and good, but there’s no hope on the horizon so I’ll listen to this record for the millionth time.

Hot n Heavy Chat Line

“Yes, I will pay 3.99 per minute. Yes, this is my verbal consent. You have my credit card number. You can bill it. I agree.”

…

“…I would like to… speak to… hmm, you see, I’m very indecisive. I don’t know who exactly… I mean, it kind of seems like fate has already connected me to y-”

…

“Yes, I understand. It’s not your job. I get it. You’re the operator. I get it. I apologize. Yes, my mistake. Wow. That many people a day? They all try to talk to you. I mean, but not the way I did, right? They try to talk to you, right? Like all lewd.”

…

“Yeah, no. I see how this is could be perceived as me attempting to continue to to have a conversation with you. But you see what I am talking about, right? This was just small talk, nothing inappropriate. I wasn’t trying to get hot and heavy with y-”

…

“Yes, ma’am. I get it. I understand you don’t care about the difference. It simply isn’t your job. I get it. I fully sincerely apologize. Now I’ve been talking to you for several minutes, boy I hope this isn’t being billed. haha.”

…

“Oh, it is? Well, that makes sense. You are running a business after all. That was just a joke. I fully consent to the full billing for every second I have been on the line with you. I apologize again. Can you just connected me with someone… trustworthy? Like, they aren’t going to talk about me after the call?”

…

“Yes, okay, I understand that is your privacy policy, but all the same… do you know the women? Are there ones who are kind of big mouths and ones that ‘get it’?”

…

“Okay, yes, I get it. It’s not your job to pick who I talk to either. Jeez, I kind of thought being the first point of contact, you’d be a little bit friendlier. It seems kind of bad for busine-”

…

“I apologize. I should have not said that to you. Yes, I have no idea how to run a chatline business. I don’t know what it takes to stay afloat and I certainly don’t know what you have to deal with as the operator connecting the calls or anything of the sort. It was not my position to criticize you… No, I am not going to berate the woman you connect me to for not responding the way I want her to… although, I am paying for her to be sort of agreeable, right? I mean, I want her to be honest with me, but she is going to be… not an ice queen, not antisocial?”

…

“Okay, okay, I understand other people are trying to get through. Just connect me to someone… um, connect me to a tall woman I guess? Is that how these things go? It’s the phone, I won’t know if it’s even true. A brunette? A Big Beautiful Woman? It’s all the same people probably…”

…

“Okay, please just transfer me to someone you claim is tall. I didn’t mean to offend you by thinking out loud about the absurdity of asking to talk to a person based on their physical features.”

*Bedeedledeedulldulldulldullbadoodoodoodoodoodoodloolooloolooloo*

“Hi, this is Sharice.”

“Hey, have you ever listened to that hold music. It’s pretty avante garde. I mean, it was so short so whatever, but uh, not really ‘easy listening’ if you follow what I’m saying.”

“What’s your name?”

“Oh right, wow, first I talk your operator’s ear off and now I’m starting off on the wrong foot with you too. Jeez, I have to get it together.”

“So. what’s your name?”

“Right, right, right. Am I supposed to give an alias for this sort of thing? Like Sharice sounds like a fake name to me. Uh, my name… what if I just said I’m like Paul Bunyan or something? Then you’d call me Paul Bunyan the whole call. Do people do that, but like they expect you to talk to them like they’re the fiction character - asking how their Blue Ox is and stuff?”

“You seem nervous. Is this your first time calling one of these?”

“Well, yes, who calls a phone sex line in 2020? There’s a bunch of porn illegally distributed all around the internet - more than you could jack off to in a life time.”

”Well, you. You called a phone sex line in 2020.”

“That, that’s true. But I’m not calling for phone sex. And it feels more and more like the government is spying on you these days. And the internet, there’s just like your browser history. And I know you can delete it, but I bet the company you pay for the internet keep a secret back up to give to the government, those bastards. And I am sure they listen to my phone calls too, but I think I saw in a movie they have to hang up after like 30 seconds if they realize the call isn’t about a crime. But that might have been from the 70s. Anyway, it seems slightly harder for them to analyze a verbally spoken phone call rather than feeding a bunch of text and data into a robot.”

“Are you going to like break the law on this call or something? Talk about murders you committed?”

“No, I’m just saying that I’m a very private person and I want to talk to someone because I’m lonely, but I don’t want some government agent knowing everything I said.”

“But you’re going to talk to a complete stranger? I know I should be selling our service, but you’re a private person talking to a complete stranger about things you don’t want a different stranger to know?”

“Yes. You think you have outwitted me, but that’s how it always is, isn’t it? You’re fine with this person knowing, not that person. You’re fine with one person knowing not two. I might be open to talking to one specific government agent instead of you, but I don’t know how to contact them so it wouldn’t be conversational like this. Plus, their job is to then tell others about that information whereas your operator made it very clear that you are going to keep all of this private. I mean, I saw Punch Drunk Love, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. That wasn’t based on a true story was it? I know that part about the yogurt with the frequent flyer miles was something that really happened, but not calling a sex chat line and then getting blackmailed, that part was totally fictional, right?”

“I don’t know what Punch Drunk Love is.”

“Oh my god! You were probably born after 9/11. I am going to shit myself! I don’t feel old yet, but that kind of shit... when I realize some new actress I find attractive was born like… even if she was born like 2 years after me, that fucks me up. The weird thing is that it’s barely even like a thing where I think about how much more successful they are than me even though they are young, but it’s like some kind of hang up from being in school where it would be weird for a senior to date a sophomore I think. Like it’s not that weird to find someone who is maybe 3 years young than you attractive. It’s not even weird to find someone 10 years younger than you attractive although it’s a little weird to date them, but some young millionaire new movie star isn’t someone I’m going to have the chance to date anything so-”

“Did you ever tell me your name? Are you going to go buy Paul Bunyan?”

“No because then I am going to just keep having an urge to talk about my Blue Ox as a part of a character and the truth is I called this line not for sex - I am sure you hear that all the time - but I called it for some sort of genuine human contact. We’re obviously on the phone and you’ve probably given me a fake name and you’re only talking to me because I am paying the company that hired you to talk to me, but even the people I see through the day in which I occupy the same physical spaces as them, those are not people where I have any real connection to them because everyone is putting on this fake persona like they have it all together and to make a genuine connection people would need to open up about their vulnerability, but then someone could use that to steal their job or their wife or whatever, they could use that against them so we’ve created a society in which everyone is intentionally cutting themselves off from each other even people who don’t live in a cutthroat part of society, they still do it just at the off chance like how people who aren’t rich vote against taxes in case they someday become rich, it’s completely ass backwa-”

“So what name are you going to go by for this call?”

“First I have to figure out who I want to talk to. Now I have to come up with a fake name. I’m not a stupid person I swear, but this is not my strong suite. Decision-making. It stresses me out. Even these small kinds of things that ultimately don’t matter. I really called to have a pleasant time and now I’m being asked on the spot to pick stuff and I’m not even being given some options to bring from, I have to choose a name out of the ether. Any name that has ever existed or an entirely new one. And then I’m trapped with that. If I want to call again then I have to keep using that name or start over completely when we could be getting somewhere, but then I have this stupid name I regret picking like if I had said yes I want to be called Paul Bunyan. I could be talking about how my dead dog is why I can never have a romantic relationship that lasts longer than a month and you keep calling me Paul Bunyan and I want to say dead Blue Ox instead of dead dog.”

“Well, I guess I can call you honey or baby or…”

“That would work for one of your standard calls, but once more this is not a call of a sexual nature so I don’t want to be called those sort of pet names. That’s something else I would like to talk about at some point. I realize many men have done all sorts of awful things and some of them who aren’t awful are still incredibly horny and our society has sort of shamed horniness so you end up with men lying about wanting sex when they do want sex, but I really wish people who trust me if I say I am trying to make an honest emotional connection and then if I start acting horny, then you can call me out for lying, but give me a chance.”

“What should I call you then?”

“Actually, I’ve got a lot off my chest tonight. I think I’m going to end the call.”

Lyric

I’m listening to these records like they contain the Da Vinci code. Like if I hear the lyrics for the fiftieth time, everything will finally click. There’s no cure for the kind of loneliness that comes from feeling like you aren’t on your home planet so I listen and listen and listen and just maybe, the record will create a portal. I need to reach out to those closest to me who have been singing these melodies for a decade plus. I treat these records like precious commodities and I treat the people in my life the same. Not that I respect them or am loving toward them, but the obsession. A stream of questions until they don’t have the answers. They will never satiate my thirst because I don’t know what I am taste I am longing for myself.

While I wait for these songs to make everything else make sense, I try to emulate these strangers I have welcomed into my home and head and heart. I write and rewrite, trying to find the balance between earnestness and safety. I am trying to do what has been done for me, but I am not sure I am capable. Every few years I decide I desire vulnerability but then I remember my fear. I used to be sincere and kind, but the only way I knew how to survive here was to grow cold. The idea of shedding this shell I’ve spent three decades building is absurd. It is all I have to show for my time on Earth.

So I keep listening to these albums over and over until I get bored of them and then I set them aside for a few months. The people find themselves in similar situations. But these songs don’t perceive me. These songs don’t ever know more than I’m comfortable with them knowing.

31 in 31

I am going to do some form of writing each night (presumably night) for ever day of December to get in a better habit of writing and I will post them even though they will most likely be gibberish and stuff only I think is funny (or profound). It will not be journaling, that much I can tell you, it will be creative.

I have not been writing as much as I would like to for… quite a while now. I did a little bit of writing on this website as you can see. When I didn’t write for a while, I felt compelled to put something else out even though it wasn’t necessarily good. I just wrote it to have a new thing. And that’s fine. I don’t know if anyone wants to read it and having no quality standards probably doesn’t encourage people to read what I post. There are definitely things I don’t post just so you know there is a little bit of a standard. As you can see from the last few posts, I’ve written some short stories directly onto this website just to try to get back into the habit of writing. Are they good? You be the judge.

When I was a Freshman in college, I had this Philosophy professor that didn’t believe in homework, but needed something to grade us on so he had us write short stories so at least the thing we wrote could be potentially entertaining. At least that’s how I remember it. I remember him saying he used to only ask for one, but people would get so stressed out (even though he would give everyone who turned one in an A) so he made it 3. I kind of marvel that I was able to come up with these stories out of thin-air back that. I did it kind of under pressure. It doesn’t really matter, but to get back into that sort of area again, I am going to try to write 31 short stories in 31 days since it happened to be December 1st when I thought of this idea. I started writing something last night, but then felt like I had done enough writing because I am lazy so there’s that unpublished unfinished thing in my drafts. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, these are going to be pretty stream-of-conscious and almost certainly unedited. And if you happened to read that short story about the billboards, you can probably tell that I have a bad habit of writing myself into whatever the opposite of a corner is. I just start writing and essentially getting further and further from an ending. And then I think to myself “how long is this going to go on for?” If I had published the thing I started writing yesterday, you would see that I am very much writing really stupid stuff that I think is funny. So spending several hours on a short story that is really stupid is kind of not a great use of time especially when I want to just finish so I can watch a movie. But I want to get back in the habit of writing again so I can be a little bit decent again and then maybe put something polished out. But like I was saying about “Billboards,” I get going and it’s been like 45 minutes and I just want to watch a movie and there’s no end in sight so I just suddenly try to figure out how to wrap it up. I have a feeling that is going to be a pattern. Maybe I’ll revisit some of these stories in the future and take them to better conclusions, but this first one for December 1st is definitely one where I just wanted to be done since I don’t anticipate many (any?) people reading it anyway. I’ve got some days off this month so maybe those days I’ll be less tired.

Anyway, I realized that putting a bunch of half-assed ideas on the front page of this website is not going to be a great look if people do visit it to read quality content so this is my post saying that you can visit this sub-section for what I have decided to call 31 in 31. I am a night owl and stuff so a lot of stuff is going to get posted technically the next day. I have no interest in getting it done before midnight or even making sure I start before midnight, if I write it before I go to sleep, it counts. And also “counts” doesn’t mean anything since I am just doing this for myself and nobody will probably read these. But here is where you will hopefully be able to find 31 short stories - or poems or some form of writing - by the end of the month.

ghoulish.me/december-2020-short-stories

Lame Duck (rough)

The days are counting down. The election was over. Soon there will be a new president. I knew this was coming. I signed up for this. I wielded the power of the most powerful country on the planet for four god damn years. It was a good run. I accomplished a lot. I served the people and they are grateful.

I will try to get a few more things passed and I will have my team reach out to the new administration to help them with the transition. I guess my last act will be helping explain the job to my successor. And then he’ll watch me die. With everyone else. He’ll watch me hang and then he’ll place his hand on the Bible and be sworn in.

He seems like a good man. I think he’ll continue some of the things I got the ball rolling on, but one can only get so far on these projects in four years. So I should count myself lucky to know that the next president will not put a halt on what I began. I can go out knowing that my life will not be taken in vain. I did not spend four years working my ass off for this country only to be hanged right before everything I did is undone.

I realize the threat of my work being dismantled wasn’t that high. Neither candidate was out to destroy the goodwill I’ve been building. Since implementing a death penalty for being the president, a lot less power-hungry candidates run. It skews toward people who want to sacrifice for their country. That’s not the official reason given of course.

It would be nice if we were honest and told the citizens that making the presidency the ultimate sacrifice has removed the majority of the worst candidates from running. Instead we’ve got some Wicker Man bullshit. But that’s what it took to sell the Christian right on the concept. So now I have to die for what the pain this country inflicts on the rest of the world. I tried to reduce the harm, but the only way this country can be this country is if we rape and maim the rest of the world. And a person who kills thousands must die in this country. Ironically enough, the federal death penalty was abolished by the third president to serve under these conditions. But still, this country says that we must sacrifice me for the sins I committed while in office.

As much as things have improved, there is still a collective delusion. This country can do no wrong. The citizens who benefit from the horrors inflicted by their government have no blood on their hands. The government and all the people it takes to run it bear no responsibility for what is done. No, it is my fault. I must be sacrificed for what I did. Solely.

And for some, it is about fairness. The punishment fits the crime. For others, there is more superstition. They remember 9/11. But the right finally lost its stranglehold on the memory. Thus it became understood not as a lesson about being hyper vigilant about anyone who doesn’t love this country, but as what happens in response to what we do to people in other countries. But, this is still the United States and we do still have our bizarre beliefs we won’t let go no matter overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So sacrificing one man, me, is said to ward off any repercussions.

If the general public was more concerned about where their freedom comes from, they might see how much money we spend on national security, they might look at our military budget - and they could put two and two together and realize there may be another reason there aren’t more terrorist attacks. But they’ve been sold on my execution and there’s nothing they love more than tradition.

Mask Off America

The streets aren’t paved with gold

They’re lined with rubber-coated lead

Mask off, America

The tears of George Stinney weren’t enough to quench our thirst

Everything we own is dripping with blood

Everything we’ve earned was pried from another’s grip

And now we spend the rest of our waking life

Fending off those who might try to take it

Is freedom supposed to feel like choking

On the stress of hoarding the most objects?

And the pain in my gut when I start to wonder if this is all there really is won’t go away

But this empty feeling is still better than the despair of those who still dream that someday, if they work very hard, they too will have countless unsatisfying things

Fatalist

Look at the egoist, writing about his woes while the world burns. If he stays up until 3 watching the police assault people on Twitter will it absolve him of his sins? If he stays up until his eyes are heavy, as he drifts in and out of consciousness, will that be sufficient support? Someone must witness the atrocities or it is all for naught. And if he oversleeps from exhaustion and loses his job mid-pandemic, then surely no one could claim he does not care about the plight of his fellow countrymen.

But no one cares. Facebook shares aren’t sufficient activism and he’s beyond serotonin bursts from “likes'“ (though, notifications in the midst of an internet squabble fill him with perfect combination of dread and giddiness that keeps him absolutely glued to an unhealthy extent, but I digress) yet it still makes him feel hopeless when an article about the impending police state mere miles away can’t garner a single reaction. And the limited amount of in-person interactions mostly with family just reinforce…whatever it may be, it can’t be a class divide, but something of the sort.

And to write? Against the hopelessness. It’s not more difficult than it previously was. It’s mostly laziness. But he is not smart enough to tackle what must be tackled. And the facts are the facts. And if we as a people cannot even agree on them then what hope is there? So he writes in feelings and half-formed thoughts, but he hasn’t tasted the teargas. And it truly is just pessimism, pure and simple, and perhaps he cried wolf one too many times - though is it truly crying wolf if one warns about a real wolf too early?

While the country waits for the nationalists to arrive at their doorstep and haul them away, the painful truth is how many will remain comfortable, even after they’ve realized it is too late. Every World War II movie made Nazi Germany look like a living hell and here we are, just going about our days. Some of us doing our best to counter atrocities, but most of us - including him - doing a minimal amount and many doing nothing at all. Waiting for the right time to rebel. Waiting for things to get bad. But they won’t. Or they will when it is far far far far too late. When there’s no one left to witness what happens when one waits for fascism to announce itself by name.

Billboards

As I walked down the street, I saw the billboards watching me. The Happy Cow, selling… himself? his friends, family?… His joyful face up high above next to a pound of flesh. Happy Cow Beef Company - we chop ‘em up before they know what hit ‘em the billboard reads, but that’s not what the Happy Cow says to me. To me, he says the CIA is getting off their plane at the airport now. I don’t fully believe the CIA would fly coach, but that’s what he says. Nope, no private jet - two agents crammed in coach. And once they have their luggage, they’re gonna come fucking kill me. I sure hope there is a luggage mix up.

“No luggage mix-up!” shouts the Lumberjack selling… Viagra? about a block away. My eyes aren’t great.

“Are you on a billboard for Viagra?! What does a lumberjack have to do with getting your dick hard…” I shout back at him, my voice quieting as the last words escape my mouth, realizing how foolish I sound! Lumberjacks get tons of people’s dicks hard! And also, I should be less focused on these billboards people were probably paid six figures to design and more focused on the CIA agents coming to kill me. Still, I stay for a moment to hear the Lumberjack respond.

“No, this is a billboard for Vitamix! Get your eyes checked, you dumb bitch!” The Lumberjack pauses, I can tell he isn’t quite done talking though, “and I’ll have you know I can still turn quite a few heads even if I am getting up there in age!”

Feeling slightly guilty about insulting the Lumberjack like that, I scurry away - after all, the CIA agents are coming for me. I don’t know how the Lumberjack knows their luggage was put on the right plane - or how the Happy Cow knows the agents are on a plane at all… or that they are coming for me. No time to ask questions when one is running from CIA agents.

As I dart and dash between buildings, down streets, hoping to find somewhere to hide maybe? Or am I just trying to get as far away as possible? I’m not sure. Are the CIA agents coming to the exact spot I was informed about them or are they coming after me, the moving target? If I keep running and they keep coming after me, wherever I am, then it seems it may be best to hide. Or perhaps it is best to just keep moving and at some point I will be far enough away from wherever they believe I was that they can no longer find me. I’ve watched a lot of thrillers, cat-and-mouse type of movies, but never really fully grasped the whole being on the lam thing and how best to do it. Perhaps I could go join some Amish people like that Harrison Ford movie The Conversation - just kidding, that’s a Gene Hackman movie, Harrison Ford only has a small role in it… and it’s not about Amish people at all, it’s actually about technology, the movie I was really referring to was Witness. But enough joking, I am fleeing for my life!

Everywhere I go the billboards watch me. The polyamorous cartoon gorillas selling… dog food? And the stern old man selling, um, car washes? Do they need billboards for car washes? Don’t the car washes just have signs up saying “come in here to get your car washed?” They don’t give me any tips or updates about the CIA agents, they just watch me as I dart and dash, as I dip and dive. I almost get hit by a car and the cobra selling malt liquor laughs. The baby with a phone number to call if I want evidence that candy is bad for my teeth looks like he wants to tell me something, but he isn’t old enough to form sentences.

Then I see the vampire selling real estate outside the Taco Cult restaurant. He tells me he’s got some information for me, but I have to pay him. I tell him I don’t know how to pay a billboard monster and he seems hurt I referred to him as a “monster,” but he tells me there’s a clothing shop with only two shirts in it that is a front for a heroin cartel and if I buy the green shirt, there will be a note the vampire wrote on the tag. So I keep moving - now with a destination. But I get to the store and there’s a sign saying the only employee is on break so it’s essentially closed for… well the sign says half an hour, but obviously they guy put the sign up before I got there so it’s less than that.

I stand and I wait. The guy comes back and is wearing a fucking penis costume like he just left a bachelorette party or something. I don’t get it. But I don’t want to really get into a conversation with him so I just pretend it’s normal - which is hard because it’s not. It’s weird. As I go to grab the shirt off it’s hanger to buy it, I keep thinking about how weird it is. Like it’s already weird on it’s own to be dressed like that at all, but at work? Even any job at all. Like if you worked at a bar or somewhere that let’s you dress in street clothes. If you worked in the backroom in a warehouse or whatever where no customers see you, your boss still wouldn’t let this shit fly. And this dude is working retail. I mean, I guess it is a front, but still. So I fucking open my mouth, I can’t help it.

As I put the shirt on the counter to purchase it, I ask, “why are you dressed like a penis at work?”

And he gets so mad. Like you aren’t even imagining it right. He gets absolutely furious. Think about the most angry your dad has ever been. And think about how it was sort of justified. Like you either were just an absolute brat for 10 hours straight or you were genuinely innocent, but you almost accidentally burnt down the house or cut your brother in half or got hit by a car. So your dad is just like maximum emotion and he’s so angry because we’re all socialized wrong so it’s just easiest to be mad about things when you gotta tap into some emotion. I don’t know if that makes sense to you, it’s something I’ve been thinking about and I haven’t fully fleshed it out yet, but think about your dad super pissed off, yelling at you at the top of his lungs like either he cannot fucking believe that he is raised such a fucking dickhead or like he cannot at all accept how close he came to being one of those super shitty parents that let their kid die like he is not gonna be one of those horror stories so he’s mad. This guy was madder than that. For a legitimate question. He is acting like I walked into his home, not his place of work - a public place - and started trying to make him justify his life decisions and, honestly, even in the privacy of one’s own home, I really just could not see why someone would be wearing a penis costume, like how do those businesses stay afloat, selling penis costumes? But anyway, he’s big mad. And I’m trying to calm him down so I can buy the shirt, but I am also a little bit still trying to get the answer - curiosity killed the cat and all that.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that in a panic I just kind of grab the shirt and run. “I’ll pay later” is how I justify it. I’m not stealing. But also it’s a drug cartel front. It’s almost more ethical to steal it. It’s pretty easy to out run a guy in a penis costume, his legs can’t move much and also tourists or whoever are trying to stop him to take pictures like they’re in Time Square. I just run ‘cause dude’s got cartel connections so I am definitely not getting caught by him. I’d rather take my chances with the CIA agents. I finally get far enough away that I’m pretty sure I lost him - which I guess is how those thrillers go, but it’s much easier to do the whole running away thing when the person is actively chasing you versus when some people just got off an airplane and are coming your way at some point, but aren’t currently in the vicinity - and I look at the tag for the secret message and it just says “made by some child slaves in some country that your government has been committing genocide in since before you were alive” and I think “damn, that vampire is pretty fucking woke, but how is this going to help me get away from the CIA?” so I take the shirt back to the vampire on his billboard to demand some answers.

When I arrive, I’m about to get the question out, but he sees the shirt in my hand and shouts at me like I’m a little kid, “THE GREEN SHIRT! I told you to get the green shirt! That’s the blue one!”

I feel sort of stupid, it kind of makes sense that he’s treating me like a little kid since I did mix up my colors, but still why did he need to make things so complicated? Why can’t he just put the message on both shirts? Or just have one shirt in the store? It’s not a real store!

Now he’s shouting at me more - or I guess he never stopped, I just kind of started blocking him out while I was thinking of ways to blame him for the fuck up. But he’s shouting “the BLUE shirt was for the banker to learn a lesson about the horrors of capitalize! You have to go back and return the shirt!”

But like I said, I would rather take my chances with the CIA agents coming to kill me than that cartel penis costume dude that I sort of stole the shirt from. God, I hope that banker not learning his lesson from the shirt isn’t going to have some massive butterfly effect thing that kills a bunch of kids in a factory collapsing in a third world country or… who am I kidding? That’s obviously exactly what’s going to happen, it’s pretty obvious, but when we get right down to it, like gun-to-the-head, gut-reaction I guess I do think my life is worth more than all of theirs combined. I mean, on an intellectual level I do not and on a moral level I also do not, but I am not going to risk my life returning the shirt to stop it from happening so one whatever level that is, I do.

So now I’ve got a vampire billboard mad at me and a guy in a penis costume with cartel connections mad at me and some CIA agents who maybe aren’t mad at me, but are going to kill me. I start thinking about how much simpler things were back when I was just chatting with the Happy Cow and even after I’d offended the lumberjack a bit. I knew the CIA was out to kill me, but life was still simpler just a few hours earlier talking to them. And as I reminisced about those simpler, more pleasant times, it dawned on me that I had no reason to trust a cow selling his own kind to humans to consume and…well the lumberjack, I wasn’t as confidence in dismissing though I think partly that was because it felt like adding insult to injury after offending him, but what kind of lumberjack sells a blender? Isn’t a blender sort of the competition to an axe? Like television killed the radio star? The blender is just faster, automated chopping, the kind that could put a lumberjack out of work - so a cow selling the flesh of his own and a lumberjack putting his fellow lumberjacks out of work? Why should I trust them?

100% content that the CIA was not trying to kill me, I headed home to get some rest. I don’t think I’ve done anything important enough for the CIA to try to kill me. I mean, I don’t think they’re opposed to killing me, but it would probably be in some sort of friendly fire sort of way. Maybe they’ll drop a bomb on my neighbors and not care when I also die? Was that the CIA that dropped the bomb on MOVE? I don’t know. All I know is that I was headed home to watch some TV - where the ads are supposed to talk to me.

a little something: Goddamn Dog

As I was tucking my dog into bed, a thought occurred to me, a dark thought. This dog had known a life before me, before I adopted him from the Humane Society. He had a mother and father out in the world or dead. We had each lived portions of our lives the other would never know. I could tell him about my wild college days and my childhood, my first girlfriend, but would he understand? Would he comprehend? We can communicate with animals; I think one would need to be a sociopath to disagree, but I am willing to admit it is more of a “grey” area when one gets into which sort of concepts a dog would understand and which they would not - and, of course, “communicate” is one thing, but spoken English language is another. Would a dog have an easier time with a slide show? Sure, he’d see the pictures from my elementary school birthday parties, but would he recognize me in them? Would he know why I was showing him these photos? Even if he were to understand the meaning of the photos, it seemed unlikely that he would understand the “why” of the situation - why I was pulling him out of bed moments after tucking him in to show him photos; which is to say that he would not understand my sudden, overwhelming existential dread. Whether or not a dog could conceive of existential dread was a question for another day, the matter at hand was how a dog could possibly read the look on my face of pure panic and know it was not the result of a home invasion or a fire, but of something grander, yet more abstract. For, I must concede, even though I was aware of dread as something that happened to me, surely, in the past, I had not understood what another human was going through while they were experiencing what I was now feeling - and, even worse, while I could recognize this as a short-coming and a mistake in my past, I could not confidently say whether or not I had ever ignored my dog’s feeling of doom. Thus, it was safe to say that an inter-species communication as to the concept of malaise did not exist. It was at that moment that my home suddenly felt very empty and the companionship of my dog no longer comforted me anymore. My stupid dog who didn’t understand me at all, who only loved me because I gave him food, was my only friend in the whole world and he didn’t even understand we were friends.

Strong

It’s hard to be strong. Who do you talk to when the sun goes down? Who do you talk to when people are still awake? Maybe if I stay busy, I’ll forget to worry. Maybe if I stay busy, I won’t remember that I’m not working toward any ends. If i work hard enough and long enough, I might die before I have a moment to think. That’s the dream.

If I were well-rested, maybe I could face the day. If I went to bed early enough, maybe the state of the world and my disintegrating and disintegrated relationships would never come to mind. Memories of my mistakes, big and small, might never rear their ugly heads.

How long can one ignore that the world is full of killers and sadists? How long can one ignore impending doom? If I had a child, how would I explain to them that the world will break their heart every hour of every day that they are alive if they let it and protecting their heart from the world will exhaust them and drive them mad? I don’t have a child though - because the world would destroy them if I did and I can’t abide by that.

It’s hard being brave. Most days I’m not. I hope that’s okay though I know it’s not.

Where Does the Time Go?

It’s 1 AM. I feel like I just got off work. I should be asleep already if I’m being honest.

While I waited for the bus, I thought about the time I thought you were moving out-of-state. I don’t know the last time I saw you. I can’t imagine the next time I will. But in that moment, panic set it. In that moment from years ago, I felt a desperate need to cling to whatever part of you that I could.

I’m pushing and pulling in too many directions. I want to write. I want to relax. I want to stay informed. I want to draw. I want to just maybe have a little fun for a couple minutes and then I’ll get focused on writing. I want to get some rest and deal with everything tomorrow when I can be more productive, but that’s what I said the day before and that’s what I said the day before that so, no, I need to actually try to be productive like I tried to do the day before and tried to do the day before that.

There are so many people I used to know. We both used to know. Maybe you still do. I wouldn’t know. I can’t recall where you were headed or why you were headed there. You weren’t the first to set your sights across state lines and others did what you didn’t. But something deep in me hurt at the prospect of losing you.

It feels like just yesterday, I was staying out til bar close and going to work the following morning. It seems impossible that I used to spend 3 hours a day commuting and I still had about the same amount of free time I have now when I get home. I don’t know where my energy went. I don’t know if all my bad habits caught up with me. I’m mentally, emotionally, and physically drained every second of the portion of the day that belongs to me, not a company.

The ingrate has no real understanding of object permanence. Tell me I can’t have it and I want it. But take it away when I’m not looking and see just how much I treasure it. The boy with too many toys doesn’t notice when one goes missing until he wants to play with that particular one.

Fake It

I feel my worst habits taking hold. It’s no longer a passing phase. I’ll do better someday. This isn’t really who I am. I am loving. I am caring. I am empathetic and kind. My apathy and indifference, my short temper and general disgust at humanity - my cruel streak - are just because I am tired. That’s just how I am acting today. I’m in a bad mood. Like I was yesterday. And the day before. And last week. And this whole month. And… how long have we known each other again?

You didn’t know me when I was little. I was a ray of sunshine. I don’t know what happened to me. I know I got mean in middle school. I know I thought I was the shit. I know it blew up in my face. But we aren’t going down memory lane. This isn’t a therapy session.

I wake up angry and fear, if I stopped, I wouldn’t be exhausted enough by the end of the day to fall asleep. But the sleepless nights still come so I’m not sure what I’m so scared of losing. Maybe it’s time to grit my teeth and hide the scowl. It goes against the very blood flowing through my veins, but maybe it’s time to take Nikki Giovanni’s advice to James Baldwin to heart. Authenticity and sincerity, like everything else, can be twisted and manipulated consciously or unconsciously. Sticking to your convictions to avoid self-improvement, accountability.

The value of human life in America is somewhere below the minimum bail can be set and the value of animal life is in the ballpark of the price of a hot dog. These are facts you cannot unlearn. The idea that any person I pass by in a day isn’t preoccupied by the state of humanity and its many failings is unfathomable. But what does one do with this befuddling scenario? The world wasn’t meant for us. That much is obvious. But after one accepts that reality, what’s left to be done? Suicide? Let greed and paranoia consume you? Those are my inclinations, but obviously not the answer.

My thought is to take a hard left and be more generous, more helpful than I want to be, am uncomfortable being. It’s all well and good in my mind until the concern arises that, outside of my head, things may not be taken the way they were intended. People don’t really want money thrown at them when they have a problem. People don’t want an acquaintance suddenly taking an extreme interest in them. People, if they are anything like me, want to be left alone.

Unacknowledged Presence

These rooms with closed windows and a gust of wind. These halls with flickering lights. We’ve been cultured to fear the unknown. We’ve been cultured to assume the worst of strangers. But everyone and everything is simply trying to coexist. I find comfort in your presence. More comfort in not needing to acknowledge it. No need to conjure you; you’ll arrive in due time.

With you watching over me, I will try to catch up on sleep. With you watching over me, I feel alright. Nothing more sincere than what we have. Nothing more true than this. No guaranteed future. All we have is this moment. Words would cheapen it. You’re there. I’m here. Humanity has twisted the definition of “company” to add unnecessary pressure.

You’ve existed since time immemorial. Maybe that’s why we co-habitat like an old couple. Through the honey moon phase. Through the fighting. We’ve found our footing. All the things you used to do that rubbed me wrong and my many faux pas have become comfortingly familiar. The chill on my neck tells me you’re close by. No point in speaking. You know I appreciate you. I know you’re happy to haunt someone like me.

Some people tell their friends. Some people call exorcists. I have no reason to bring attention to a perfectly comfortable situation. When you wail, I let you wail. When the time is right, I’ll fog up a mirror and wait to watch what your finger draws across it. But most days, you’re there; I’m here. We both know it. Why waste words?