july 6th 2024

when i return from my late shift nobody’s waiting. i pull my comforter to my shoulders and underneath the bows and stars, i hate this city where everything leans sideways like a horror film. i don’t like to leave my apartment. i do because that’s not reasonable. on a checkered mat in the park by airport station, i’m time-spinning—here’s the shirt with red stripes, here are the concrete steps i filmed with the school-leased bolex too heavy to carry alone. if not this park then the common gets to turn my stomach, or bryant in manhattan, which should be too far but wasn’t last week. even in the peace of 14 horace i suffer anniversaries, passing and passing again as brands seared on calendars. was i better then, or am i now, or can i be, or am i doomed? what can you do when the only one who’s loved you thinks you a monster, other than believe it? 

it’s worst at night, and it was worse when i smoked at night, so i haven’t. i can’t lose the feeling that it was the best i’ll ever have, maybe because i’m wrong, or not because i’m wrong—because i’m fine but not exceptional. i’m a toy past christmas, i was lucky and that has expired, hasn’t it, lucky to be who i was where i was and to know what patience was when it’s vastly true that others would not grant me that. i’m an ugly thing for my autism, singleminded, clumsy, crass. i know that i’m worthy and good someplace and i promise, i do, that i do what i can, which is still not enough, and how fatiguing that is. my head’s been a garden where weeds reign untended. i need crane hands to pluck them clean, like my dad tearing through mile-a-minute vines in our azaleas, skilled and kind enough sort it out. but i can’t ask for that. the best i’ll ever have—cool and sanguine and smart in the ways that matter to me, endeared and endearing, liquid-eyed and smooth stepped and brave enough to touch me. i don’t smile for shy lovers, i’m stubborn and pressure keen. the best i’ll ever have, songs and theories and we-could-talk-until-the-end-happens, what about it was true? i was sweet with a face like a car was coming to hit me in the road. i had ambitions of pitching a fantasy series, animated stills above my bed like bible verses. once an angel stood at my bedpost. if it’d been another i would be someone else, but maybe i could be anyone with a nice set of collarbones. less to remember me by, so i do and she doesn’t. i’m just in the way.

sometimes i’m having a shit day, i’m at work on an understaffed crunch but i have to be up early for another, and my right foot’s sore and my head’s full of rocks and people have disappointed me, and i think that i’d like to go home. i figure that there is no home for me, not a place or a person, not an image to conjure to calm me before i fall asleep. self-sustaining vehicle, i move to keep moving, eat to keep eating, and nothing’s good much anymore, nor will it be. i thought i’d feel better in high school—i thought i’d feel better in college away—i thought i’d feel better when she’d gone—but i haven’t. my parents sunk hundreds of thousands on an education that i wasted and others deserved. nobody reaches to hold me when the lights go out, nobody knows where i was before now. days are investments in a hollow future—there isn’t hope for me, and if there is, i’m wringing it out. do i call my mom to say i’m dreaming of falling off the highway bridge so she can wean me from my freedoms and expedite the process? and how can i do that to my cancered father, to the family carrying that? i would’ve pulled the plug before if i had the balls to, and wouldn’t that save so much trouble? it’s too late now, i’m in it. i’ll make it to the next thing and i’m sure i’ll manage to do it all again. i’ve got no choice but to hope it changes, that i can change it, reign the slippery song to its conclusion and wake the fuck up and live again. i really miss when that was easy—unless it wasn’t.

i want it, i want it, a warm leg and fingers threading hair, goodbye at the door, it’s alright, we’re okay. i want i’m sorry for everything ever, it’s not right this way, i dreamed this last night, and i’d sing it this time, i’d do it this time, knees to the gravel, kissing ankles. i want it more than i want to stay alive. if i live through this then i can’t look back.