i can stop whenever i want to.
The clicking on my right. Long nails, dry skin. She always starts picking at her skin when she is on the phone.
Click. Click. Click.
Let's try this again. I press my fingers into the chords, pluck at the strings--
Click. Click. Click.
"What is the name of those actors in the..."
In the movie we saw two hours ago.
I stop altogether once again, "It was So and So."
"That's right, So and So were in the Movie we saw."
Trying again to pluck at the strings--
Click. Click. Click.
The cats scream at each other on top of the staircase.
Tummy recoils. Banging on the wall to scare them off because he hates the sound of the cats screaming, and I hate the sound of him barking at the cats to stop.
Click. Bang. Click.
He comes downstairs, stands in front of me, starts asking me to play So and So song.
I try to pluck at the strings, looking for the chords on my phone,
but he is asking for eye contact. He is still standing in front of me. Talking.
Telling me to sing. To play. But also to listen. To call on the cats. To play what he wants. To talk about rent. The incoming electricity bill. The war in Palestine.
But to--
Click. Click. Click.
The glass in the kitchen clangs against the counter, knives in my ears. The wind outside rattles the branches; an open oven that is much too hot.
Windows are still closed.
Click. Clang. Eye contact. "Go ahead and sing, it makes me happy when you play."
Click. Clang. The windows rattle from the heat.
Every time I inhale it feels like what comes in is chlorine. The air outside is the same as the air coming in. I can't tell anymore, am I--
Click. Clang. Windows rattle. Am I breathing? Click. Clang. Windows rattle.
Cats scream.
My phone screen lights up. Is he okay? Is something wrong? Why won't he talk to me like he did before--
Click. Clang. Windows. Cats. Phone. Guitar. She laughs much too loud, slaps her hand against her thigh, and he bears his teeth at her in irritation, claps his hands together and bangs the wall to scare the cats and I keep wondering what is my problem, what is going on, the rug is itchy and smells of mildew, my finger is bleeding, I want to throw up, I can't throw up, they will ask what is the matter with me and it will be worse, I can't throw up if I can't breathe, what if he dies and all he remembers is me being unkind, what if this is it, why is my mouth so dry, have I even changed when everything else has not, am I imagining that we are falling apart because--
stop talking, stop talking, stop talking,
I want to scream, my hands are numb.
I quietly finish the rest of my drink. Deep claustrophobic breath.
The shaking stops.
The world quiets down for
just a single moment,
and I do not know
how much longer
I can actually
go on.
but the roses have wilted, and these doors will not close.
I fit my arm through the open space between the bars connected to the garage and the front entrance. After lifting the heavy metal lock holding the garage door in its place, I slowly push the door into a gap large enough for me to slide through.
I observe my surroundings– our front garden is wild. The grass lies a few inches below my knees, the roses have wilted, the fresno tree and the palm tree reach for the sky, taller than they ever were before, sending the entire area into the shadows.
The front door is coated in a thin layer of dust. Cobwebs hang delicately from the golden doorknob. The plants beside me smell like fresh dew.
There appears to be no one inside the house, but I can hear hushed voices from what appears to be a casual conversation. Someone laughs. There are outlines of people, but their faces are blurred. A man, perhaps. A woman. A young boy.
Am I really there?
I wiggle the handle, feeling it stand firmly against the weight of my hand.
Knowing the door will not budge, I remember the laundry room we never locked that led straight to the kitchen.
I walk down the small path stretched along the side of the house. It had a fence separating the alley from the backyard. Our dog would oftentimes frantically dig holes beneath it during firework season in an attempt to outrun the blasts of sound.
The rugged cement on the floor showcases the paw-prints of feral cats who roamed the house before we moved in, when the mix was still wet.
I used to trace those paw prints with chalk– the powder coated my fingers.
The grass is even longer on this side.
The fence that separated the alley from the backyard is shorter; I can easily climb over it.
I land on the loud crunch of piles and piles of wilted leaves and unruly weeds.
It is strange to see the yard empty. A pang of sadness overwhelms my stomach.
I can almost hear our dogs running around the yard.
I can almost see our oldest one walking on his same worn path on the grass from one end to the other as we called him inside.
Everything lies in stillness. Not a single sound. Not even a miserable cricket.
There is no one there.
I am all alone.
The door leading to the laundry room is open. It does not creak.
The machines themselves are reddened with rust, but the scent of detergent still wafts from them.
The inside of the house is the same.
Clouds of dust form tornados with every single one of my footsteps.
The piano is there, even with a few of the knick-knacks we kept on top of it;
its deep cherry wood is as vivid and beautiful as it ever was.
I press a few of the keys. They are out of tune. The sound of the notes sound as though they are underwater, or very far away. The whispers become louder, more frantic.
Maybe we can tune it again someday, I think absentmindedly.
I head toward the staircase, pressing the tips of my fingers against the walls. The first sight I encounter at the top of the stairs: the cabinet where we kept crafting paper with its two swinging doors that would never fully close. I try once again to slam them shut, for old times’ sake. The bodiless whispers that followed along completely disappear at the first impatient slam on my part. For some reason, the air around me reverberates with fear.
Damn doors still won’t close.
The balcony overlooking the living room from the second floor is closer to the ground.
Our rooms are the same color they were before we coated them with eggshell white paint: a deep turquoise.
A few of our belongings piled neatly on our beds.
The farewell cards, a dry bouquet of flowers, markers that suddenly ran out of ink.
Why do I feel watched? Why are these voices here?
I see my reflection on the dirtied surface of the mirror my sister hung on her side of the room: I am barely a grey shadow. Every part of me is translucent, and my clothes seem old and out of place.
That’s when it hits me.
What if the house is not actually intact?
What if there already are people living there and they see a different version of what I think is standing before me?
Maybe I am the uninvited guest in this home that is no longer my own–
Maybe I am the ghost of my own memory.
I smile in my sleep.
the ongoing literary battle, but in 2024.
Bear versus man. The fight we never expected. Then again, perhaps it is.
Most of literature is written as Man vs. Something.
Man vs. Nature. Man vs. Man. Man vs. God.
It was about time for such a subject to pop back up within our society.
For all of those who may not know, what is the gist of this?
The concept is: if one's daughter, wife, or sister was lost in the woods and bound to encounter something, would you prefer that Something to be a bear or a man?
Naturally, several women prefer the bear, and when giving their explanations,
they fall into deaf ears to the point where several individuals
are now making the joke of choosing a lion in a cage vs. the concept of marriage.
Well,
I live in a country where there is an ongoing word like an echo, a screaming heartbeat
of outrage,
"Femicide."
Over and over again--
in the posters of missing women you know will never be found,
in the mind of every woman being followed street after street in the dark,
in the rushed heartbeat of every woman alone in a car with a man who tells her,
"My, you look pretty. Are you single? Are you married?
Do you have children? I'll give you a free ride if you agree to come home with me."
No one is arguing men do not go through violence, through hurt, through pain.
No one is arguing the insanity in this schizophrenic world does not somehow
inevitably go
both ways.
Hurt is hurt, no matter the race, no matter the gender.
There is a war going on and somehow we turn a blind eye because ultimately we know,
"What exactly can I do about it? What can I do about everything
that is going so, so wrong?"
Which is exactly the very problem; when we make jokes about what we do not
understand.
When we look away from the bleeding streets instead of doing whatever we can
to make it right.
When we turn against one another, wasting our time and our breath convincing someone that when a bear sees a human in the woods,
they will understand it is a human,
when most goddamn humans
don't.
how to be your own roman emperor.
So, I've been learning about stoicism and a fellow named Marcus Aurelius.
Why is it that most Roman philosophers and emperors had names ending in -us?
Was it a decree of some sort? Who knows. There must be a linguistic explanation.
Or, another reason, is that humans sometimes are stupid
and look for meaning in places where there simply isn't any.
Anyhow, back to the original point. Stoicism.
It is not the concept of not feeling anything, but rather about choosing the best box
in the attic of your mind in which
your emotions belong.
Instead of acting on impulse, one focuses on the facts,
on reacting to an event with courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom.
In being the most genuine version of yourself instead of fixating on what was,
on what could be.
There are several aspects based on the concept of memento mori.
Remember you will die.
Yet, despite these philosophies and Roman emperors and tips
and meditations and breathing exercises to take four seconds breathing it,
holding it in, and another four seconds breathing it out,
the reality is
I desperately want for so much, precisely because I know I will die soon.
Soon can be tomorrow, twenty, forty, fifty, one hundred and twelve years from now.
What I want is tangible, burning, nonsensical, a borderline teenage dream--
I want to throw this desk into the window, create a bridge of iridescent glass
I get to step on in my sudden escape,
and no matter how many bleeding scrapes will cut my feet,
I would grin and laugh knowing I am finally, at long last, free;
free to explore a place where I get to climb trees to the very top branches,
where I get to make my words matter to vastly honest, honestly vast audiences,
where I do not think about my lifetime of the past as if it was my present,
where we all want for naught, where we choose kindness above all,
where we are all doing what we love, to the point where we forget to eat
or drink
or sleep.
I want to skip along insomniac streets with the sound of yellow-white
lamppost light and music in my ears,
to stare at the sunrise from a beach with tears in my eyes as I just
allow myself to simply
Be.
putty-esque stream of consciousness during a work break.
The other day, I read about the telling signs of a pre-midlife midlife crisis.
Granted, most of the signs are actually part of the ongoing collective human experience within our own schizophrenic domes of semi-consciousness. But hey, there is an admittedly nice ring to, "I'm having a pre-midlife midlife crisis." rather than a plain ol',
"I think I'm having a reoccurring panic attack."
Yesterday, two clients yelled at me for 1. not being the person they wanted to speak with (aka, someone with "power"), and 2. the fact they have paid an exorbitant amount of money for the utmost professional service, and they are still stuck speaking to the same chump (aka, back to point 1). That's customer service for you.
There is a sense of beauty in knowing you are just one tirade away from becoming the Hindenburg disaster. The spark that caused the explosion. The straw that broke the pissed off camel's back. Only to realize, when you feel you've reached your limit, your willpower is made of Silly Putty instead of iron; it is flexible, sticky, and just when you thought you were on the last strand, nope, guess what, there is more putty.
You don't fully explode. You don't fully break. You keep going-- a giant balloon that is slowly deflating but still afloat, a camel that spits at people but keeps carrying its load.
I wake up feeling a nerve of rage tangled around my heart. Then, after some thought and remembering the tips from that ridiculous self-help book, I acknowledge it isn't actually rage.
It is longing.
I am so proud and so happy for many people I care about and their accomplishments. I just wish those things were happening to me as well, in their own way, on their own time. I'm happy for others, and just want to be happy for myself as well, but not even sure where to start.
Apparently, that is one of the signs of a pre-midlife midlife crisis, so go figure.
Who knows, maybe tomorrow I will quit both jobs and start selling homemade jelly rolls.
The possibilities are endless, and somehow, increasingly finite.
these walls do have a heart.
If I could, I would tell you all the parts I remember about you;
how the smaller details helped shape exactly who you were,
and much more importantly,
who you almost could have been.
I would tell you how much I miss you each and every day.
It is a very empty feeling, the one I have without you.
Everything is...cold. Even more so than before.
It's not as if you brought much warmth right as you arrived.
Your blood had been drained, your organs disposed of as donations
or...well, sorry to say it, biohazardous waste.
You know, the usual morbid schematics and mechanics.
As usual, I saw people coming in and out--
prepping you, cleaning you,
whispering and...singing to you.
I'm used to the sponges and needles and eventual tears.
The singing was new.
They didn't mention much about you.
They didn't do much other than stroke your face and sing.
Each stroke highlighted something different
as I observed from all around in utmost curiosity.
Their finger gently traced the blonde tips of your eyelashes,
(your eyes were closed and I couldn't help but wonder...
just what color did they use to be?)
the half-smirk indents on the right side of your lips,
(you must've looked glorious when you smiled,
from what I could catch in the echoes of your grins)
your eyebrows from beginning to end,
(you must've furrowed them constantly,
perhaps when you talked about something you had read)
Were you a reader? Was your eyesight strained?
Is that why they traced your forehead, the lines connecting and
leading down to the tip of your nose?
How often were you kissed?
How often did you let them hold your hand?
How often did they pause to see you standing right in front of the sun,
their hearts almost stopping as you practically...glowed?
They may not have said it before.
They may not have had the courage.
But I hope you know, just as they felt, just as they were singing songs
while secretly thinking about your name,
that they loved you.
And I love you now and forever,
just the
same.
i want to hold your hand.
The cat had run away from the door leading to the basement. Her fur stank of fear.
I decided, with mistaken curiosity, to explore. I went one, two, thirteen steep steps down. Musty, powdery air. A single faded blue-white lightbulb flickering behind me. Shadows stretching all around. But that's all they were-- shadows. Of course.
I was surrounded by boxes of stored belongings. A broken porcelain doll. Unworn baby shoes. The lightbulb burst into a shower of sparks. A blink of complete darkness, until it wasn't. Until I saw her. Until I felt her shredded, pale arms around my neck.
songs in 3/4 time from that one controversial band.
It comes in flashes. Precise, echoing pieces.
Just enough to know what the puzzle looks like:
making a garbled mess out of a happy birthday song,
choking on swollen tears while laying on the bathroom floor,
repeatedly asking the question, "Why do you even love me at all?"
at no one in particular, because the world is spinning
and you've already done all your spilling
of your own and everybody else's
unusually well-kept secrets.
You remember going past the point of no return;
the one point where you blur your own lines
because you actually reward yourself with another shot
after admiring your own oh-so-self-restrained good behavior.
And half a bottle later you find yourself thinking
of things you soberly try your best to forget,
so you drink more, repeatedly licking your lips and trying to
remove any trace of having touched the bottle again
when you thought no one was looking.
But they were. They did. They do.
They could see it in your face.
They could see it in the slurred words you spoke,
in the series of calls left unanswered, messages left unread,
in the loss of trust when you apparently somehow crawled
into bed and fell asleep without giving any sort of response.
You wake up the next day with the kind of headache
that makes lights much too bright, and the world go in
sticky, nauseating slow motion.
So you promise yourself you will not do it again,
after all, it was a fluke, you'll be better.
In fact, you did great this week,
and you know it was stressful--
so, why not reward yourself
for your stellar
oh-so-self-restrained
good
behavior?
her name was isabel.
The shaking won't stop.
Gets worse the closer I get to it. To her.
My fingers won't cooperate, won't close. My teeth don't stop rattling.
I clench my jaw so tightly it hurts.
She's hiding in the nook beneath the sink.
A shadow, glowing darker than the lightless room.
A small figure, her knees curled up to her chest.
Black liquid eyes streaming down her pointed face.
She speaks.
A dry voice. Barely more than a whisper.
The hair on the back of my neck rises.
I want to hear her. I don't want to hear her. I want it all to stop.
I want to get closer.
So I do.
I stretch out a hand towards her, "Who are you?"
"...remembered."
She shows me those moments.
Hands around her neck.
"Please." No.
Mud on her face; her body. God, no.
"I just want to be remembered.
Will...you? Remember?"
this is why i don’t open that particular pandora’s box.
One time, I read this brilliant short story about a beautiful tightrope walker,
a sad and hopeful clown, and a seemingly confident lion tamer.
It became one of my favorites from the very first sentence.
I often think about the story, even if I can't remember the exact words.
You know, I must say,
I find this situation laughably ironic; the better people feel,
the less they book sessions,
the better and crappier I feel.
Better because it is one less burden to carry on my shoulders and my psyche.
Crappier because of the other burdens that appear from a lack of cash.
You see, you may not know this, so I will fill in the blanks:
my "career" thrives and feeds on futile attempts to assuage human misery.
Quite literally, the more miserable a person is and the more tears they have,
the more they want to talk to us.
I've heard more prayers, wishes, sins,
confessions, than mosts priests will hear inside their cold church walls.
I was told once that during more difficult sessions, my voice sounds
like that of a person who wants to calm a frightened horse;
soothing, quiet, bringing comfort where I can. But little do they know
my hands shake nonstop with frustration
as I take on these people's prayers, wishes, sins,
and endlessly repetitive confessions as my own.
And every time I crack a joke to make them laugh, it is because I spend
an hour every day running as fast as I can until my lungs hurt just so I
don't think about their voices on a loop by the time the night falls.
You see, so and so, your feelings are valid. Your (or their) behavior is not.
Yes, you have the right to feel like you (sure as Hell) deserve more.
No, I do not believe that any kind of (Christian) God
made this happen in order to test your faith.
You've got nothing to prove by not letting go.
But they don't believe it. For many obvious reasons, they rarely do.
You see, they smile, they nod, they say they've understood, they've learned,
they're now changed men and women, they now know exactly how not to be fooled
by the shitloads of social and emotional predators they "formerly" chose to indulge.
And the next time they book a session with me,
it is nine times out of ten because they have fallen back
into the same patterns we struggled to untangle the time before that.
And the time before that--
well, no,
it was more or less the same thing.
And I end it thinking to myself,
"I don't care. I really do could not care less by this point."
But I don't believe it. For obvious reasons, I do not.
You see, I smile. I nod. I say I've understood, I've learned,
and I'm now a changed me, and now I know exactly how to cope,
how to not over-invest in or care about these bleeding hearts more than I should.
And the next time they book a session with me,
nine times out of ten I will repeat myself. I will listen.
(If appropriate) I'll try to make them laugh.
I will give them much-needed tough love.
And after all that, I will stare at the screen,
wishing I could stand up, walk through that door,
and travel for miles on end carrying just the one story in my head
about the beautiful and maddening tightrope walker,
the well-intended but pathetic clown,
and the overcompensating
lion tamer.