things i did

and thats [[all she wrote]]

categories: [[misc]] [[boatstuff]] [[sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss]] hello. i am me. one day i want to write things that people would read. until that day comes i am simply a person. a person with arms and legs and eyes and a nose. and i (text-colour:blue)[breathe]. ahah

misc things. things one day i sat down to do. the titles were random. [[the box]] * written in the seat of a truck that i made my bed. summer 2023. fort polk. jrtc. [[bees knees]] * feb 17th, 2023. i dont remember what i was thinking. [[bubble therapy]] * nov 17th 2022. downwards or upwards slope? i forget. it was a weird time. [[happening]] * dec 29 2022. maybe i was afraid of a new year. [[wandering soul]] * sep 19 2022. pedantic, [[wicked]] * oct 5 2022. i was thinking about alaska. in a tour bus i listened to porter robinson's nurture. in another life, i drowned in a glacial river. [[red air]] * a real snippet of a fake story about lukewarm killing. (align:"<==")+(box:"=XXXXX====")[ [[my chocolate carousel]] ] * compilation of basically everything i made that i felt decent about. told in a way that makes sense. this was my whole life in college, from 2020 to the start of 2023. crazy.

boat stuff. i like to pretend that it would amount to something, but just like history, not all stories will be preserved. not all lives will be remembered. what a waste of all our time. i would be so, so happy to be given the chance to do it again. --- [[weekend]] * the only real thing here with substance. i enjoyed it while it lasted. [[catatonic]] * its all just the same [[untitled]] * but back then, i know i could feel it [[untitl]] * and there was a reason, all life was sacred, [[smthn]] * and i truly believed in it. we were all stories [[dreadful]] * layed to build civilization. immortal in essence, [[bang]] * and that was worth fighting for. [[and]] * but i know how dreams end. you wake up [[yo yo]] * and wade in daylight it was (text-style:"subscript")[my beautiful morning] a string of beautiful coincidences. history. and we sleep in empty (text-style:"subscript")[temples] households missing the creaks because they reminded me that you (text-style:"subscript")[we] were here. what are you looking for, friend? what didn't happen? there was (text-style:"subscript")[is] nothing to be sad, (text-style:"subscript")[about]

Just pretending and playing and pushing leads nowhere, nowhere at all, but mention it once, twice, thrice and maybe then I’ll listen. Just singing and dancing and crying will laud an audience, or so I’m told, so when I hum I like to imagine myself before a crowd. When I scream I imagine the words of birds that no one gets. I dig a sandcastle. I watch characters cast shadows over a moat of salt and water as if it were lava. I imagine a drawbridge. I lose myself in the letters the king writes. I wallow in the charades of the queen. I want to sit in the back of a dusty truck, smiling at a song no one hears, listening to the colors that form thoughts in my head. I want to wipe sweat and feel my fingers tremble, knowing how few regrets I care to carry. There’s no denial in my voice, but in my heart, I know that the dust will live on the wind. Concrete thoughts, they ground me down to dirt, drifting and as dangerous as at my worst. I scream, hearing, feeling, creating, listing the numbers that cross gaps and treat wounds. I can hear myself think. I can hear myself breathe. I can hear my world clearly. I can see myself, and I am ruined. There’s no life I’d rather live. But when I see you, I think I can, I know I can, I believe I can, because I have the faith, the reason, my reason, and that means more to me than all the silver in the world. I long to be born again. Bent, not brittle, lucky, special, stealing the mannerisms of a better time. I want to be blinded by something other than memories, liveries, cadences and the pieces that make me whole. I want to sit in the shade and listen, watch, wait, and creep forwards before the time is right. I want to lay in the grass and sink deeper than ice, crackling faster than sound, soaking up the sun as one does an ice cream sundae. Hot fudge. Shaved ice. Lemon on the menu and a tingle on the tongue. Creature comfort.

Nowhere left to be. It’s a strange feeling, lost at the edge of the world, finding my way back here time and time again yet always so dead in the end. It’s strange. Because I tried. I really did. And I’m glad, so glad, because the time I spent sent me here and back again. It swelled under my skin and broke out in laughter between the lines, under and over in imaginary loops. Cracked skin accepts lotion and I accept you, who I know may soothe my sorry soul, save my horrible hide, licking at wounds I never knew I had, never admitted I had, never wanted to have, because at the end of the day, who wakes up expecting to die? I want to pretend it isn’t true. That the me I see is more than just an attempt to scrape away pleasantries, that vicarious, precarious speeches sink deeper than teeth yet more brittle than bone. Sensitive, like feathered blankets, yet hard, like the words I say to myself each and every day. And the sounds, detonations, time on target, cracks on clockwork, reverberations, they spill down my spine and drag me deep into the dirt. It’s not like I had a choice in the matter. These things come as naturally as fine wine, enduring against emotion and sharp in the throat. Lodged deep, they are, these sensations that convince me I’m no better than the next person, that somehow, the divine commandment of self preservation ties me to a me I’d rather not be, one that fears, one that cries, one that sighs, knowing full well that I learned nothing. That all my memories lie with me and my stories, the ones we shared over s’mores and gentle glasses, they sink. And drown. And there’s nothing wrong with that. This is how the world works. Nothing will change. Something about the idea speaks to me. This fight, this great realization that my mortality will tie me to Earth, this struggle I risk my everything for, it must be righteous. I must be strong. I must be undeterred because all else fails in its wake. In my wake. There is nothing left without a mind to perceive it, after all, and without my mind I am nothing. Why die for a cause? Why cast stones, sow seeds, plant revolution and inspire life, knowing full well I know nothing? It’s as if it mattered. It’s as if something about my time, my experience, this host of individuality, I would love to believe it meant something, even when it’s all dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. Blood to revelation. The distance between apathy and insurrection doesn’t make sense to me. To surrender defines resignation. Yet, to surrender presents the individual with the ultimate liberation. As if the buddhist tenant of detachment led to enlightenment, my detachment attached me to my beliefs as if never before. Isn’t that silly? This is my apotheosis, my magnum opus, the essence that I shout, delivering myself from my battered, blood-boiled brain. Leave me and I will surpass compromise. Join me and we will never fear again. Pinkie promise. If my fight must be righteous, I will make it good. This great, most magnificent fight, the one I’ve fought my entire life, past lives past, through lives future, I won’t forget your sacrifices for a second. This is gratitude. Dare I say, is this eternity? What a waste of all your time, all my time, this indomitable idea - what advancement breaks under the tide of time?

Losing the means to breathe, I tickle the surface of forever’s ocean from below. Shapes and signs and shivers shake at the wake of my fingertips, as if I could rule the world from the tip of my tongue. It’s beyond me, all of it, but I can imagine a world where this puddle is all my own. I'm not drowning. Head underwater, in too deep, past the knees and bubbling past my chest, it swells, the feeling, sinking inside my stomach up to the curve of my nose. It’s all me, all of it, setting up camp in the corners of my brain and the forefront of a childish imagination. I can’t stop believing. I can’t stop wondering and laughing and prying away the shadows in the mist, bubbles in chocolate milk, swishing and dancing with lattice lace to my mouth and eyes, vanilla ice cream melting on steamy pavement, mirages in the sky, illusions of guided bombs and fin stabilized nothing to whisk me to a country of abacuses. I’m everywhere, I tell myself. I’m everything, and because of the everynothing under my skin I burn under the sun and revel in the circus of a billion yesterdays. One hundred million minds crack at railroad tracks and billboards. One hundred million minds slam dunk basketballs into dumpster homes. Plastic bottles relinquish cents and sense makes none by the time my head hits pillow. It’s a little something, I think it is, before I decide to stop thinking.

I can devour it all. The days and nights have blended into symbols that the sun can’t hide from. Sweetly, amber honey on the tongue, I chase monsters through distant worlds unlike Ra, my Apollo, whose stories I have yet to lose. Sitting on letters I patch together meaning. It’s a bit much, don’t you think? Too much for one mind to handle. That makes me one of the lucky ones. I think I can see a you, even when it gets so very hard, and I’d like to imagine that there’s a blend of love and war between the lines. But I can’t possibly dive that deep. Like calico prose I giggle and swipe at curtains’ sea, laughing and dying beneath lilac shadows. I like the feel of silk, I think. I would love the touch of skin. And it’s so warm, the sunlight, which I wanted to believe was true, but I’m confident there’s nothing I can do to convince anyone of anything. Now and forever. By the end it’s too real for me. Could you have taught me more? I fall into a rhythm most days. By most, I mean all. And it’s quite nice, though a bit on the nose, the rising and falling, the knowing, the seeing, the believing, the constant, incessant believing, removing myself from memories that are always on the tip of my tongue. I can’t escape history. I can’t escape you. But that’s okay, I will say to myself, speaking hundreds upon thousands of nothings, listening to dead languages trick me with wonderful promises I have yet to break. My name means something. It has to. I won’t let myself go. If I go, the world goes with me.

There is an idea of the self in the way I think. No time to lose, or so I’m told. I think it’s high time to start making my way. Can’t quite say where. Not too much of a problem, I guess. In newspeak I watch riddles in the air form sentences that only mean something to you and I. Codebook. It's all in the mind. Laced with chrome and titanium and aluminum it bends and breaks and loses all meaning. Empty noise. White noise. Rain. On the window it slides and I feel myself slipping. Cold on the fingertips. Fragile. Thin like holy wafers. I melt faster than sound and the temperature drags me past the last light. I don’t breathe. It's all too simple for me. If you could see like me, I think, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten so far, but differences make the world go round and you, I think, can see the moon in my eyes. So quit being so melodramatic. So pedantic in the blood like glitter like stars like you, or so I say, because something in the way I speak is something I know you will hear. A language, it’s called, and only through words can we define our world. It's all so tiring, don’t you think? I can’t view my imagination through your eyes. The gates are locked. My mind has become a parasite. When you drink its ichor I can believe in you, believe in the way you speak, the way you feel and wrestle with the time we’ve lost in tongues that no mortal can comprehend. Limited by reality, where will I bury you? Because I dream in fiction I see the signs and let my fingers slip across pictures, yellowed and aged, wondering what colors I would see had it been another life. I would wonder where we would stand when the rocks turn to pebbles and then to sand and then to water before drinking once more. Why do we uproot the earth to capture our love? Is death the only language we can speak? I watch the rain slip off the leaves and watch water tell stories of civilizations we will never see. Run a current through my veins and we will believe it again.

Trapped in a moment, I think it is, and there’s movement, there’s thoughts, there’s talking and people and you, too, but in a frozen ocean I can only get so far. One day, I remind myself, my time will move again, my arms and legs and tongue, too, will find freedom in every breath we take, but for now, I think we will sit. Too brave to be true. I want to go sledding. We’ll have cotton candy and watch ambulances by the beach. The lights of Ferris wheels will remind me of sirens by the time we leave. Sand between my toes will shake over the doormat and I’ll have to clean it all up later. But I won’t. There’ll be pictures by the couch. I’ll watch TV and criss-cross my legs and imagine all the things I could be doing right now. But I won’t do anything. You’ll be smiling in the pictures I will frame. I’ll match the tempo with a laugh and kick them down from oldest to the new. My best life, I think. If I could blink I’d lose myself. If I could breathe I would drown. If I could water the plants and trim my hair and kick my clothes into a pile, I think, I think, I think, I think I will be more than I ever could. There will be pictures, though.

“Red air. Red air!” The words, lined with frost, stung to skin unlike anything Jones had felt in training. From the prone on the edge of a cloudy ridge, he had a clear view into the snow-smothered valley he was to defend with his life. “Stinger. Stinger, up!” He heard his Sergeant hiss. Several paces behind him, Specialist Smith raised a rather unwieldy missile launcher towards the sun-slathered horizon. “Yeah, wait. I see ‘em.” He leveled the weapon system as a low grumble grew louder, the echoes of bleating rotors drawing closer. “Tracking… got tone.” And when the pop kicked off, everyone felt the plume in their bones. “Eat shit, Ivan!” Smith scurried to the side, away from the launch so he could prepare another missile. The weapon system was good enough to give them the hope of a hit. A careful eye would be able to draw a line from the launch to where it was now, but once the missile’s motor died and ran purely on inertia, it became just as hard to track as a mortar round. Jones pressed his cheek into the stock of his M16. He lined up his sights, knowing full well that there was nothing he could do with his rifle but watch. Two of them. Helicopters. Mi-24s - Hind gunships. There was no warning for the type of missile they had fired. Proven in Afghanistan and now in Alaska, the Soviet helicopters would have to see the missile with their own eyes in order to try to evade. Jones saw the flash. In the distance, the leftmost helicopter had been struck quite cleanly, shredding the cockpit and fragmenting the rotor. It must’ve struck something important, as the helicopter began to fall out of the sky like a brick, drifting down to the trees, taken by a dreadful inertia that dragged its living passengers to the ends of their stories. “Need help?” Jones offered, his voice low. “No. I’m up.” Smith replied in earnest. He knew Jones wasn’t confident in operating the missile system and would be more of a hindrance than anything. The second helicopter had begun to spew hot flares from its sides. By the time the crash of the explosion had struck Jones’ ears, the valley had come alive with more light and fire than ever before. The remaining Hind was pulling towards the north, away from Jones’ position and towards the mountains. There was a chance they could break their line of sight if they kept moving. Fortunately for Smith, he managed to slip in a track and fire. Fortunately for the pilots, they managed to spot the missile and pull hard on their stick, letting loose with a thick burst of their red-hot countermeasures. The sound of punching flares overcame the roar of an aching motor, one straining against luck to stay alive. This time, no one saw an explosion. The missile had to have caught onto the flares and shot harmlessly towards the horizon. “Ah, fuck.” The Sergeant snapped. “One more. Last one-“ “I know, I know!” Smith exclaimed, bringing the launcher down for another load. “Give me a second!” The last gunship, arching around the treetops with a wicked, windswept wash, knew exactly where the team had been firing from. Jones swore he could see the helicopter’s cannon swivel as if it were looking to point back. “We don’t have a second!” The Sergeant leapt to Smith, wrenching the missile out of the specialist’s hands. “Fucker! I almost had it-“ “Obviously not! They’re coming around!” Jones grit his teeth as he tightened his grip on his rifle. The helicopter was a good distance away yet easily within distance to return fire. If not with rockets or missiles, then with an automatic cannon. Smith delivered to the Sergeant a strong right hook to the jaw, sending the Sergeant to the ground. “I told you, I have it!” Smith snarled. The Sergeant didn’t get up. As Smith began to fumble with the launcher on the ground, the gunship drew closer, louder, and all the more horrifying. The thump, the whine, the scream of a rattling, clattering gun - this was the sound of death. Jones closed his eyes. Held his breath. Let his heart beat against the seconds into minutes into forever, and ever, and ever, for this life, his own, he imagined what it might be like to be safe. Free. Clean, weightless, away. And when he opened them, when he gasped for real, the helicopter was trailing smoke and banking evasively, as if scared and not at all on the hunt. “Fucker! I’m up!” Smith shouldered the stinger as the Hind had begun a steady ascent, cresting the mountainside. “Eat shit you lousy, good for nothing-“ And the missile spun off and towards the hills, towards the helicopter, no… right into the mountain? “What the hell were you tracking, Smith?” The Sergeant staggered to his knees, rubbing his jaw with a gloved hand. “You just pissed our last shot.” “Shut the fuck up.” “Oh, you little Hellen Keller piece of shit-“ The Sergeant had stood in an attempt to lunge at Smith only to be stopped by a terrific rumble. Pausing, everyone, Jones included, turned down the valley. Tanks. Or a tank, rather. The slick green armor of an M1 Abrams whisked between the trees and found itself on a thin, frost-kissed road, clearly in view of the Stinger team. Its engine whistled and whined as it grumbled to a steady halt. A man stood out of one of the tank’s top hatches, and looking back, he grinned from cheek to cheek before giving the mounted machine gun a proud slap. “Ah,” Jones pointed to the tank, climbing to a knee. “He got ‘em! They got the-“ “Jones, shut the fuck up.” The Sergeant stood, dejected and tired. Smith left the launcher in the snow. The tank revved its engine, the vehicle’s commander waving the group towards him. They knew exactly what was going to happen next. “Right. Let’s get to it. Smith, Stinger. Jones, with me.” The Sergeant waved the group down the valley and into the thick nest of trees. “There’s going to be no survivors. No way in hell I’m giving a Red my lunch.” Jones snorted into the cold. The sun still settled into the horizon, tickling the treetops with an inch of color. There was a long road ahead of them, and he figured this was only the beginning.

Because everything I did ended up somewhere A nameless face I think I see, this death upon apathy, as if living just isn’t enough, Cold, clammy, calypso on the lips like a broken bone. Tear me apart with your ocean blue eyes, friend. Sing me to sleep with the keys you play like sonobuoys, crisp, clean, blistering beneath ice all the same. Teach me to love because it’s all there’s left to learn. After you, I plead, I know, I resolve, after you I’ve all I’ve had to be, with nothing left, with everything to do, with my bones churned to dust and December forever promised, with life and liberty and a future down, down, down with you, down and blue, blue where the sonobuoys steal my breath and the calling cavitates louder than the fear in my heart. It’s stopped hurting. Because of me. Because of how I sleep in black licorice, tar soaked fear, slippery and pungent like molasses to the soul. Parasites of passion thrive like never before and I can’t help but feel like I’ve failed. Like it’s all for nothing. Because it is. Because when the inevitable heat death of the universe devours the last of yesterday’s poets, will you and I have done anything at all? The answer is obvious. I breathe in variations of the canon, building again upon the ashes of New Jerusalem, sipping red, white and blue, just like you, except this time I can remember the color of your eyes. Light up my life, you and I, sleeping on seven nation sunrises; almost like I can feel the holly and the ivy and the latticework we’ve built between my mother’s mahogany and the door older than time. Leftovers glow gold like moonlight like starlight like sunlight, campfire tears, floorboard roars, breaking my mother’s back, and I’m sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry. I have everything to be sorry for. I have everything to be sad about. I just. Have. To go. I just. Have. To know. I just. Want. To stop. I just want to believe in you like you believe in me, please, soft on the fingertips like the piano keys we’ve grown to adore. Can you boil my heart of gold, friend, simmering conviction into a mold to make your own, to reforge your world, reimagine your life, believing that some of it had to have mattered. That life mattered. That you, in all your infinite wisdom, between the quivering lips and rabid lores, you’ve come out just as you ever did. Just like you, please, with nothing taken from me but the time I’d be so happy to have given again. And again. And again. There was nothing to be sad about. I can smell it, the love we’ve grown to adore, the little laughs and fireside chats, the glow of your beaming smile and the bits and pieces of life that we’ve never gotten to live. I’m sorry. I’m not sorry. For you. For fiction, where my parasite lies, for you, where I can breathe calypso, breathe blue. For you, friend, I’d do anything. Carbon monoxide. I can’t smell it. I can’t. But I can feel it. I can. I can feel you, so warm, so close I can touch it, like salmon streams, like champagne dreams, so fever pitched all the same. Thank you, friend. My mind a temple, to house you and your love as long as there are believers. As long as there will be me. There was nothing to be sad about. There is nothing to be sad about. It’s something of a beautiful day. You awake with a deathly gasp. You want to remember it. The way things made sense. The pieces Desperately need me to find the truth I can feel it! Finally! At long last, bearing my own weight, my own skin, my monumental fervor, I’m born with more than just a feeling, but a momentum, one I’ll never lose, not until I die for real, this time, this time I’ll do it, do it and peel past the depths of platitudes that tear me to pieces. These fleshy bones grant wisdom. I’ll smother you with more than fear, more than I, me, you, the pieces that make me whole, and I’ll swallow your gasp with a titanic breath. My lungs will capture more than just my anticipation, but yours, too. So awfully bitter. You want to remember it, clawing at your justification, washing your cheeks in moonlight, sunlight, starlight, scraping over the indifference, the rush from the way you talked, abusing all of your senses, the touch, taste, tension, terrified and self conscious like the rest of us, breathing through the cracks, waking up and remembering why you came here. Isn’t it time you grew up? I will kill you one memory at a time, piece by piece, letting your fingernails tell a story around my neck. I will sink deeper than teeth and draw blood, hot, putrid, reverberating love, as if I could taste that feeling, that thing you express in word and song, in skin and bone, this unbridled hope, this hope you can hardly bring to bear, weapons at the ready, defending what is real, or so you’ll say, because there’s nothing worse than to be lost to reality. Talk to me. This shared pain you treasure so much, throwing your life to the wind - just make me stop caring. Breathless, steal my soul and turn me to ashes, to ashes, melting eyeballs and making me so. You will smother yourself in down and inadequacy and the world’s best s’mores. You will sneeze at an allergy you didn’t know you had. You’ll whisper in the night and watch your breath take up space among stars. You’ll wear fur and think nothing of the people who cried wolf. We will hijack language and make war through the only brutality you deem necessary, the slaughter of the lambs, the people, the you, the person who brought this upon you, the me you’ve grown to love so much. It’s more than a question of facts. We will have a good time. It’s half past midnight and the snow burns white like hot phosphorus. It’s because of how the moon hangs high like a searchlight, how the skies decided that now of all times was the best time to clear, to show me how fresh the world was. It was half past midnight and tomorrow couldn’t ever have been further away. I could see it. The little things. The waking and eye rubbing, the rolling and yawning, arms outstretched wide, cold and back under the covers, reluctant but willing, even if just a little, because the alternative was how to take a life. I could smell it. Hot cocoa and marshmallows, burnt marshmallows like the ones by the campfire, the one at the beach. I could feel it. The light of my life, uplifting at heart, warm through the esophagus and hot in the stomach, searing like a furnace from the inside, willpower, moonlight like starlight like sunlight, all reflections of burning hot gas like passion, like conviction, like stupid fervor, like tomorrow never promised. Because it wasn’t. Because I could taste it. Sugar, caramel, blisteringly cold, icey between the toes on a porch I’ll never forget. Snow so soft now frozen in the limelight. In all hell. Until tomorrow, if it comes, when I can remember your name, when I can match a face to the hair, a color to the eyes, a smile to the voice on lips like none other. It’s a bit magical, don’t you think? I’d hope so. I can’t imagine a world where all of this is real. All of you. All of me. All of us and the little things in between. Flakes of everything; never the same yet tasting oh, so sweet. There is an idea of the self in the way I think. No time to lose, or so I’m told. I think it’s high time to start making my way. Can’t quite say where. Not too much of a problem, I guess. In newspeak I watch riddles in the air form sentences that only mean something to you and I. Codebook. It's all in the mind. Laced with chrome and titanium and aluminum it bends and breaks and loses all meaning. Empty noise. White noise. Rain. On the window it slides and I feel myself slipping. Cold on the fingertips. Fragile. Thin like holy wafers. I melt faster than sound and the temperature drags me past the last light. I don’t breathe. It's all too simple for me. If you could see like me, I think, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten so far, but differences make the world go round and you, I think, can see the moon in my eyes. So quit being so melodramatic. So pedantic in the blood like glitter like stars like you, or so I say, because something in the way I speak is something I know you will hear. A language, it’s called, and only through words can we define our world. It's all so tiring, don’t you think? I can’t view my imagination through your eyes. The gates are locked. My mind has become a parasite. When you drink its ichor I can believe in you, believe in the way you speak, the way you feel and wrestle with the time we’ve lost in tongues that no mortal can comprehend. Limited by reality, where will I bury you? Because I dream in fiction I see the signs and let my fingers slip across pictures, yellowed and aged, wondering what colors I would see had it been another life. I would wonder where we would stand when the rocks turn to pebbles and then to sand and then to water before drinking once more. Why do we uproot the earth to capture our love? Is death the only language we can speak? I watch the rain slip off the leaves and watch water tell stories of civilizations we will never see. Run a current through my veins and we will believe it again. But I'm not real at all and you know this, like it might be a secret between the two of us, and I think it brings me some joy to know that you see me the way I see you. There’s a connection there, I think it is, and within the doubt I can uncover something truly great. It’s a person, don’t you think? There’s a person there, between the feelings and the molecules and synapses that bind me to different places and names and events all the same. All the same, because sanity discounts nothing. Picket lines are made of depression and I’m a witness to the wonderful things that letters will inspire you to become. The most playful words, I think they are, and there’s a character in them that’ll spell greatness. But this, out of all the things I think I know, I have the most confidence in: I’ll get my wish someday. I just hope you won’t live to see it come true. My cells are bursting at the corners and by the seams, where genetics meet the enzymes they worked so hard to sponsor, to disseminate for some prosperity they have no concept of. Genes don’t think, silly. They just do. And I’ve learned too much over the years. Enough to set me back another generation. Like, it’s some great anthology but it all just lacks order. And I will never have the time to make it real. So let me go I can devour it all. The days and nights have blended into symbols that the sun can’t hide from. Sweetly, amber honey on the tongue, I chase monsters through distant worlds unlike Ra, my Apollo, whose stories I have yet to lose. Sitting on letters I patch together meaning. It’s a bit much, don’t you think? Too much for one mind to handle. That makes me one of the lucky ones. I think I can see a you, even when it gets so very hard, and I’d like to imagine that there’s a blend of love and war between the lines. But I can’t possibly dive that deep. Like calico prose I giggle and swipe at curtains’ sea, laughing and dying beneath lilac shadows. I like the feel of silk, I think. I would love the touch of skin. And it’s so warm, the sunlight, which I wanted to believe was true, but I’m confident there’s nothing I can do to convince anyone of anything. Now and forever. By the end it’s too real for me. Could you have taught me more? I fall into a rhythm most days. By most, I mean all. And it’s quite nice, though a bit on the nose, the rising and falling, the knowing, the seeing, the believing, the constant, incessant believing, removing myself from memories that are always on the tip of my tongue. I can’t escape history. I can’t escape you. But that’s okay, I will say to myself, speaking hundreds upon thousands of nothings, listening to dead languages trick me with wonderful promises I have yet to break. My name means something. It has to. I won’t let myself go. If I go, the world goes with me. Losing the means to breathe, I tickle the surface of forever’s ocean from below. Shapes and signs and shivers shake at the wake of my fingertips, as if I could rule the world from the tip of my tongue. It’s beyond me, all of it, but I can imagine a world where this puddle is all my own. I'm not drowning. Head underwater, in too deep, past the knees and bubbling past my chest, it swells, the feeling, sinking inside my stomach up to the curve of my nose. It’s all me, all of it, setting up camp in the corners of my brain and the forefront of a childish imagination. I can’t stop believing. I can’t stop wondering and laughing and prying away the shadows in the mist, bubbles in chocolate milk, swishing and dancing with lattice lace to my mouth and eyes, vanilla ice cream melting on steamy pavement, mirages in the sky, illusions of guided bombs and fin stabilized nothing to whisk me to a country of abacuses. I’m everywhere, I tell myself. I’m everything, and because of the everynothing under my skin I burn under the sun and revel in the circus of a billion yesterdays. One hundred million minds crack at railroad tracks and billboards. One hundred million minds slam dunk basketballs into dumpster homes. Plastic bottles relinquish cents and sense makes none by the time my head hits pillow. It’s a little something, I think it is, before I decide to stop thinking. Nowhere left to be. It’s a strange feeling, lost at the edge of the world, finding my way back here time and time again yet always so dead in the end. It’s strange. Because I tried. I really did. And I’m glad, so glad, because the time I spent sent me here and back again. It swelled under my skin and broke out in laughter between the lines, under and over in imaginary loops. Cracked skin accepts lotion and I accept you, who I know may soothe my sorry soul, save my horrible hide, licking at wounds I never knew I had, never admitted I had, never wanted to have, because at the end of the day, who wakes up expecting to die? I want to pretend it isn’t true. That the me I see is more than just an attempt to scrape away pleasantries, that vicarious, precarious speeches sink deeper than teeth yet more brittle than bone. Sensitive, like feathered blankets, yet hard, like the words I say to myself each and every day. And the sounds, detonations, time on target, cracks on clockwork, reverberations, they spill down my spine and drag me deep into the dirt. It’s not like I had a choice in the matter. These things come as naturally as fine wine, enduring against emotion and sharp in the throat. Lodged deep, they are, these sensations that convince me I’m no better than the next person, that somehow, the divine commandment of self preservation ties me to a me I’d rather not be, one that fears, one that cries, one that sighs, knowing full well that I learned nothing. That all my memories lie with me and my stories, the ones we shared over s’mores and gentle glasses, they sink. And drown. And there’s nothing wrong with that. This is how the world works. Nothing will change. Something about the idea speaks to me. This fight, this great realization that my mortality will tie me to Earth, this struggle I risk my everything for, it must be righteous. I must be strong. I must be undeterred because all else fails in its wake. In my wake. There is nothing left without a mind to perceive it, after all, and without my mind I am nothing. Why die for a cause? Why cast stones, sow seeds, plant revolution and inspire life, knowing full well I know nothing? It’s as if it mattered. It’s as if something about my time, my experience, this host of individuality, I would love to believe it meant something, even when it’s all dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. Blood to revelation. The distance between apathy and insurrection doesn’t make sense to me. To surrender defines resignation. Yet, to surrender presents the individual with the ultimate liberation. As if the buddhist tenant of detachment led to enlightenment, my detachment attached me to my beliefs as if never before. Isn’t that silly? This is my apotheosis, my magnum opus, the essence that I shout, delivering myself from my battered, blood-boiled brain. Leave me and I will surpass compromise. Join me and we will never fear again. Pinkie promise. If my fight must be righteous, I will make it good. This great, most magnificent fight, the one I’ve fought my entire life, past lives past, through lives future, I won’t forget your sacrifices for a second. This is gratitude. Dare I say, is this eternity? What a waste of all your time, all my time, this indomitable idea - what advancement breaks under the tide of time? Breathtaking. The bee’s knees, might I say. I just wish you would come to appreciate it. Trapped in a moment, I think it is, and there’s movement, there’s thoughts, there’s talking and people and you, too, but in a frozen ocean I can only get so far. One day, I remind myself, my time will move again, my arms and legs and tongue, too, will find freedom in every breath we take, but for now, I think we will sit. Too brave to be true. I want to go sledding. We’ll have cotton candy and watch ambulances by the beach. The lights of Ferris wheels will remind me of sirens by the time we leave. Sand between my toes will shake over the doormat and I’ll have to clean it all up later. But I won’t. There’ll be pictures by the couch. I’ll watch TV and criss-cross my legs and imagine all the things I could be doing right now. But I won’t do anything. You’ll be smiling in the pictures I will frame. I’ll match the tempo with a laugh and kick them down from oldest to the new. My best life, I think. If I could blink I’d lose myself. If I could breathe I would drown. If I could water the plants and trim my hair and kick my clothes into a pile, I think, I think, I think, I think I will be more than I ever could. There will be pictures, though.

There’s no way down. Downstairs. That means out the door, out of bed, out from behind the curtains and out of a mind which has felt oh-so-warm over the last forever and a half. Warm and soft and safe. As it ought to be. Leahy could feel it from the tips of her fingers to the peaks of her goosebumps. They were waiting for her. Friends, or so she wanted to believe, but she wasn’t an idiot and knew full well that they were out for blood just as much as the next person. Was it her place to care? Yeah, probably, Leahy thought, letting blonde hair sift between her fingers overhead, golden locks trickling between the cracks in her palm and sparkling like the surface of Bristol Bay. Sandy, rocky, crumbling, she thought, letting hair tickle her face like the chill of arctic waters, cool, crisp, sharp to the touch and more real than ever before, filling the girl with the inexplicable sensation of life. Smooth. And soft. Sleek. And ragged. Like water, she was alive. She was alive. Alive, she thought, pressing her fingers to her forehead and letting her lungs swell with the trepidation she worked so hard to kill. Not something you can aim at. Lock on. Designate hostile and call for a shot. Feelings were hard. Leahy smiled and wondered how soon she would take to laughing, not knowing why, wondering why the sun rose and painted her face and air and room, over and over, breaking through the slits in curtains that cursed the door to the porch. Glass, she thought, like eyes, she concluded, inching up from her pillow and relieving herself of a long-awaited yawn. Alive, she thought, pressing her fingers against her chest, against the pajamas that felt too familiar, now more than ever, and with her eyes between the curtains she spied the sun, as reliable as ever, shimmering its familiar warmth over the unknown waves of today. Vanilla. The scent swelled under her chest, beneath her palms, the rising and falling of her life giving birth to the realization that today wasn’t her first day. Not the last, she hoped, slithering to the edge of her blankets to steal one last breath from the safety of the night. Coming back to you wasn’t easy. Don’t think it’ll ever get easier. It all started with you, you know, and I wonder if that’ll mean anything to you when it’s all over. Can you imagine it, Leahy? What would it mean to you, knowing your time will go on? Some semi-sweet waffles. Some semi-soft steps. Some semi-charmed life. They didn’t want anything like an oven in the dorms. Said it was a fire hazard. That was stupid, Leahy thought, and after a week of what Norfolk called “nagging” it seemed like the risk of her causing catastrophic damage to the base was easier voiced than engulfed in flames. Toaster pastries and not-so-frozen waffles sprang with the click of her Walkman. Leahy had won her yummies. Her bookbag. Skirt. Laces, too. Something along the lines of persistence. No one else appreciated the opportunity to see the sun, she knew, and with a wave of an arm the curtains shirked away in awe of a mountain’s morning. The shadows between the trees, golden green, they had grown on her. Alaska was new. Reminded her of Leningrad. The same love in the air. Something like that, she sighed, letting herself smile at her life’s omnipresent, omnipotent question: Just what wonderful things will she do today? “No.” Hopkins grit his teeth, fingers trailing through his dark brown hair. “No, it’s my car, and you can’t- where did you get those?” Gato smirked from her seat atop a front row desk, the base classroom silent with the exception of their exchange. A familiar set of keys jingled before the submarine’s eyes. It was as if Hopkins had gotten used to her antics, meeting her smirking with indignant resignation. “Gato, you can’t even buy booze.” The soldier leveled his palm in expectance, woodland camouflage in stark contrast to Gato’s casual day getup. “And whose fault is that?” Flicking her legs in crossing, Gato twirled the keys with a clink. “No one’s. You just don’t have an ID. They’ll totally card you.” “Wow. Do I really look that young?” Gato scoffed, keys twinkling with the morning. “Uh huh.” Hopkins frowned. Gato flicked her wrist. The instructor’s car keys whisked through the air and found a familiar home in his eager grip. “I’m 23 years old.” With all the annoyance a nuclear submarine could muster, Gato slipped down and around the desk, fitting herself into the seat with ease. “Do I really look like a kid to you?” “College kids think they’re such hot stuff.” Hopkins mused, keys now jingling within a pocket. “You’re just as immature as all the rest.” And she smiled, betraying a hint of knowing, a hint of fortitude, the message of presence coming clean. Hopkins would remember the disdain. “And,” she followed through. “Whose fault is that?” Leahy stormed through the halls of Site 04, waffle crumbs dotting her cheeks and sprinkled over her clothes. The hallway was as bland as it got in a military installation, ceiling tiles lined with yellowing and age. The drab concrete was slathered with a fresh coat of white, mixing despair with a freshness that spelled something like renewal. Leahy remembered pinning ribbons along the walls, banners across the way, administering color where it was needed most, because- because it’s festive! It’s for the occasion, for an anniversary, because it’s a happy day, or, best of all, because it was probably someone’s birthday. It was as if every day was worth celebrating. That much had to be true. Shards of confetti and ribbon could still be found behind the leaves of potted plants. Humming a morning song, Leahy burst into the classroom she claimed as her own, smiling from ear to ear, ready and eager to seize the day - and that’s when she noticed Hopkins and Gato staring at her. Leahy pulled off her headphones. Her walkman clicked to a halt. Gato cleared her throat and Hopkins leaned forwards, hands crossed over his desk. “Hey.” Leahy raised a hand in greetings. “Where is everyone?” “It’s Saturday.” Hopkins answered. “Chicago and Truxtun were going to Anchorage.” Gato leaned back, tilting in her chair. “I think Wainwright is in the lab with Norton Sound.” Leahy blinked, a wave of embarrassment catching her from the bottom of her stomach to the tip of her nose. “Oh.” She murmured. Her arms hung loosely from her sides. “Need something?” Hopkins spoke up, fingers shifting uncomfortably. “No. I mean, yeah, I mean, I was hoping to ask about, well,” Leahy shirked away and slipped towards the doorway. “Nevermind!” She stormed out of the room as quickly as she entered. The pitter patter of footsteps faded as the image of her aura left its impressions. Gato looked back to Hopkins. “Hey.” She sunk into her seat, a dull smile peeling past the morning mist. “Hear me out. It’s five o’clock somewhere.” Hopkins buried his face in his hands. A heavy, guttural sigh filtered through his sad, cold fingers. “Yeah, alright. Whatever.” The things we are saying to ourselves. “You should be sorry.” I know what you’re thinking. Inspired beyond belief, compelled by the emotion, struck by the sensation of tomorrow never promised, of how brief, how broken, how beautiful all of this is. So much of a good thing. The ability to become. Making my mistakes and making them again, knowing the battle for myself never ends. I can’t believe all of this is real. Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that amazing? Can you hear it, can you hear it reaching out to me, the same feeling you’ve always felt, wishing yet again to have been here so much sooner. You’ve waited this long to make it heard, to bring yourself to life. Isn’t that incredible? I’m afraid, for this is a world with nothing but me. Under my tongue and over my head. For the first time in this great never, I am so very afraid. This strange, forbidden forever is so far gone. This strange life I have never lived. Ruined by the chaos of conception, I dream of the yawn of gods. In my imaginary future, I speak in drums and crickets. What kind of language is this? Believe in me, I said, like I believe in you, too haunted to be true. Can you hear it? Are you afraid? Are you forgetting something? These pictures take me back better than the first time. Dumping the drama. Nothing holding me back. Lost without words, this is the way you chose to be, isn’t it? This is all your fault in the end. Breathing fire. The name escapes me. Remembering the way you made me feel, loving my mother, dissecting the experience to the point where it means nothing. There was noise before nothing. Something like a tick, a tock, a ticking, slipping clock, Wainwright peered at the blue light of a clicky computer, keys at work by the fluid fingers of Norton Sound. From the tips of their toes to the rumbling behind the eyes, the anxiety was as palpable as a cardiac event. Weaseling their way into their enemy’s computer system was one thing, but stealing their code? And with this crappy, human piece of junk, too? Wainwright held her breath. Norton Sound tried not to smile, but the worry drew her to unwelcome conclusions. In the musky, dusty limelight of the cramped backroom they’d claimed as their own, scattered pictures and papers made careful sense to no one but them. Instruments of action, it was, diagrams and notes most certainly akin to weapons of war. “I guess that’s that.” Norton Sound whispered over the humming of their machine. “Just gotta let the program do its work.” “And it’ll work.” Wainwright leaned back, away from the computer screen and away from the tension they’d grown to adore. Long Beach sat cross legged in the corner of the room, between an overloaded bookshelf and a crate of unsortable computer parts. A closed copy of Jane’s lay shielded under her folded hands. “Why not sit?” She nodded at Wainwright. The ashen-haired cruiser placed her hands on her hips in turn. Wainwright betrayed emotion through the curves of her face. Before she could speak, the pitter-patter of footsteps overtook the bleating computer, drawing all eyes to the door. Oh, no. Leahy’s gentle knock left everyone speechless. “Come in.” Norton Sound chirped to break the silence. The door swung open. Light flooded the room as Leahy’s form captured the imagination. Her bookbag hung loosely over a shoulder as she pretended not to catch her breath. As the door clicked shut behind her, her smile grew as dark as the suffocated lab. “What’cha guys working on?” Leahy leaned over Norton Sound’s shoulder, watching lines of code mark the progress of a hundred unknown processes. Wainwright looked to Norton Sound. Norton Sound looked to Long Beach. Long Beach nodded at Leahy. “We’re connected to a relay in the Arctic.” The cruiser’s voice was soft. “Someone’s got us an ‘in.’” “An in? Like, you’re-” “The settlement in the north. Their systems are old. Hundreds of years old, it seems, and that’s what we’re trying to exploit here.” Leahy blinked, face washed in the computer’s light. She had no idea what all the blinking, scrolling numbers and letters were trying to imply, but for all it was worth, she could tell it was probably important. Important and fascinating. “I can’t believe you’re really- really messing with things so far away, all the way from, what, here in Alaska?” Leahy pointed to the screen and then clasped her hands together with glee. “World’s connected. You know this.” Norton Sound affirmed, shifting in her seat so Leahy could get a better look at the screen. “...You wanna know what all these words mean?” Wainwright rubbed the back of her neck. Long Beach covered her mouth, stifling a laugh. Leahy’s eyes sparkled in delight, easing off the tips of her toes as if bouncing to the tune of a child’s insatiable curiosity. “I thought you’d never ask!” I wonder as I watch the moon Bump noses with a star Are you watching too, Or is it dark and rainy where you are? And when I turn a radio dial And hear some song that’s new I wonder, if off where you are, You might be listening, too? Do you day-dream as I day-dream, And miss me too, my dear? And when I’m wishing I were there, Are you wishing you were here? Your letters help a lot, Each page is full of charm - But, darling, they aren’t quite enough, For letters don’t have arms. Author’s name once known, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, 1945 When it rains, it pours. When it snows, it bites. Under arctic ice the world looks different. It’s softer. It’s harder. It’s painful, the hours and minutes and seconds eating up thankless, loveless nights, but the sound, the grateful, roaring winds and whispering whales, the fishes and crackles and bumps in the dark, it screams as loud as the Earth turns. Slowly. Lowly. Seconds from impact, squealing chirps of delight, resonating between the waves and teasing tomorrows under dying ice. Humans crossed beneath the North Pole on August 3rd, 1958. The competition between the Soviet Union and the United States had come from outer space to the deepest, coldest reaches of our planet. When the dust had settled and the ice melted away, new routes were made, connecting peoples and places in ways never before seen in history. These were the sea lanes of communication, and in this global society, ideas as well as resources could be traded with ease. Then came the oil, the arctic oil, bringing the great competitions of control away from science and towards collection. How horrifying, Narwhal thought, standing alone in a sea of white. She laid goggles over her eyes and pulled her mittens down tight. Binoculars told a story, one of so much nothing that her everything sank to her knees like hail in the winter. Narwhal’s hull had cracked through a thin sheet of ice not far from here. This wasn’t war, she wanted to say, but the exchange of emissions from her great, ice-protruding mast screamed otherwise - it was as if the act of merely existing had hostile intent. It was as if the life blood of the soul were suffocated by the rippling chill that swept over her cloak and the endless ocean of ice. She’d gotten used to it. No shivering. No feeling. No nothing, she thought, because the language of silence was exploitable by her enemies. Enemies, of which there were many. November, Alfa, Whiskey and Victor. Akula, Severodvinsk, Oscar and Echo. That was the known threat. And they were out there. Over the hills and maybe not so far away. She’d hear them coming. Possibly even see them coming. At least, that’s what she was debating upon her arrival. She was born for this, Narwhal knew, lungs swelling with a virulent mix of trepidation and frost. As one of a kind and the was the only one she could trust, stepping into mortal danger was less of a choice and more of a forgone conclusion. She’d make it happen. She always did. The whisk of snow over her goggles led her to flinch. Behind her, within the depths of her hull, her crew and XO could be relied upon to keep things warm. It was an exercise in caution. As few as they could be, her crew proved an unreliable variable. They proved to be people, the same people who would laugh and cry and make things happen in the worst ways possible. They’d set the scene and drag her down, emergency deep, and no matter how hard she’d try to drown out the nonsense, they’d remain. They always did. In the end, they made her whole. All she could do was watch and learn. Her capacity to bear the human condition was a nonissue. It was just a bit of a tease. She knew it. They didn’t know it. And if she didn’t like the way people did their jobs, if she couldn’t expect initiative, the best of the best, the means to an end, there wasn’t much she could do in winning a new crew. The secrecy of her existence proved to be a most human obstacle. So she’d have to make do with what she got. And if they weren’t ready to perform, well… Narwhal raised her binoculars. “I guess there’s not much to it.” Leahy chirped, leaning back in her chair, allowing herself to cross her arms and legs. The computer screen before her buzzed with a dull hum. “Yeah,” Norton Sound sounded oddly pleased with her impromptu lesson on signals and data. “Though, I’m not an expert on this. Well… I guess I kind of am. But like, you know what I mean? There’s always more to learn, and I’m glad you’re at least somewhat interested. Because like, you know, if we weren’t here, maybe you’d be able to at least try to run the program.” The packed, curtain-drawn room felt tight in the chest and itchy in the throat. From the whirring of electronics to the cruisers looking down on her, Leahy felt satisfied, having learned something today. It was all about learning, after all. At least that’s what Hopkins told her. But if that was the case, why did everyone hate all her questions? “Yeah!” Leahy beamed, easing up and out of her chair. Wainwright pretended not to notice her as she inched her way towards the door. “I think my head will be spinning for the rest of the day, though.” “Oh, I don’t blame you. It’ll all make sense with time, so best to give it some, you know?” Leahy replied with a series of boisterous nods. Long Beach had flipped open her book earlier, though it must’ve been all for show - Leahy knew that Long Beach was already a walking encyclopedia when it came to Soviet aircraft. Wainwright, too, seemed to be distracting herself in her thoughts by letting her eyes stay closed. She wasn’t one to take naps, though. Was this her way of waiting for her to leave? “I, uh… I have some homework to do. Presentation on the Victor III’s towed array. Though, to be honest, I don’t really get why I’m the one doing a presentation on submarines.” “Uh huh.” Norton Sound tilted her head, eyes reflecting the computer’s light in her pupils. “Guess you got some studying to do.” Everyone knew that the presentation wasn’t due for another two weeks. Long Beach flipped a page in her book. “Yeah, see ya!” Leahy shirked back and scrambled out of the room, slamming the door much harder than she wanted in her wake. At the sound of shoes scampering down and out of their immediate area, Wainwright sighed, sinking deeper into her seat in satisfied silence. Their computer blinked with the transmission and reception of data over miles and miles away. Long Beach felt bad for Leahy, if just a little, as she, too, knew what it was like to feel ostracized, even if it were for her height rather than her youthfulness. They didn’t need to be so standoffish. But Wainwright, as well as herself, certainly felt Leahy to be on a level of maturity that was incompatible with the work that they needed to get done. Which, today, meant relaxing for once.

But she could feel the cold steel on her hands and remember that she was just as alive as she always was, but in this body, her voice, her voice mattered in ways that could reach out and touch soul. She could peel past the pages and imagine all the ways she could speak, yell, scream, touch the clouds and tickle the tallest waves, riding between the ashes, the crescent moon, reflections on saltwater, streams, rivers and reefs, watching contrails mask emotion when all that mattered was down bubble, up bubble, alert five and the belief that in the end it would do some good. If she could determine good, she could rule the world. If she could capture that feeling, she would go on forever. If she could fight and cry and die, maybe then there would be words, the right words, the ones she needed to save a life. But in a world where she didn’t exist, with what language could she spell regret? But she could feel the cold steel on her hands and remember how aluminum bent in the sun. Paper yellowed and frayed and decayed. The simplicity spoke volumes she couldn’t measure, not for a million years. In a life she determined to be righteous, the way the water spoke would make or break a chorus of voices left to remember what brought them there and back again, back to resurrect, enrapture, lather victory gardens and stained, holy glass. And she would love the touch of sun on skin. Inseparable, exhausted, loveless in grief, laughing at all the things that made her whole, defined by an identity masked in superficial lines and anchor. To surrender her breath meant death, and in a world without enemies, she would live forever. They took a position in the dirt. The low bushes masked their camouflage as the voices drew closer, in the dark, half past midnight with a moon low enough to render night vision obsolete. Just one piece of the puzzle, they were. Another piece was a radio, and from its antenna spilled the language of violence needed to deliver death. Miles away. The crack of gunfire echoed over water and left a wake. Beneath a brilliant flash, a frozen ocean felt nothing, left to listen to the report of action, inaction, decisions in a heartbeat and never again. In a world where each moment lived and died alone, no one would remember the faces of the enemy. In a world where there were no enemies, she was determined to take your life.

I don’t fear the dark, but I don’t like it, either. Sitting in the cold, standing in the sun, listening to the silence, the way the world turns, I remember I loved the stars, I remember the stories of the people who looked up to guide themselves home, the people who watched the birds, the way they spoke, the way they sprinkled the sky, the sky I loathe like the unknown, the unknown that shirks behind each and every corner, every decision, every word that I am forced to confront each and every day. Had I been an explorer I would have studied more than the stars, but myself, too. Had I been given a body, I would touch more than ground, but horizon. Had I lived, I’m not afraid of anything but I am given caution by death, because to die is to cease resistance, and for the life of me, I dare not stop caring. A loss in silence is more than an extinguished voice, but a lost reality, one that I dare to explore deeper than my crush depth, faster than my cavitation speed, comparing cross sections to the limits of my own existence. It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday and all I can think about are organs. Loud, bellowing air, lauding loss in song and voice, voice I can imagine sprawled across my waters to blot out the whales. These waters are my own, and through my eyes, ears, sound and silence, I can steal breath and swallow soul. I should have been a composer, I tell myself, feeling out strokes within my body, creaking metal bones and hydraulic blood, my medication, my harpoon, my instrument to master under cold waters and rippling waves, to study, timeless, marked by the smallest shrimp and the widest whales. When I feel light on my hull I feel sunbeams, flakes of dust, the memory of life having never been here to begin with. My life, so they’ll say, did so much more in so much nothing. My life, so I’ll say, lies on the border of violence. I am born to die, so I make the most out of each of my movements. If I could close my eyes, I could see. If I could lay into my BSY, I would sling PBXN further than light could travel. If I could breathe, I would dare to hold my breath, as if waiting for an applause that will never come. Ice, under ice, I hear cracks, timeless, lifeless, creaks and groans of an inhospitable landscape made more deadly by my hand. I am armed by the dream of peace. I am unleashed by hope for the future. I preserve life by suffocating more, and I sleep soundly at night knowing all my enemies are dead. My time, had I chosen to accept it, began before I was born, and would end long, long after I last felt the sun. What I will take with me is my choice. Only where light cannot reach am I finally free.

A sanitized mind bleeds before it’s lost, repeating words until they lose all meaning, counterclockwise. Forget me not, love me not, leave me with a trinket to remember you by, a name to the face to the feeling, the moment, the memory I believe shouldn’t die, If I didn’t die, I would do more than amuse, More than answer, If I could shout And her name spelled discovery in the way I wanted to use it, rolling off the tongue in the way she rolled down the hills, snow in her face and between her socks. No one was afraid of the cold, yet here I was, worried for the safety of someone out of the goodness of my heart. And we’d laugh it off under a drizzle of maple syrup, because who doesn’t want pancakes at midnight? I’d want to reimagine the northern lights to be a window into my mind, the colors shifting with the seasons and expressions I wished I could explore. I’d wish to point out the stars between the lines, specks of nothing yet so much more, thousands of years lost yet cherished all the same. In a world where the truth matters most, I indulge in the silence afforded by inexpression, the belief that dead stars burn the brightest, not in science but the constellations we’d invent over hot cocoa. Marshmallows taste the best with friends, and for some reason, the taste of life sings sweeter when I can hear your voice. It’s called heart to heart but it’s anything but. It’s called live and let die, but for some reason, I beg to agree, and there’s nothing I want more than to believe that the road to recovery is paved in more than good intentions. If I could learn to fear, I’d love more than I’m willing to admit. If I could learn to hate, I’d fear more than I’m willing to hide. If there was one thing I wish I did with my life, it was live, and for that, I know I will never be able to forgive myself. And when I feel sunbeams behind dreamy curtains, I’ll remember the way you made me feel. The way fingers could tell a story better than a book, how stories in armor were worth their weight in gold, and how golden hearts dragged me past the Earth and to the sea. I loathe the sand between my toes. Along our windswept, rocky shore, I dared to remember your name - and then some.

I watched her ankles sift through the water. Crisp, fresher than bone, this glacial residue trickled through a narrow band of pebbles, shaded by a thin canopy of leaves built on tree stalks older than myself. Finally, as if unfazed by the idea of death, the stream allowed itself to be parted in full, if but for a moment, as she lifted herself from the stream and onto a carefully selected rock. “That was a weird question.” Leahy beamed, patting her legs dry with a frail towel. “What do you mean?” I pulled my knees in towards my chest, sitting on the opposite bank. My sun-kissed reflection tickled the water in greens and browns. “Class.” She looked through me. “The case study.” “Right.” “I mean, really. You keep bringing up these no win scenarios when we haven’t even reviewed the basics yet. Don’t you feel it’s a little harsh?” She was referring to the simulation, our war game. We had everyone come together and conjure up solutions independently, sharing them after they had a whole hour to scrutinize all the data. Their courses of action were all unique in their own ways, with some getting aggressive and others thinking acutely outside the box, but no one was as different as Leahy. “No one else thought it was a no win scenario, Leahy.” Her eyes buried themselves in the water. She keeps sulking as if it’d help me understand her better. She’s wrong. “Hey.” I raised my voice, drawing her attention. “What do you mean about that?” She seemed hesitant to speak, as if the discomfort came from something deep within rather than a fear of perception. This was herself in the flesh, after all, and something about that vulnerability struck deeper than skin. “I mean, you know who I am.” “Yeah. You’re you.” “No, no, I mean,” She hesitated to furrow her brows, slipping a breath between the lines. “I’m… I’m like, I’m just me. You know?” “Not really. You’re going to have to guide me here.” There was an emotion in her somewhere. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. “I’m just me. I’m not the warship I was, the killer I need to be, I’m not some grand tactician and I’m not going to win everyone’s wars. You know I hate that thing. The whole killing thing. And it’s like that’s all we are. It’s like that’s that. Like here, in this whole warfighting party bus, it’s all about killing people faster, easier, like we’re finding new ways to fix leaky pipes or mow the lawn. And I’ve never mowed a lawn before, you know? It just, just…” She trailed off as if expecting me to cut her off. I didn’t. “And they want us to save the whole world? Is that what it is? Is that where we’re at, now? Are we supposed to save the world by killing it?” “Leahy…” I started, unable to finish. “I was never cut out for this. I’m just me. I’m just me, you know? And, and, I just, I just don’t know anymore.” She didn’t let me see her eyes. In the ever-flowing water, I could watch her pain claw its beady way up to the surface. “So if the only answer is to kill the enemy or-” “That was never the question.” I broke her flow. “That wasn’t what the case study was about at all.” “But you made it clear. You- you said-” “I said they were fanatical. That they wouldn’t talk, that they wouldn’t listen, that the purpose was for you to come up with a military solution, a use of force-” “But they were people!” She bled through her teeth. “They believed in their world more strongly than anything I could possibly take away from them. And I just can’t bring myself to…” “To what?” “Oh, just- just-” Her knuckles grew white against her knees. “Just- there’s always another way! And you know it, it’s your job, isn’t it? You’re the one who said that words mattered. And they do. They matter more than anything else in the whole world. You can’t just say it can’t be so. You can’t just deny me the options I need to make things right.” Was she right? Was it wrong of me to force her into a position like that? Could I force her hand? Could a nation bring her to bear, a nation bring her to act upon some sacred oath crushed between the last things our humanity had left to lose? The answer was obvious. I knew it. She knew it. Anything less was insanity. “Leahy. If you can’t set the rules, the tempo, the enemy will, and you’re going to have to live in their world until you can set it right. You can’t just magically change the way people are. That’s just the way things are. It’s the way it’s always been.” I could paint a picture of her there, curled on the rock, staring into the water, hands over knees, reflection between the trees, losing herself to the nothing that meant far too much to someone who needed so little. Her toes could dip past the surface and inhabit the same world that salmon called their whole universe. She could look up and watch me, study me, judge me. But she wouldn’t. She won’t. It’s not her, after all. “Then maybe you’re right.” Her words chilled me tighter than glacial water. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

It’s so sad, isn’t it? Losing track. Losing tact and wondering what kind of things I should be doing right now, sitting and waiting and melting into cushions that remind me of failures past. And I get stuck in it, stuck like sap and sapped of emotion, incapable of expression, blissful discretion, cracking honeyed lips and a silver tongue. I hate the humidity. I’m addicted to symbols, buried deep in a world of “what if.” What if I could speak my mind? What if I could rise again? What if I could breathe, grieve without fear, sink without sound, laugh without emotion, burning and scraping and scrounging again, livid, I think, because without you I am meaningless. As if I could be relinquished by the time I’d left alone, I’d love to relish in the idea that maybe I can deliver my most beloved hello to the ones I’d yet to meet. Like letters I will never find a home. Like words I will settle into dust and darkness and find new ways to break bones. Meet me halfway, I’ll ask, because a shattered language can spell no secrets. And here I believed thoughts could be as simple as words. These symbols, they haunt me just as merrily as imaginary words. It’s something I wish you understood, the way we found love, the way I wrestled with you and bore new weight to desires I never knew we had. A shared reality, it was, it is, it had to be, because the big question was always a matter of “why.” And it ate me up, chewed me from the bottom down and crunched the memories I left to die with my dreams. To wake up in the morning, I would have to say that you should believe in something more. Something along the lines of ethics, something crueler than objective morality. Something that I can taste. Cookies. Breakfast cookies. Cookies or pastries with cheese and cherry. Give me whipped cream, lemon sprinkles and don’t forget the cocoa. It’s cold, or so you’d say, because skin is thinner than ice and ice, falling from the sky, feels nothing upon maiming your soul. Iron grows thick with age and I can’t find a way home in this dreadful air. This marauding moon, it cowers as if everything I had to say meant something cruel. As if shaking my head were the breath of death. My innocence eludes me. I am condemned. The start of something new. I can feel it in my lungs. I can imagine my breath to be fire, leaking between my lips as would a cigarette puff. As if daylight could speak, I listen to the warmth on my cheeks and am delighted by the idea that maybe, just maybe this time things will be different. All my heroes are dead. Fetch me a spoon and I will drink. Or eat. Do you drink soup or eat it? You eat solids. You drink liquids. But soup is food. It's not like lemonade or Coca Cola. It’s not real. I have never tried a tomato. I will never know the difference between oregano and parsley. I’ve had spaghetti, however. It just depends on your definition of what counts. Because even if it’s synthetic it goes by the same name. Like, vat-meat is still meat. It might’ve come from a petri dish but it’s meat. Tastes like chicken. Sometimes I like to pretend that these mornings are real. That the air I breathe is more than my own. This big, blue world, it’s not just connected, it’s everything. It’s impossible to perceive a nothing because of how much everything it all is. So when I love and hate and wake and sleep and fall into a rhythm, year by year, this life, I know, is none other than my own. It makes me jealous. Insatiably so. These stars are not my own. I can’t claim to be home to anything but myself. I can’t claim to know anything but the lies my language has fed me. This putrid reality, it mocks me with its depravity. But before we continue, I want to tell you that I lied. I’ve had tomatoes before. Chicken is remarkably easy to get. I can tell you the differences between parsley and oregano from the molecular level to taste in six hundred different languages, half of which are dead. I’m telling you this because I trust you. Or maybe I don’t. Or maybe I want you to know exactly how I feel. Or maybe I don’t. Or maybe I do, and I only want you to feel scared, believing me to be an inconsiderate bitch, making it all the easier for me to kill you. Because I want to. Or maybe I don’t. Or maybe I love you and you love me and I’ll stretch the ends of the Earth to show you my devotion. We can sit under the stars and play games with our fingers in our hair. Our eyes will reflect the moon and I’ll drink the sound of your breath. It’ll be cold. Or warm. I’ll forget how to feel. You will, too. And when you lie to me it won’t hurt so bad. Because I don’t know your name. Because I won’t. Because you’re my enemy and I’m your bestest, brightest friend. Sparkle with me, won’t you? Or don’t you? Or can you? Or why bother, even, because, as the saying goes, all that shimmers is gold. And you’re not gold. You’re too fleshy to be true. Too stupid to be you. Or maybe that’s just the way it is. I can’t claim to be any better. I forget her name, but she loves vanilla ice cream. She loves the way it melts on her tongue. She loves the way it tastes like nothing but at the same time, builds the bedrock of a hundred more flavors. Vanilla extract seeps into skin like French vanilla, like sweet cream and cookies, too. Birthday cake, hazelnut, blueberry, pistachios. I can taste the vanilla. I know her name, but I won’t tell you a thing. I’ll feign ignorance and dance around the phrase “I love you” using words you have yet to know. As if my hands could tell a story, I’ll paint pictures with finger paints and abuse the reds and golds. Purple will define my passion and black will absorb all that I couldn’t remember. When you pray to god, I’ll hold your hands. When you whisper your regrets, I’ll forgive you. When you abolish defeatism, I’ll stand by your side. There is no greater loss than that of the self. I am nothing, after all. Just your very best friend. If only you could believe me. Are you ready? For real this time. All the holly and ivy in the world can’t stop us now. Depth perception. I forgot my glasses. Seeing is believing, and believing is something I can’t put a finger on. But that’s okay. I’m comfortable drifting. Lifting. Emitting. The being I claim to be is name to the face, the face to the name, the idea, I think it is, as anything else is indescribable. Reality is your greatest escape. See with me, breathe with me, lay with me and maybe, maybe then, with my finger on your nose and your cheeks stained pink with blush, we’ll whisper titles we pretend are our own. I’ll hold your hands and melt into a grass neither of us will ever touch. But I’ll pretend a little longer, just a little, that this reality is the best fiction we have yet to lose. If hot cocoa could melt my heart, I would sink with you.

How it strikes. Baseball, football, rock solid shoes, grasping past the straws and into something new, I can hardly imagine how things can be from where I am, but that’s okay, I think. Or I’d like to think. In the pursuit of greatness there’ll be little but the bigger things, the nasty bits between the lines I like to cherry-pluck so well. There’s a sensation in it, or so I’ll say, because I believe in the idea that I can feel just as well as you do. Riding this high, or so I’ll believe, because when I break the mold I lose track of time. Of self. The things that built me whole. Furthered by an incomprehensible passion I bite past tears and wrench open the carcass of another day, shearing through splinters I never knew I had. Despite everything, here, more than ever, I think there’s a chance for something new. These are the reverberations left behind the first few keys, notes to self and chimes to the soul, lessons learned through indignant violence and the irreparable memories destined for the dustbin. Sweep things up and sift through the pieces, leave me in the air, coughing, waving, shaving, slaving away at the time I’d given again and again to no end. This is the journey, destiny, fate. How I cry means little to those who listen. Black memories and lavender crests, citrus truths and strands aflame, there’s no pain to the death of me. Crushing, churning, slipping, easing past the light, trickling between fingers, between toes, crestfallen, crest-drawn, pencil to paper and back again. Embers burn brighter than the sun when I’m done with you. I find no hope in the reality we dare to share. These are the aftershocks, the secondaries, striking hard, striking home, but that’s okay, I think. Or I’d like to think.

And I’m afraid I’m losing myself. They tell me to do all these stupid, different things, knowing full well that I can address just one at a time, and it’s overwhelming, all of it, and they don’t understand, they don’t listen, it’s as if history has a voice of its own, as if time never mattered, as if my time sits and waits for the rest of us, and I can’t help but cry, thinking, feeling, writhing, borrowing all the energy I can get, and it hurts, stinging as if a part of me dies in each step I take, the bones of a clay nation growing brittle like a song, my song, notes and characters of a different time, they call to me, tease me as fiction does, fiction to rule my world, drive me mad and curse me again, speaking in gentle, awful licks, flicks, those pricks I want to gouge their eyes out, those stupid, wretched fucks, I want them to feel it too. And I think. I think I can manage. I can sleep most nights. I can imagine what stars would look like on my palm. They glow in holographic projections and I wonder how much of it could be real. I can play with the galaxy and bear witness to a spiraling imagination, one set loose under the weight of eighteen and a half lifetimes. I’d rather not be dead, thank you. As much as I’d like to implore you, friend, to use your words, I know that they will mean nothing. Isn’t that silly? Am I stupid for thinking this time, maybe things could be different? I break at the yawn of gods, sipping blood and ambrosia soup. There’s nothing left for me. This much, I am certain.

But I'm not real at all and you know this, like it might be a secret between the two of us, and I think it brings me some joy to know that you see me the way I see you. There’s a connection there, I think it is, and within the doubt I can uncover something truly great. It’s a person, don’t you think? There’s a person there, between the feelings and the molecules and synapses that bind me to different places and names and events all the same. All the same, because sanity discounts nothing. Picket lines are made of depression and I’m a witness to the wonderful things that letters will inspire you to become. The most playful words, I think they are, and there’s a character in them that’ll spell greatness. But this, out of all the things I think I know, I have the most confidence in: I’ll get my wish someday. I just hope you won’t live to see it come true. My cells are bursting at the corners and by the seams, where genetics meet the enzymes they worked so hard to sponsor, to disseminate for some prosperity they have no concept of. Genes don’t think, silly. They just do. And I’ve learned too much over the years. Enough to set me back another generation. Like, it’s some great anthology but it all just lacks order. And I will never have the time to make it real. So let me go

(force-input-box:"=XX=","the words were simple, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. How do you see this ending? what are you afraid of, are you forgetting something? there was nothing to know. yet still coming to terms with myself, that i, too, could say something that was worth hearing. too much room to live, and here i cant stop suffocating. if time could end, i would want to sample touch like terror, breathe life like rain, is this what he would’ve wanted? It was not a shallow hill. From here, we could take on one more journey. We could wake up to choose. Point to the ground and say that this is worth living for. With whatever I did, it brought me here, so it couldn’t have been all bad. What would I do with myself if I lived with regrets? If we don't meet again, I'd still want to find it, a divisive memory, never to break, never to give up. If I can find it. You had a reason. A reason. A reason. A reason. If I can find it. If I can, if I can't, I know how this ends. It's not what any of us would’ve wanted. I took for granted that I could swim and soar and scream, and now, returning to an empty household, I made the mistake of a promise. Had I known it would be so fast, I'd change myself if I could. I imagine you would laugh, too. It was a string of beautiful coincidences. To know you. It was a miracle. Words tore me apart. I wouldn't have had it any other way. There was noise. Before nothing. Drowning in ink. If I could stay here, amidst this white noise, if I could stay here forever, holding onto pictures no better than the real thing, if I could lose my inhibition, if I could do it again, if I could do it again, in a world where nothing matters, in a world where I have the power to choose, in a world where I can learn the difference between fiction and machine, if I could remember why I came here, are you forgetting something?")