and more scraps. this is certainly not the darkest timeline, just reading a lot of Murakami at the time.

*****

Somewhere nearby, time is ticking. Lean hands dutifully counting every second with absolute precision. When the smaller hand reaches the thirty-four second mark at precisely 11:26 A.M. however, it pauses. Had she been paying attention, she might have felt her reality shift just then. She might have understood that particular moment had lasted longer than any other and it was highly likely that nothing would ever be quite the same; that her entire life had just been altered due to something no one could have possibly predicted. She hadn’t noticed though, and no one was about to explain it to her.  So, this young woman, normal as any other, oblivious as you and I, continued on as though this new reality was the old, buttering her toast and swatting crumbs off the comics page of her Sunday newspaper.

further scraps. at one point in time I was convinced I could write a novella. I got through most of it and then decided I had no idea what I was doing. 

***** 

A bumbling slick mass consumes him in the middle of the street. They swarm over him, a vague outline of his figure still visible through their transparent layers, and he does nothing to resist, but he mouths something to me as his body is engulfed by unreal gelataneous beings. When he’s gone, the mass of jellyfish turn to me and the neon signs overhead keeping the intersection alight shut off almost methodically, one by one, darkness inching towards me, masking the motion of the crowd.

I can hear their tentacles slipping along the pavement, coming closer. Only one lights remains, just above my head. There’s a sick suckling noise issuing from beyond the light, accompanied by the soft fizzle of electricity. If I were to reach out my hand, extend my fingertips past the sudden opaque darkness, I could feel them. I could be swallowed whole, just as he was. So I do.

digging through piles of unorganized writing from the past few years. most are awful, but there are a number of pieces that I recall being attached to for some reason or another. they’re all unfinished and will likely remain that way.

***** 

When he makes love to her, it’s borderline macabre.  All silence aside from his laboured breathing as he moves between her tense thighs.  She traps any possible sign of satisfaction in her teeth and let’s him finish, her arms lazily slung around his torso.

She wants to go back; she tells him so.

He stands behind her, just out of reach and unable to process his wife’s statement, extends a hand to touch her naked shoulder to bring her inside.  She manages to shrink away without even looking his way, baring herself entirely to the view and beyond.  The small slice of dingy sunset over green water she can barely glimpse through the brush surrounding them has her enamoured.

They find her body forty-three days later, washed up on a neglected bit of private beach, miles from their home.  The coroner at hand cites it as death by asphyxiation.  He knows this means she died peacefully.  The last moments she was alive were probably the most calm she had seen in years, but it still does nothing to comfort him.

everything is a hazy clamouring dream now
transparent & transient as the depths breached
in the shortest of hours. 

I should be afraid to say this;
crawling out of my skin my mind
because we’re supposed to be frightened
and damaged
and perpetually unhappy
embittered by the weight left on our tiny shoulders
by mothers fathers sisters brothers lovers strangers
or just by ourselves
our selves
singular beings
thrown to the ground with nothing
our landscape is one of dystopia
and deep dark distinguished despair
longing
ever longing
every longing
more impractical than the last
so we fall and fail until failing is our natural state
and in time our bony contorted bodies will evolve
to take a beating —

I should be terrified. 

some days I feel small. collapsible.
you could fold me over again and again, limbs precise lines, deliberate and angular as a paper crane sitting tall on it’s own. a shell as sturdy and delicate as glass, housing nothing nothing nothing but atmosphere, fleshmade transparencies like a May breeze which rushes through over around you, a reminder that you are something, one whole entity, a universe compacted into one tiny perfect being, and yet you are part of something larger still and you swing on forward and back in a pendulum rhythm which echoes the arc of your very own grace.
on these days I feel the most powerful. not precious — potent. a ticking bomb on the ocean floor.
a star on the verge of collapse. dark matter. constant flowing volatile energy prepared to burn and crash inward for eternity only to form again; just as small, just as polished, and just as indestructible.

I’m waking up night after night, body dripping, covered in sweat and moonlight and nothing else. The odd angles of my own limbs offer no explanation for the eternal internal ache which I have come to recognize as something entirely unlike illness. Medicine might calm my symptoms for the time being but such spiritual sickness will hardly be put to rest so easily. 
Each night it swells 
filling the forgotten corners of my self 
pushing past the dust
clawing at the surface
making its way outside the cage. 

not nothingness 

not a void 

a swollen well of matter, deep within the confines of this vulnerable primordial prison I refuse to relinquish to any other. 
this celestial body — compressed, dying, pulsating. 
rhythm so easily mistaken for a beating heart; 

just as powerful 

as keen 

as beautiful. 

maybe I’ve been dreaming, lost in a myriad of days rendered untouchable by a simple presence 
lost in vignettes of diaphanous images which draw heat to skin in a sticky dew 
one body making up for the warmth of two which it so desires, mist spread like constellations pure and new 

as dust 

as vapour. 

resist the placebos. 

hold on to that ache as though it’s the last flickering light in the galaxy because maybe it is and that sickness is something real, physical, to hold on to, a reminder to bring me back to the beauty who should be resting so sweetly in the crook of my arm.

go back to sleep.

back to you.

and you.

and you.

We go to war with ourselves, our minds, identities; the mind becomes a battleground and we’re trying to pick up the pieces, trying to forge something shiny out of the scraps left behind, so clearly forgotten once all fantasies of youth have been washed away much like the hangover taste of the next morning, heavy with stranger’s spit and fuzzy ale stuck to your tongue. We know we’re not alone in feeling so lost at sea, but most days, banding together over wide choppy waters hardly seems an option. Our lingering war wounds are unique to us and it’s not unusual that the stitches will split and we’re left right where we started, cursing and bloody and without any sense of hope. But we stand by one another as we each grapple with our own base nature, whether it be a fight for acceptance, dominance, or a single strike, one fatal blow that will bring this great tiring thing shattered and collapsing down on us like icicles, like rain, rushing through fingertips, washing away, sleek, wet, smooth, new and whole.

sometimes you can remember the drinks that led you to bed; other nights you can’t, and what you remember is breezy darkness, an expanse of phosphorescent plains below you as you climb higher and higher and higher and the panorama buzzes beneath the hill where he kisses you. And when you wake up to garish sun the next day, you creep away and he remains a stranger from a strip of heady translucent film rolling behind your eyes.

you let this happen again and again because you have no idea what you are or who you want and you think maybe the mouth of a stranger can remedy that. 

you build a small collection of intimate slideshows of touches and empty nights, for the sole purpose of letting them haunt you, like that will suddenly give meaning to the person you’ve let yourself become.

or maybe they’re not a stranger at all. You go to bed sober and wake up even more so. It gets worse. Pushing naiveté aside in favour of being a stranger yourself comes as naturally as the passive expressions you have no choice but to arm yourself with as a means of keeping yourself shut up safe. 

And it works. And then it doesn’t. 

but you’re happier than you could have imagined because you’re no longer waking up with a ghost — in fact you’re no longer waking up with anybody.

what if perhaps one day you wake up and you get a sense that all of that strangeness you’ve learned to cloak yourself in has seemingly evaporated?  

and if there is a person lying next to you, they aren’t just some stranger? and neither are you?

when you wake up with an overwhelming sense of belonging, and being present in that particular room wrapped in nothing but yourself and bright white sheets is all you need, all you can possibly hope your future to feel like; what do you do then? 

feels like it’s been awhile.

Seeing the body of someone I loved being carried slippery and blue and lifeless through my living room is not something that will ever just evaporate from my memory. I remember what I was wearing, what album was playing, the weather, the sound of the water running, the feel of the blankets underneath me, the noise from the other room, the panic as I tried to break down the door climb through the window do anything to get into that stupid little room. I had to clean up bits of plastic and drag the coffee table back inside after the ambulance left. Fighting and being too tired to fight anymore followed by the longest night of my life and by even longer days, laying in bed waiting for the heroin to worm its way out of his body, because he refused the hospital and I was too stupid to make him go. 

I’ve rarely felt such contempt, disappointment, or confusion in my life. It’s amazing that I still pick up the phone when he calls; somehow, we’re still on good terms. I’ve always leaned towards the philosophy that everything happens for a reason, but this seemed gratuitous before it was even over. I was never going to change his life, not really. 

I see its purpose now though, and while I’m not grateful this happened, I understand it, and maybe next time I bump into him I’ll be able to think about more than just that track mark on his arm that never seems to fade. I doubt it, but I’m trying to remain optimistic these days.

I was young and stupid and desperate and longing for anything; I could’ve just said fuck it.

I had had my heart properly broken for the first time. The sort of pathetic first heartbreak where you’re convinced that no one in human history has felt as wretched as you do when you’re lying in a pile of blankets on the floor, crying until you can’t anymore, because of course he would go out with her, she’s perfect, she’s not you. Like, that’s it. Game over. No chance left in Hell for you, girl. Of course at that point in life, the only way to pick up the pieces is to drag your feet to endless parties and drink like your throat isn’t burning and you don’t hate everyone and somehow find yourself latched on to someone new.

I was 17. He was 23. I think about that now and it makes my skin crawl, even though it was really nothing, and these things come and go like it doesn’t matter now. I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t even remember his last name. Did I ever know his last name? Maybe not. His first name still irks me — why did it have to be the same as my dad’s? and my stepdad’s? and what is wrong with my mom?

The playground wasn’t always a pile of savage angles made of metal and plastic and rubber. A ship had been moored in the sand for years, vast and unfettered by our future miseries. All the things it wouldn’t see.

Perhaps if it had still been there, I would’ve just gone with it; my already-foggy-vodka-mind filled with deluded thoughts of lovelorn pirates finding solace underneath the mast in the arms of some blah blah blah blah whatever. It was nearly four in the morning when I walked home, feeling more than alien and colder than I should have, considering the weather.

I passed by on my way to the watershed yesterday and the playground was surrounded by temporary fencing. Half-dissected, the structures looked obtuse and lonely behind the blue barriers. Ready to be stripped away, just like that ship. It had been long enough, I suppose. It’s always a bit sad to see something from your youth leave, but this was different, somehow. As much as I hate to think back on it, I learned something brilliant about myself that night, and it was pivotal in creating the person I am now, which is something I hope I never lose. Seeing that plaything dismantled felt like it was alright to finally relinquish those memories. No longer try to spare myself from them, just let them be, and maybe I will finally smile at the way 17-year-old me acted and reacted one bizarre night in the dimly lit park in which I had spent my worst years.

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