i feel shame. the kind that comes from just existing.


a disembodied fat arm rotates the greeting card rack. i've created distant cousins in the south. and more and more i feel less distant from these people. while they constantly remind me i am different. i have a high school diploma. i've been to college. i don't have children. i am not married. or divorced. the only one who is one. strangely solitary and intellectually isolated. saying strange things and talking to myself constantly. disappearing acts. still trying. still looking for something. not giving up. i'm lending myself too much credit. i have no idea what's going on. but feel the desire to be sleeping in a car again. to be passing through city after town after city. knowing no one. living no real life. i feel a tiredness that sleep alone could not quench. and death now seems so humorous. not existing. just vanishing with the day. there are better people. far far better.

+

i was attempting solitary sleep. as the friends we were, there was crying, and it was winter. we wrapped ourselves in blankets and sat on the stoop outside the front door, without pants. the other front door, and smoked cigarettes, feeling vulnerable. just sitting. and as the friends we were, often times we would sit in the basement, the both of us together, while i cried and asked rhetorical questions about my self-worth. i suppose i should just appreciate the tight skin around my face, while it still holds to the bone. one day it won't so much. and on another day it won't be present at all. just bone. the thrill of leaving has left me. alone to take care of only myself. and often times, i think of my hurt feelings, how silly of a human condition, to contain such grief for something so intangible. but it was tangible. there were hands. and sometimes, but very rarely, i inadvertently find myself imagining the act which affected me so. and inadvertently the knots form inside of me, my stomach and throat spasm with the onset of tears. my body prepares for the outpouring of an emotional state. because something tangible did take place, and i know there was blood pumping inside the veins and organs. deep breaths and wanton signs. mouths sucking salty skin, leaving the marks to witnessed later. all while i slept far away. and i try very hard to keep these thoughts just as far, but occasionally they come to me suddenly, without initiation, like repressed memories that aren't mine. they belong to other people. they must belong to better people, because i'm the one who wasn't there. who was there, but quickly forgotten somehow through substance and darker hair. deeper eyes and intellectual conversation. i didn't know that these things made a constant life disappear into thin air like some fleeting thought about how you have to mail this letter before the post office closes. if i'd known this, maybe i would have been more careful. and i am told of all i have. life is so simple. here is my gratitude, i'm telling you that i have no one now. there will be no received comfort. and when they say i have them, i see the half-hearted feelings behind words i know are true. so now, when they say they love me, i don't care as much. my life is a series of moot points i can do nothing about. there is no pursuit, except within myself, and i'm getting tired already. and knowing that alone will last for a long time makes the spirit predisposed to weariness. it makes for envy, anger and sadness. i don't want to be so cynical! so no, i don't care much for love these days. because it has given me so much, only to leave me for other people. and such is life they say and i believe them. it is truth, but why waste the time. and why should i dance. i'm only sad and dancing. trying to force something inside of myself to feel good again. for just a little while let me rest, please i say this with such desire. for just a little while let me remember what it was like to feel contentment, and resist the disappointment when i recall that these are not good times now, and i can no longer have that which was so good. or at least let me relive what was self-sufficiency. an honest concern for simply myself. these days i find too much pleasure in taking care of others, and living without it is now detrimental. why is my grief so trite. heartbreak is so overdone, you would think that people would stop doing it to each other. you would think that through my thought process i would be capable of releasing it. but i haven't been able to yet. try as i might, somedays it doesn't seem possible to me anything more than just human. thank you for this. i am thanking you for this. thank you. thank you. thank you.