9.30

Today, I summited the mountain, and looked down, and all I saw was milky whiteness. The wind pulled fingers of fire and ice alternating through my skin, and I shivered behind a thin layer of solid stone. Today, I summited the mountain, and nothing will ever be above me again.

9.29

Rah Rah America
The good old, good old, U S of A.
A country I live in--I suppose it's okay.

[Written while putting on flag socks to go to school today]

9.28

"Have you heard what the teens are doing these days?"
She leans forward, spins her head. Her breath hovers in her chest. "No, I haven't. My Maisie doesn't come by as often as before, but--"
"I'll tell you, they've gone and cut holes all down their pants. All down their pants, Mary, you wouldn't believe."
"Maisie used to come over just about every afternoon." At this point, there's no attentive attitude. She's melted back into her seat and let go of that bated breath.
"The pants--well, they're more shorts than pants, but with a strip of cloth running down the backside to an ankle at the bottom. There's no fabric from shin to thigh on the front! It's a riot, Mary."
"We used to have such a lovely time." The room around her isn't, anymore. She's on the front porch with the door open, watching a toddler trying to put the water back into a sprinkler on the yard.

9.27

Her wingtips are silvered, like she flew through a lightning storm and came away with just a bit of that electricity on her. The line of her leg is terminated by a talon. Her eyes are golden yellow.

9.26

Do you tell yourself stories? I do. I imagine myself in mundane scenarios. I imagine people handling me in a conversation. I imagine women ignoring me. I imagine conversations with friends, with enemies, with myself. I imagine myself trapped, constrained, trying to deal with the interminate future of four close-set walls. I imagine being used, being described, being opened up and examined.

I don't tell myself stories of victories, though, of reciprocal desire, of small comforts.
I'm happy enough in my everyday life. I wouldn't need the fantasies; I'd waste them. I'll save them for later, but--

What if you only have so many stories before you run out?
What if all my stories are sad?
I should look it up, but nobody's written that book yet.

9.25

Pouring another glass of the thick, black medicine, I concentrated on the musical sound of my grandmother's voice in the other room. "Well, I started seeing him when I was only a child, you know, but he started seeing me when he was a man. Really, it was just a case of missed connections." I leaned into the doorframe with the glass in a white-knuckled hand.
"Ready?"
"Oh, never. I've enjoyed talking to you, though." She turned, and patted the empty air, as if to say "I'll miss you, of course." I handed her the glass, and she drank it without complaint. Her eyes lost the light of moments before, and she looked around the small room as though she was surprised to find herself in the place. She turned new eyes on me. "Again?"
"Yeah."
"Who was I this time?"
I shook my head. There was no point in telling her. It would only hurt. I sat down, and we drank the silence for a time.

9.24

I'm quarrelsome today. I groused at my mother and whined at my work, but I did the chores and I struggled through the assignments.
Who can say if I was a good man at the end? Must I go silently through my day, or can I yell and scream as long as I, at the end of the day, have accomplished my goals?

Anyhow, three lines. Such a small task, but today--overwhelming.

9.23

Antecedent grief to a previous sorrow still informing the shape and sound of the current disaster, I have chapters. What is it like to die? I don't think about it. Flesh is squishy and wet. Is that what it's like inside mine? I don't think about it. What caused my brain to initialize? What happens after it terminates? I don't

think about it.

[Stephen sent me this song two weeks ago. It's still in my head sometimes.]

9.22

Troth is I, thy most flight-happy captive, spite-having,
Who can lose a heart to you (beats, that is, if truthfully youth
Has what for loss), but you, my mishap perhaps, wait.
Thy inner cavity thus metronomically replete withal, and
My members removed to move in you withal, and
Our "something" become as stagnation within,
I feel: dry heat, a fresh weal, live bones now cracked steel,
Shared skeleton and flesh fresh mine, I find
That pulmonary sack filling a puissant lack, is
Now first to pain, gnarled, fired, and slain
Ludicrous, lavish solution to a lost life.
Theft? No. I think to thieve, a gift won't do.
My organ, our chest, our life, my grist.

Be, beauty, a better bride.

9.20

I watched a kid lean into his girlfriend today, his toes tense and his neck bent. I heard a woman laugh with her partner today, hearing a funny story for the millionth time. I saw a man's ring today, bounding his finger and signing his commitment. I saw a full life today, and I fancied the colors of it. Hot yellow, white at the fringes crumbling into old, used red. Bright blue, flashing out blue, unlivable blue. A soft, permanent black, a nighttime gloom, limned with silver and hiding white. The palette of today was worth painting for you.

9.20

I've been more fastidious, more contientious, more dedicated before. I've accomplished, experienced, lived. The problem is that I've never done so much all at once. I'm too large inside, uncontainable, indeterminate. I'm a symphony in sets of three, and I'm overwhelmed, overjoyed, underdeveloped.

9.18

Posthumously, I will fear you. For right now, you're human, flesh and blood and dripping snot, a sack of skin and muscle laid atop a spire of bones. Posthumously, you'll be legend and lore: untouchable. That, I can fear. That, I will fear, for I fear the unknowable, the unknown.

9.17

That same old lariat is pooled around the toes of his working boots. He hasn't touched it in years, and it's cracking into dust. There's no new mud in the tread, no new tears in his shirt, no new scars on his hands. The old work has died and took with it his self, and if you don't think that's sad, you're looking in the wrong place. He falls asleep, there on the edge of the bed, his boots just fresh kicked off, his hand trailing, gripping the coils below as though for the first time, as though he can use it to lasso the better times to bring them back.

9.16

This is not a pitiful story.

I wrote a paragraph about a cracked glass. I hated it.
Three sentences a day is supposed to be enough, right? But I've lost the edge I once had. I'm incapable of writing about anyone but myself because I don't know anyone else. My parents are too happy or too sad, I'm not sure. My friends are thousands of miles away. The people I interact with daily are either not daily or just shallow acquaintances. I'm sequestered. I don't listen to people or watch them interact anymore.
Maybe this teaching thing will be good for me, to have a responsibility every day again for a time. I just hate having to do something I didn't choose for myself, don't understand completely, am not excellent at. I hate it.

That's why I hate writing, finally. I might not be good at it anymore.
This is weepy.
I'm done.

Maybe I'll write something good for you tomorrow. Something enticing, something about a sword and an enemy and three paths at a fork in the woods. Something ugly and acceptable and loving taking the place of the beautiful broken people in your life.
Maybe I'll stop writing about her.

9.13

I am thankful for my crazy cool body, the way my eyes work, the precision with which my limbs move, the way the skin moves over the back of my hands, the scars on my arms and knees.
I am thankful for my incredible brain, the way I read and understand, the intuition into other people's emotions by subtle facial cues, the language I can use to communicate when my face fails, the incredible emotion I feel when good things happen.
I am thankful for the freedom to do nothing some days and still feel financially secure.
I am thankful for the inanimate benefits that prop me up every day.

9.12

I've held the bar of my kite as the wind whistled, loud, through the foil. I'll be honest, it was terrifying, that knowledge: any second, a gust could come and knock me off my feet. White-kuckled, I held to the bar, desperate to let go, holding to the edge of my ability, my feet light on the ground as I desperately struggled to dig in, begging for the grass to wind up around my ankles, to keep me from flipping away on the next breeze. Let me tell you, I wanted so badly for my forearms to give up their ache, to feel strong again so I wasn't so afraid of the power of the kite. But terrified as I was, I would do it again.

Maybe it's this way with life. Maybe we make poor decisions and skate at the edge of our ability for so long because it's the thrill and the rush of feeling that knife's edge of death at our throat. But we don't see the precipice of chance for what it is, and when we're finally, inevitably dragged from the edge, we reach our fists up and curse God and the fates for doing to us what we could have seen, had we opened our eyes.

I'm waiting for the wind to rise again, though. I wish you could come fly with me. We'd poke at the probability of faceplanting, of lacerations and contusions, of wrapping the kite around a power line or a tree and losing it permanently. We'd take the risk because that's what's worth living. Don't say you're not tempted. Come, fly a kite with me.

9.11

I got new glasses today, and the pounding spike of iron between my eyebrows is probably their fault. I won't explain to you the gnaw of it, the pulsing dread of it, the inevitability of it. I'll only couch it in these terms: I have never not had a headache. Other people turn to me and complain of theirs, and I'll assess, in that moment. Inevitably, there's a dull ache scraping the lining off the inside of my skull. Today, it's risen above the noise and asserted itself into my consciousness.

Sometimes, I wonder if it's congenital, or if there's something I did wrong. Sometimes, I wonder about a cure. I suppose trepanation might solve me, or lobotomy, or cephalectomy. Wouldn't you like that? If I do it, I'll be sure to send you the results.

9.9

The arcane remnant of youth clung still to the thin frame sitting in front of me. Long since lost, it spoke through her teeth, as though pushed through a sieve. "I had desire, once. Heat! Ha! I remember it. But the warmth of it still dries the damp days in this cobwebbed cloister." I rocked forward in my chair, anxious. It sounded like the beginning of an unbelievable story.

9.7

The steel frame of this poor car is twisted just a few degrees from true. It's not so that you'd notice when you're looking at it, but it's enough that when you corner hard enough, brake hard enough, drive hard enough, one tire will lift from the ground. It's interesting that the owner still drives it, but honestly--there's nothing else much wrong with it. It's a functional car. It has air conditioning, a radio, comfortable seats, and a frightening wobble at highway speeds. I've seen him demanding more of this poor car, and it delivers every time. You wouldn't hardly know about the frame. I guess it's just one of those things. What are you going to do?

The wooden frame of this old house is twisted just a few degrees from true. From the inside, it's almost imperceptible. You have to stand outside and use the trees around as reference, and then you can see the list. It's still a habitable home, I swear it. The issues are miniscule. In a hard, face-on wind, you can see the walls shudder. A few of the doors stick in the jambs, and of course you can't open any of the windows or you'd never get them back down. But it has a functioning kitchen, a shower, air and heat, and a propensity to fall down in strong winds. I've seen the family that lives here, and they're normal in every way; they just live in an off-kilter house. What's wrong with that?

The human frame of this child is twisted just a few degrees from true.

9.6

I watched the wind tear needles from the pines, today. They tapped against the glass inaudibly, a golden cascade of thin light flecks. I was alone, inside, with no reason to stay, but I just didn't walk out. When it's that beautiful moment outside, and I'm in this husk of a house, I question myself. Yet the door stood closed, handle unturned. My shoes will never get the adventure they deserve.

9.5

Can I describe bone-tiredness?
There's a feeling I get in my chest when I really should be asleep. It's a feeling like the connective tissue behind my breastbone is all wore out from breathing so much. Its elasticity fails, or maybe it retracts back into its cave to sleep, and all I'm left with is a nagging pull on the back of my sternum.
There's a motion to my eyes. The lids droop closed, but that's not how I know I'm bone tired. When I'm fully exhausted, when I flick those hooded lids back open, I'll find that the left eye has wandered. It's just ever so slightly lazy, and it really starts to give up the ghost when I'm tired. I've been so tired before I couldn't keep it straight when the eyes were fully open. I don't do that anymore while I'm driving.
There's a sickness to my emotions. I'm never in bed. It's always too large. There's never enough space. Where a you should go, there are cold sheets. I miss waking up sweating, your legs uncomfortably hot against my legs, your back stuck to my chest, your breathing slow and shallow. I miss the idea of you.

9.4

Am I willing to be stuck writing the same love story over and over again? The pen of my life has ink left in it, but the scrawl is the same sentence, same sentence, ad infinitum. I want for inspiration, but this old heartbreak is all I have.

9.3

I have a skeleton inside me. Sometimes, I hear it clatter against itself. I can only see it in my mouth. I have a skeleton inside me.

9.2

I have waded out, deepening waters clutching my legs, tearing with cold fingers at the hairs there, sweeping a constant threat against the tenuous friction that holds my shoes against the rocks below. I'm open-faced, young, optimistic. I'm engaged and intelligent. The river below doesn't understand all this; to her, I'm only another fool who won't survive a lifetime with her, won't be able to keep up with her coursing strength, won't throw myself headlong into the fullness of her like so many others have failed to do before. She is strong and never static, pushing herself forward relentlessly. I dredge my fingers through the top slip of glassy coolness, and that tenor gurgle joins the baritone turbulence behind my legs and the bass tumble over the rocks beyond.
I'm obsessed. An hour passes; my legs grow numb. I've forgotten her constraints. She is encompassing, powerful. My mind neglects above, beyond. The rock below, the air above, the banks to the sides. I adore her and continually forget the conventions she can't break, the constraints she can't avoid, the collapsed view of the world her narrow valley affords.
Why do I lift, exalt? I want to, you understand. I close my eyes to the outside world. I make myself a river. All I want is to constrain myself to her boundaries. I lay back. I collapse into her world. My ears full of the sounds of her, my teeth now chattering, my bones now fluid, my breath now choked. My limbs now, my depth now, my heart now.
I stand, I leave before the bass tumble of water over rocks catches me and carries me down and over and through the wringer, before she destroys me, unthinking, unknowing that I exist, uncaring of her ignorance.
I drip dry on the bank and walk uphill, freer than she could ever dream, enslaved to her yet.