This is the new beginning. The new originals. The new today. This is not countable. It is impossible to count. Impossible to accurately measure. If the universe has a bookkeeper, then this is accounted for somewhere. But for all real purposes, there will be no count. It’s a thought exercise. Like wondering how many potentially fatal doses I’ve ingested, or how many times I’ve actually been close to death. No one is counting. But it is a set of integers greater than one and less than infinity.
Sociopath
Of course, we all have the ultimate responsibility for who we end up being. By the time that happens–is happening– blame has almost no real value anyway. And culpability is only recognized by the small subset of the guilty who possess insight and the ability to feel guilt.
Everything is nothing
Peace seems like a silly word to use here. Which is weird because I’m a pacifist. My rage looks in the mirror and hates what it sees. The milieu is safe. I’m pretty sure I’ve never hit someone in anger on purpose. Your conspicuous rage baffles me. Which is weird because there is a storm in the center of me that will never quiet. It’s the sun and the moon and the stars, all at once, burning a fire that never stops.
Diaphragm
I wish to think that we’re not just slaves to dopamine and serotonin levels. The cynic in me recognizes chemicals and their resulting imbalances. The part of me still capable of tricking the rest cries, “Love!” I listen to songs or I read poems and the words shuck and jive, as they should, but sometimes one or three land a punch to the celiac plexus and still manage to draw my breath. Just like the literal and metaphoric heart, the diaphragm is a muscle that might work forever without your notice. Until something goes wrong.
Ambition kills
You don’t know me like I was. The me when I was corporate. It’s why I was always welcome and always rehired through my myriad proclivities. You never understood my value, and it’s why you wrongfully think I have no ambition. I am loyal. I am political to a fault. In that world, I only knew resilience and survival. I ate people I didn’t like or who I thought were unhelpful. I would sabotage your bungee cord and return your smile when you jumped. I’m much, much softer now. There are still teeth in my mouth and bile in my gut.
Letter to someone
It’s weird, all these things I curated to a greatness in my mid-teens have come around to be the defining characteristics in haute couture. You might know the story of how I went to undergraduate Tacoma with nothing but a box of ill-fitting sweaters, two pairs of size-44 Levis 501s (that I squeezed into so I wouldn’t have to buy a bigger pair), and 500 LPs ranging from Kiss to Depeche Mode to Iron Maiden to Nina Simone to Queen to Rocky Horror to Miles Davis to the Escape From New York Soundtrack. I didn’t even pack a turntable and wouldn’t have one for my first three months in school. I carried all of those albums into a future I had no idea what would bring; they were how I defined a pretty big part of myself. And in just 12 months, I would trade all of those albums at the Jelly’s on Pensacola for the promise of about 40 “permanent” compact discs.
The lament I have for that moment is not financial. There are far greater “what—ifs” that would have resulted in far higher values lost or found. At best, those albums might fetch five figures if the collection remained intact, and mostly undamaged (highly unlikely). I lost more selling Apple stock too early (I still made a lot, not life-changing a lot). But that makes for a good story. This one always feels like a blow long lost could-have-been. Those albums were me. And I traded them all in for the illusion of a new permanence. I rebuilt that CD collection even larger, and the mp3 collection larger still. But I’ve never had something in my personal space like those discs.
The salt
This is how you fall when it’s inevitable. Falling when you stumble is so predictable. The shoestring. The inevitable. Falling when you know you’re falling.
Brush off the arms pulling you perpendicular to the ground. “Brush off” has more intent than what happened. Shrug off is a better choice of words. Ignore the whispers. Ignore the screams. Ignore the blood. Blood coagulated. Coagulated. It made the effort to stop. This is not that. This is, I don’t know.
Wake up to a dog licking your knee because it (your knee, not the dog) was still bleeding. He liked the salt. (I type that, and I suddenly find it very funny.) He liked the salt. Not table salt. Not sodium chloride. We iodize it because, by itself, it is not enough. This is all a metaphor.
Now you are her
Heartbreak—no matter how predictable or anticipated—lands as a singularity, a before-and-after point. Once there was warm certainty, now cold distance. Once there was we, now only me. Once there was you, but now you are her.
Rehab doesn’t work
Generalizations are usually not a good idea. This one holds. This is not a qualitative deconstruction. There is no agenda. Look at the numbers. Crowdsource the answer. You can lie, but 1 billion nods move in the same way. Listen to anecdotes. Ask anyone even tangential to the process. Yes and no questions are rare, but here, the answer, like 1+1 is always 2, is always no. I can point to 200 that died today. In memoriam. Black and white. Slow-motion. That’s heroin and alcohol. Those are easy. It doesn’t matter. Choose something slightly less toxic, at least slower. Tobacco? Sugar? Ask someone to stop. Put a black lung on Instagram, then reply with a cirrhotic liver. Give someone a new lung. A new liver. Say,” Don’t smoke.” “Don’t drink.” Metastasis is far more clever than you are. It’s far more insidious than even me. Just quit. You know better. Try harder. Yes, 12 steps that anyone can choose at any time, and it’s all in this big blue book. Now, choose it. Choose. You’re not trying. It’s your original sin that makes you choose otherwise. It’s a choice. You choose no. You choose to lie where you are. You are choosing. To lie. Lie where you are. Don’t choose. Don’t choose. You. For the overwhelming majority, rehab doesn’t work.