{Live while you can, and don’t regret a single goddamned thing.
she laughs, blowing a kiss over her shoulder. }
{Existence is meaningless,
she explains to you one night.
i live only to die,
as you do,
as we all do. }
{“It is better to have lived and loved than to have never have died at all.”
When you correct her, she shakes her head.
Tennyson was wrong. It was never about love, because love cannot be defined. Death, on the other hand—death defines life. }
{Death does not destroy me; it does not humble me.
it only gives me meaning—a goal, of sorts, she elaborates.
for what is life without death?
we shall all die, and be the better for it. }
If I could just disappear into my bedsheets, melt and disappear like the rain into the waves; if I could just cease to be, I would. Someone would notice, perhaps. There might be minor disturbances. Nights like these, however, sleepless, cold, empty nights filled with nothing but the sound of fingers and keyboard, nostrils and tears, swearing and writing. I sit here, procrastinating as I always do; and yet, and yet. When did I start this? I don’t know. When will I stop? When I’ve stopped entirely. If I ceased to exist, I might be mourned for a bit, yes, but I have never had much of an impression on the world in any case. If I had never existed scarcely anything would be different; others would fill the role I had so carefully stepped into, fearful of getting my feet wet or my clothes dirty. I have never been much of an asset to the world; honestly, I’m more trouble than I’m worth. This is becoming more and more apparent as I experimentally veer off of the path to what they tell me is a ‘successful future’. And yet, and yet. Do I want said future? What, if anything, do I want? I want to be young and careless, for a bit; I want to taste adventure and oblivion in equal doses, and decide which one I like best. I want to be, but I want to stop being. Even now, I type, trying to avoid a lab report. I hate them. They feel too much like lying. Science has never been, and never will be, my forte. Indeed, I’m rather useless in this aspect; it is almost a guarantee that I will royally fuck up even the simplest of lab instructions. So yes, it feels like lying; it feels like pretending to be smart, competent, pretending that even when things go wrong I still have them under control. Write-ups remind me of my failure, of how spoiled on success I have become. They have taught me that I break at the first sign of stress, and that improvisation is a worthy skill to have.
She reaches up and plucks fading stars from the night sky, clutching tiny pinpricks of dull, mistreated light by the fistful; she breathes life into each and every, sparks tumbling out to coax a hearth full of embers back into being; she closes her eyes and hums as the stardust mingles with the ash of her breath, a soft, unchanging chord both unknown and undefinable; she lets the white flames crawl up her arms, dance upon her shoulders, opens her mouth to the sensation of them dancing atop her tongue; she waits, with a small smile, as, one by one, each flies away—alive, whole, revitalized.
its cloudy outside
why is it cloudy outside?
there was sun yesterday
or was that the day before
i cant remember
i cant bring myself to care
its my problem, i know
im not satisfied with average, but thats all ill ever be
if i need to lie to make my way through life
if no one wants to hear me talk
if nothing i say or think or hear matters
i feel i want to die
but im not sure
i dont want to die
but i dont want to live
i just want to sleep
sleeping feels like being dead, dont you know
as long as you dont dream
and i always dream
Sadness, I have found, is not equivalent or comparable; the simple yet complex nature of the heart leaves much to be desired, and though sometimes I spend far too much time sewing proverbial hearts onto all my sleeves, in my dreams I am whole.
in my dreams i am intelligent
i am whole, i am perfection realized, i am all that i have ever strived for and more
and then i wake up, and i am this
i think im dying
or maybe thats part of the dream too
i make jokes
( insidious words, casual
remarks embedded
with the tension of truth )
( i wish they would kill me )
( not insidious enough )
One night, lying beneath the stars together (you learned very early on that hesitance was damning, that it was far better to jump and be done with it than to oscillate, teetering at the edge, looking for the latest reason not to fall), you lifted a finger and whispered all the names of all the constellations, you mapped the stars for her; she watched, rapt, as you traced them on her skin, for she was made of stardust and starlight, and you could taste traces of them on your breath whenever you kissed her.
One day, you called her beautiful, and she laughed and corrected you with ‘beauteous’; you asked her “what’s the difference” and she replied, “it’s all the difference in the world, darling”, turning toward you, willing, despite her impatience, to teach you words, to teach you the power of mouth and lips and voice.
“I’m dreadful at science,” she confesses one morning, with rare sunlight pooling in streams around her, and you simply smile, take her hand, and say, “don’t worry, i’ll teach you.”
One night it’s chemistry, the chemistry of your bodies, aligned just right to spark a chain reaction; you recite the periodic table from memory and she repeats it after you, memorizing every element as you have memorized every mark on her body (fluorine, that’s the scar on her right ankle; antimony, that’s the shape of her eyes).
Another, it’s physics, and you’re walking with her, showing her how to skip stones, noting the surface tension of the lake, the amount of force it takes to throw a rock, and how easily she beats you at your own game; newton was one hell of a guy, you tell her, when she laughs as usual and says, well so are you.
Your favorite lesson is biology, as it involves anatomy, you exploring her body and finding that yes, the textbooks were right, everything is where it should be, every bone and tendon and muscle; you name each and every part of her and she returns the favor, except in words like eunoia and videndus and concupiscence (you ask what they mean, but she simply smiles and presses her lips to yours, so you give in and file those words away for later, to be reviewed at an undisclosed time).
You hum sometimes, when her head rests on your chest and the sky above is placated, for a time, by the infectuously calm scene below. You and she lie there, heartbeat mingling in cut-time, eyelids drifting closed to savor the
moment. These days, you’re grateful; but then again, you’re always grateful, whether you know it or not. The tempo slows, a subtle ritardando of hearts. She is still in your arms, but you can sense the heat emanating from her warm,
warm body. You hum to the time of her heart and are rewarded when you feel her, in turn, tap her fingers to your beat. Together, synchronized, you watch the pale sun rise to take its place in the halcyon sky.
It’s a grey, dreary morning when she teaches you to write, to let words flow across the paper like an artist spilling paint across a canvas. Storytelling is so different from the essays and research papers you’re used to, a whole different beast. You let her guide your letters, piece together your broken, stumbling words with bits of string and duct tape, but you know that you will never be the logastellus, the natural raconteur she is. But she persists (it’s not that hard, come on, you’re brilliant, love, I know you can do it), and you find yourself beginning to make progress despite yourself. You try a different approach, and slowly but surely, the page begins to fill up with words. The letters are arranged artfully, irregularly, and with a start, you realize that what you were writing—what you have created— is poetry. She kisses you, then, and remarks that while she had always been good at arranging letters into stories, she had never had the patience for poetry. You kiss her back, softly, gently, taking your time as if you’re finding the words to a poem about her.
