"Cogito ergo sum"

They say if you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish…. then he’s gotta get a fishing license, but he doesn’t have any money. So he’s got to get a job and get into the Social Security system and pay taxes, and now you’re gonna audit the poor cocksucker, ‘cause he’s not really good with math. So he’ll pull the IRS van up to your house, and he’ll take all your shit. He’ll take your black velvet Elvis and your Batman toothbrush, and your penis pump, and that all goes up for auction with the burden of proof on you because you forgot to carry the one, ‘cause you were just worried about eating a fucking fish, and you couldn’t even cook the fish ‘cause you needed a permit for an open flame. Then the Health Department is going to start asking you a lot of questions about where are you going to dump the scales and the guts. ‘This is not a sanitary environment’, and ladies and gentlemen if you get sick of it all at the end of the day… not even legal to kill yourself in this country… You were born free, you got fucked out of half of it, and you wave a flag celebrating it… The only true freedom you find, is when you realize and come to terms with the fact that you are completely and unapologetically fucked, and then you are free to float around the system.

“I do this real moron thing, and it’s called thinking. And apparently I’m not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.”

This morning he forgets her next to his keys. He pours himself a cup of coffee and laces his shoes on the front stoop of his building. He taps his right wrist twice, searching for his watch, looking for the time. On the bus he asks an older woman if it’s half past ten and she responds with a nod, hugging her purse to her chest. The bus lurches. He stumbles slightly, wringing his wrists like dirty laundry in the back. The other day she began to fade. And he couldn’t grasp her hands or hold onto her waist or bury his face into her chest like he often does when they’re lying together in bed. Why do people always forget? he asked. And she gently touched his temple: oh, because people are just like that.

There it goes again. That heavy feeling in your chest when you don’t feel any desire to speak or move. All you want to do is close your eyes and sleep, because the process of being broken is incredibly exhausting. You attempt your best to make your days fulfilling, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to connect to anyone or anything.

You happened to me. I was happened to like an abandoned building by a bull- dozer, like the van that missed my skull happened a two-inch gash across my chin. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse. A new- born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone, swaddled in strange air I was that alone again, inventing life left after you. I don’t want to remember you as that four o’clock in the morning eight months long after you happened to me like a wrong number at midnight that blew up the phone bill to an astronomical unknown quantity in a foreign currency. The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me. You’ve grown into your skin since then; you’ve grown into the space you measure with someone you can love back without a caveat. While I love somebody I learn to live with through the downpulled winter days’ routine wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine- assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust- balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust that what comes next comes after what came first. She’ll never be a story I make up. You were the one I didn’t know where to stop. If I had blamed you, now I could forgive you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox- imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind, want where it no way ought to be, defined by where it was, and was and was until the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled through one cheek’s nap, a syllable, a tear, was never blame, whatever I wished it were. You were the weather in my neighborhood. You were the epic in the episode. You were the year poised on the equinox.

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

exaggerated fiction

“The last one was the only one who made me feel the way I have always wanted to feel. She made me feel better than I have ever felt, better than I imagined I could feel, and it scared me, scared me to the point of paralysis. When she offered herself to me, I failed. That failure drove me to destruction. I destroyed her, destroyed me, destroyed the two of us together. I destroyed the hope of a future. She will not speak my name now, nor will she acknowledge my existence. I don’t blame her.”

You were always so scared, even when you were being brave. How could I be mad at you for being so scared?! Every time you didn’t show up, I knew it was because you were just too scared and I never held it against you. There’s so much to be scared of in the world. All my friends are all terrified. All the time. My friends are afraid of being around other people. They’re afraid of being alone. My friends are scared to go to the store. My friends are scared that men are going to run them over on purpose. They’re scared to ride the bus. They’re scared everyone’s going to find out how to scare them and then scare them on purpose. I keep thinking about how scared you must have been. You left the house by yourself at night. Anyone who doesn’t understand how scary that is will never understand you or me or us.