directsleepingpill

[directsleepingpill]

Of All The Ways To Lose Someone, Death Is The Kindest

I tried praying once, but the gods I reached turned out to be locksmiths. Silent, deliberate, and weighing my grief like it was counterfeit.

They left me outside with everything I lost.

[directsleepingpill]

Feel Everything (At Least Once)

At first, I thought photography was about the act, about showing up with a camera and catching the world before it blinked. Travel more. Take more shots. Click until your fingers ached and your hard drive groaned. As if quantity alone could distill clarity. I believed that motion equals mastery. But somewhere along the way, I realized that not shooting at all, just standing there, letting light touch you instead of chasing it might be the better teacher. Live first, frame it later.

Writing was no different. I thought I had to bleed every day onto the page. Read everything, write everything, consume art like a starving thing. But that wasn’t it. The words I kept chasing only came when I stopped trying to deserve them. When I sat still long enough for something real to rot in me, quietly, then speak. The truth is, the best lines come after life has knocked the wind out of you. You can’t make art without living. You can't speak if you’ve never swallowed anything new, anything difficult. Live more. Watch films that makes you want to run away and become a sound designer. Listen to music that makes you believe in God for exactly three minutes.  Try drinking Guinness in a sports bar and hate it, then try it again just to be sure. Talk to your dogs. Pick up new sports. Talk to people. See what happens. Because probably good art doesn’t come from craft. It comes from corrosion. From what life takes from you while you weren’t paying attention. From the people who leave before they finish their sentence. From the rooms that go cold without warning.

I think that's why artists drink. Or use. Or disappear. Not for glamour, not even for inspiration. Not for the high, but for the shift. The chance to experience something, anything, everything from another angle. They want to see the same thing twice, but differently. They want to listen to the same music on different substance. They want to try to touch the wound, from the inside. Even pain feels different when you rename it. The best writers are already halfway dead. Because the deads don’t lie. Because when your body stops mattering, all that’s left is language, and language has sharp teeth. The kind that bites you and scars forever. It’s never an expression. Maybe art is about taking everything that could’ve killed you and turning it into something someone else might underline. Might reread in their death bed or sing it on a night they don’t think they’ll make it through. Again, probably the best artists are the dead ones. You get to experience hell and tell a thing about it. Maybe once you’ve danced with death, you stop writing about what things are and start writing about what they cost. And what a fucking privilege that is. To be alive just to feel it. To be dead just enough to say something true. 

[directsleepingpill]

[directsleepingpill]

Based on a False Story It rained for three hours straight today, the kind of rain that doesn't apologize. No lightning, no drama, just a steady whisper against the windows like someone trying to remember a melody they’ve already forgotten. I sat by the kitchen sink peeling an orange, watching the peel come off in a single spiral. It felt like an achievement. I wanted to show someone, but there was no one around, so I just stared at it, proud and a little sad in the way one gets when there’s no audience for quiet triumphs. The orange tasted bitter. Or maybe I did. Hard to tell anymore.

There’s something strange about the way time folds over itself when you stop marking it with the lives of other people. No more “this is the day we went to the cinema” or “this was the month of iced coffee and pretending we were okay.” Now it’s just days. Days with eggs and no eggs. Days with messages from the bank and socks that disappear in the washing machine. I used to measure time in touches. Now I measure it in weekly screen time and the weight of my own thoughts. I’m starting to believe that symmetry is overrated and mess is just another word for "honest."

The neighbor downstairs sings in Spanish when he does the dishes. I don’t know the words but I hum along, like I’m in on something I can’t quite translate. It feels good to be included in someone else’s rhythm, even when it’s unintentional. There’s a kind of intimacy in overhearing joy that wasn’t meant for you. Like catching the last note of a love letter drifting out of a mailbox.

I’ve been trying to write more, but my thoughts are like unpaid interns — scattered, unmotivated, and constantly asking for snacks. I started a story about a man who falls in love with a girl who writes poems, and somehow ended up writing about a box of milk rotting in the fridge. Maybe that’s the same story. Maybe love and expired dairy have more in common than I thought: sweet at first, then quietly leaking into everything.

I thought about how many versions of myself exist in the memory of others. The one who talks too fast. The one who never talks. The one who always smells like eucalyptus. The one who disappears without warning. None of them feel exactly like me, but maybe they’re not wrong either. Maybe I’m just a prism, different colors depending on who’s holding the light. I want to believe I’m more than the sum of my worst conversations, but I still flinch at the ones I didn’t finish properly.

And here’s the twist. None of this happened today. Not the rain. Not the orange peeling. I don't even eat oranges. Not the Spanish neighbor. Not the expired milk. I just missed telling someone a story, and sometimes I have to make one up just to feel heard. That part, at least, is true.

[directsleepingpill]

Never Challenge The Ceiling For A Staring Contest Some days it feels like crawling through molasses with a smile stapled to your face. Like you’re expected to carry grace in one hand and your own wreckage in the other. Don’t spill. Don’t spill a fucking drop. The truth? Nothing’s neat. Nothing’s fixed. Most wins look like surviving the afternoon without panicking. Sometimes the dishes get done. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the noise in your head shuts up long enough to remember why you started trying in the first place. It’s just one long fuck-you from the universe sometimes, and the best you do is brush your teeth, answer two emails, and not ghost your friends. You stand in the shower too long, scroll past everyone's story except the ones hidden from you, and pretend oat milk in your coffee is a form of self-care. That counts. The people who said “it gets better” forgot to mention the part where it also gets weirder. Quieter. Rougher around the edges. Like a sad song you used to love that now plays in a happy, major key. Some pain left quietly. Some turned into insomnia, into productivity, into organizing your drawer at 2AM like that might fix something. The rest shape-shifted into deadlines and social niceties and saying “fine” with a smile that feels like wet paper.

And when it comes down to it, I just want to be able to say I gave it all I had. Even if half of it was caffeine, antidepressants and white-knuckling the void.

[directsleepingpill]

Soft Apocalypse “Is it supposed to be blinking like that?” It’s the first thing she says after we step outside. The moon, dimming in pulses. Not winking. Not flickering. Blinking. Like an exhausted machine.

“Maybe it’s tired,” I say. “Of what?” she asks. I think of all the people who’ve whispered wishes into its craters like confession booths. “Of listening,” I tell her.

“Do you think it’s broken?” she asks. “If it is, it’s still beautiful,” I say. She doesn’t respond. She just picks up a rock and tosses it toward a vending machine that’s trying to sell umbrellas during a drought.

A few blocks later, we pass a payphone ringing to no one. “Don’t answer it,�� she says. “Why not?” “Because what if it’s the future calling to tell us we got it wrong?” She’s always been like that. Half-feral, half-philosopher. The kind of person who makes you feel like you missed an entire page of instructions just by standing next to her.

“What would you ask the future?” I ask. She shrugs. “If it still remembers me.”

We sit on the curb as the moon blinks slower now, like it’s falling asleep. The sirens start fading out. I think of all the things we were supposed to do before the world got strange; pay our taxes, learn patience, and stop ghosting ourselves. Instead, we’re here, counting satellite tears and waiting for a sign that never asked to be worshiped.

“Do you think the stars are still watching us?” she says. “Maybe,” I say. “But I don’t think they’re impressed.” She laughs, sharp and sudden, like shattering glass. “Good. Fuck ‘em.”

“I used to think the universe had a plan,” she says. “Maybe it does.” “Maybe,” she shrugs. “Or maybe it’s just a mess of missed calls and half-sent letters.”

I want to tell her she makes sense even when she doesn’t. That chaos in her mouth sounds like scripture. That every time she talks about pain, I get where it came from. But I did not say anything. “You know what I’d do if this really was the end?” she asks. “What?” “I’d leave a voicemail on that payphone. Something stupid. Something that mattered.”

So we go back. She lifts the receiver, presses buttons at random like she’s unlocking a door that never existed. And when the beep sounds— “To whoever finds this: We stayed! We fucked up and fixed what we could! We laughed when we should’ve cried and danced when the sirens started!! So if this is the end, know this! We didn’t run.” She hangs up gently, like she’s afraid of waking something up.

We turn to leave, but the payphone rings again. Just once. Then silence. She doesn’t flinch this time. Instead, she smiles, soft and crooked.

“Maybe the future called back.” And this time, I believe her.

[directsleepingpill]

Decades Measured In Sevens

When I was barely six, I believed the moon followed me home. That love was the warmth of fingers sticky from candy, and heartbreak was a scraped knee on the playground. I cried once when the rain wouldn’t stop, thinking the sky was sad because I’d forgotten my umbrella.

By ten winters, I had learned to lie politely. I folded my feelings like letters never sent, hid them between school books and shy glances. There was a girl who said I walk funny. I started running after that.

Eighteen, tasted like stolen cigarettes, midnight phone calls and profanities. I mistook attention for affection, and let someone write their name in the wet cement of me. They never came back to see how it dried.

At twenty four, I kissed a stranger at a party just to prove I was still soft. It felt like swallowing glass sharp, immediate, and easier than explaining what I really needed. I started writing poems I'd never let anyone read.

When thirty two comes, love arrived dressed like a mirror. I started measuring joy by how long it stayed. A girl asked me if I ever danced in the rain. I told her only when no one’s watching, but we both knew that wasn’t true. And we promised we'd do it someday.

On a Wednesday at forty five, I bought a flower just to watch it survive me. Spoke to it more kindly than I’d ever spoken to myself. It bloomed once, on a Tuesday and I grieved for reasons that didn’t need explaining.

Fifty seven arrived like dust in an old attic. Memories curled at the edges, still breathing beneath the yellowed folds. I danced with ghosts some nights, just to remember I had legs that still could.

Seventy three will find me alone. I’ll sit on a bench and feed crumbs to birds with the same hands that once held thunder. And if anyone asks, I’ll say I’ve lived a dozen lifetimes and died just as many, all for the ache that taught me my own name.

[directsleepingpill]

Give me a blade, and I’ll kiss the edge.

Show me your thorns, and I’ll show you hands ready to bleed.

Ruin me, and I’ll call it resurrection.

[directsleepingpill]

"How the Light Slips In", The Weather Report Was Wrong Again, pp. 114

Ezra used to think he had to outrun loneliness. That if he kept his calendar full enough—nights stretched across rooftops, bar floors, borrowed beds—he could trick time into believing he was invincible. There were years blurred by neon signs, taxi rides he couldn’t remember, and strangers he kissed just to feel something. He consumed things he couldn't pronounce and woke up in places he couldn't name. Everyone said he was living. Maybe he was. Maybe he was just very good at pretending.

These days, he mostly drives. He likes the way the city looks when it's almost empty—fast food wrappers chasing each other down the street, a flickering streetlight that refuses to give up. He still goes out sometimes, but the noise feels different now. Like a song he once loved but outgrew without realizing.

"You still coming tonight?" Marcus once called him over a poker night and wine—the cheap kind that tastes like burnt hopes. Ezra just shrugged. "Maybe. If the moon's out." Marcus laughed like it was a joke. Maybe it was.

Living isn’t about building walls anymore. It's learning which doors are safe to leave open. It's realizing that all sins are attempts to fill voids, but not every silence needs to be filled. It's answering, "I'm okay," and meaning it,even if only halfway.

The drive home feels softer now. The headlights blur like brushstrokes. The songs sound a little less sad. There are a hundred ways to spend a life, he thinks. Maybe the trick is finding the ones you'd want to spend twice.

[directsleepingpill]

Cardiac Arrest

When deciding what I am, I’ve ruled out mosquitos, cats, broken air conditioners, a closing shift, a small town prophet who once thought ghosts were made to steal money, a dictator who tortures people to death, nor the last drink you pour out of habit. Is there a memory in a KFC inside a gas station at 2 a.m. on a road trip no one finished? And do I miss that? Might not be the food, but the way we never checked the time. The more I learn about people, the more I want to be a vending machine in a thunderstorm. Misunderstood, but always holding it together. Until then, I’ll tell my lover I love her in Cape Town and Bangkok and bed, in loose t-shirts and black dresses and songs, in theory and facts and dreams, drunk, sober or high on medications. Still, the engine fails, still the apology’s late, and the stranger at the bus stop still tells me that pain is just feelings that got held too long. If given an option, I wouldn’t pick being human. If given a choice how to stay human, I’d say like a 5-stars hotel room left slightly messy — lived in, but not abandoned. While I have no answers to the questions I can’t pronounce, I can still mean it when I ask, “Are you feeling okay?” I can still mean it when I say I’ll call. In Los Angeles, in pieces, in echo, in the cheap seats of a Grab ride home, in missed calls, in general, in detail, in vain, in sympathy, in stealth —and right now as a poet wondering if doctors, during surgery, tell the dying and recycled heart it is loved. I think so. But I’ve never asked a heart how many voltages it needs in order to revive. Were you worn thin, were you worth all this trouble, are you still trying to beat?

[directsleepingpill]

What if readiness is a myth we invented so we’d have something to blame when things don’t go as planned? That would explain why so many good things happen just after you’ve told yourself you’re not prepared. It’s funny how often I’ve felt most alive in the middle of a half decision — or in that strange space right after doing something without knowing why I did it.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much time I’ve spent waiting for the right voice to come out of me, the one that sounds smart, or sharp, or gentle enough to be liked. And while I’m doing that, I’ve said a hundred things I didn’t mean, and left a thousand I did inside my head.

I used to think the point of writing was to make a point. Now I wonder if it’s enough just to get it out. Maybe clarity isn’t the goal, maybe it’s a byproduct of doing the work, of putting the words down even if they feel a little foggy.

This year, or this week, or this morning, depending on how brave I feel, I just want to keep writing. Even if I’m not the best at it. Even if my metaphors get lost halfway through. Even if there are people like my past significant who can craft symphonies out of words, while I’m just patching sentences together like a kindergarten boy. Even then.

I’m just trying to close the gap between who I am and who I think I should be. I want to write something without feeling like it needs to carry all my worth. Maybe this is just another small note to myself I’ll forget I ever wrote until I need it.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s worth something.

[directsleepingpill]

Half Conversations & Bitter Citrus

Cocktail bars always feel like they’re waiting for something. Not someone, just something. The next song, the next drink, a story that almost starts but doesn’t quite finish. I took a seat under the neon sign — half of it read "COCK," the other half "TAIL." Seemed appropriate. Next to me is a man checking his reflection in his Negroni glass; on the other side, a woman correcting a crossword in pen. There’s a light above me that flickers every now and then, but not enough to complain. The bartender listens with half an ear and still gets your life story in under six minutes. I tell him I want something with Gin and mood swings. He laughs, then gives me a Martini and a wink. Close enough.

Behind me, a couple is deep into their fourth round. Their hands never touch, but their words are practically leaning on each other. The woman in a green coat says something about betrayal and Blood Oranges. I’m not sure which one she’s been drinking. Her date chuckles nervously and stirs his drink without sipping.

I take a sip of my drink. It’s cold, clear, and says absolutely nothing back. But it doesn’t need to. Around here, silence isn’t awkward — it’s just part of the design.

When I finally get up to leave, the woman with the crossword looks at me briefly, then back at her puzzle. “Twenty-two across,” she says. “The answer is ‘departure'”. I don’t know if she means it literally or not, but either way, I nod.

Outside, I noticed the bar had shifted a few inches to the left. I didn’t know whether I was drunk or if it always does that — like it’s reminding you that even the things that stay, change.

[directsleepingpill]

How to Keep Going Without a Joystick

I used to think growing up would feel like finishing a video game. You beat the final boss, roll credits, maybe unlock a cooler outfit.

But it’s more like playing The Sims and realizing halfway through you forgot to build a bathroom, and now everyone’s shitting themselves while the kitchen’s on fire.

Adulthood isn’t linear. It’s not clean. It’s deleting 500 unread emails while reheating takeout you swore you wouldn’t order again.

It’s telling yourself you’ll read a chapter, then watching five episodes. It’s googling “what does a mortgage mean” at 3 a.m. and then googling “cheapest ways to feel something.”

My friends talk about retirement funds now. We used to argue about which Hogwarts house we’d be in. Some of them are parents. Some have therapists. Some still text me memes at 3 a.m. and ask if I think time is real. And I still don’t know.

But I’ve learned most of us are just riffing, half script, half improv, full-volume jazz hands. And maybe the closest thing to progress is putting on clean socks and opening the blinds, even if the sun’s being a little too loud today.

The truth is: I haven’t finished the game. Hell, I’m not even sure what level I’m on.

But I’ve stopped looking for the final boss. Now I just try not to miss the cutscenes.

[directsleepingpill]

The Museum of Clocks That Don't Tick

There’s a museum in a city that doesn’t exist on any map. It only opens after 2 a.m., and only to people who never learned to walk away the first time.

Inside, there are rooms. One holds every word that was almost said. Another: a hallway of glances that lingered half a second too long. No plaques. Just the hum of fluorescent regret.

In the center, there’s a rotating exhibit: A dining table set for two, but the chairs are mirrors. A coat left behind on a train headed nowhere. A voicemail box filled with unsent drafts. The air smells like rain that changed its mind.

Some visitors cry. Some try to steal things. One once tried to live there, but the lights dim if you stay too long. Security doesn’t kick you out. The building just gently forgets you.

At the exit, there's a guestbook. Most people sign it with initials. Some draw hearts. One entry, written in a left-handed scrawl, just said:

“Next time, I’ll leave the lighter.”

[directsleepingpill]

if time had a favorite hour, I think it was when stillness felt like a shared secret

Iris: I used to write poems just to feel heard. River: And now? Iris: Now I write them the way people hum when they’re alone. Not to be heard. Just because. River: People say time fixes it. Iris: Time doesn’t fix. Time just edits. River: Cuts out the middle. Leaves the opening scene and the final frame. Iris: Then plays it on loop until it doesn’t hurt. Or until it hurts in a way you get used to. River: I remember when you couldn’t play The Postal Service without weeping. Iris: Still can’t. I just cry quieter now. River: I’ve always thought grief sounds like a scratched record. Same pain, different skip. Iris: Or like those empty Cheesecake Factories at 3 a.m. Neon buzz. No laughter. Just the ghosts of someone else’s Friday night. River: That’s oddly specific. Iris: So was the hurt. River: You used to talk about love like it was Paris. Now you talk like it’s Detroit in winter. Iris: Paris was a postcard. Detroit feels real. Cold. But honest. River: I don’t think you’re broken. I just think your softness grew teeth. Iris: That’s the thing no one tells you. Getting better’s not always about daffodils and yoga. Sometimes it’s just eating takeout in a parked car, trying not to call someone who forgot your favorite movie. River: What was it again? Iris: Her. But now I pretend it was something else. Something that didn’t say too much. River: You still talk like you’re bleeding. Iris: Maybe because I am. But it’s slower now. Like a wound learning how to breathe. River: And sleep? Iris: Comes easier, it visits, not stays. Hot showers. Cold rooms. Songs without lyrics help a little. River: Sounds like peace and loneliness at a same time. Iris: It’s what I can manage. Although some nights I still can't sleep at all. River: Have you tried prescription? Iris: Yeah. Didn’t work. I need something stronger. River: Like what? Iris: I don’t know. Something instant. A pill that releases all the melatonins in my body within seconds. Anesthesia. A direct sleeping pill. River: I've checked the drug store. That kind doesn't come in bottles. Iris: Right. I guess they don't make medicine for that kind of ache.

[directsleepingpill]

Some Houses Don't Need Blueprints

some of us learned love like a fire drill, hands on the desk, head down, waiting for the danger to pass, even when it never did.

some grew up memorizing exits. never asked where the smoke came from, only how to leave before the room filled with it.

so when i see people dancing in the burn, calling it warmth, calling it spring, i don’t judge. but i do flinch.

i was taught to fold love small enough to carry alone. a note in the pocket. a light left on, but never the door. so when it comes with noise,  crumbled and unapologetic, i let it in, not despite them, but because of them.

like you always said, people talk.  they always do.  but love, the real kind i guess,  never needed their applause.  it only needed a place to land. 

i had that, once.  here — in the space we made where none of us needs to be perfect. i don’t know if you remember, but i do.  some nights louder than others.

[directsleepingpill]

Letter I Never Sent to Myself

Don’t chase urgency anymore. Breathe first, speak second. And when quiet comes, let it.

You used to shrink yourself so people had room to feel tall. Now, please, just stand. Quietly. Fully.

Don’t explain your joy when it comes from things others don’t understand. Swimming alone until the pool lights go off. Editing a masterpiece and never posting it. Or the way a sunset can wreck you. Or finding the perfect analogy wrapped in a pop culture reference hidden in your writing.

Stop giving disclaimers. No more “it’s probably not that good” or “I just threw it together.” It’s yours, and that’s enough.

The more you unlearn, the lighter everything feels.

You don’t owe the world anything just to exist. And if you ever forget that, you’ll write it down. Again and again. You won’t care if your hands bleed or if it blinds your eyes. You’ll write it down until it sticks.