flotus420

[flotus420]

dream about god

Two boys (blond and brunette) arrive in this world

It is oversaturated and blooming with emission and light

It almost feels like a jungle you can only experience in VR The boys are about 12 years old and they have just arrived with a goal; they are here to study and understand something that is not disclosed to me yet

They are both trying to solve the same puzzle through their two different perspectives

The brunette understands the world through a philosophical lens and is trying to figure out what happened here intellectually. He thinks through the way that the things around him are and why they happen.

The blond understands the world through what is physical. He climbs trees and feels water and wants to solve the puzzle through the natural, material world.

The boys only have so long to try their hand at the puzzle of this world before they must leave forever, and they must leave the world as they found it.

There is a girl here, though it is clear that she has been here for much longer than they have; however, she is the same age as the boys and doesn’t know much about this place from a material or philosophical perspective. But she is safe here and they do not need to tend to her or protect her. She is safe because she is of this world. There is a feeling though, between the boys, that they are involved in her fate because there is one thing they know that she may not.

The boys explore the world over many years, forming separate relationships with the girl as time goes on.They both bond with her in their unique ways: the brunette spends hours walking and talking about the way that the world is with the girl, and the blond runs through the forest and climbs mountains with her. They both come to love this girl with their entire heart, and she loves them. It is never spoken, but the feeling of overwhelming care and adoration for her is understood. The boys are never in competition and the love is never romantic; they understand her fully, each through their different lens. There is also the feeling that they created the girl and that their love is like that of someone watching their creation gain a life of its own.

There is also the feeling that the boys do not live here with her, but are visitors to this world. They have a place in a world outside of here that cannot even be planarly compared to this world. The girl remains here, though she is never lonely. The feeling that the boys leave or arrive is not present - they also “remain” here somehow and their lives are full in this world.

As they grow older, the boys begin to understand the ways of the world and the nature of its many rhythms, but they begin to lose hope that they will understand the mystery that they set out to solve. The boys and the girl are 17 or 18 now, and the boys are phasing out of their - what is becoming more evident - failed mission. They did not discover the reason behind the instance that sent them here. The brunette never found the logical solution and the blond couldn’t find any reason within the natural world that could explain the happening. On their final day in this world, the brunette walks with the girl. He explains to her his understanding of this perfect and beautiful world, why he has had a place in it, and how this girl is as intrinsic a part of this place as any tree rooted here. She is so naturally a part of this place that it doesn’t translate to words; there shouldn’t even be a distinction between her soul and the soul of this place. Physically, she was meant to be here - but meant would imply that someone else intended her to be here. There is no human hand that could have positioned her in this place, as she is too perfect and divine to be recognized as a physically separate instance within it. The brunette says this, and explains that this is why he cannot solve the puzzle, and that is why they finally have to leave the world as they found it.

As this is being said, the blond is running through the trees, far from where the brunette and the girl are standing but at full force. He cuts through the air at a speed so intense that only someone aware of the complicated physics at hand would know it to be a deadly impact. 

The brunette tells the girl the reason behind their stay together in this world, which is that he and the blond were tasked to discover who killed God, a girl so perfect as She. Then the blond reaches the pair and in an instant, he separates the girl’s head from her body. It drops to the floor and she is dead, but nothing has changed. Blood spills, but it has no physiological effect on either of them besides the heartbreak they have had years to come to terms with. They must leave the world exactly as they found it, with God decapitated and dead, and hope that the next visitors will be able to understand why she ever had to die. Was it at the hands of those who visited immediately before them? Or was the death of God at the end of an inquiry the length of one’s formative years only part of the tidying up that had to occur at the end of every failed attempt to understand why the world is and why God had to die? It is only assumed that upon arrival, the two boys found her decapitated and found a way to renew both her material body and spirit. While the brunette mastered the philosophical understanding of the world and the blond mastered the laws of nature, it was impossible for them to find out the original hands at which God, perfect and beautiful and intrinsic to Eden, was slain. 

[flotus420]

dad takes me home

Clenched down on the rim of a styrofoam cup

I am tenderly nibbling the edge of the styrofoam cup

I try extra hard not to bite down and swallow a piece of it when you turn the car in the roundabout and we pull up to my apartment

The torque of the car is combatting my tears

This whole ride I’ve been mastering the art of water surface tension, looking at the beige roof so the tears can sit in a thick layer on top of my eyes

The jerking of the car around the median pulls the front line of tears out, quietly

I am tensing as many joints and muscles as I can control so I don’t let go and whimper

[flotus420]

dream june 26

A morbidly obese woman sits in a rocking chair in a wooden house with lighting that feels like mildew. She is a stupid woman and has chosen euthanasia to cure her of her mental diseases, not knowing that it will effectively kill her.

She is given a dose of the lethal poison and waits for it to kick in. The person administering it, whose identity is unclear, is unsure if the dose given will be effective enough for her weight class, so they cut a small and painless but deep gash in her throat, causing her to very slowly and gently bleed out. At first the woman just sits in her armchair - at this doctor’s personal home, while the person goes to their kitchen to wash their tools a few meters away. Then the woman reaches out for a bowl of tortilla chips set out in front of her and begins to reminisce about her mother.

As she slips away, a potato fairy enters the room and sits on the armchair next to her. “You’re an annoying little mister potato, aren’t you” says the woman to the potato fairy.

“No I’m not” says the potato. It is an intricately carved potato with a small head and a bulbous, bug-like body sitting cross legged on the armchair. It doesn’t say much, but it listens to the woman even though it is annoyed at her too.

She speaks of when her mother’s throat was slit and that she didn’t even realize until she stood up out of bed. Then she grabs another tortilla chip and eats it, getting some of her own blood on it as her hand passes it by her neck and into her mouth.

[flotus420]

poem from 2021

Back porch in rain and shine

Strawberry moon chess queen trade

Let the greeks have their philosophers, saddam hussein

Millennium actress, catboy autumn

Emoji summer - starstruck

Catalina crunch under falling string lights

And getting too high on your couch

Walking three miles with a plastic children’s table and chairs

To sit at while drinking french press coffee

while we wait to turn over the laundry

Kissing at the dock on Indian Lake and never fully grabbing my ass

Sustaining me on oatmeal and neck kisses,

Leaving you writhing like the squirrel outside the Honey Farms

Strawberry moon chess queen trade

[flotus420]

I’m Kind and Good

Upon waking and before work I went to the apartment gym 

And I rode on the cycling machine for 15 minutes

Walking out of the gym and with the final bars of My Chemical Romance’s “I’m Not Okay” closing out in my earbuds,

I pass by the stairs to my apartment and notice my bike lock clipped on the floor with no bike attached to it.

When I go upstairs to shower, I accept that bad people are everywhere and let it wash off of me.

Apparently the red glass bulb on my most prized cherry necklace from my best friend also decided to wash off of me, and fell into the drain.

After an initial moment of rage, I relaxed.

That’s okay, I thought. I am not so attached to material things that this should bring me disappointment or anger.

I hope those dirty fucking sewer rats enjoy their new plaything

And I hope whoever stole my bike hits a pebble and skids on their face.

[flotus420]

i stole a microfiber towel from the lost and found in a hostel on notting hill

it smells like whoever used it last liked expensive jasmine lotion

and it felt like the uncertain embrace of schrodinger's love and his cat's bone dry tongue

[flotus420]

sensory perceptions of love

What does love look like

Reading bedtime stories over facetime

The yellow glow in your heart

Looking into someone's eyes and smiling when you can't help it even if your face is puffy or contorted from the wind or the alcohol you've been drinking too much of or ugly acne bandaids dotting all over your chin and cheeks

Jealousy

Heartburn. An eye twitch at someone else’s success. Looking into someone's eyes as they say something that makes you burn and replying with the most plastic tone you didn't know you were capable of. Jealousy sounds like a polite lie that you externalize because if you open up the wrong vocal pipe you’ll explode

Jealousy tastes like bile and garlic. It’s so bitter that you want to spit it out but you’re in public, so you tighten your lips into a smile and let the juices swish around your mouth.

Grief

An anvil on the chest. A dotted line air-lobotomy following your head around all day until the gift of unconsciousness is delivered to you at night. Or in the afternoon. Or whenever your brain decides it needs to restart.

Joy is jelly. It’s silicone and malleable and stretchy and silly. It hardly exists in an organic form - it’s a special man-made delight for you to relish in. and its transparent - so you can see a distorted version of the world through the film of joy.

Calm

The restlessness dissipates. Calm is a spine against grass and a sun on your face. It is flattening yourself in a humble gratitude to the earth your feet know best and feeling the horizontal pull towards the ground.

Obnoxious sounds are loud. Or poorly timed. Or haughty or gaudy or another ugly and annoying au word. French roots - not surprising. They stick in your throat no matter how hard you cough them out.

Fear feels icy and lives in the gut. It is the best probiotic supplement of all time. It turns your brain inside out and excruciatingly turns it right side out when you’re safe again.

[flotus420]

supernatural selection

I wondered, “If people switched lives with mine, would they be bored?”

It felt strange to open the shop at night. The last time I had to fumble in the dark for keys to the building was when I was setting up inside for the first time. Moving in in the dead of night was the only option when I first arrived in the city. The previous landlord was leaving the country - something about having to get out before anyone could tell he was gone - and handed me the keys just before the taxi arrived, ushering him to his redeye flight out of town. Sketchy guy, but it made for cheap fixed rent. Admittedly, the mysterious air of that brief interaction made me feel vindicated. The powers that be certainly had a role in the convenient fate of the shop’s previous tenant. The energy was on my side here; I could shape up this dusty ex-pizza parlor into the alluring storefront of the fortune telling business I had so recently established.

And I did. Thrift stores, arts and crafts sales, and community generosity helped me piece together the beaded-curtain clad space of my visions.

I really just wanted to help people understand themselves better. Therapy is expensive, but words are powerful. The least I could do for humanity and the most I could do without a college degree was give people a peek into their extended future, and suggestions about tools to prepare them for it.

This client was new. I hadn’t read her before. On the phone, the client sounded young. I couldn’t tell if the client was nervous - intuition doesn’t kick in until you can read the energy of the person in the room with you - but the client spoke fast. Perhaps with a sense of urgency, or maybe between appointments was when the client called.  I  had been thinking about myself when my phone rang in my pocket. I had been thinking, “If people switched lives with mine, would they be bored?” The depressive trail of thought was interrupted by the vibrations against my side, and a new tangent became the main path.

“Is this Psychic on Stout?”, asked the potential client. “I want a reading from you”

The potential client became the client shortly thereafter. She didn’t ask any questions. 

The client had requested to meet that same evening, much later than I typically advertised my business hours. I said I didn’t mind scheduling her then, but the client’s request felt more certain of the adjustment being possible. Almost like a demand. Business is running slow right now, so I should feel grateful for the appointment at all. That was my attempt at smothering my microscopic annoyance towards the new client’s subtle impoliteness.

I was reminded of that moment earlier in the day as my keys turned in the lock to the shop. I brushed past the curtain of amethyst beads and, in entering my studio, moved past the previous thought entirely. In the fifteen minutes before the client was scheduled to arrive, I  lit some pillar candles and put on an ambient synth CD. The CD player sat behind a velvet room divider, which also sectioned off the portion of the studio that housed my coat rack, aura-cleansing table, and mini fridge. Looking at the aura-cleansing table and the disorganized shelf of crystals and oils that accompanied it reminded me that the client hadn’t specified the type of reading she wanted. Shit - Do I  have time to clean this up before she comes?

For the second time that day, my thoughts were again interrupted by the client. The delicate string of bells hanging over the front door were sent flying through the amethyst beads and into the ceiling, a harsh metallic klang announcing the client as she pushed open the front door.

“Hello? I have a 9:30 appointment?”, said the client, already inside the main room. Her energy was tangy, like an orange.

I quickly shuffled to the public side of the curtain, alerted but careful to not trip over the CD player cord. 

“Hello, welcome to Psychic on Stout! Thank you for exploring your future with me.” I did my best to give a calming richness to my business voice as I hastily maneuvered between the curtain breaks.  “I’ve just been tidying up. I’m glad you found the address without issue, some people forget it’s a one-way street out front.” I smiled warmly before even seeing the client. I noticed that the client was much taller than the average woman; I  had to crane my neck slightly to make eye contact. The client was beautiful. She had on a large round pair of plastic sunglasses. They were a gradient between orange and purple, but they were transparent enough to see that she had a favorable bone structure. Funny accessory for this late at night, but I appreciate the aesthetic. 

The client curled her lips into a wriggly smile, like a string twisted so many times that it coils over on itself. “Okay.” said the client sweetly. I found the sentiment bitter - like a hard, unripe peach. She really didn’t care. I actively reminded myself to not count this as micro-strike two. 

“What’s your name?” “Don’t you already know?”

I grimaced. “I don’t know everything about you - at least not yet” I joked.

Without reacting, I  pulled out a plush velvet seat positioned at one of the long ends of the table in the center of the room. “Have a seat here. May I ask how you heard of me?”

The client sat. “Friend of a friend” through the same coiled expression. Botox? Or is this how her face always looks? Perhaps I  was less adjusted to the city than i thought.

“I’m glad to hear that. What draws you to a psychic reading so late?”

“I heard it was fun, I need a few good affirmations before bed.”

I couldn't discern how much of that statement was a joke. I  had a fear of clients who panicked at the less savory news. “It’s hard to say what ‘good’ news comes right away,” I said . I then asked the question I asked all clients, though this time I truly felt it needed to be said: “Do I have your permission to tell you everything I see, good and bad? I’ll do my best.”

The client squinted her eyes and made what looked like an effort to give a smile of affirmation, as if she had just heard another piece of information she didn’t care much for but owed a reply.

“I noticed that you did not specify the type of reading you wanted over the phone. Would you like me to go over my services?”

The client asked for the cards - “the ones that rhyme with carrot, or whatever”. 

Fair enough, thought I . My small relief that the back room could remain disheveled had overpowered my annoyance at the client’s pronunciation. 

“That is my specialty.”

I asked the client to remove her purse from the table and, after the client did, began shuffling the deck of cards that sat atop it.

The Fortune Teller felt the energy of the room. She breathed in the scent of the client and the candles and the musk that settles over a deck of well-loved cards. She felt the temperature of the room, the subtle shifts of the client in her seat, and read the connection my  intuition was forming with the human across from me. The body knows the truth; the cards provide the language - at least, that’s what Wiki-How said. Regardless of my sources of training, she was good at what she did and she knew it.

Each reading tells a different story, but every client that had experienced my services so far had been grateful. In turn, she felt lucky to help provide and experience a shift in perspective alongside them.

The breathing of both women and the shuffling of the cards layered a blanket of white noise over the ambient music. I was in tune with the energy of the woman in front of me and, one by one, I laid out the cards. 

“Um… does that one say Death?”

The client pointed her finger at the Death card, which laid upright in the center of the card formation. I  shuddered - she did not like others touching her deck. At least it’s only her acrylic nail, I thought, though I was not much more relieved.

“The cards are mostly symbolic. It’s not a determinant of mortality, per say. The Death card can be one of the most positive cards in the deck.” The client remained tense. I sensed a tremble in her outstretched hand; a waver in her confidence that the card really did bring an omen. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ve been doing this for 5 years. You have nothing to fear - at the end of the day the outcome of my premonitions relies on you.

Let’s start with family. An older figure in your life - they appear maternal - may be entering a period of difficulty in their health. Surgery may be on the table…” I furrowed my brows and searched within my connection to the woman. When she found it, I  gave a small sigh of relief. “I’m not getting any complications… but now is the time to be supportive and strengthen your communication with this person.”

The client’s eyebrows furrowed as well. For a moment, her mouth relaxed, and the client seemed to be in deep thought. The moment was short lived, and the client quickly broke the silence. “I thought this reading was about me?”

A tart cherry. This client had an energy like a tart cherry. Thick meat and a hard pit within. “This is about you”, I  responded, “Everything and everyone around you is interconnected. This figure - whoever she is - might be a relationship that you have been neglecting,” she gestured to the reversed Empress card on the table, “and an opportunity is opening up to heal. For both of you.” 

My empathetic smile (practiced, sure, but true) was reflected back to me in the distortion of the woman’s sunglasses.

“Um… sure. What else?”

“Well… I’m seeing that starting over is a theme for you right now. In your love life, you have taken the backseat for the last… wow, two years. Is that right?” “I thought you were telling me?”

She knew it wasn’t, but it felt personal. “Well, what do you want me to say? I’m just here to read the cards.” I my tongue, hoping the milligram of venom that made its way out with those words was benign.

The client didn’t respond. She folded her arms, signaling to I  that she received the venom, but would ignore it. I ’s heart rate increased, but she continued:

“Your previous partners… they made you feel small, but they also made you feel comfortable. It may be a generational pattern, but the Ace of Wands right here… it's telling me that you are in the drivers’ seat. You are in the right position to break this pattern in the coming months and-”

“Months? What about right now?” The client’s hands gripped the table and she leaned towards me  mockingly. I felt winded - she just couldn’t connect with this woman. 

“Miss, please. I’m just reading the cards. Am I right? If I’m on the wrong track, please just say so.” “Just tell me what’s going to happen now!”

“That’s not something I can do - not exactly.”

A lemon now. The woman’s face puckered, sour. Her glasses nearly slid off her nose. She grunted with frustration and rose from the chair, almost knocking it over. Her height and her demeanor frightened me. She tugged her purse over her shoulder and aggressively fisted it, removing a crumpled twenty dollar bill and tossing it on the table. “Thanks.”

I remained seated, processing the shock that this client on this evening brought upon me. I felt an angry knot form in my stomach. I was afraid that this woman would be quick to type a negative review and decrease the already slow influx of new clients. As fast as she can type with those plastic nails, anyway. I felt personally attacked, though this woman didn’t know a thing about me. I put myself out there, I give them my all - and nothing! What do I get in return? Most of all, I felt grief for the woman. I could not sense exactly why, but I could tell when a soul was in pain, desperate for answers no mortal being could give. I was so deep in the spiral of mixed emotions that I  didn’t hear the front door open and shut.

That was short lived as, for the third time that day, the client interrupted my thoughts. Over the course of a few seconds, the volume of tires screeching increased outside, leading into a shattering of glass that punctured the ambient synth music of the shop. The building shook violently. Vibrations rumbled the room from the front corner of the shop, where the string of doorbells and amethyst beads now lay on the floor, draped over the twitching body of the client who had been attempting to cross the one-way street. I had an answer to my question.

[flotus420]

I’m conceptually in love with a man from Oxford

The shape of his skull is hard and thick and bigger - a man’s skull. The closest comparison is that of my father’s head. It feels like it did when I was a child trying to climb up my dad’s back to sit on his shoulders, back when I needed the rocky knob of his adult skull as leverage in my ascent.

His head feels like that in my now adult hands - big for my sex and height anyway.

And the layer of buzz all around is totally even and cropped, as if airbrushed on at conception and left undisturbed since. This layer runs from his head to his back and chest and arms - the hairiest man I've ever felt. The first man I’ve ever felt.

An ugly houndstooth scarf nests this huge bony skull. It is so ugly. It is a bizarre choice for an otherwise stylish adult in the second decade of the twenty-first century, but I am equally if not even more enamored by this dressing choice because it doesn’t add up. I had a scarf just like it when I was in elementary school; It was given to me by my girl scout troop so I had something to wrap around my period products when I needed to make a discreet trip to the bathroom.

There is something so adult in his pairing of this houndstooth scarf and a grey hoodie layered beneath a pressed felt jacket.

Something childish and mischievous in eyes that are so huge and kind; a mouth that curls and a gap tooth.