a-deluded-banana

[a-deluded-banana]

Tragic

(tw: very graphic depiction of eating disorder)

It's funny how much

The noodles still look like noodles

Little half-masticated eels

In an acrid sea

It gives the sound of your breaths

A hissing quality

You wonder why

An expulsion of regret

Through rotting teeth

Weekend afternoon amusement

Toilet bowl acoustics

Two strings

Of saliva

One long and rubbery, the other thin

Like tinsel or noodles or the space

Between now and digestion;

Having half a gag reflex

Is like being fingered by a man

Poke around, hope for a sweet spot

Mottled skin, blue-veined

Bodily permafrost

Around you

Dust bunnies and stray hairs of family members and

That slight film of 

Non-identifiable bathroom floor gunk

You can smell your own breath

Tears, not from emotion

The toilet needs cleaning

So does your face

The sea retreats and

You stand up

What a shame, everyone said

All that beauty

What a screwed-up world we live in

How tragic

Can I get a taste

[a-deluded-banana]

Made a songwriting/poems insta acc @ellas.ongs

[a-deluded-banana]

Letter to my Kid Self

I remember you. You hate sunscreen and you love big empty boxes. You make finger paintings in that red plastic Little Tikes chair on Sundays. You want a golden retriever but settled for hermit crabs instead. The words "you're not alone" mean nothing more to you than your morning bowl of cereal.

Your senses fail you, and it's not fair. In a couple years, the world will be a lot less confusing.

You'll learn why you cry when there's a lump in your sock, and how to get people to be your friend, and that cars don't drive themselves, and why everyone else can follow directions in computer class except you, and that getting fired doesn't mean getting burnt, and how to go to bed earlier. Well, maybe not the last one.

You interrogate everything and everyone in the name of understanding. Later, you'll learn to stop doing that so much. But for now, keep on asking why.

Good luck,

Me

[a-deluded-banana]

Dear Body

Dear body

Thank you

You've been through a lot

Congrats on making it through

I'm not going to

List all the things I've done to you,

Tragic and sob-worthy,

Eulogize eating disorders.

I'll just say it's been a wild ride

And I'm glad you're still here.

It is through you that I feel the repulsive and superb presence of mud between toes,

Hear jar jar binks' voice and laugh at it,

Taste butter drips on a microwave popcorn bag.

Without you I wouldn't be able to move

Or blush, sweat, orgasm, play guitar.

Because of you I know what it's like

To get goosebumps from really good songs

And have a personal fashion sense

And be high on indica

And roll my eyes when someone's being dumb.

Thanks.

[a-deluded-banana]

Not So Poetic

Grief, arguments, and hurting hearts

lend themselves to

lines & stanzas

like water in a groove.

Other things are more viscous

gelatinous thought blobs

semisolid hypotheses

What treaty do I sign

to make peace with the unknowable?

Every tree has its roots (and seed)

Emotions aren't trees

Need some post-smoke clarity

Or will it just make me anxious

I just wanna feel good

My lips won't stay still as I take a drink

look at the ceiling

look at the ceiling

trembling lips

Sorry to be a wet blanket

This summer thunderstorm humidity

isn't doing me any good

Are you mad at me

Is it manipulative to say that

God I sound so insecure

& I know

I've been blowing shit up

like fucking Nixon

Leave it to my brain to

take a good thing

& carpet-bomb it.

I throw things when I'm mad like an alcoholic dad

don't talk to me.

My heart listens

at maximum volume

no earplugs

Conversations in the car

I beat a dead horse till it was raw

"Let it go"

it's one of those concepts I know but don't know

like inflation and photons.

too many things

to think about.

Not so poetic

[a-deluded-banana]

~ a shitty little poem i wrote after i had a fight with someone ~

twisted strap

stubborn ballpoint pen

thin strand impervious to my curling iron

minute hole in logic

itchy dangling remnants

it's the little things that matter most

it's the little things that cause a brush with insanity

shake

sob

scream

the heel of my palm takes it out on my forehead

four or five times

that's better

i wish anger didn't repose just up my sleeve

[a-deluded-banana]

The Visitation

(A new rendition of a story I wrote a while ago. Wanted to change some things.)

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Maybe that’s why I often find myself looking back at glowing advertisements of my childhood. But absence also drives people apart.

I look at my mom through plate glass. If I move my head a bit, a smudge on the glass is a mustache on her upper lip. Next to the smudge is the reflection of the officer standing behind me.

“How’ve you been, Honey?” Her lips move but the mustache doesn’t.

My answer is reflexive. “Good. How about you?”

“Good.” Her fingers reach for mine through a little hand-sized hole at the bottom of the glass, the hole that always reminds me of a mouse hole from a picture book. I hold her hand. She used to scratch my back when I was a kid.

“You got new hair,” I say. Her hair is red; last visit it was pink. I forgot how much could change in a month.

“I did,” she says. “You like it?”

“Love it. You look like the little mermaid.”

My mom brings me up to date on life at home, the new parts as well as the ongoing storylines. My grandpa is back out of the hospital. A coworker was caught having sex in the supply closet. Someone checked into rehab. My little brother got his first zit. Then she asks if there’s any new prison gossip and it’s my turn to catch her up.

As I talk, a ghostly arm of February light from the overhead window reaches down and grazes the top of my mom’s red hair, telling me evening is on its way. I miss summertime, miss morning exercises when the grass rolled itself out like a soft green carpet and colors seemed garish and the sudden light made my eyes hurt in a good way. The new old days. Sort of.

After I’ve said everything that can be said with an officer nearby, my mom props her elbows on the elbow-worn table and sighs and says, “I almost didn’t make it this time.” She’s talking about gas money. It’s a three-hour drive from home to me.

I feel a twinge of guilt. “You don’t have to come every time,” I say, knowing how I’d feel if she didn’t.

“I should be able to keep coming,” she says with a smile meant to reassure me.

I nod. Silence settles. I’m about to say something about the bad weather but it doesn’t seem right because she’s not a store clerk or something. You’d think it would be easy to fill an hour with things to say to someone you love. But each visit I get a feeling that sort of dries up words. It's a back-of-your-mind kind of feeling, like a piece of food between your teeth.

The officer says time’s almost up. There’s swishing as my mom puts her coat back on. My fingertip squawking against the glass, I make a heart shape around her face so the room won’t forget us as soon as we leave, at least not until the janitor cleans the glass.

We say our goodbyes and see you next times and with a final swish, she’s gone.

[a-deluded-banana]

weird little flow-of-consciousness thing

there are strings that connect me to things—

silly string, hot pink and sticky—

gotta stop living in the past. It doesn’t deserve the flattery.

prom queen, mom jeans, I hated being sixteen

stimulant-shaky hands in my pockets remind of when

my pockets were full of sugar-free gum wrappers and weed and

whatever the opposite of happiness is.

but now it’s just my hands and I like it better that way.

& yet—

he gave her his coat.

I had alienated myself from him be saying he had no redeeming qualities

but he gave her his coat.

We all have our own little styrofoam shields;

love songs are cringe but then again

maybe I’m just a cynical teenager.

maybe I romanticise self-destruction.

always the first one to go and the last one to speak

Go ahead, call the cops

what the hell.

3 things behind my ear: glasses, hearing aid, mask.

Been sleeping in my clothes & not showering

calling it freestyle.

sleep paralysis as a preemptive measure?

it’s like I’m trying to get kneed in the balls

i’m no bloodsoaked superhero

[a-deluded-banana]

it would mean a lot if yall would go listen to my EP I made over quarantine! On all streaming platforms! :) https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/ellaline/wisdom-teeth

^ here's a sample of one of the songs

[a-deluded-banana]

I Did It

TW: ED

I had to do it. If you'd seen what I'd seen, what was just between me and her, you'd get it. Or maybe you know her. Maybe you’ve seen for yourself.

She had me wrapped around her finger. She'd seemed positively radiant at first, a rainbow so garish and oversaturated it blinded me. But she was pretending. As time passed and I saw that she wasn’t a rainbow but a couple of soggy froot loops, my fuse burnt out. What lit up in its place was the desire to do what needed to be done—which brings us to this tale.

I paid her a final visit on Friday. There were steps leading up to her hilltop mansion, but I drove instead. The diamond-studded gates swung open for me with their usual beckon. Home, they said, but this time I knew better. Home is where you live, not where you die.

I hadn’t been to her place for three months. There wasn’t an inch of surface that wasn’t engraved, encrusted, or plated with something, and I felt like an ant before it all. The knocker went down three times and I patted my back pocket and the door opened on cue. Inside were more nauseating riches: satin curtains, rhinestone drawer handles, a monstrous chandelier with some strange and exotic vine clinging to it. Just as I’d expected, I found her draped over a silk settee in the drawing room clutching a china teacup in one hand and a fan in the other. The walls were mirrors, and marble statues stared from pedastals.

“Long time no see,” she sneered. “How have you been getting along?”

“Great.”

“Did you run up the steps in less than seven minutes?” Her gown was bright with color; the excess pooled at her feet like a small ocean and I was going under.

“Yes,” I said. My legs twitched. 

“Really?" Her eyes became slits. I remembered how they used to crinkle at the edges, sometimes.

"It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I don’t care.”

“Oh, but we all care. That’s the beauty of it.”

Already clawing at my back pocket for the knife. I moved forward and did what I had come to do.

After a few spastic jerks, she came to rest, pain-twisted, the teacup in shards on the floor. Blood trickled over her collarbones like a tiny fountain and her gown, sticking to her skin, turned red. Her open eyes looked the same as they had when she was alive.

I did it.

[a-deluded-banana]

The negotiators

At first Laurel Plantagenet’s husband had thought she was kidding. Once it had become clear that this was, in fact, not the case, he had stared and said, “A hidden camera? You could get yourself in some deep shit.”

“I was just curious,” she had said. But it was a curiosity that tasted like suspicion. It had been only a month since she and the other thirteen representatives had voluntarily given up their jobs to the Negotiators, but a little seed of doubt had grown into a big hulking thing and that was why Plantagenet was currently staring through her computer screen at fourteen figures seated around the big round table she knew so well. The Situation Room.

“...The GHL in Region Thirteen is 63.1 percent,” Negotiator #13 was saying.

"The GHL in Region Fourteen is 59 percent,” said Negotiator #14 to his left. He had ginger hair and freckles.

“Great, thank you everybody,” said Negotiator #1, a tall blonde with dimples and the sort of smile Plantagenet always wished she had. “Based on all of your reports, the average General Happiness Level stands at 58.7 percent, .3 percent higher than last week. Additional calculations need to be made to determine its statistical significance.”

Negotiator #4 announced, “Region Four has renewed an ongoing concern regarding employment. Road workers have experienced loss of jobs due to increased airtrain travel. More opportunities for employment could be created in the field of agriculture; however, we are unfortunately suffering a drought. We would like to request permission to use artificial rain.”

“My deepest sympathies,” said Negotiator #2 without sympathy.

Negotiator #9 gently clasped his hands as if he were about to tell a child something disappointing. “Artificial rain is quite costly for the government I’m afraid.”

But Negotiator #4 did not seem fazed. “I understand our predicament. Are there any other ideas?”

“How much revenue is predicted to be brought in from the tax increases on organs harvested for genetic research we agreed upon at our last meeting?” said Negotiator #6 two places away. That had been Plantagenet’s chair. It had had a little plaque that said Laurel Plantagenet. Now the plaque said 6.

“251 thousand dollars per month,” said Negotiator #1 in a voice like dripping candle wax.

Plantagenet leaned back in her chair and rolled her shoulders back and thought about how much of a drag it all was. She hadn’t even liked her job. Maybe the droids were a good thing after all. “Makes perfect sense,” her husband had told her. “Invent a system that’s literally programmed for success instead of human politicians making a mess of everything.” If there was one thing he had been right about, it was the mess part. The droids had certainly been a last resort. Tired of angry politicians and inaction? the billboards had said. Introducing the Negotiators: highly tested, polite, easy to understand, and ready to improve YOUR life!

“...Final calculations predict this operation to increase happiness without significantly affecting efficiency levels,” Negotiator #1 was saying.

The droids’ faces, given an undertone of pallid polystyrene blue by the computer screen, stared out at their unknown single-member audience, who shuddered at the thought of what it must have been like when there were actual countries—how many were there again?—and all their grumbling politicians to worry about.

On screen, a utility robot had rolled in with a tray and was distributing cups of Sorin-tea and little silver saucers to everyone around the table.

“Let’s not forget that during the Religious Ages GHLs are estimated to have been 28.8 percent lower,” a Negotiator with a slick black pompadour was saying.

“That is correct,” another chimed in, holding her cup without her pinky finger.

“Lovely, now that we have reached a consensus, are there any other issues to address today?” said Negotiator #1, and Plantagenet realized the droid's lips never really moved from their faint smile even though she spoke the most out of all of them.

"Well,” said Negotiator #11 through a wisp of Sorin steam, “there is the ongoing issue of where to store the deceased. Last time we determined that all unused religious spaces have already been filled.”

“If this is the last issue to be raised today, it and Region Seven’s farming crisis should be the only two currently unaddressed,” Negotiator #1 put in. “Perhaps there is a way to achieve a mutually beneficial solution.”

"The deceased could be made into livestock feed,” someone said.

"I'm afraid that would be quite difficult and inefficient to carry out. For example, it would call for more transportation and more factory space and equipment.” Negotiator #6 set his cup of Sorin-tea on its saucer without even the faintest rattle. Fourteen silver cups glittered on fourteen silver saucers.

It dawned on Plantagenet that the Negotiators possessed something she and the representatives hadn’t. What was it? The Negotiators all carried the same distinct poise, all sat with inflated chests, all wore the same expression, if it could be called so much, of courteous indifference. No, it wasn't that. They had something else.

Death had always been presented to Plantagenet as a thing to be feared. But these droids, they just folded death up and carried it around in their pockets, batted it around in the air like a balloon, sipped it from shiny teacups. Death was a utilitarian matter, nothing more, nothing less; no different from droughts or road workers or taxes. To Plantagenet this was a peculiarity, perhaps even a marvel, to observe.

“I understand our predicament,” was Negotiator #11’s response. “Perhaps the efficiency would be helped if the process were to create jobs.”

"Research and statistics indicate that thinking about death lowers General Happiness Levels. Could there be an incentive for people to participate in this operation?”

Negotiator #7 spoke up. “Something that has been proven to raise GHLs is feeling that one’s work is of direct assistance to himself or his own family. Perhaps the workers would be enticed by the promise of being able to directly handle those of the deceased to whom they have a personal relation.”

“Are there any objections or additional suggestions?” Negotiator #1 was saying, gathering up an array of paperwork from the big round table. When no one spoke, she continued, void of emotion, “Great, final calculations predict this operation to increase happiness without significantly affecting efficiency levels.”

“No!” Plantagenet told the wall of pixels between her and the robots she had lost her job to. “Handling your own loved ones after they die is not a good incentive!”

But their blue waxen faces kept half-smiling as they pushed in their chairs and picked up the cups and the saucers and filed out of the Situation Room.

[a-deluded-banana]

my neuro pathways are paved with gold—

lavish but

malleable (thus formless).

overindulgence is the best diversion;

to gorge oneself on misery is to surrender to it.

they'll catch me red-handed with a cherry blossom in my hair

maybe if I’d hang out with a different crowd

maybe if I’d get out of bed

maybe if I’d stop eating my goddamn heart out

until then, i guess I’ll just keep on taking.

[a-deluded-banana]

2 hours of sleep

Water leaves stalactites leave stalagmites

Sharp teeth

Dark & cold in the mouth

Each saliva drip echoes like a scream

“Bradycardia”

O n r e p e a t

Except stalagmites remind me more of dicks than teeth

Rounded tips

Water worn, porn

I’m a dirty little thing

Haven’t showered in a week

Remember that old picture book

Where the fish—Otto—eats too much?

“Never feed him a lot … never more than a spot!

Or something may happen. You never know what."

Eat less or die.

Tire ruts in

Neuro pathways

To veer would be risky;

Big chomping cave teeth

Might just finish me off

A fork in the road

Leaves me a fish out of water

[a-deluded-banana]

second shift

Rider number seven reminds him of a raven. Maybe it’s her oily black hair, or maybe it’s the way her beady eyes glint from their sockets. Barely looking up from her phone, she swishes into the back seat, collapses her umbrella, and caws out an address. He mumbles something about the rain, something he’s recited so many times that it slips out before he realizes it, but the woman ignores it. He hates smalltalk, but he's still annoyed that she ignored it. Tires spitting rainwater, the cab angles away from the curb. He stares into a sea of blinking tail lights and realizes, in a corner of his brain, that he could just drive away. He realizes that fact at least once a day. It only lasts a second though; he has a family at home.

God must be crying, he thinks to himself. The only thing keeping him dry is a relatively thin sheet of metal. The street is gridlocked with Lexuses and Volvos of weekday commuters, their tired eyes and furrowed brows, though somewhat obscured by steamy windshields, the likeness of his own face. To him they are all identical products of the city’s financial district, and he regards them with a mixture of sympathy, curiosity, and disgust.

The neon streak of a billboard means he’s nearly missed his turn. The cab swerves, provoking a symphony of horns, some long and blaring, others staccato. A thin white woman with sparkling teeth and a bulky diamond timepiece smirks from the billboard while he mutters an apology to the raven woman, whose alligator purse has toppled off the backseat. The rain has let up a bit—a small act of courtesy on nature’s part. His stomach is grumbling and he thinks of the bags of Cheez-its his wife brings home from the discount grocery store on Mondays. He loves Cheez-its.

Brakes moan. Cars stack up like dominos. He fixes his gaze on individual drops and counts the seconds it takes them to roll down the windshield: three, six. The rhythm of the wipers is lulling, and sleepiness creeps up. Last night, on the other side of a cardboard wall, his neighbors’ nightly shouting match went later than usual. He can’t remember when they finally stomped off to bed, had brief sex, and shut up for the night, but it must have been sometime after two.

His reward for staying awake: a couple of wadded up bills. He takes the money, clutches it because even if he can’t hold on to his sanity, maybe he can hold on to some pieces of paper. He tries to remember why he came to this city in the first place. The raven woman is gone, her high-heeled footsteps fading down the sidewalk. The rain’s monotonous drum has become deafening again, so he cranks up the radio—some pop song he’s heard thousands of times. It’s a tolerable song at best—all wailing and whining like a fussy baby, repetitive, and he can’t understand half the words anyway—but still he sings, because he has come to know the shape of the syllables in his mouth.

[a-deluded-banana]

prompt list

Dusty road

heel-worn carpet

Peeling walls

neon sign: $60 a night

[a-deluded-banana]

an exerpt from a story i'll never write: pt 2

“I remember it all,” he says, and a minute later I’m still waiting for the joke or sneer that usually follows, but there is nothing, not even the slightest upward curve at the end of his sentence. Suddenly I hate this new cold, flat voice just as much as I used to hate the old one.

I want to let him know he’s not the only one who remembers, but my lips can’t seem to shape the words. I remember the day in painful detail, as if it hadn’t just slid in and out like any other day but instead somehow preserved itself in time like an insect in a chunk of amber. As the memories flood my mind, breathing becomes difficult. The first image is of the morning of that day: white, virgin snow.

What was predicted to be a two-foot blizzard had turned out to be a rather disappointing December dusting that couldn’t even stick to the roads. But it was snow nonetheless, and a few determined sledders still turned up at the hill behind my house. I watched them through my bedroom window while I straightened the collar of my dress—yes, I recall the dress distinctly; it was a blue taffeta dress she had bought me from Gimbels for my fourteenth birthday. I never did like it very much, but I wore it from time to time simply to see her smile when she noticed. But today I wore it because I would never see that smile again.

Swallowing a lump in my throat, I huffed steam onto the window and traced a lopsided heart, moist glass squeaking under my fingertips. What a shame she had to go right before Christmas. It had always been one of her favorite times of the year, second only to the fourth of July. Perhaps the universe was so excited to have her back that it just couldn’t wait eight more days.

[a-deluded-banana]

an exerpt from a story i'll never write

I make another feeble attempt at reconciliation after dinner, but it's no use. The night just ends in the same old drunken climax—or maybe anticlimax—of half-hearted kisses and robotic face-fucking until we lose interest around 2 am. It's a drag, really. Nothing more than a distraction from reality and an easy escape route for when talking requires too much effort. Which is nearly all the time these days. I don't really miss those old sprawling conversations leaning against the back of the cabin, though—but maybe that's just because I'm too busy either yelling at Leo or being pounded against the wall to think about it.