messagestoanonymous

[messagestoanonymous]

coming together to come apart

last lights acquiescent in face of piling dust forcing dusk. blame my allergy to this world on the same; the nasal irritation is real. then there's phantom itch, or how scars can be conditioned to masquerade as benign scratches self-inflicted by ingrown wings. like orphaned feathers in swaying descent, everything floats down—halo to necklace, then shrunk taut, thus surrendering significance to a grander scheme. separation is a dance across the collective expanse of all the places we've been before. it's easy to get disoriented in the nebulosity of imagined worlds, but choreography ensures that we will eventually trace the shape of a sigh. your heels click to fill in for the silence of my treading barefoot. there are worse things to worry about than broken glass, no matter how sharp or how many. it was through each shattering that my inner child learnt to count to large numbers; a growing up of sorts. help me reconstruct my confessed methods of destruction for educational purposes, I promise fingers crossed. spectating the valiant shadows pre-empting actuality, I saw everything unfold with cold haste. I saw myself being dropped off and you saying you wouldn't be back ever; there I was and there I will remain because of you, in spite of you. natural tendency disfavours permanence so I am letting these words immunise you from a grotesque eventuality. the memories I will alter beyond recognition, I won't get to recalibrate with reality—all these I know, but while it's still a countdown, accept me in this fixation,   don't tell me to look at the bigger picture I can't yet see. i'm still too close for discomfort. too close to be afraid.

[messagestoanonymous]

another familiar denouement

a forced blossom; an expedited wilting. contortion betrayed this body to be incapable of a comfortable state of rest. I cannot draw fresh petals quickly enough to match the speed at which everything is falling apart. from children's ball pits to the valiant desiccation of this body i'm drowning in, look how far we've come—here, where no other mouths dare open, vultures feast, and there's no need to guess what on. unchanging are the   ashen clouds of this recalcitrant sky that I still expect to feed me, only then will I believe in mercy. recolouring monochromes used to be an exigency, but i've gradually developed a convenient colour blindness, one that's still perceptive of your idiosyncratic presentation. indeed, there you are, dressed in a diaphanous shadow when the entrance becomes an exit. I bid farewell to you and immaculacy, carve desperation into my own skin. who knows how deep I can go before anything oozes; how long till evaporation gets utterly sick of it. all i'm certain of is that time buries—exactly what it's done to the mercury that has now sunk to the nadir of our scale. but hey, anything to keep your ice creams in shape and my monsters unthawed for just a little longer— brain freeze: this is why I haven't been checking under my bed. i'm not afraid of what isn't there. every wake-up call is a whispered reminder to remember to try to forget. I never dared look beneath my feet at the prospect of splitting the air apart only to have it heal so quickly it's as if nothing ever happened. no cry will endure this nonchalant amnesia. the only way back down is to fall and it's best I stay quiet through it all, lest I wake up what you’ve struggled for so long to coax to sleep.

[messagestoanonymous]

extraorbital

                         — after Внеорбитные

upend chronology: set my time bomb ticking in reverse. solace shrinks the arm's length but a certain sense of separateness remains omnipresent—you are the extra-orbital moon, and I was never shaped to get through this. still, you pull me out to blank space and into your cradle, one so unfamiliar. I could get used to this. I already am. the weight of my world has grown so heavy on yours; that i’m cognisant is why you’ve diagnosed my oceans to be unnaturally still. faint embers of fires once held close sprinkle the peripheries, dying but effectively dead. discount them in triage, so that rain can be wished for with less hesitation. maybe this time, silence can bloom into a sound you'd want to hear. periapsis: by now you must’ve realised the glaring conspicuity of our recurrent arrhythmia, hearts excommunicating in morse. once again, it’s back to this temple with a loaded gun pressed up against it. in supplication, I transferred to you all that I never had. we come undone and i'm left with this newfound necessity to swallow your stars whole, coruscations and all, for a hunger sated by the faithful certainty that you’ll always be out there, somewhere.

[messagestoanonymous]

best before

peeling sunburnt skin prematurely is a somewhat engaging afternoon activity whereby pain can be elicited with ease. you know the things your stomach refuses to digest will last longer than you will. same goes for me. honestly the razor felt blunt until it managed a cut. I am learning to never underestimate any detriment. I can never be everything to you, that you genuinely feel otherwise reveals how useful memories can be contrived. for your own safety, stand within striking distance of my shadow, cast without corporeality, this unnatural phenomenon you will still grow familiar with. lean in and let it tell you the things I never dared to say before you blow out the fires originally meant for birthday candles that never found the occasion to be lit.

[messagestoanonymous]

perfect immunity

sleepless nights, again I reminisce my disparate dreams. every recollection alters the memory and adds to the disorientation from feeling earth's rotation as a disturbance that's discernibly less uncomfortable than the cringe-worthy sourness on my tongue, sticky feeling every time I lift my feet. you see, when life gave me lemons I didn't know what to do with them other than what I did. even now it's hard to think with the static of unfamiliar sounds as a baseline silence, histories held in the body whispering what it had earlier shouted while waiting for anything to begin just so it can look forward to its end. blueprint for repairs includes instructions to cast a shadow unattached to the shape it represents, a shadow that will hence be able to go places. that my body won't move isn’t an immediate cause for concern. you can't kill what's already dead.

[messagestoanonymous]

getting laid

thaw frozen meat with gentle heat that melts bones into milky puddles. every fracture bleeds bright colours that are all black in the eigengrau of natural night. I still try to make myself known for your remembrance is the only desirable perpetuity. you are admittedly better than I am at being me, I concede, which means there's nothing left to say. I await the reanimation of my taxidermied monsters, the stuff of nightmares. it doesn't take much to be convinced of the fallibility of all that lay waste on the ground, on which I am supine, on which a home might be built. my heart slows to below tachycardia. comfortably intervalled vertical exhales fall back down gracefully, each visible breath assuming the shape of a horizontal body in permanent repose.

[messagestoanonymous]

false plurality of outcomes

being broken beyond further division implies fearlessness. word to the popular opinion that war is a means to an end even though we do not believe in heaven or hell elsewhere other than here. we can't lose what we never had the chance to lose, so this is our solace our excuse to not fight. stay behind, make breakfast, ignore the tachycardia. crack an egg with one hand and fail terribly. gone is the urge to fix what's broken, so rest in pieces. fire licks its way to where it hurts much more quickly than to the centre of a Tootsie Pop. no buffet of pharmaceuticals will appease this ravenousness. this static between us a mildly uncomfortable reminder of our comforting proximity. I know it's a long shot but close your eyes. the good dreams we can only dream asleep.  

[messagestoanonymous]

evangeline

soft hum of the air-conditioning. old walls whisper their faint colours in a guided visualisation of a freer space like an open sky, birds of prey without air traffic control, merciful. on their blood-wet claws I taste myself from their valiant attempts to lift me out of my human susceptibilities. I am undeserving of any apology. the threat of oblivion is a blessing best kept secret. everything that hurts does so in ways analgesics can't quite comprehend. I cannot dream enough— not with the allure of gross misrepresentations. in waking is the need for new nails to scratch blackboards with, to scribe a grandiose denouement, some semblance of a satisfying last page. how comforting it would be to know that this surely must be it.

[messagestoanonymous]

obligatory fires

candles not of the open flame variety looking all zen on the candelabrum with its meditative-like pose. I have been raving about the endurance and other benefits of electric light ever since ineluctable scalding, ever since the constant rush to relight fires that keep extinguishing themselves. my bedroom windows are left wide open for winds to enter, to meander through printed circuits in search of an off switch. there was no need for the impressive thirty-thousand hour lifespan to elapse before I developed an untested fear of the dark. I fit myself into a circle of similarly powerless people collectively known as a support group, but when empowered, we get labelled as a cult. here there is only silence and facial expressions that sublimate rapidly. empathy is then inhaled, ensuring a quick route to uptake.

[messagestoanonymous]

here versus there

sign an unconditional surrender for the peace needed to rebuild your destroyed walls. natural magnetic repulsion encounters persistent defiance while serving as a stop-gap. concrete slabs make for a good barrier, but disproving to all potential trespassers the existence of a soft, creamy centre is much more effective. their stomachs continue to growl, scaring werewolves. if anxiety had a flavour, salty would be it. I know this from tasting your cold sweat. on the other end of the heat spectrum, hide & please don't seek is the hottest irl game now. all that you crave, deem as exigencies, even are only barely visible. what a tease. light gently touches what hands can't. shy translucence feels guilty about this and alters its properties, deciding that opacity is for the better.

[messagestoanonymous]

alive, not much else

it is as I had expected: believable facts under bottle caps or just mini tests of gullibility. someone whispers a little too loudly and there is a brief, pervasive alertness not seen since seeing scratches on the curvature of overinflated party balloons. nobody remembers what the occasion was. two thin fault lines break into the room together as a reinforced pair, seeking pluralities to separate. I observe them snaking around, trying in vain to catch avoidance. perceived purpose has yet to be defeated, even in the zero sum of all interactions. one good use of knives is for slashing tyres—a necessary mischief, considering the incapacitating effects of The Influence. we crush red Solo cup after red Solo cup. eventual sobriety will do the same to us.

[messagestoanonymous]

some kind of dermatillomania

tempered glass doors unknowingly slammed into do not shatter, hence more pain. each wrong turn was calculated— evidently nobody’s good at math. pervasive buzz gets drowned out by the sibilance of heavy rain. if large commercial planes can simply vanish, so can bees and they do, abandoning all hot pursuits. their disappearance has no effect on the population that’s already been set in frantic motion other than leaving everyone unsettled and hyperaware. light pollution is kept up by candlelight vigils held for the insect pursuers, missing but not missed. holding candles with bare hands until they burn through, then another, leaving layer upon layer of solidified wax to scrape off. now there’s a good reason to scratch the itch that isn’t really there, continuing till skin becomes raw, hot, stings to the touch.

[messagestoanonymous]

spontaneous changes

      after the Dyatlov Pass incident

lacking in any sort of explanation as to the events unfolding in real time. we split light so as to confirm that its overlapping vibrancy no longer exists, not to find the pot of miscellany fabled to be at the ends of washed-out rainbows.   while awaiting the consensus from peer review, we recall we might be colourblind. sprouting pipes establish a whole new system underneath our skin. the focus shifts from biology to physics: our limbs now hydraulic, leaking a little fluid. following reports of observed redshift, we know inhibitive caution has been overridden by a compelling natural force. to it we ask where are we going and why are we running.

[messagestoanonymous]

prolonged surrender

it was because of what we buried under our tongue. after we hung up I dialled myself and listened to my own breathing, which made me realise one of us is more alive than the other. if defeat was as spectacular as a cigarette cherry extinguished by a precise raindrop I would have been satisfied. alas, it’s just messy, weapons in the most illogical places. consider our ruptures and what they let out, system of little pipes orchestrating order.   everything appears to be happening now, our body protesting every acquiescence. the peace disrupted is one we’d rather not have. contusions allow us the most familiar feeling so they are where we rest our tiny weights on. you are a danger to yourself and others is the prognosis, even when we do not wield knives but feathers instead. we drop them in unconditional surrender. that they take forever to fall to the ground is maybe a metaphor for something.

[messagestoanonymous]

about what i said

pilots fly steep parabolas in a spectacular show of brinkmanship. we lay lower than they dare to swoop, I watch you undress your imperfections while exercising my rights to subjectivity and favouritism. I am recognising the non-physical spaces you have the ability to fill, the rest is, of course, up to food. nothing is being done about the melting ice cream dessert sugaring your hand. you know what it's like to be in a body that just won't move. maybe something good can come out of this is your optimism, but I have to give up your klieg-light smile for a theatre dim. the final act is us only being able to feel what we let bloom.

[messagestoanonymous]

based on spiritual apprehension

I will stop counting only when I have lost count of the questions we must learn to ask, but this is the least of our concerns. continued care must be taken to not fall out of this delicate orbit. I am absolutely sure now this nowhere is right where I want to be. the way your skin remembers my teeth, the way your bones don’t, is how I will recognise you in this dizzying crowd of ghosts. emptiness gives rise to their Sisyphean task of space-filling, which they attempt by spreading thin to invisibility. now I am afraid. let us hide in the cupboard, where it is darker and makes perfect sense. neither of us has ever held a gun before, much less fired one. write me a list of gods to allocate my faith to.

[messagestoanonymous]

best before

peeling sunburnt skin prematurely is a somewhat engaging afternoon activity whereby pain can be elicited with ease. you know the things your stomach refuses to digest will last longer than you will. same goes for me. honestly the razor felt blunt until it managed a cut. I am learning to not underestimate any detriment. I can never be everything to you, that you genuinely feel otherwise reveals how useful memories can be contrived. for your own safety, stand within striking distance of my shadow, cast without corporeality, this unnatural phenomenon you will still grow familiar with. lean in and let it tell you the things I never dared to say before you blow out the fires originally meant for birthday candles that never found the occasion to be lit.