popochonimus-blog

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Latest picture of Sanctiphage of the Burning Blood. I really tried to push myself here

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S.686 - RESTRICT Act

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Horror Story

tw: gore, depression, self harm, mentions of suicide You sat down on the sofa, the same one dad had dragged puffing and cursing all the while, up to the terrace on the third floor. You were completely alone: three whole floors of house entirely silent, full of a morning quiet that had gone unbroken but for just the recent sounds of your panting as you’d laboriously made your way up the stairs.

The day was young, a mid-morning sun beat slanted rays onto the flimsy tarp that your family had set up to cover up the open terrace all those months ago, when you had first moved in. Your mom originally wanted to install a plastic half-roof, but the family’s budget would never allow that. So now, you enjoyed the rasping of tarp against silence of early morning, in that fleeting time just after the birds stop singing but before the cars start to roar.

It had been a rough couple of months. Unemployment crept up your spine and nestled painfully at the base of your neck. No matter how many cover letters or CVs you sent, the dread seemed to always be there watching over your shoulder, unshakeable. It had led you to several panic attacks and a relapse in your depression. Some days had been so bad that you hadn't been able to talk to anyone or do, really, much of anything.

As a way to counteract these and to unload your anxiety, you had begun going on runs in the mornings. Draining affairs, true, but at least you added some productivity to the day. You'd get up earlier than anyone else in the house, that three-storied building that you shared with mom and dad and two siblings, and put on your sneaker shoes. Then you would go out the door and just run, noise cancelling headphones on, basking in the pre-dawn half-light.

Every day, the last climb up your three flights of stairs like a victory to you. Most days, by the time you got back home, everyone else had already left to work or school or other appointments that they didn't bother telling you about. You were living in a sort of limbo, and couldn't tell the days apart from one another, much less remember whether your older brother had a dentist appointment in the morning next week or not.

You felt sort of equally comforted and hurt about it. It hurt because they excluded you, even if they did it in an attempt to avoid overwhelming you. It also made most mornings easy. No unnecessary conversations, no questions about the past or the future. You could concentrate on the way the wind kissed your skin while you sat on the sofa, in the terrace, and the world didn’t seem as bad somehow. At least for a while.

This particular morning, as you sat there basking in the soft light, you looked to the left instead of the right. To the right was the railing that kept people from stepping off the terrace and plummeting their way to broken bones and pain but not death. The house wasn’t tall enough for that, you had checked. Beyond the railing you could see other houses across the street, slightly smaller than yours, and then beyond and out to the trees and farms that surrounded your town. Normally, your gaze would be fixed on that side. Looking at the trees as they swayed calmed you. After particularly cold nights, on those weird occasions when you’d managed to get your run done quick enough to be up there in time for it, fog would rise from the earth and give everything a hazy look, one that you particularly cherished.

But today, you looked left. Left towards the house's insides. Left towards the narrow hallway that communicated the terrace with your parent's room, the only room on the third floor. They'd left the door open in their morning rush, and you could barely see the hint of objects in half-shadow beyond the doorway.

Your parents had never been the organized kind. All sorts of litter filled the floor around their bed. Old receipts and piles of books, used napkins and both worn and unworn clothes. In your post-run euphoria, you wondered if you would make something of the morning and de-clutter your parents' room for them. The idea was attractive. Give a little back to them. They'd suffered as much as any loving parent does bringing you and your siblings up, and perhaps it wasn't out of line to show your gratitude. It would have also been the first truly selfless act in your mind since who knows how long. Yeah, why not? You unfurled your legs and placed both of your feet on the floor and it felt good. Inspiring, somehow. Perhaps today was the first day you allowed yourself to feel like a person again.

But then, the hand curled into sight from the very edge of your parent's doorframe.

You watched it, barely taking in the details from the edge of your peripheral vision. It emerged from within your parent's room, hanging far too close to the ground, skin pale past the point of consumption, its five long fingers creeping vertical into the light. Too long to be human, the fingers wrapped around the wall one after the other, arcing across the doorframe, nails clicking quietly against the plaster. Framed against the clean white wall paint, you realized there was an off grey, grimy sheen glazing its skin. The dark stuff collected on the creases of broken fingernails, shiny and heavy like motor oil.

Calmly, quietly, you did the only thing that seemed sensible. You got off the couch and walked over to the sliding glass door that separated the terrace from the rest of the house.

You expected the hand to be gone by the time you reached the glass door, but it was still there across the hallway, hanging on to the bottom of your parent’s room wall. The image of a Japanese spider crab, a gigantic deep sea arthropod with a body as big as a human torso, flashed through your mind, brought there through association. The hanging hand’s nails left a dark streak on the spotless white paint, splintered and shattered as if they'd been smashed with and dragged over and over against stone. Despite all this, your own hand didn't so much as tremble as you grasped the sliding door and lightly pulled it closed. You couldn't lock it. A couple of days after your family had moved here, your brother had locked himself out in the terrace during a smoke break and had had to wait shivering in the iciness of moonlight for Dad to come open the door for him. Ever since, the latch on the door had been wrapped in several layers of duct tape to stop it from locking on accident.

Instead, you collapsed and knelt against the wall, next to the glass door. You made yourself as small as possible. Knees went up to your chest, your face buried in them, your hands over your head. You waited and waited, unable to do anything else but breathe quietly, doing your best to control your shivering lungs. No prayers occurred to you, no calls for help left your throat.

Somehow, you felt it come right up to the glass. The sensation creeping through your back and into your diaphragm was hot, if heat had made you want to throw up, pull your hair out. Radiation heat was what your addled mind equated it to. If emotions were made out of atoms, that presence across the glass was distorting yours, disrupting their natural make up and warping them into pure dread.

It knocked on the glass and you jumped up, scrambling away, covering your face with your arms. The glass held up, the knock was loud but not violent. Methodically, you heard rather than see it keep knocking. One finger after the other, a loud tap, as reliable as a metronome. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Knock. Over and over again, like a dripping water line. You wondered if it would ever end.

One, two, three, four.

Five.

From below, street-level below, noises reached you. A metal fence creaking open. Steps on gravel growing closer and closer, until the jingling of keys and the closing of the front door confirmed it. The thought came to you through the haze of your mind. It was Saturday, and your brother didn’t need to go to work. He called your name as he made his way up the stairs. You froze in terror. You moaned: a long, drawn out whimper dredged up from the bottom of your throat, barely audible. Your heard him call your name again, this time from the second floor landing, just before the final set of stairs.

When you were little, he used to take you on small cross-country walks. He would take the time, even though he was about to graduate high school and had so many other things going on. The two of you would set out through the morning air and trod your way into the nearby woods. There would be lizards and birds chirping in the branches and hidden streams. Your mom always warned you never to go into the woods alone. Strange men made their home there. But it didn't matter when your brother was with you. It didn't hold. You were safe with him. It was within those woods, just after you’d found a particularly thrilling species of bug, that you had told your brother.

"I want to be a biologist." You said.

He smiled at you, proclaimed you'd be a great one, that you would change the face of natural history as humankind knew it. The bug had jumped off its perch then, straight into your face, throwing you to the ground in a vain escape to dodge its buzzing advance. Your brother had laughed, and even though he laughed at you, his laughter was the warmest feeling in that sweltering summer afternoon.

Now, he screamed. It was a throat-rending, guttural sound. You felt the hot pressure next to the sliding glass door disappear in a second, but you didn't register what it meant until your brother stopped screaming and the sounds changed entirely. Wet crunching. Gurgling. Faint grunts and groans. The house shook with the weight of the impacts, over and over, sledgehammer-like slamming into the ceramic floors, into the walls. Out of nowhere, the glass next to you rattled as if hit with a hose, a quick series of impacts in a line. A liquid spray, dense and heavy. Then, silence again. Your brother didn't call for you anymore.

Your hands shook violently. Your knees clapped against one another, as you held yourself still in your corner of the terrace. One minute, then the next, and the next, perhaps just the right amount of time and quiet to rekindle hope. You waited for the sound of it leaving, whatever it was. Only silence. Then heat, radiation again on the other end of the glass, and tapping. Endless, regular tapping. One, two, three, four. Five. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Tap.

Tears ran down your cheekbones, but you weren't aware. Now that your brother had come home, all you could think of was what, or rather who, was coming home next.

Even so, you begged. You pleaded and whined inside your mind, without making a single sound. Not even a sob came out as your brain was fried with worry. Please, let there be a nail in the road. A sudden call. An accident, a biker crushed under the wheels of a truck, a bus full of children sideways on the road, gas leaking from a ruptured tank and a spark in the engine block. Anything, anything at all. Your prayers weren't heard.

The sound of a car engine drew close and stopped. The car door opened and then closed, and hurried steps ran in your direction, towards your house’s front door. You heard voices, someone telling the running steps to wait for them, to not rush up the porch stairs. Mom, returning from your little sister's volleyball match. She'd been unexpected, your parents claimed. They only wanted two children, but had been blessed with three. That's what they called your youngest sibling. Their little blessing, who opened the door without a care in the world, her footsteps disappearing beyond layers of concrete and windows and doors, three floors worth.

The perverse heat behind the glass door disappeared again in the space between two heartbeats. Sis only managed to shriek once before the bashing began. Below, your mother called after her, her voice shrill and laden with worry. Her running was uneven as she rounded the car. She'd hurt her knee going up a flight of stairs at the hospital she used to work for, and had ever since sported a slight limp. You could tell, from the way the sounds of her dragging feet changed from concrete to wood, that she had barely reached the porch when she screamed again. She called for god. For her god, specifically.

A sickening thought: She isn't inside the house yet. She can still run.

When you were little but not that little, you had trouble sleeping. Your period had begun and with that came the talks and the implications and the fear. Your mom had done most of the talking, while your dad simply sat next to her and nodded away. Perhaps he'd been there just for your mental support. You two had always been quite close. Perhaps, you would think reminiscing on it later, he was there just for your mom's mental support. She had explained in detailed and clear terms what your period was and what it meant for you as a young woman. Using the same hygienic, sterilized voice she had used for so many patients before, she'd told you that you were now capable of bearing a child, that men would start looking at you differently and that your body would change in ways you had no control over. She said that, one day, a man would thrust himself inside of you and that you could bleed even more then. She'd smiled awkwardly and said that you may get to enjoy it. Ever since, you'd had trouble sleeping.

You didn't tell anyone. How could you? This seemed entirely your fault somehow. You had failed, and now your body would punish you for your failings. Every morning, as the sun rose, you dreaded having to get out of bed and ready for school. You dreaded the bathroom mirror more than anything, couldn’t stand looking into it and scrutinizing your own body for even the smallest change. It would've continued for who knows how long, had it not been for Mom. She knew, without you ever whispering a word. One night, she came to your room. She held you in her arms and you cried and cried. I know, I know, she kept repeating, as if that shared pain could heal you both. It worked. The next morning you didn't go to school and she called in sick to work. You spent the entire day together. By the end of it she briefly turned sad and asked if you hated her. You said no. She asked if you thought she was a good Mom and her chest heaved with relief as you answered that she was the best. Good, she had nodded. Her voice lowered confidentially. That gives me courage. You know why? Your voice was hidden behind a smile as you asked:Why? She winked. A good mom will never abandon her children, my love.

The yell your mom gave as she rushed into the house reminded you of a lion. Your hands went to your ears, but that didn't stop the vibrations that shook the house from reaching through the wall and up your spine, directly into your brain. The jarring sound of breaking glass thundered below, followed by another human sound that you couldn't quite name. It just had never occurred to you that a human throat could make a sound like that: a combination of pained moan and grieving wail, cut abruptly by more bashing. It went on and on, just as measured, just as strong, turning from wet to creaking as the plaster broke and the wooden walls splintered.

Thump, thump, thump, thump. Thump.

Creak.

Eventually, it did stop. You mouthed words with your lips that your throat refused to voice. Please and no, combined and repeated ad nauseam, but even though the sick was there, you never did throw up. Your arms hurt, and tufts of hair now adorned the joints in your fingers, sticky with sweat.

Let it end, you thought, and as if by command, you heard a bike coming up the road. Your hands went down onto your ears again, gripping so strongly, pushing so hard that you thought your head would burst like a water balloon. There was only one person left. Dad. You heard him, muffled through flesh and bone and the sound of your heartbeat rushing like a rabid horse, stop next to the house, leave his bicycle behind, and call out for someone to please put a hot mug of coffee on the stove.

Two months before, you stood with him as he came to pick you up from work. You'd had a breakdown on the production floor and first responders had had to haul you away before you could hurt anyone else or yourself. Hurt yourself more, that is. He smiled politely at the paramedics as they gave him the diagnosis. She needs to go to a facility, one of them said, and you didn't bother to hear anymore. You knew you were done for, you knew you'd lost it too bad this time, and they were going to put you away. You didn't even bother to push against the restraints that held you to the stretcher. It was done.

When you found yourself sitting in the passenger seat of his car, you thought you were hallucinating. You didn't remember walking there, only the feel of his strong arms around you the entire way from the ambulance and through the parking lot. He turned on the car quietly and you two left the lot without a word, never to return. In your addled state, you knew you didn't want to return to that parking lot, but the thought of coming home was even worse. As if he'd heard your unspoken fears, Dad turned left on the intersection and away from the house. He drove instead to the lakeside park. In the distance, you could see early vacationers enjoy the calm water, but all in all the place was deserted. The two of you sat in the car in silence as the afternoon slid into evening and the sunset bled red all over the treetops.

He didn't say anything. Just sat there and stared forward, sighing every now and then. You expected him to be angry, but he wasn't. Dad wasn't the kind of man to stew quietly on a rage. He would voice his thoughts, loud and clear, more often than not much too louder than was necessary or good. That's what you expected of him, to shout and scream at you, but he didn't. He just sat and waited for you to be ready to talk to him. And he was right in waiting. Eventually, you broke and cried and told him about all the little wrong things that filled your little wrong life. You went on and on, talking like you'd never talked before, a dam ruptured with such force that it could never be rebuilt.

And yet, it was so easy for him to reach out in the half-darkness before night and pull you into a hug. You didn't cry, your daily quota for tears already spent, but the contact helped something inside you settle. Dam wasn't fixed, not even close, but at least the gushing of water had stopped. He held you there and kissed the top of your head, and it was his tears that wet the creased leather covering of the car seats. He cried for you, and you loved him for it. There wasn't much talking on his part that night. He said Oh Honey, and I'm sorry, and I wish I'd noticed sooner. Empty words of comfort, and even though you knew they were empty, or you thought they were, they did comfort you. After a while, you pulled back from the hug and he wiped his face dry and drove you away. Parked outside home, he asked you to wait in the car a bit before going inside. He must've seen how your eyes widened in surprise and fear, for he jumped to reassure you that everything was alright.

I don't know how to fix this, honey, he said before going inside first, but I do know one thing. So long as we have each other, we will be ok.

Nobody asked you anything that night and you went to sleep without a word, dreamless and deep.

=

It is now that you wake, from not so different a sleep from the one you had then. The day has progressed while you were away, and the sun has made good work on more than half his daily trek across the sky. As you stare across the empty terrace, you hear cars in the distance and the buzzing of insects. Bees, perhaps, as you recall having seen a new hive being worked on during your run today. Suddenly, it all comes back to you. You fell asleep. How could you? The feeling of guilt rises deep in your gut and your chest begins to heave up and down, agitated. How long have you spent here, unconscious, kneeling against a wall? Your legs scream as you get up, tendons sensitive after being stretched for so long. Over the railing, you can see the neighbor’s house across the street. Mrs. Mendoza is in the kitchen, baking pies. The smell reaches you and makes you aware of how hungry you are. There's no other way, you tell yourself, over and over. With a deep breath, you turn on your heels and grimace, prepared to see your brother's blood splashed against the sliding glass door.

But there’s nothing. The glass is marked here and there by spots of dust, but nothing else. No giant, oily hands waiting for you, covered in your family’s guts. The third floor landing is empty, just as it was this morning after your run. Gingerly, you walk to the door and slide it open. You step inside and hold your arms out, waiting to be rushed by too many limbs coming up the stairs, lusting after the stuff inside your bones.

But there's only the landing here. Old furniture and your mom's books on medicine, stacked in the same lazy way she stacked them when your family moved here, as you and dad puffed dragging the sofa up the stairs. You risk a glance inside your parent's bedroom. The same clutter that you saw this morning greets you, still untouched, waiting eagerly to be put away.

You descend the stairs to the second floor landing. Your brother’s body should be here. You heard him calling your name from this very spot, you're almost certain, before you heard his muscles tear. Yet there is no corpse, nor a trace of him there. The stairs disregard your alarmed mind as you descend them, as if mocking you for your bloody expectations. Your steps grow quicker as you rush to the first floor.

Your heart drops as you see the living room completely tidy. The furniture is intact. The walls are safe and sound, devoid of craters betraying great violence. Your mom's collection of crystal figurines glitter in the midafternoon light, dozens of animals and ballerinas and angels staring at you expectantly. Nothing makes sense anymore. You call their names, your brother's, your sis', Mom and Dad's, but there's no answer. In your heart, you begin to fear. Did you hallucinate it all? Was it nothing more than another failure of your already malfunctioning mind? You laugh, mired in pain and relief at the same time, but it stops abruptly when you hear a creak again.

The front door gapes open, like the mouth of a dead man, swaying imperceptibly in the wind. The street beyond it beckons and you can't help yourself but heed its call. Stepping outside, onto the porch, you see your mother's car and your father's bicycle. The bike lays on its side over the grass, unattended. The car's driver-side door was left open, barely an inch away from its socket, its window partially rolled up. A car drives by but doesn't stop, the driver doesn't even spare you a glance as you stand out there in the porch, alone. Behind you, the house yawns, empty like it's never felt before.

Some distance away, you can smell the neighbors baking pies and hear birds taking flight towards the sun.

[popochonimus-blog]

Have You Read...

Can be read here!

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Critique is literally the life blood of art for the love of god, listen to me!!!!!

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The idea is to lose, isn't it? To brave yourself and come away bloodied. From that perspective there's no victory. No one true path, no revelation under a bodhi tree. Just constant change. You lose something and sometimes you get something else in return, other times you don't. But the idea is to keep trying, keeping clear that the world can be unjust but also magnificent. So in that way you understand: there's endless chance on every step. Behind every door. And the sage will pipe up and say that knowing this will free you, but I'm not so sure. For once, just once, I'd like to say that I won. That challenges were faced , met, head on and defeated. Head on. Instead, you're meant to lose until you're enough, Not too much, just enough. "You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone." Is that the goal? Well, I don't know, Mr. Baldwin, I don't know.

[popochonimus-blog]

The writeblr side of my dash is pretty inactive, so please interact with this post if you're an active writing blog! My main is over at @brw, so that's where follows will be coming from :)

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NaPoWriMo 18.1: Sunspots

It’s kind of hard to say what I might be

if I weren’t me. I worked hard to get here,

why yearn another form, another time?

The past is full of perils, the future

is unknown, and nature’s brutish shortness

does not appeal at all. No, I think I’d

zoom out from all that stuff, see all the things

millenia of life can bring. I’d burn,

glow fusing atoms, brightness lighting up

the darkened cold, pull defining boundary

space amidst raw infinity. I’d dance,

a billion years, then die, a nurtured system gone

but birthing newness in my death, I’d smile.

Sweet flaming mother, cradle in the depths

I’d draw my children near and hug with light.

I’d spin them round the room to hear their cries

“One more, one more!” oblige ten billion times

Till age and sunspots end that loving grasp.

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I loved a man once. I lost him.

A brave man A kind man, A wonderful man A good man

Who will return him to me?

I once loved a he and his was no ordinary hand, no His hand carried the weight of the land

in his fist there were stars and dreams and mists and lists of things to do, to carry through and without fear let their endings bring us rewards: scars and tears.

I did

Once love a man And this love was beyond anything, far higher than the moon before its own apogee

Who will return him to me?

No news, in years past and years that I forgot There was no point to memory without this love

Finisterrae, at earth's end maybe there, among the flot- sam and the refuse there's

a bottle, with a name on the cork and a small note titled: "For my love, for I am lost."

This man of mine He adored the world for, in his mind to be known was to be loved

Maybe that's why I lost him I don't know him anymore

I once knew a man I once loved a man I used to find him lying in the grass Staring at the clouds Or standing on the porche Looking down at the falling water drops

Who will return him to me? Where has he gone? When will I find him?

In the foggy mirrors of the morning air? Or in a long lost reliquary filled with hair?

Perhaps in the earth beneath my feet That I pound every day, without release

Or in the ever fleeting reminder

that regret may burn bright

but hope burns brighter

[popochonimus-blog]

The body wants to feel. It wants to experience and accumulate impressions. A life can be called well lived based on the depth of concepts felt and understood.

You can go two ways about it: height or width. 

A great breadth of different memories will a great life make. The storyteller approach. The one with the anecdotes, the random facts, the funny jokes. A repository of different seas and mountain peaks exists for this person to peruse and procure, like cards in a deck, safely nested at the center of their brain. They've seen so much, been so many places, that you can't help but nod and agree. There goes a person who has spent their time wisely, leading a worthwhile life.

Or, one can also go with the craftmanship approach. Dedicate oneself to a singular task with equally singular constancy and willpower. Explore the task to such extent that all of life's intricacies can be seen reflected in this one thing. The task then becomes a bottomless crucible through which every aspect of life can be processed, understood, appreciated, or at least managed. You'd look at them and say: There goes a person who has given their energy to the perfection of their art, leading a worthwhile life.

But then, where does that leave us? We, the middling ones, the ones that haven't the means or the courage to travel, or the willpower and obsession to embark on a never-ending project for the sake of practicing the craft? What are we, the masses that toil just enough to cruise by, living day to day, not wanting to worry about whether or not we're leading a "worthwhile life"?

You see, people get handed things, and we tend to cling to them. We lack a purpose, so the moment something comes along, something that we identify with enough, we close our fists around it and say: "This is it!"

We smile and we nod, without really knowing what it is that our knuckles are getting white for.

I recline in a dentist's office. It is a refurnished room of a corner house in the middle of a downtown neighborhood. Two rooms over, I can hear my dentist's mom working on lunch. The dentist pokes and prods at one of my cracked teeth with a drill and then a barbed needle. She's trying to pull out all of the nerves inside the dental cavity, to stop the pain and also so that she can install two metal rods in the resulting empty space. A porcelain-zirconium composite crown will be secured to those rods later down the line to replace the natural tooth that I have squandered. My gums have been anesthetized, I barely feel a thing. But every so often, as the dentist drives the needle home and twists it, an errant nerve cluster shoots one last prickly message up to my brain. 

We were here and now we are not. They are killing us, and it's all because we were doing our job. 

The body wants to feel, to burn, to embrace outside input and turn it into mental output. I just don't want to feel like I wasted my time. I want to live a worthwhile life.

[popochonimus-blog]

DONT STOP TALKING ABOUT PALESTINE! DONT STOP TAKING ABOUT GAZA!

DONT LET THEM MAKE YOU FORGET!!

[popochonimus-blog]

Longing is a strange thing. It creeps in the soft shadows of things, just beyond your peripheral sight, attacking you when you least expect it. When I was younger I read the Silmarillion and a certain phrase always stuck with me: "[…] and those to whom that music comes hear it ever after in their hearts, and longing for the sea never leaves them again."

Tolkien was describing Ulmo, god of the sea, and how once you hear his music (the rolling of the waves, the quiet sighing of the sea breeze), you'll long for it all your life.

I have been to the sea twice. The first time I was too young to remember. The second one was a disastrous trip with my best friend that I cut short due to social anxiety. And still, the sighing of the waves, the silver glint of moonlight atop their phosphorescent peaks… It still calls to me, even though I don't remember much of the trip or whatever actually happened during it.

…

Longing is a devil lying in wait. All it needs is a fleeting second, a lapse in judgement, a slip of the mind. Once it catches you with your defenses down it will flood your heart and seize it with a dead man's grip.

And that's fine and all. That's part of the deal, within the confines of the contract.

Except that longing is also a good businessman and an even better salesman. Long for what you have known in the past and can no longer have? Sure. Basic package comes with that feature pre-installed. But, and this is a limited unlimited offer, we can get you longing for things you don't know. Things you've never had, never have seen with you own two eyes, never have felt on your skin. Things that have never been yours.

That's where the real metaphorical money is.

Better a devil known than one unknown, such is the saying. I'll raise you one better: Better a devil imagined than any other that has come before. Imagination will get you to miss that which never has been and charge you twice in the process: once for the invented memory and then again for the privilege of remembering it even though you made it up.

And so I find myself at day's end, staring at the sunset over the distant mountains, sighing after a sea that only exists in my head.

…

Longing, you crafty bastard, once more into your arms I go. To golden countries made out of unraveling clouds and smiles unseen, arms untouched, names unknown.

Wherever you take me, I will row.

[popochonimus-blog]

forever in awe of people who pay attention. people who wait for you while you tie your shoes while the others have walked away. when they continue listening intently while the rest of the group stopped listening. noticing your moments of silence when everyone else hasn’t. “this made me think of you” noticing things you never even noticed about yourself. people who say “text me when you get home safe.” people who make you laugh until you cry. childhood friends who keep in touch. people with genuine intentions. people who are soft when the world has given them every opportunity to turn hard. the “let’s get ice cream” at 3am friend. the turn up the music in the car and sing friend. people whose actions match their words. people who make the world feel less chaotic. kindred spirits. the trustworthy and honest. hard workers. good listeners. clear communicators. people who love you for who you are. people who don’t ask you to be anything other than yourself. people who choose you. people who stay.

[popochonimus-blog]

✷ blue jay ✷

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speak with the dead | baldur's gate 3

[popochonimus-blog]

I'm not doing this again. Those were words, such was the promise. So many occasions, so many slow deaths, as the sparrow slowly flew forwards and into innocent glass. Death, time and time again. From that repeated torture, that compost of the soul, a great machine arose. A wonder of rust and gears that don't quite fit with one another. Friction and sudden release. = A common idiom. A well-known dialect. These are the things I seek. All under threat that, when I find them, I will find that the words they are meant to carry are nothing but blunt pieces of concrete. I can read the stones, can you? I can see the secret hidden in circles placed where they should not be. You can't fool me, for I already fool myself. Under the guise of communication I will endure and smile and suffer throughout and out. At the end, I hope to not be proven or tasted or broken. At the end, I hope not to be. = Y que todo regrese a las raices. No queda más que colgar la toalla, la hoja de platano bajo la almohada y correr. Un chiste infinito, que nunca termina de contarse, no tiene sentido. There's no punchline here. Tiene que haber un final. Más cual final podría ser el adecuado para este aparato de incongruencias? El tunel sigue y sigue y no encontramos pared, fondo o fuente de concusiones encefálicas. Tantos días encerrado en este dolor y al final resulta que todo esta adentro y nada es desprendible. El dolor se disuelve y para cuando nos damos cuenta ya toda el agua es vino. Vinotinto, no por que sea embriagante, si no por que está manchada de rojo. = The fox plays the game, just like the bear did before him. It is lucky, unlike the bear yesteryear, for the odds are on its side, through random chance. The bear, instead, found no mercy in the endless falling of the dice. Just like so many did, he made every correct move and lost still. Sometimes one can be good, make no blunders, and still end up trampled underfeet. Play, little heart, before the moon comes and steals your grit.

[popochonimus-blog]

And suddenly you wake up and she's throwing up. You rush to move her. "Not on top of the PC." You grunt in between dry lips. She's heaving, her whole body contracting with the expelling motions. You place her gently on the floor. She's old, after all, pushing 60 and perhaps a little bit more. Now there's a stain on the floor, and it's speckled with blood. You look at her, trying to discern anything new, but you're crude and inexperienced at this. To you she looks the same as any other day, eyes alert, staring up at you and then at something else. She leaves the room, her life unchanged, unlike yours, because she can't tell you about her pain. The next morning, you tell your parents and they say she needs to see a doctor. You're alone in the house, no one else will take her. It's all up to you. You delay. You buy time of normalcy. She's sitting down in the terrace, taking in the early morning air. You sit down next to her and try to pass the time. She ignores you and you can't tell if it's because of an illness or because it's just one of those days. You spend an hour there, just trying to pay attention. Trying to see if something is wrong. Nothing. Just when you get up to leave, she begins the throwing up process again. The gurgling sound, the heaves, the shakes. That push that seems to come from the bottom of her legs. It's bright red in the early morning air. She claws at you when you try to take her to the doctor. The entire way she cries and cries, asking for help. You ignore her. "It's for your own good", you say. When you finally get there, there are others waiting. You inform the nurse and she takes down the information on a small school notebook. She asks you how old is she, when was the last time she saw a doctor, all that stuff. You have to stand there and swallow your shame as you admit that's it's been far too long. The nurse nods, smilies (that's the worst of all), and moves off. The doctor will see her shortly.

Sitting in the waiting room, you hear someone talk about the color of urine. She doesn't calm down, drawing looks here and there. The natural human response to distress. We all want to help. Finally the doctor is here. He takes a look at her and touches her body with professional disinterest. He asks how long has she been throwing up. You say you only noticed yesterday, you don't know anything else. He says she's running a fever and needs a shot to calm her stomach. Leaves. Comes back with three syringes. She doesn't want them. You trick her into not noticing the first one but it hurts anyway. She jumps, the doctor drops the needle. "Nurse, can you get me another one? This one touched the floor." The last of the shots is the most painful and the doctor warns you. She bites you on the hand you're using to comfort her. Afterwards, the doctor tells her that the vomit should stop. He gives you a list of medicine and the price for the injections. You pay, because of course you will, but have barely enough money on your account. You still need to pay the internet bill and your credit card this month. "Don't worry, she should be fine with this. If she throws up again in the next two days, then we can start worrying and we'll need to run some tests, perhaps an X ray." You nod and thank him, take her home, happy to at least have been for her. You spend the entire afternoon keeping her company, making sure she feels loved. She doesn't throw up. At dinner, everyone worries and asks what did the doctor say. You tell them in broad strokes. The next morning you wake up to the same retching sounds, the same pinkish stain on the floor. She looks at you with clear, alert eyes, leaves the room once more.

My cat is sick, and I can't help but feel it is my fault.