ramblestimesthree

[ramblestimesthree]

5/3/25

Pop psychology has ruined my life! It’s barred its teeth, called me strings of letters that don’t make sense, none of it makes sense. It’s yanked my hair out, one by one, until there’s knots of it in my hands like tiny ropes meant to pull you in from the shore. I hate pop psychology, hate how it’s mislabeled people, is ruining their lives one by one, knot by knot, letter by letter. I have grieved my sense of self too many times, have reversed my memory, gone with those flashing blue lights and video in which I try to find answers. Any answer, any letter, to make sense of this dirty isolation I’ve been participating in. Because that is the root of all evil, those navy blue dawns, that is where I’ve dipped my toes into add have had them burn off. Watching people unravel, watching them be manipulated into false premises and false memories, dreams that were placed there, an invasion of the mind. Place those thoughts in me, give me a reason to think this is anything but the truth because maybe then I’ll feel some relief and that’s all you want for me too. Is this a break up letter? Is this another letter on the chart, another word to be misused? I can’t trust any of it anymore, don’t trust my own toes to not crash into the couch so now I have a black and blue toenail on the edge of falling off completely. Can’t trust my own mind, no longer because I have a bad memory but because too much of it isn’t mine and now I have to grab a shovel and dig deeper to remember the mundane truth of it all. Perfectionism, impulsivity, intrusivity, these aren’t symptoms anymore but rather simply a part of who I am. A part of what I can change. It’s not because I was raped or molested or beat or abused or hurt, it’s because life challenges my ability to achieve and my brain just moves too fast to keep up with. Keep up with me! Move your fingers faster so all the words are thrown out to the wind, the only one who hears.

I showed you my world, showed you all those things, those challenges, that keep me up at night, just to find out that the jaded mountains and ruby skies are of your creation, not from my own two hands. How much is it me and how much is it you, dear therapist. Dear therapist, do you know that I feel fucked over again? Another diplomat, another trusted soul that pleaded the best and gave the worst. I don’t even care if this reaches you because I feel so betrayed and angry, those fabulous emotions I’ve been bribed to feel. Pushed to feel when all I wanted is to be anything but an angry person. I don’t want to grow bitter with age. Yet here we are. Maybe I’m just listening to the wrong voice again, maybe t’s time to call it all quits, but maybe there’s a grain of salt mixed in with all the pepper. Maybe there’s a rock in the sand. Pop psychology has ruined me, ruined this whole generation who identify with it to the point their charts are their autobiographies. Can’t you see there’s more? To me, to you, to the generation lost in the screens between mind and body. To those attention-seeking souls, hoping to find uniqueness in a waiting room. To those insane, to those faking it, to those who love and thrive in the chaos because mommy and daddy occasionally didn’t get along so they decided razor blades were the answer. Because mommy and daddy couldn’t afford swim classes so taking their own life was the only option.

This is bold. This is crazy. But I’m so tired of it all. I don’t belong here. Maybe none of us do. Maybe all we need is a long hug and a cup of hot chocolate on a windy day.

[ramblestimesthree]

3/11/25

We are all products of our lineage. From parents to parents to parents, our moods and motives get passed along - turkey on Thanksgiving - but also the grav, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, even the ones we don’t want Ike broccoli or peas (not sure if those are Thanksgiving foods - I don’t eat my vegetables). All to say that they get passed on and on, never ending fruits of our lives. My mother a laborer - from age 11 she was painting buildings for her dad and learning how to drive for her mom. Work is all she knew, and so when that was “stripped” from her, she was aimless, despite having three children to raise. We were not enough for her - she couldn’t make a living wage of packing school lunches and judging report cards, doctor’s visits and dropping off us at camps for the sake of her sanity. But we were also too much labor - too much laundry, too many groceries and diapers and weird rashes on swollen feet. A never clean house equaled a never clean life. And so this workaholic is lost in the mundane, cannot discern work from rest, responsibility from love, and her children now suffer from all these constant shifts of moods, of beliefs and of perspectives that the mother once held. I am now shifty. I cannot tell work from rest, responsibility from love, and I m drowning in it. It is a lonely swim uphill. Upstream where all the fish stare as they pass me. What do you mean I need a break? That I am doing too much? This is what I want - I want to suffer because I thrive in the chaos - it’s what birthed me after all. When the chaos inside and the chaos outside align I am at my peak - my height. Now pass me some more stuffing because I’m starving for a taste.

Hear her suffering! Hear me! I feel as though my tongue ahas been ripped out. My tendons yank with each step and my arms strain with every letter. Can you listen to me? Hear about the horrors of my life and tell me it’s real. I want to know if those little words are real or if I’m being dramatic and making it up. I’d swallow pills for the truth, pray something will come through my dreams or my writing - something to unplug the explicit photos in my mind. I know I have done wrong. I know I did naughty things that little girls shouldn’t. There’s a reason why you sent me away, right? Right, right, right? I won’t repeat those forbidden words again, but maybe I should scream from the rooftop all m sins just so the birds can sing them back to me. I was a whore, and I don’t use that word lightly. I did things no 14 year old should even know of, let alone to think someone showed me in the first place. Who? Who taught me? Who taught me pleasure, desire, lust? Who showed me those pictures when I was 8, who sat in that luscious bath with me while I giggled and giggled and began to understand what it meant to be gratified? I say all these dirty thoughts because someone must sing in order to demonstrate what it’’s like to be heard. So hear me! Do you truly know what I’m saying or do I need to spell it out once again? Young children should not know what sex is, let alone experience it. Now that’s what I’m talking about. And I’m sorry for those of you who know what happens underneath those bubbles, frisky hands, sorry that it’s too taboo that even the birds can’t sing it. But I can, even if I can’t hear my own words as I speak them. Today we will tell.

There are those days where it feels like the whole world is burning down. My writing rushed, my back yearns for hear and my feet can barely go a mile. There are days where everything feels stuck, a mouse in a trap or flies on a sheet of glue. Days I just can’t take it anymore, the sweet fr of oil overwhelms my lips and I just want to swim in it. To keep swimming, that’s what I keep being told but don’t you know that the water’s too cold in the winter? But I’ll ride out the freeze, out-swim it if I can, just for you. I’ve never understood how people can roam this earth without feeling its magnitude. Without trying to grow carrots and forget-me-nots in the wind - soil toppled on my patio - maybe the seeds can still grow in the cracks of the tile - a dog waiting at the door just for you. Just for you. I could sing a dozen songs, write dozens of pages yet I’ll never truly capture what has happened to me - hell I’ll rewrite the same story over and ver again till I truly get it out. Yet I’m so compelled to write that 13th time regardless. I want to tell you a story, one of muck boots versus riding boots, of true hard work and little girls who didn’t know any better. My cows’ names were, are?, Snickers and Donut. Not a day goes by where I don’t think of them. Their hopeless licks on my salty cheeks, the head nudges, their ears that flicked when I pet them. They were the best part of my life, usually the only thing that kept me going - the first place I went when I could walk freely again - free as horses in a pasture, the fence never in sight yet always there. Always there. I remember feeling so confused yet obedient that first night. I dragged my mattress to the living room to be watched while I slept, in case I tried to do something naughty. I’m not sure how I slept with those watchful eyes, and it wouldn’t be the only time either. God, the memories are all so blurry, my brain’s way of protecting myself from evil - from myself. Hay would get everywhere, same with dirt, and there was always a piece in my hair. I couldn’t live without it. One day the fire alarm when off at the school, a drill supposedly, and I’ve never seen so many meltdowns happen all at once. Traumatized girls, naughty girls, girls who didn’t drugs and slept with boys and girls, girls who rebelled and made a ruckus and partied. Girls who cut. Girls like me. I viewed the whole ting as an adventure, the avid reader I was. Didn’t they know the had a copy of “Gerald’s Game” there? The irony and confusion of that book on their shelf. But like Harry Potter, away I went to a magical place, yet the only magic was in those sweet baby cows. Did I deserve to be there? The therapist always did try to explain ‘earn’ versus ‘deserve’, ‘guilt’ versus ‘shame’, yet the only thing in the battle was me versus me. I hold all those dichotomies and that’s ok. It’s ok therapist, I lived. Can you? For working there? You knew of all the pains us girls faced yet you, all of you, worked there regardless. What a waste of a good therapist. What a waste of a year. Will I ever be able to tell these stories that flick behind my eyes? Do you want to hear them?

[ramblestimesthree]

1/15/25

Writing sometimes feels so distant from me even though it is my given art form. Sometimes I sit down to write and all that comes out is an “I’m not even sure what’s going on man.” Maybe that’s okay, just to simply state something true use to write - an attempt to tie myself to something again. /it’s so hard to write today as I am preoccupied with my mom - it’s taking over my head. I’ve been awake way too long and my own body is sick and therefore feels unsafe. I am hurt. This doesn’t feel real. Why would she send that out of the blue? Is she going to hurt herself? I am a kid again,, thinking my mom is going to hurt herself or leave because of something I did. But this time is different, this time I did do something so now the consequences are coming. This is big. How do I begin again, begin anew when this cycle of manipulation continues? I am free like horses in a pasture - my space may seem boundless, I may not see the fences but they are out there somewhere waiting for me to stumble upon them again. Silly fence - I will just stand dead center - deer in headlights - because I know you will find your way back to me instead. I have never been so absorbed in loss, never felt this much hurt or chaos and it is overwhelming. You are hundreds of miles away and still breathing down my neck. I smell your constricting perfume, feel those acrylic nails sink into my arm - your own five fangs, stronger than a snake. I miss you.

I’ve never thought about the importance of being vulnerable with yourself. I think it’s different than honesty - it’s truly feeling and accepting the depth of your emotions. Maybe for the first time ever that is how I am feeling today. Maybe maybe maybe. Maybe I just think that because the cold meds are making my loopy. Maybe I am just grasping at balloons to carry me out of my own body. Maybe I am playing with my words as carelessly as a child playing with Barbie’s. Maybe maybe maybe. Maybe she didn’t mean it. I had this Barbie guitar growing up - it was pink and played Maroon 5 songs but now that memory dies not feel like mine but rather a photo clung to a wall. I cling, like Saran Wrap, like bubble wrap around my body so I don’t trip and fall. I want to feel safe and small. I want a hug but I am scared it’ll just be a snake constructing me. Am I seen today? Do you hear me, hear my pleads to be loved? I think I’m starting to get it, I think I understand. Today marks a day without you and today marks the day the day the real wor begins. God save us all, save me from the sin of not loving my own blood and accept me for who I am. I am poor but rich. Rich with emotion and that is the gold at the end of the rainbow or gold bejeweled on rings on my hand. Golden.

“If I found a magic compass that could take me where I want to go…” I would not pick it up. What if the walk is the best part? The journey, not the destination and all that jazz. What has my journey been? Razor blades and broken glass and wearing glasses so I can see each individual leaf for the first time and rose-colored glasses that lead me to knees sinking into carpets and bruises. The walk is where life is and I am glad to have mine - even if I feel guilty for living while so many others could never get the chance. Do I touch the compass for them? What would they want me to do? I lie awake in the wee hours of the morning stewing over an empty pot and… and what? The pot is empty until the magic happens and the fire’s blazing and somehow I am home again. Home. I have become my own sense of home yet somehow the word ‘unrecognizable’ comes to mind. An unrecognizable home. A conundrum.

[ramblestimesthree]

1/22/25

Alone, those big wide words staring at me. Alone. I want to be alone as often s I want to be in a hug. I grew up alone. It wasn’t as good as I kid myself into thinking. Sometimes I wonder if my reality today is just a world I’ve escaped into during one of my nights in the closet - anywhere but here. Anywhere, anyone, other than my own body - telescope eyes peeking into stars I’m not allowed to see. Today I feel like the bo who cried wolf - those things didn’t truly happen to me, I’ve just kidded myself into them being true. What if what you see is only what I want you to see. How could that be if all I want you to see is an empty chair? I am a healthy baby girl even if the words feel like sin on my tongue. How could it all happen in one life? One year? It didn’t. I think of the fairies who carried me away and ever since then I have been an imposter in my own skin. Water molded without the bottle walls around it - a lid with no jar. Paper towel rolls for eyes. My eyes, my head, my shoulders knees and toes. I am just a small kid in a body too big for me - one I have to grow into yet I am stunted. Alone in my own skin, how could it be? When can I come back to my own body, to what should be mine? When will it be safe to come back inside? Oh silly boy, you are crying wolf again - your words lie and you cannot speak the truth if it is not there. Never the same story twice yet that’s all you tell. Who are you? Is this why I am invaded so quickly, because there is room inside to fill? I am alone but no lonely - I have myself to keep my company.

A new skin, sign me up. Mine is leathery and worn and it is time to molt. I cannot think about skin without thinking about liminality - to be in my own skin is a forever in-betweenness. In between buttons and cotton, closets and bathrooms, reading and writing, purple and orange. I am the ‘and’. I am an at in line, forever waiting for more scraps. How can you be in between yourself? I will tell you, but promise to keep my secret. I see myself from the ceiling, running, sobbing to my room, slammed up into safety. But I am not safe and now there is a splotch of blood as big as a ladybug. I am not safe and the ceiling moves to the door opening. Cue the mom! All I see are razors thrown at a body not mine and I do not feel it thump at that shoulder because that is not me - that is a girl and I am the ceiling - the quiet observer. Why did I lean into this today? Why try to cover the truth yet this is true! It is! I may be the ceiling but the walls see all. My cuts did not sadden you but disappointed you - oh there she goes again telling more lies. Once you say or shear something enough it becomes true thus I became the liar even if it is branded on my body otherwise. I am in between truth and lies and I wish someone would tell me which one to believe.

A quality that I fear is my diminishing memory. I remember some big things but for the most part I have lost grip on my own life. I find myself checking my own mind, seeing if I remember what I did over the weekend (I do not) or what I had for breakfast (a Diet Coke). Did I walk my dog? Did I participate in class? What did I talk about in therapy? Not only do I not trust my mind, I do not trust reality anymore. I keep getting asked if I like it in here, inside this body I do not control, asked so many times I’m starting to believe I do. I like forgetting. Do I? I don’t know. Never the same person as I go sleep when I wake up. Sometimes I see my own feet slipping through the ground. Sometimes I wonder if someone can give themselves a psychotic break and if that someone is me. Why do I remember the fae of death but not the breath of life? How come I feel like a rainbow, an illusion, a trick of the eye? Am I truly here? Do you truly see me? Maybe that’s what being truly alone does. Maybe that’s what being an artist is, the constant brink of madness. I do this to myself even when I cannot see my hands move the strings. What a trip! Forever repeating the same day. Tell em I’m self aware again - let me live the lie before I realize (again) nothing is ever true, all tricks of the eye. The harder I push the less I move.

[ramblestimesthree]

2/11/25

Drinking the tears of the world is a beautiful title and I am a deep well. I grew up eating others’ grief for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sob stories of climbing up buildings on ladders with a bucket of paint in hand at 13. Of watching cows being butchered and learning each cut of meat. Of still eating that meat. Stories of being fat, of Weight Watchers and C-Sections and cosmetic surgeries. Stories of my own life but not my stories. Of having seizures at malls and daycare and having one with tantrums out of his control while another kid is seizing at school. Which one do you pick? What about the third in between them? Not y stories, not my life but the tears are on my arms regardless, embedded and seen and glued like the forehead I cracked open when I was two. Not my story. Not my sobs echoing through the hospital - how could you do this to me?!? What did I do wrong? I’m a terrible mother and this is my issue, not yours as you lay dying on the table at 13. Your story stayed at home while dad drove me crying to the hospital - it was too much for you. The razor blades, the suicide, the abuse and neglect - your stories not mine. No the only story that’s mine is the ones I didn’t, I don’t, feel safe telling you because I’ve learned that all my life does is hurt you and causes sobs. I will drink and eat and throw back up your tears for you - I had no choice until I did but no one would hold those tears for me so my story drank me. Drank me silly, drank me high, drained my ability to love, to stay present, to have desire. You never asked for my story.

Left behind by our personal escape. The only thing keeping me of that pink cloud. My wounded, softened heart, like sliced bred and butter. Where did you go? What’s your escape? Mine today is a meadow of pink dragonflies and little yellow dandelions - the one’s I’d collect in a bouquet and give back to my teachers. The only way I could give back to them. When did I stop collecting the dandelions? What happened to me? I think of it all the time and will never ind an answer that fits just right. Not too big and not too small Goldilocks. My home was too big. Some call it a blessing, and it was a privilege but also a curse. Cursed to grow up in my own 10x10 bubble (sometimes a 4x4 one) and learn about the bees and birds through experience rather than safely through a window. My window - the great escape. My mom put up a stained glass cover on our bathroom window so the neighbors couldn’t see in. It was beautiful and made that bathroom holy until it wasn’t. Who did what to who? Oh the sins in there. Oh the broken down door and stained bathtub and rugs thrown out. Oh oh oh, why did you do it to me? My bubble wasn’t small enough to hide from you. Pants down, bent over, leather belt I pleaded you not to use. Not small enough. Carry me to the meadow so I can rest. I’ll rest my head and watch it al from the fan so it never happened to me, all I know is I slept on the closet floor afterwards just in case. Just in case. I forgive you, you didn’t know better. It’s ok, give me a hug ad I’ll kiss your boo-boos better even if my butt is so welted I can’t sit down. I’ll make it better.

Imagine. My word from residential. Imagine a better life for yourself - you are full of wonder and curiosity and creativity but your imagination has run dry. How do I find it again? I can imagine I am a cricket - croaking but you cannot find me under the bed in the room full of red flowers and that tv stand covered in stickers we got from the doctor’s office. I would sleep with my eyes open, whatever that means, because I was scared, but of whaat? Of those bright orange vets and wooden planks and unfinished walls. Was it a dream? Would you believe me if it wasn’t? Would you believe me if I told you how much of a monster I truly am or is it all just in my imagination? Maybe my issue is I imagine too much, made it all up - I’m not sure what’s real, what’s the truth anymore. Those sheets are stained and I am in so much trouble. Three girls, one bed and I’m in charge , yet who put me in charge?? Who taught me to manage? Am I imaging that the blame is yours so I don’t have to live up to my own sins? It plays so freshly behind my eye and it’s hard to remember that I’m not still naked - I am clothed and have choice again even if I still live in the darkness behind my eyes.

[ramblestimesthree]

2/18/25

Is this an exciting and hopeful time of my life? Maybe resting before the boulder is necessary. Tell me about these Barbie dolls, face down on the carpet bloody and bruised, naked. Tell me about the blood and piss and monsters scouring the stairs before you. Behind you! All around, mumbling at the floors that shock feet or sink them like quicksand. Feed the stars, they’re starving for attention, for help. Why are children deemed liars? I don’t think those little lips even know what that word means - maybe they just speak in riddles because that’s all that’s safe. Punk toddlers with broken dolls and tow trucks carrying them, Lincoln logs chewed on and little toy soldiers kissing. Sold! Happy accidents. Icons of a stolen life, of coffee spilled in bathroom stalls, leaking under the splits between doors and tiptoeing on toilets trying to get a glance at the future. The disgusting, the gross, the taboo. Embracing the poverty of thought, of innocence, of cracked jeans and missing laces. Mixing punk, taboo and shadows all in one bowl with a pretty pink whisk. Maybe add a little whiskey in there to show who we really are.

Who did they read? Write? Draw or skim or Sparknote or steal? Collective eyes, collective noses smelling the bullshit. Eyes better off before. Exploit my explicit eyes, touch them, caress them with silver little blades. The foundations of my soul is my weakness, my strength, my filthy, filthy blood. Peek over, peek under, peaking at age 8 and never living up to that sunshine eyed girl, honey lips and green apple detangling spray. Behind you! Above as below. Bag em up and empty them so they can float away, litter our streets, make nests for birds. Nonsense once agin, stolen words from the dictionary herself. Tangled curls and grotesque bodies surround me and fuck do I crave a lick of sweat. I wanted the world and got five guys instead. Or girls. Who knows but they live in my head and just won’t show themselves yet. Not yet, dear writer., it’s lies. Bad after bad after bad, no good in slavery and it ends by not ending. Deja vu. Wish it was three words instead and fuck the pronouns they shouldn’t be in the word count.

Check out on Thursday! Didactic, who’s she? Maybe it is she who pulls my fingernails off and whispers in the night. It’s a journal, not a book [at least that’s what I keep telling myself]. Don’t forget your face is in the flowers; eat them, gag and shove it down your throat. Testify my own teeth and nails but not my eyes, they are still button brown. Dying. Dying in shabby clothes, burned in cashmere and covered in fur and feathers. Feathered feet, feathered fights, frosted feathered fights for fuck’s sake where are you going? You can hide but you can’t run in the corners of closets from the puppet’s belt. Feathered belts. Can’t sit still, the words won’t settle and listen for a goddamn second, won’t you? Watch it back, after the conversion, after the sins bestowed upon you, behind you! We look and look and look and don’t see. Don’t see the quiz coming, don’t look for regular journaling because I don’t know her, I only know violent skies and strapped pillows on arms and backs to break the fall. Fights in bubbles popping and scared girls who just want to be believed.

[ramblestimesthree]

9/24/24

I’m not quite sure how that quote is quite related to it’s title seeing as it didn’t mention a crisis at all. Anyways, I agree with that last sentence “everything is held together by love.” I’m not quite sure what else to say to that. It makes me think of all the dogs at work, the love in their eyes when I ply with them. Love doesn’t need to be spoken or seen or heard, just felt. Sometimes I struggle with the fact that they love someone more, their owners. Of course they do. But it makes me feel like the love I feel from them is fleeting, like they can’t contain it even away from their owners so they give it to me in the meantime. Isn’t all love fleeting? Can you equally love two people at the same time? Is some love, not all of it, enough? Why can’t I just be grateful that I receive some in the first place, that even though it may end at least I got to experience it in the first place. My whole life I’ve looked for love in all the wrong places,and I wish the love and care I give myself could satisfy me but it just doesn’t. I don’t want that to be the only love I receive. Love hurts. Love means you have sometime to lose.

To be honest, this doesn’t make me think about simplicity but rather the opposite - maximalism. Or it’s extreme - hoarding. Maybe the best way to understand simplicity is see the reason for its counterparts - understand why we hoard, we can dismantle the instinct and achieve an ideal life of minimalism. I thin hoarding brings superficial comfort. Maybe you hold onto every piece of clothing you’ve ever touched because that ay, no matter how the current trends change, you can always fit in. Maybe the clothes hold memories. I think that’s the real comfort behind it. Whether you hold onto books, newspapers, photos, stuffed animals, they remind you of your own life when maybe you can’t remember it yourself. Comfort in remembering who you are and where you come from. This is why I’m scared I’ll become a hoarder. Sure I desire simplicity and the ease it will bring, but I’m scared that I’ll lose myself in the progress. Forget who I am without the material items present. Even though I don’t think I’m quite there mentally yet, I’m scared I will lose touch with myself. My purpose. I remember reading Thomas More's “Utopia” and thinking about how in a simply, peaceful life people lose identity. Sure you may have a job and purpose, but you can’t express yourself. How you’re feeling. There’s no art, no beauty. I think us humans want to replicate the beauty of nature on our own bodies so the more we lose the natural, the more comfortable we’ll feel with it gone. Like in the “Hunger Games”, everyone in the Capital wears all these extravagant clothes because it’s the only beauty they have left.

The greatest life lesson I have learned is through quicksand: the more you resist the deeper you will sink. I learned this through literal quicksand. When I was in residential [the first time round now], we went on this big seven day backpacking trip at one of the very corners of Utah. It was supposed to all happen at this particular canyon, yet on the very first day our director drove to the wrong place. That first day we walked 12 miles trying to find this canyon, 12 miles with sporadic patches of quicksand. I remember the first patch we crossed through - it was small but I could feel the lo sink into the earth, like it was going to take its sweet tole time swallowing me whole. Enjoying eating me alive. It felt like stepping on a giant wad of gum. At certain points throughout the hike, we’d have to cross through different sized patches and at one point a girl sunk all the way down to her waist. She was struggling so the more she panicked the deeper she sunk. It was terrifying. Yet now all I can think of is the valuable lesson it taught me - to stay calm in a struggle. To continue walking the path even if you feel like you’re losing your footing. That if you do struggle too much, there are others there to pull you out. The branch to grasp and pull yourself up again.

[ramblestimesthree]

9/19/24

Mashed potatoes are an easy meal. A quick fix. A way to fill yourself without much real nutritional value. My brother loves mashed potatoes. He could easily eat the whole bowl if you let him. On our thanksgiving plates, he and I would usually only put turkey, mashed potatoes and bread. Maybe corn or Mac and cheese if we made it that year. All safe food, foods we relied on because we knew we liked them. That craving stayed consistent year after ear, even if nothing else did. Last year maybe two?) I made the mashed potatoes instead of my mom. I don’t know why she was upset but she shut herself in her room the night before and didn’t come back out. But I wanted to keep the family together. The show must go on!

We ate without her that night. Thanksgiving was so quiet. No fights, minimal talking, just four hungry people who wanted to eat food you could eat any other day yet we call it a holiday regardless. I made those mashed potatoes my way, with the skin included, rather than peeled because that's the way I liked them. My family liked them. Our peels stayed on , our defenses high because who know when she’d come back out for a fight. Peel off our skin without even asking first. I feel raw. Hard. Uncooked. Maybe my peel is still on.

But the trees are all alike because they are all trees. Yes there are many different species and types, maybe no two have the exact same bark, but you can still label them as birch or oak. You can name it, place it in a group, give some sort of semblance to its peers. Who cares about the different whirls in their bark? The different amount of leaves each tree has? Iwant to care but it’s so hard to look past those insignificant details. To see the tree in its detailed glory rather than how t helps shape the forest as a whole. If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it or see it, did it really happen? I’m apparently feeling very graphic so I will be. If I fall, if I die, me, one insignificant digit in the number, will it matter? Will anyone hear? See me? How long would they take to find my body? Weeks? Days? Maybe my tree is different, but what does it matter? I feel like me, my problems, are nothing compared to my peers. I don’t care to hide behind metaphors because I don’t care. Isn’t self harm just an attention seeking disorder? Am I not just begging for attention in my own way? I hate it, hate I want attention, hate that I want someone to find my body so I hide it all. Hide what I’m hungry for. My tree doesn’t have any apples to eat. I have no purpose. I don’t even think I care to have one. I just want to be a tree. To feel the bark, the leaves, the wind because right now I can’t.

[ramblestimesthree]

9/17/24

My skin is quite comfy. Could you imagine if humans actually shed their skin like snakes? What would we do with all the waste? Burn it? But it? It’s funny because we treat corpses the same way we do with other, more material trash. Dump it, burn it, bury it, throw it in the ocean (@ serial killers). Are we equal to trash? Just another thing infesting the earth. I think a lot about all the different definitions of nature we, as humans, have created. Are we natural? Or are humans artificial? There’s such an overlap between natural and artificial that it seems redundant to separate the two. Do Christian’s think the world itself , the sun and stars, are artificial because God made them? If he chooses all of nature’s actions, is he the only natural thing about this universe? How can a God be natural in any definition of the word? The world? Artificial intelligence could then be deemed natural if al God does its part of nature. Think about lol the material that goes into a chair alone - cotton, metal, leather. If it is made out of all these so called natural materials then how could we think of it as purely material or artificial? Maybe it doesn’t matter what is natural or artificial. Maybe a God doesn’t matter if we can’t feel his presence in our lives. Maybe reality, what’s true, doesn’t matter as long as we are too distracted by mundane tasks that help us avoid these overwhelming feelings of nothingness. That;’s how I feel today, I think, too distracted by the consistency of life to care about anything else. Simply another cog in the machine, working a job that gives me an underwhelming sense of purpose.

This is exactly why I don’t reach out in a crisis. I mean, maybe more romanticized that I would phrase it, but still. I have to battle this alone. No one can guide me through it or protect me. Even if I got put in a psych ward again all that would happen is I self-harm when I get out because of the shame it builds in me. Who thinks that someone traumatized by residential treatment would best be served by going back? The way I fight myself might not be fast or steady but I know I’m in it for the long haul because I don’t have a choice. I can’t keep being whole, who I have been. So I show up everyday, hoping I’ll find some reason, some part of myself that wants to endure my suffering but she is quiet. That part of myself has been silenced. I lost feel like I’m shut in the shed. Only my shed is the closet, surrounded by clothes bought for me by my mom in an attempt to connect with me, yet all it helped with was muffling the sounds of her yelling. Her pain. I remember leaving private school, so excited to dress up and express myself in public school.How free I felt. Now I dread getting dressed. Doing Laundry. All these small decisions that could impact how I feel the rest of the day. I want to stay in the closet where it is safe. Maybe I have to stay quiet in there, make myself small, but I can get by this way. I feel like a bruised apple, safe to eat once you peel the skin off and see that the bruise is only on the surface, just imagined. But unfortunately I eat my apples with the peel still on. Even dipped in peanut butter, another coat. Another closet. I had a dream about my old room burning down, trying to space out the window but the screen kept me in. I used to have that fear all the time, that my house would burn down - it’s why I’d keep my door closed, so it could contain any potential flames. No one else would get hurt but me. But that dream made me remember something. There was another door in my room, to the bathroom where lays water dormet, waiting to help smother the flames. Why didn’t;t you help me? See me? Come through that long bathroom we shared. You were my older brother. I know you were also hurt, also scared of what would happen if you fought back. But isn’t it easier to fight for someone else, someone smaller and younger than you? If you can't fight for yourself, fight for me. Instead you fought with us, with him and I. As if we were the problems. But we were all hurt, all in the middle of a long fight between mom and dad. Yet there was still a secret tunnel you and I had that could’ve helped, could’ve connected us and we could’ve at least fought together. Burned together. Jump out that window together in a burning house.

I want the compass to take me home. I’m not sure where that is, but it could show me. Like that one mirror in Harry Potter that shows you what you desire most. Maybe I’d feel at peace, maybe I’d suffer more, but at least I’d know where home is. A place to start and finish, a place where the grass is blue and the skies are green. Where you could walk and walk and walk, alone or with a friend, yet you would be safe - no worrying about being abducted or shot or tripping over loose rocks. Someplace safe. Someplace intangible, backwards. I spend a lot of my time thinking about houses - their seemingly infinite nature, not knocked down unless on purpose. Houses I’ve lived in, seen, explored, created. Yet a house isn’t a home unless there are people there to fill it. Would earth still feel mighty and significant without its people? I think she’d feel lonely without all the noise and chaos we bring. It’s crazy how I can remember all the nooks and crannies of my house and the places I’ve been yet barely remember the peopl who were there with me or the memories I’ve made.

[ramblestimesthree]

9/13/24

I can only hear the saying "if there's a will there's a way." Now that I am older I wonder if that statement is true. Can I simply will my dreams to come true? Is there a path I must follow? What are my dreams, my goals, my ambitions? Who am I? Maybe I am simply a plot of dirt ready to be sowed. And the glory of gardens is that they can both stay the same - same plants, same size, same harvest, year after year but they can also change indefinitely. The possibilities are endless. So many choices and possibilities, how do I just pick one? Even if I can eventually grow every type of flower there is, I have to start somewhere, some seed, and I do not know what that seed is yet. I love flowers. i wish I had a real garden, not just a metaphorical one, so I could grow all the flowers I want. I think it’s beautiful how each flower has it’s own symbology behind it. “The Language of Flowers” - my favorite book. But see, some people may think flowers only symbolize the most fundamental concepts in life - love, death, friendship, mourning. But there is so much more than that. For example, m favorite flowers, alstroemerias, can symbolize many things based on their color: red ones illustrate love but purple represents beauty. One of my core values is appreciation of beauty if that’s not obvious.

I feel like I am constantly floating. Looking down at the world beneath me. Safety in hat vast blue sky. I see all the people around me, hear their stories, smell their flowery perfumes and comforting colognes. I feel it all yet somehow I am still disconnected, simply a gas in the air - felt by all, seen by none. I feel haunted, like I am ghost passing through life. Day in, day out, in, out, in, out. Shouldn’t it be peaceful, being a cloud in the sky? I could go anywhere, see anything yet nothing meaningful will ever stick to me. The planes fly through me as if I am not even there. The only thing that does stick is the rain within me, constantly sticking to itself to hold my cloud together. But once one drop falls, the rest of me wil fall with it. Many people ask the question - is water wet? It’s a joke, a debate meant to form friendly arguments and conversations that hold people together. Yet I am not held. Water is only wet when there is a second drop, something else touching it makes it come to life. I’ve always wished that I had the power to fly. Now I realize I’ve had it all along - simply flying through life as if it didn’t matter. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I just need to go outside, open the window and touch the grass. Even the air can feel the grass around it. There is so much grass, so many molecules in the air that me, a simple cloud, feels so insignificant. So small in such a big wide world. Why did I survive? What’s holding me together? Who do some clouds rain while others just keep floating, spinning around that big wheel we call earth? One foot on the grass, one in the air with the rest of me. What am I if not a cloud?

One thing nobody knows about me are the hallucinations I had when I overdosed, how frequently I still think about them. One thing I wish people knew about me is how hard I still fight everyday to not self-harm still. I did this to myself.

[ramblestimesthree]

2/10/25

Now it’s going to spilled out of me like the Diet Coke next to me still stained in the carpet. Before I left, we were talking about if you could study one for the rest of your life, which one would it be: space or earth? I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to study space because there’s so so so much we still don’t understand earth. The way she flips her hair and causes waves, or what her core truly looks like - maybe it’s as empty as the rest of us. We agreed to present on earth, because how could we not? But then I fell in love with space. The crows flying away, teasing you as if they knew how desperately you wanted one. Running around in the grass, pretending that maybe if we stay in this moment forever everything will be okay. We can chase the crows forever. I fell in love with space, his blue? Brown eyes? Space changes faster than I can watch. This poetry is stupid, I can’t stand writing about people because they leave, they all fucking leave and if they don’t I do because that’s all humans know, leaving. Leaving earth, the unknown, for the seemingly beautiful same unknown that we’ll never know because of all the constant shifts and maneuvers and stars blowing up as if they can’t stand our invasion. But I fell in love with that too. I left you. Left my king, the puzzle finished and the bed made and one last final kiss at the airport shared. We knew. We knew we knew we knew and it happened as harshly as it did regardless. Golf and beer and pools and flights over the Grand Canyon, as if any of this artificial closeness could change the fact you are a thousand miles away and all I want are wings. Come back to me my crow, we old dogs can learn new tricks. I keep my lego space craft just for you, in case you decide to come back to me. That letter is waiting in your mailbox still.

My writing is changing and so am I. Absently changing.

If this world was mine I’d cry and beg for you to come back, hell if this body alone was mine I’d do the same, but alas I am in a pink cloud and cannot find mt way down. I feel like all I know is loss yet I have lost nothing but my fucking mind. You’re all still alive and seemingly real yet my Lasix is expiring and I can’t see anything anymore. Change the fucking channel! How do I explain the automatons as you so say they are. It’s more like everything is in 2D, paper people and cars and buildings like I’m Mr. Game and Watch. Throw those little pancakes and take me out! People aren’t wax or robots or zombies but rather they look like card-stock stacked on top of each other and forming some sort of collage I don’t get the point of. I don’t get the point of any of this. Uncanny valley but forever. Is it my writing? Is that was gives me away? How long can the anonymity last or am I about to get a text telling me to take it all down and how dare you talk about our family, about me, in this light yet this light is the sun and it is never-changing, well as long as never lasts. I want to be a writer. I want to be a writer so so so bad but I never will be in this keyboarded world. Never never never, black and white and gray and long sessions and soft blankets and wow look at that owl , she watches me carefully and makes sure the words don’t come out. No I’m not scared of the fucking owl, I live with it. I know why I do it. I count them long and hard - hundreds. 76. It’s not enough, but not enough for what? For who or when or where or why? Why does it feel like I never enough have, maybe for the sins I’ve committed or the people I’ve hurt or for all those apparently intrusive compulsive thoughts I have? Why why why? It doesn’t matter if I don’t want to stop. Will you watch me die?

[ramblestimesthree]

2/10/25

I can’t do my homework. I can’t do my homework when the words are blurry and the flashcards look like rocks and I’m actually going to have a breakdown over he paragraph long definition of irony our professor provided. Now that’s irony. There’s a ladybug on my side table and I wonder what’s the point of it all. The homework, the talking, the miles of fabric curled around me and the sand in my mules. I was so tired today that I thought I caught the flu - my muscles ache from the weight of it all. The weight of what though? Oranges? All piled up in a sack. The weight of shirt covering it up or all the things that I’m hiding from myself. I know the truth, I just can’t say it. How much do I know? I see the blood, see the bodies and the shirts and the little tiny rocks scattered around them all as if someone was about to start a seance or build an army of zombies. I’d fit right in. I hate how much we use pronouns and people in writing nowadays, hate it when I write about it myself yet that’s all I tend to think about. People. Their pasty skins and their eyes that can see, but never themselves. Eyes that can fit in. I don’t understand why I feel so separate but also the same - row upon row upon row of zombies making coffee or tea in the morning humming “The Saints Come MarchingIn” and watching the bluebirds outside their windows. The decaying skin flaking into their breakfast and not even caring one bit because they’re so stuck on their tracks, a train never leaving. It makes my stomach scuttle.

Do you think we are awake or asleep? Since when did it begin to matter? It’s nearly a full moon and I wonder what she will show us this time. Apparently we can count on ourselves but fuck I’m out of fingers, that is, if I had them in the first place. Count my fingers and toes and make sure they are all still there won’t you? Paint my nails brown or a deep purple that looks black in the dark. Darkening eyes and darkening polish - how do I process it all? Where do you end and I begin? A vine ever looping that solid brick house - the house everlasting storms and hurricanes and fires - is it worth it to last that long? Can vines grow flowers too? To remind us of our identity. The flipping of tarot cards - threes in a row, no cups in sight - the smell of grilled steaks with too much pepper and salt, cows and peaches and broken lawnmowers living the last of their days in the old shed out back. I am these things, the elephant, the markers bleeding through the page and ripped apart papers because the words just wouldn’t come out right. Write. Write it all out, get it out of me before it me gets it out of it. Does the order really matter or is it the meaning that really stings? I want to tell stories but they never seem to come out of me. One day. Two days. Three more.

I wanted to walk to school in fifth grade - it was less than a mile away and directly across from my neighborhood. That sweet sweet neighborhood in the middle of nowhere with a handful of grandmas who gave out full sized candy bars for Halloween. My mom said no and that was that. I would have sleepovers at my best friend’s house - we’d watch movies in the theater room till we fell asleep to them and her at would wake me up purring, begging for attention. Of course I always pet her. We loved movies - loved Edward Scissor hands and Despicable Me and Harry Potter. She was Alice from Wonderland one year, her sister Cheshire Cat, with handmade costumes from a mom who drew coloring pages of campers and bonfires and regular family things they shared together. They were beautiful and tasted of marshmallows. I still have drool on my chin from them. I was too much, I told too much and got in trouble for it. I had no idea hw much I was hurting you, al I knew was that you were a friend, a safe person and I thought that I was supposed to tell you these things. I’m sorry, sorry for the way your dad cut us apart with those same scissors we loved, the quiet hallways and friends who didn’t understand and the text messages I sent you afterwards hoping to reconcile. I’ve changed! I promise! But I still dream of those scissors and have learned that cops really love their daughters, even if another daughter suffers from it. Was I also your best friend? Why didn’t you come to the hospital? Was it because you were banished like Harry or was it because the words were stuck in you too? Where are you?

[ramblestimesthree]

1/23/25

My inscape is wild - butterflies and palms, gardenia, peonies, hyacinths, lavender, alstroemerias. Oa and birch and I, the weeping willows. The wild forest within me rages yet whimpers so gently it melt butter for toast. Reckon that life blooms in the darkest of landscapes, blackberries fill the sky within me. To be fruit, to be sweet yet I am the forbidden apple begging to be bitten. Poetics are political they say, ye all I am fighting is tangled green ribbon shriveled up inside. No dead leaves yet but they are fragile and browning and soon will be bagged and seeped. Rosemary, oregano, cilantro; my pot has boiled over and feeds, my starving plants. I am starved, but of what? How so, if my inscape is as flourished as my woods convince. Woods and words and barking butterflies swirling in my mind. All I need is a new pillow for this wreck of mine has plucked all the old one’s feathers. My hand yearns to shred another. To see another inscape, that is hat the plants desire, to be admired. Admire me! Hear me! See the beauty of my wilt, of all those leaves wrinkled with lines of the tires that drove through them. Leaves are meant to have lines, right? What purpose do they serve? Too bad the lines I do don’t get me high. To clarify, they never did. All I have are balloons tied to fingers that will sever my arms front my body when I drop, crash land into my own woods - a brand new world. Unceremoniously.

Imagine - that was my rock-out word. For those who are blessed to not know, a rock-out is when you leave a residential treatment program, you receive a rock with a word on it to carry with you - something you need out in the real word. Imagine the real world! My reality is cracked - good thing my rock isn’t. the first time I let residential when I was 14 I got nothing as I left. I hadn’t earned my love and left disgraced yet still branded on the wall. To speak is to die, there is no ‘or’ today. I cannot imagine it. how long would I have stayed if my parents did not randomly decide they want me back - a child of divorce yet all that separate was me from them. A rock, a brand, a horseshoe - these things will haunt me forever. Seventy six cuts, whipped ream on the porch, broken lightbulbs and breaking plastic spoons - all this pain I’ve inflicted on myself and all I can imagine is more. A dream is a wish your heart makes but the heart is coal warming up another’s house. I’m on fire! God I wish I could burn myself but I am a. Coward and the only lighter I have is dead. Fingers creak and crack, wrists wither and I am alone again, deserted in Utah where I go seventy two hours mutter for crying for help. No wonder why I write for help now, to be heard. I was not to be even but obscured, dissected looking for another seventy six cuts that will never kill the dogs whimpering inside. Whimpering at the moon - they too have lost their howl - vocal cords shred to pieces. plucked petals lie around me - shards of a past I am ashamed of yet I want to dance around and feel the grass on my toes. This is just writing, just empty thoughts escaping a wild wild zoo exploding in my head.

I am already a blank canvas - so many possibilities ahead of me yet I cannot choose a single path, all I do is sit in the road waiting for a semi. Am I truly a good writer? It feels compulsive to write - can’t breathe until the words are down and out. Yet I think that’s what I’d choose to be - a grand writer - one who weaves stories so intricate and tight it’ll have a million different analyses - no one understand yet that’s the beauty of it - it’s complexity. I have said before… well what have I said before? It’s blurred, like the stories I yearn to tell yet when I grasp they disintegrate. Put it in my hands and let me feast on its smoothness. Let me shower in naked words and swim in peace. Fuck! I’d kill for a normal thought yet all that comes out is gibberish - I was born to gab yet my lips are sewn - pop the buttons off one by one yet they come back faster than zits. I try to play wack a mole with my ow ideas, keep suffocating these tropes but they just pop! Pop! Pop! When will my blood run dry? When will I stop over-achieving and just fucking sleep for a bit? Even when I tried to hide from it the words found their way back to me - the ents love me so and have claimed me as their own. Fuck fuck fuck! Leave me alone - let my wild beasts roam. I am a gentle girl yet my voice is not so I hide the hideous thing and let y hands roam the silken paper as if they’re never touched anything before. Little baby hands and little baby feet. Rest them upon my new pillows. I want to stay empty, forever have space for more paint.

[ramblestimesthree]

1/24/25

I don’t have to be you. But what if I already am? What if we’re woven together forever and I don’t know which strings are yours and which are mine. I crave scissors to cut us apart, to cut you out because I cannot live in this home anymore. Being a girl is a privilege, that is what my family, my mom taught me. I know color! I know beauty and poetics and shopping sprees, which bras are the best and underwear most comfortable. I know how to sell and to buy and make those around me fawn - it is a privilege that I have. A privilege that makes me speechless - lipstick but no lips to speak - paint all over this body of mine. It is weird to feel beautiful amidst family who yearns for it - moms who do Weight Watchers and brothers yearning for both privileges - to be a man and a girl. I wish it made sense to me. I wish it made sense to him, that regardless of what he wants to be, he will be able to grocery shop, go to dinners, get haircuts without being afraid of people trying to guess his gender. I did not expect my family to become a secret but he has locked himself in - a boy and a girl all one body with autism secluding him from himself. The worst, most selfish part is that it feels like my fault. Was it my bra he wanted to wear? Wanted to feel that silky smoothness, envied my privileges that now feel like sins against him. My sins against his. He will never be me, I will never be him but our bras are woven together regardless and I wish I could tell which strings are mine.

Today I have fallen in love with the tube on my vacuum cleaner, how it can reach behind the toilet to get the dead spider there. I love the eggplant shade of my water bottle and the way my nails match my IPad case. See, I’m not sure if my loving is enough is my issue, no I tink it’s something else. I love love, love Valentine’s Day and the little baby angels and little heart candy. I want to go to target just to see their Valentine’s Day collection. If I love love so much, why can’t I feel pleasure? How are they not connected within? Like spaceships and stars and little tiny flags on little tiny moons the space has grown comfortable and I’m not sure what to do. Oh what to do, what to do. I want to write till my knuckles bleed but the body I wear disagrees. Wish I could rip desire out and let her fly free but alas she is more strapped than an infant on the way home from the hospital. Write or blow my brains out, what a lovely conflict. Make those little toy soldiers kiss each other - war is too silly! Just kiss and make up you know? I made my Barbie’s kiss, didn’t you? Love love love, love is my problem because I was loved too much in all the wrong places and now I’m bruised. Love love love, crushes me, sits on my back,pins me and tells me to love it back. Love me back! This is love; love is zip ties and hard helmets and construction zones and more Ken then I can fit in my hands. When did I’ve become a black starless night? Can I love the stars back into existence?

My body is full of sticks and straws - you will never see how easy it is for me to snap and stumble but it happens everyday. My body is butter. I look in the mirror and see nothing so how do I know which parts are visible or not? Can you see the pins holding up my eyelids, the glue between joints, the dandruff in my hair? I have no eyes so I cannot see, nor can I know how much you see. I’m more blended than a smoothie, a singular berry you cannot differentiate from the rest - a seed in a meadow or a letter on a page - I have no shape just lines. Unconnected, invisible lines that taste like copper water fountains or wooden planks. Snap snap snap me out of here! Break those sticks to twigs then set it on fire, no evidence behind - you’ll never see me again!

[ramblestimesthree]

2/3/25

I feel so empty, so fucking empty like the pen I’m trying to write my manifesto with. Because that’s what this is, right? The manifesto of my body, not m life because I’m not sure that belongs to me anymore. Free cancellation, what a blessing amongst this angst. I remember, remember everything but my own name. Is that who I am? I can’t say that, can’t expose my clocks and gadgets and gizmos because I’m still wondering who decided that clocks should go from right to left instead of left to right. This isn’t a game, it isn’t. It’s me figuring it out, figuring out my subjectivity because right now I’m a fly on the wall. I can’t read my own handwriting. I still have more stories but I can’t read my own handwriting when this happens. When the writer comes out and nothing else matters but the release. The writer, the poet without the poetics because my mind is too busy for more politics; I’m still trying to decide if I believe in honesty or not. I do, I think. I’v been cursed, can’t you see? All this “shit” I’ve been through, scars on my body to remind me when my brain cannot. I’ve opened up these cuts, time and time again, make them bleed so I can finish an assignment.

What is happening? I can’t control my hand, it just writes and write and writes. I’m there again, there there there. Cursive going sideways. A meadow of flaming flowers. Is this poetic enough of do I need more symbols to make sense? The stars behind my eyes, the chipped nail polish. If I had my way each nail would be painted a different color. Me. Mine. I. My. Why does it feel like burnt toast? Give me some butter or something! Anything so it doesn’t crumble. I’m in control and it’s a power trip alight. So much I could do in this state. The secrets I’m not supposed t tell but have the power to do in these moments. Spin the wheel and choose! Maybe I don’t have that much autonomy. I really don’t. But the keyboard beckons me regardless. This is the compulsive me - writing just to write, right? Were you right or did you just not want the truth, to dig deeper and see me for who I truly am. A monster. A little fuzzy one you carry in a bag with you, and I jump and jump but I can never leave so I chew a hole through the bottom instead. History is repeating itself and I’m stuck in a loop. Breaking the fifth wall this time. Coffee or tea? Or or or or or. I live there. Never one, never the same response. I’m digging the hole again - who can stop me?

Oh, you’re scared? Well I didn’t like the spiders either. Crying in that bathroom stall, the beckoning to come out but you wouldn’t. Why are you in there little girl? What are you hiding from with your eyes sewn shut? The very person convincing you to “please unlock the door, we can go home” or something scarier, more feral that awaits your entrance? I can’t speak of it but I know the answers - regardless of how confusing that is. I’m the one flickering the lights. I took a peek and didn’t like what I saw. Something happened, is happening, and I saw it in the mirror but can’t put my finger on it. Maybe I’m calmer, can do my homework even if I’m at a loss for words. What story are you not allowed to tell? I see. Maybe the world will know one day? The cold bathroom tiles, flowered curtain. How does so much happen in one room? I could write a book in that room alone, exploring my whole house would be a library. I was there today. How much do I share? All of it, that was our deal. I want to help myself, even if every word is tattooed on my body forever. Not only does my hand cramp but my arms sting and I need some salve to soothe them. I wish I didn’t do this. So many wishers, which one is most important? Ask me again tomorrow.

[ramblestimesthree]

2/3/25

Fuck it’s happening again! Again and again and again. I stare at the words - did I write them or was I possessed by a ghost who really likes doing homework? The week five slum. The massive, mega, milky white hole I dug for myself. Staring at a full screen with no eyes, just sockets. Can I write three pages? Do I have enough or must I turn on the faucet so the ink can spill on the page? I need to do this, my homework, but I’d rather eat a bucket of nails, bucket included. Where did he go? Shit! I forgot to cancel it. Forgot my claims, my lunch, my two front teeth. I forget it all and it’s normal, it’s ok I promise because I’m obsessive and maybe if I think hard enough it’ll come back to me. Two brown cows stare down at me, little white wings flap and flap. Their hooves dirty and snouts pink with little brown freckles. If no one else, then them. Named father milk products for the irony. Pastel polo shifts hung up in an emptier closet - rooms with no doors and military style bed-making. Could the cows tell we weren’t ok? The horses, maybe the chicken? Thirty or more hutches in a row, could they truly be happy in a four by four box with some hay and milk fed three times a day or did they turn us into abusers like them?

Imagine twenty plus people in a windowy conference room, five buckets of bracelets in the middle. You’re standing at the end, fourth button eyes discerning what’s real and what’s not. How much of your body is your own. Congrats! Unfortunately… knowing they talked about the way you brushed your cow or the secrets you sold to others for a pancake breakfast. Did I belong? My polo says so but the way I embrace the frozen lake says I’m not afraid. I’m breakable, I broke. Now the record skips and I feel the collar choking me all over again. Two big warm hands around my neck. Why do I still write with a pen when there’s two keyboards in front of me? Who made me this way? Click clack, click clack, hooves of the horse while she prances around the calves, as if she’s better than them. Do you want to be a cowgirl? A jester? Then ride me baby, but ride me slow because I want to feel it. Feel the dirt slip in, fill my nose and ears and eye that stay wide open, even when I try to sleep. My hand still cramps over it. My jaw still clenches at the sight of my brand - invisible ink on my forehead. Paw print with four digits but there was five of us. There was five. Water we drowned in, the sun or the moon encompassing it all, but which one is it?

Why the crescent ‘C’? How did I forget? The pill closet, foot in the door, two to a shower. Watch me strip, watch hair slowly drench and soap roll off my body. Watch me decompose. Press me into the dirt, hands on arms and butts on backs. Dig me deep, I don’t want to breathe so maybe if I stay here longer I’ll stop. I laid down there forever, in front of the rock. I never got up. Now there’s moss and mold and rotten bones hugging the grass. A girl once tired to drink the watered down soap to kill herself, can you imagine the pain inflicted to get to that point? To the point of broken lightbulbs and plastic spoons. Never caught unless I wanted to be. Fake throw up in the sink for a day off - no, real throw up from fingers down the throat, anything for a break. Cactus feet and spider beds - fuck I’m traumatized. I don’t care if I never speak a word of this, just get it out! Open the tent so I can run back to the van - one cell to the next. Still feel the spiders in my hair, the sting on my soles. Bees, spiders, ants, quicksand (can you believe that’s a ‘real’ thing?). Do my homework for me because right now I need to feed my cow and run with the horses. Fetch my yellow polo for me will you? Maybe then I can focus and finally type this essay.

[ramblestimesthree]

1/28/25

I’m ready for another storm to roll me up like yarn then push me away. I’m ready for change. I want to travel, or build a new home entirely from purple Lincoln Logs and decorate it with parrot pillows and peacock sheets. Ready for leaves to fall over me to keep me warm in the winter and flowers to cushion my feet in the spring. It was a sign of change, a sign to do better, a leap in a frozen lake because even if the piranhas are out to get me maybe they’ll be frozen to. I can not wait, caution to the wind and the wind is a sign and the hyacinths and the peonies and the parrots and the peacocks. Signs pointing, pointing towards credit card debt but pointing nonetheless. I am safe in here, with my leaves, but godamn it I want to be a pretty flower smelling of daisies. Maybe I’ll write. Maybe I’ll swim in the bathtub with goggles in the dark eating my own bubbles, better than food. Join me in my feast of light in a dim room, please, if not for me than for you. I do not know you yet but I’d like to - we could be bunnies in a meadow forever. I’d like to swim again but with a gold medal on my neck to keep me grounded. I will travel with it till it is weightless , till I no longer care to distinguish it from the rest of my body - is it a symptom or is it bronze?

Turning to live with animals, enchanted with fantasy lands and creatures, blessed to escape modern pleasure, innocence never to be taken. Like a ship capsized, innocence of mine has been flipped, seized by the sea, drowned by weeds and now home to something new. Starfish? Sea urchins? Be careful, they are just living, maintaining their shallowness in my ship. O’ sweet ship, how I miss your masses and gold and wheel that would spin and spin so I could go in circles and bask in the sun while the waves took hold. The weather is changing, the boat dry and crusty in the light. Magic of reality, a fantasy lived day in and out, other worlds babysitting so the world doesn’t get set aflame. Well those were some bad babysitters. Leopard print bras and gummy sharks, ships loaded with bait to dig me deeper instead of being caught with the innocence I once held. That messy apartment lingering behind my eyes, that tiled bathroom chilling me to the bone, carving it into knives. Peeking smells; perfume, weed. The rainbow leading me back into fantasy, whispers that the apartment is someone else’s memory, not my won even if that’s all I grasp but good thing magic to make it all disappear is harnessed, not the be held but harnessed, caressed. Bad babysitters, letting the mussels bite before you did. You bit me and wouldn’t let go. Maybe thee leaves are animals, fantasy worlds have no rules. Maybe all that separates us is our perceived separation.

Symbols! Signs! They are everywhere and they haunt me. Stories haunt me but they are my mind’s secrets and not allowed to be told. What is real? What is not? It doesn’t matter and it haunts me regardless. A self-made self seems surreal, impossible, did I build myself to be this way? I think I’ve just convinced myself things are wrong because how could they be? They’re merely mild symptoms. I am successful - a student, an employee, a dog owner, an independent yet I still deeply belong here. I am a liar, I must be because that is the only way any of this could be true. What’s my struggle? What’s happening, what’s my crisis? The world is shrinking again. I am nothing, a mere body on this earth and that I shall remain. What’s wrong with me? Explain it when I ask. Why do I still crave the silver blade? Why do I plan to use it as soon as I can? What’s wrong with me, I am already perfect. Honor’s student, thesis writer, 3.7 GPA, no crisis, no suicidal ideation, just the taste for blood. Blood blood blood, gallons of the stuff, give them all that they can drink and it would never be enough. Blood! All I want. Maybe that’s perfect too, a new Jennifer in the making. Mega hot vampire cheerleader, that’s me. Something is wrong. Something deeply deeply wrong and that something is me. How? How could it be? Can’t you hear me scream? Why do I think something is so wrong when nothing is. I’m perfect. Or