thesmashingoffutureryan

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

moulding the emotions into shapes, which balloon animal do I fashion out of the chest pains today? should I take the ugly beast and stretch it into something sweet for you? I could reach inside the wolf’s mouth and pluck out all his teeth or pour blue buckets of thick paint slow into the sea if it isn’t quite the hue you like, i’ll redirect the sunlight to throw sharp tarpaulin shade over all those things you hate and pray you’ll never find them where I hide them in the cabinet of my brain.

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

i hate that it's always off the cuff whenever we dare to mention love. i always take it off the chin whenever it slips away from us again. maybe it is ironic that we never played ping-pong on that trip (we were too busy fucking). i love a competition as long as i never lose. i love an afternoon cigarette in your driveway as long as i get to wear your shoes.

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

there is a pain in empathy - i can recognize all the reasons despite the harm they did to me. i get sick of speaking to myself about all my distorted fantasies, i was never one to bury the past but instead drag it like the sea. futilely. the elements warp the bones, there are some things that can't be recovered. the recklessness of building a home out of someone you called a lover. i tackled this with fists up, i refused to call it love but i made that drive knowing what it would become; hand in hand at sunset, it was inevitable for us. i want to cradle the good things gently, to appreciate them fondly but it's just my nature to dig my claws in deep, to bleed them dry until they drip with melancholy. i waver at her sweet nature, i want to stick my neck out proudly, to handle this responsibly for all the people that are holding out for me but i'm charging full force at fences every night, a cacophony of apologies for my self-inflicted obsession with agony. i greet you with the sweetest kindness from these nights spent internalizing my violence. i greet you with a crooked smile despite the nasty glares received when i venture out in public. i greet you from the hope of the broke pouring cash into lotto tickets for good luck. i greet you happily because i'm trying so hard not be mean but instead to glow with vibrance, to embody the tender embrace of a comfortably delicious silence, to be the steering wheel curving hard around those harsh dips in the street, to serve up a silver platter in the pretense of peace, to earnestly speak these words and to one day believe that for me.

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

object permanence, subjective departure. photographs splayed out across the counter, words i don't hear anymore in cursive script, the way they curl at the edges sound like your voice; i tell you i miss the tone like i'm not up nights replaying all the messages i had the foresight to save. i'm not delusional and i never liked fantasy novels. i have always been good at beating dead horses. sun on my face at the top of the world, prepare for the unexpected. emergency disaster kit, prepare for the apocalypse. my laughter booms a little louder now like vines wrenching their way through the earth, the pitch surprises me every time. awkward gravity. empty bed, i sleep on the couch; it's too small for two people to fit comfortably, i spoiled the ending and i didn't even realize it. haphazard existence, sometimes we toyed around with domestics, it always felt good to come home to someone. i romanticized you living in my space without me, i enjoyed going about my day with the thought of you surrounded by the things that i've collected, it was like spending time together without actually doing it. i can't listen to that song without the stain of that highway at sunset, it's one of my favorites but i'll never play it again. going going gone.

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

my hands are so fucked that i can't make a fist without blood pooling in all the creases and i know i'm holding onto this too hard because of the dark stains on everything i own and i don't know how to explain it away to the apathetic gaze of the cashier when your open palms made it so easy to release me like i was a cool breeze passing through the summer heat a sweet relief from the pains of the season while you weigh heavy like harsh winter snow that prevents lovers from a warm holiday at home

my hands are so fucked that i can't open a beer without leaving a red rim around the lid of the can and maybe i've grown to enjoy the taste of poison with the decorative accent of copper after i've had a few they dig out the photographs from the drawer leaving red prints around all the corners forcing the sepia fade of time sooner than naturally your body wrapped in my sweater at the picnic table the sign on that wretched logging road we pulled over to document me striking a pose in front of the neon motel sign distanced to a decade instead of a season

my hands are so fucked that i can't pick up my phone or maybe thats the excuse i use to not reach for it anymore because i got so tired of leaving streaks across the screen praying that i'd wipe them clean to find your face underneath the notifications are all just empty requests for money but i'm still up all night hoping you'll say you still love me i want to apologize for being a grown man that can't deal with heartbreak i want to apologize for what all of this has done to your heart i never meant to trap you in a birdcage i never meant to leave you so bloodstained but my hands are so fucked that i couldn't help it

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

what is more vile than using another human life as collateral damage? i hoarded all these months of her time like some bizarre sort of currency, woke up every morning to feed the coins she spared into the machine of me and i knew something was off about it but i allowed it to happen anyways. i say “allowed” as if it was an accident, a steep slope i cautiously allowed myself to recklessly tumble down.

it’s a matter of softness. it felt good after an eternal winter to dabble in the sunshine. i felt that warmth and i know what can happen when i give myself over to that sensation, how the flames can engulf you whole before you have the chance to save yourself. the thing about being on the fence is that you have to pick a side eventually. it was so tempting to open up, to be known and understood, to reveal all those pieces i have hidden from myself and from others as life unfolds in it’s sprawling and unforgiving way. i’m a coin flip, i’m a see-saw, i dared play chicken with the tide and shed crocodile tears when i got wet. i’m a door slamming, i’m the click of a padlock, i’m too late.

have you ever been hurdled against gravity? do you know what it’s like to be aggressively flipped upside down on a roller coaster and feel your wallet slip free from your pocket to descent into the wild and chaotic oblivion? maybe you even caught a glimpse of it as it was ripped out of reach? have you ever been caught up in this wild reeling, plunging forward, already knowing you have made a mistake that you can’t walk yourself back from? have you ever come-to after a disaster and felt such gigantic, unshakeable shame knowing that the entire thing could have been avoided? have you ever set yourself on fire?

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

you are white picket fences, the good intentions of the american dream, the illuminated living rooms of serene homes that i walk by alone with rain-damp shoulders, with cold fingers that do not wrap around anyone else’s anymore. i felt my body for the first time today; not that of the bloated distortion that i gaze upon in the mirror but instead i stared down my frame at my silent footsteps and i could see how much of me has withered away over this last year; the wind pressed my shirt against me, a cold arm draped over my back and it billowed around my stomach in the places that used to be hugged, and it stuck to my arms that were soft when you knew them but now they are solid and defined like i used to long for but with no one to encase with them i can hardly see what the accomplishment is. my hair is a different color now and sometimes i shave it off at three in the morning when i am panicking about all the aspects of life i cannot change and i have covered my arms in ink because i want to be a different man when you see me again. i know i am different now but the goal was to be better and i have only run in the opposite direction whenever i have been presented with an opportunity.

age is a bizarre and wretched thing; for years i have heard all about getting older but nothing can teach you like experience. they said that something dies, that certain feelings fade away and they warned you that it was all the good things but you don’t know until they are gone. when i think about falling in love with you, with cliche rainbow pastel butterflies and falling asleep on the phone and racing against the skyline to make it to you before the sun rises it is hard to imagine that i could ever feel those sorts of things again.

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

“You and me, we’ll start again and you can tell me all about what you did today, what you did today.”

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

And if all was well and your heart could find the words Would we be for better baby, would we be for worse? And if there was a way to navigate your seas And if tonight, my true love dared belong to me

Playing this on repeat. Brian Fallon knows how I feel.

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

Diamond Stingily. Entryways, 2016.

door with locks, bat, wood

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

“Do you take pride in the hurt? Does it make you feel large and tragic?”

— John Steinbeck, East of Eden (via modesofexpression)

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

strange summer

Seattle, Washington

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

It’s just that I’m still here and there’s still everything you don’t know Oh, how often I dream about you You don’t know how I need you

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

“At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? / And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?”

— Ilya Kaminsky, from “A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck,” Deaf Republic

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

playing hide and seek in the city; i can feel the fingers sifting through frequencies to find me but i cut them dead, i burrow inside instead. i used to be wide open, a public beach of emotion and they stole the pretty stones, they took all the good bits home to collect dust upon a shelf, to own the bared bones then store them away to forget about. now i’m racing to close up all the gates and i’m mixed haphazard bitterness, i’m climbing into my cage and it feels like over-exaggeration, it feels like trying to ride tandem by myself but i have felt black hollow abandon and i won’t be the discarded scraps again, i will be the knife this time and not the one that gets cut out.

[thesmashingoffutureryan]

Your Best American Girl // Mitski

You’re the one 

You’re all I ever wanted 

I think I’ll regret this