aSoSS 33 | Handprint

We should just become English and get double-decker buses.

Pierpont Commons, 11:30AM, 11/8/2024

there is a screech of sweaty palm on stainless steel. the paint is stripped away in degrees, each sheet plastered to a different person. to think that we grabbed the same railing, turned the same key, held our own hands in the absence of the other’s. i was young and i did not realize you were young too. the paint, strong and dazzling, untouched. the pain, flaring, like a static discharge through the heart. the same hands, once cupped and overflowing, are now scrabbling at the coffin–but from which side? bury me alive, if it means you will never see me dead.

This is a really weird Sunday. I feel like everybody who was already gonna be somewhere has already left.

Trader Joe’s, 12:30PM, 11/24/2024

you are stuck somewhere in a space without dimension, a page without definition. your hair trembles. if i blink, you wave, your wrist flapping back and forth, your smile stretched between ears. an apparition, childish at heart, perhaps the worst way to suffer eternity. scream! please scream! the soul never matures; it knows the mortality of the body cannot compensate for the factors of luck, the four-sixteen-sixtyfour-leaf clover tattooed on your back. you are stuck somewhere, going but not gone, and i am stuck with you, suffering in silence, praising the deity that granted passage.

the devil’s dichotomy: an underworld, or a world without you.

Thanksgiving! It’s about the food and the family. I’ve told you, it’s like Christmas without the capitalism!

Glen/Catherine Inbound, 9:30PM, 10/8/2024

it is hard to write fiction and recognize the elements of truth that are sewn into the words, baked into the structure, digested in conscience and spit out as thought. of course i am thankful, but to speak it aloud would shatter the reality, a stake driven into the timeline. the only way to speak is to write, to draw parallels, to squint at the stars and see a bear. we are a kaleidoscope of butterflies, each of our successes driven by the updraft of our companion’s wings. i thank the earth for spinning so that i may see the sun split the horizon every day. i thank the moon for shining so that i may read and cry and dream without judgement.

i thank you, dear reader, for listening so that i may share a slice of this fruitful life with those who enjoy it.