Author: a-spider-on-state-street

Stay away!

If you’re with the car I’m not gonna ticket it, so I guess you just wanna wait here?

Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, 4:00PM, 3/13/2025

a dangerous thought is the deadliest parasite–once a thought is born, there is no way to kill it; you must live with it, nurture it, grapple with the fact that it came from your own conscience. i used to think the act of forgetting would erase these thoughts from existence, like a child who covers his face in hide-and-seek and declares himself the winner. despite everything, i still believe it’s true: when the time comes, my words will be turned into dust, a trajectory parallel to an event horizon. my last breath will be my first on the other side, a complete unknown, a land where flowers bloom crystals and spiders spin sentences into silk.

I will say, frozen peas, eating them frozen, I don’t know what it is but it just makes it taste better.

West Medical Center, 4:00PM. 2/25/2025

what a terrible curse it is to wield logic in the face of love! to fall back on probability, the ifs and the buts, is to live a fearful life. trust the hand of fate and walk through the veil with confidence. the absolutes overrule the ambivalence: you sit there, petals falling–love me, love me not, love me–each one the product of a hundred bad decisions. tell me, who was there at your lowest? the light and the darkness, in that order. when the sun sets do not forget the pull of the moon on the tides, on the stars, on your soul.

You have to come with me to my physics exam tomorrow… you’re luck, you’re very good luck.

Chem Building, 11:00PM, 3/12/2025

a scent later and i am back in your room and watching the cartoons on the television. a breath later and i am watching your chest rise and fall as you sleep–gentle and graceful, the way a lily leans into sunlight–wanting nothing more than to burrow into the crook of your arm. the water does not heat, the window is missing a tile, the stairs creak in their sleep–this is a misfortune that we must endure. the reward? with your lips on mine, you convince me that luck is a zero-sum game.

…at the club, instead of being fifteen dollars for a drink it was twenty dollars, and of course Trisha had to have those!

Sky Harbor International Airport, 8:30AM, 1/6/2025

mark the spot where we buried you, kicking without force, screaming without sound. in my hands, in memoriam–you deserve that dignity, at least–slammed against the earth, stone imprinted against skin, the divot between neck and collarbone which i am intimately familiar with: a cave beneath a waterfall, a cloak of caramel to shield the sweetness. you are not dead to the world, least of all to me, with your stare piercing the back of my eyelids and your smile shining against the moon–

You could go in a vertical line, you could go in circles, my sister just picks a random spot and starts shoveling…

Union + S. University, 11:00AM, 2/20/2025

displacement is a natural order. in three generations there will be nothing left of the world we treasure: one to prime, one to paint, and one to sit and wonder where it all went wrong. nostalgia clings to the heart like cigarette smoke, heavy and unyielding. i will name my youngest after you and pray they carry your soul onward, an electrical current through the family tree. you are quivering from the tension. an impulse, or an impasse? look around, grab my hand, close the gap. look around, whisper a prayer, close your eyes.

Born curious, it’s gotten me into a lot of trouble…

Yeah, that’s what life is all about!

SPCA Thrift, 3:00PM. 3/4/2025

the water is up to my chest, shallow enough to hear my thoughts and deep enough to drown them. your crown is made of sand and the palace has long crumbled–you are on your toes, chin above the current, swept head over heels. the ocean flirts and then consumes, a vicious cycle of birth and rebirth. the blinking dot on the horizon was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a four-leaf clover with a missing petal. the lighthouse is nowhere to be seen.

We saw each other three weeks ago…

No we didn’t! I don’t remember this!

It was at the bus stop. Remember I went to Canada three weeks ago? We were making fun of Canada.

Duderstadt Library, 4:30PM, 2/4/2025

to think that we can live a thousand lives in the blink of an eye–one for each word, each feeling, a pixel of sunlight in the crook of your smile, cutting through the fog like a lotus in the mud. you are older now and the photo has faded from your memory–does this mean it even existed at all? as Forster put it: the king died, and the queen died of grief. just like a story worth telling is defined by the plot, a life worth living is defined by the details.

They didn’t have cell phones in ’96, at least the kids I worked with… life has changed in a relatively short period of time.

Jerusalem Garden, 12:30PM, 2/1/2025

we have run inside to escape, a one-way street with no reprieve. the playpen has been replaced by a touchscreen, a bright light projected from a black hole. do you think the grass misses the footsteps? such is the cycle of attention, the rhythm of the rivers and the stars. the same way the brook bends against the underbrush: restless, ceaseless, the water strumming the chords of river rock. the guilt settles and hardens like a gumdrop–the feeling has passed, but the dust has already settled.

Another text in the group chat! This man hasn’t texted us for two years and now he’s texted us twice! He misses us!

Science Learning Center, 5:00PM, 2/19/2025

an analogy: if the chef brings out a dessert and you gulp it down in one bite, you experience the short-term pleasure of the meal without regret. you pay the bill and take your leave; you live in the moment; you forget. but instead if you take incremental bites, savoring the flavor, your pleasure is extended–but so is your awareness of the ending, the certainty that at any moment you will reach for the fork and find an empty plate. which, then, is the greater heartbreak: to be ignorant, or appreciative, of the timeline? to lose without knowing, or to count each moment as it slips away?

–your breath shudders, for you know this is the voice of a mute and the word of a liar. into my ear you whisper goodbye in your language–i ask you what it means and you say i love you—

Me when I can have a girl dinner without a boyfriend screaming in my ear… like, it’s just noodles and butter!

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 5:30PM, 2/5/2025

when the earth was born it appeared purple in the sky, like a blood clot against the skin, a bruise never fully healed. in an instant, an element so volatile it recolored the planet’s iris. an oxygen holocaust. do plants remember? violet fades to verdigris, the seed a photograph, the stamen a scar. lavender grows in my backyard as a gentle reminder of the transgressions i’ve accumulated. act the saint, so you can turn me into the sinner–

She used to stay with me ever since I was born, I mean, like, I’ve stayed with her for the past nineteen years…

Science Learning Center, 2:30PM, 2/5/2025

millions will die in this false spring, in the eye of storm and shadow. with the grace of a twig contorting in a wildfire, the passage from person to thing, a frozen pipeline, a burst eardrum. even after a flood, the water reconfigures itself. in a thousand years there will be villages of coral nested in your ribcage and schools of salmon swimming through your skull. in a thousand years man will marvel at the atlantis you have created, a legacy beyond flesh and bone.

Go ahead…

No, I could talk about it for hours—

—and I want to hear it!

Michigan Union, 11:00AM, 2/20/2025

the diary of a lover is filled with ellipses–it hurts too much to end even a sentence about you. we are dust mites floating together and the sunbeam is our domain. in this world, a glimpse of the heavens: what guides us also restrains us, but this is a good restraint, this fusion of you and me… consider the weight of the world in one hand and your fingers clasped in the other. if nothing lasts forever, maybe i can be nothing with you…

Where are you from?

Virginia. DC area, Arlington.

I’m sure you get this question a lot, but do you live close to the cemetery?

Uh, yeah I’d say it’s about a ten minute drive…

EECS Building, 3:30PM, 11/21/2024

i met you for the first time as a stranger. we talked about the weather and your father and the new prodigy and the death of our favorite restaurant, like we were seventeen again and you had crawled through my bedroom window and into my arms. as if the world had not stopped spinning, a planet so big and full it hurt to laugh. as if i am not sitting on your gravestone, a quiver in my lip and a tremor in my chest, whispering to the soil to keep you warm in place of me.

You’re gonna be the best—oh look! The sun is out!

AADL Downtown, 12:00PM, 11/12/2024

it was a weed. i wanted to call it pretty but it was a weed, a dandelion beaming with the blush of the sun. quick to bloom, quicker to rot. against all odds it has conquered the impossible, leaves outstretched in heavenly embrace. what wouldn’t a flower give to be appreciated? if i had the chance, i would sit on the cobblestone and watch it grow. if i had the chance, i would name it after you.

There are a bunch of spots down there, it’s like Hogwarts!

Nickels Arcade, 2:00PM, 2/2/2025

after Marty Rubin: “lies bewitch us, if we want to be bewitched”–

i have inherited an incurable insomnia from you, in the way your absence keeps me up at night. sleep is a luxury you have stolen–you leave me with nothing more than pity, a memory woven in moonlight and encased in spider’s silk: i closed my eyes and breathed a prayer and you were there, my voice a siren, your mouth a shipwreck. there are ninety-nine names for God and yours is not one of them.

Nice nails!

Thank you, they’re for Valentine’s Day!

[…]

South Quad, 1:00PM, 2/3/2025

skip the middle man, shall we? there is nothing left to say; i have torn the dictionary apart searching for the words to give you. entrust to me your heart and let me cast it in gold, so it may be preserved for the world to admire. one soul to another, without syllable nor stress, for this is the gift of a language repossessed. temple to temple: we are mothers kneeling and mothers weeping, hands clasped and prayers unanswered. how can we be damned when we have each other? your eyes tell me it does not matter; this altar holds enough room for two.

I think about you a lot. What does that make us?

Alice Lloyd Hall, 4:00PM, 12/8/2024

i can feel the melody of your thoughts through the heat of your touch–an excellent conductor, in more ways than one–your pulse rippling but not breaking the surface, a swordfish streamlined against the ocean. everything we have to say has already been written above, a cosmic braille blotted by the sun. you wear the stars as a cape; i trace the freckles on your back, brush tears away from your cheek. don’t you see? a night sky splashed across your skin. a kiss made salty by sweaty lips, fingertips charting the seas you once commanded. you have been graced with ethereal beauty. in the nowhere there is only the rush, the crash, the silence.

I’ve got no one to cuddle with, [so] I’m gonna buy a body pillow…

Stockwell Hall, 12:00PM, 1/9/2025

a seed of resolve: i am going to love you to the moon and back. you protest weakly, the way a tired child insists on staying awake. do not set your words on me, for i know your tongue too well. i will wrap my arms around you and never let go, until the daylight bleeds into darkness and you fall asleep, the thump in your chest in line with the echo in my eardrum. it will take more than death to separate us. atrophy or infinity, whichever comes first.