Author: a-spider-on-state-street

I’m a moocher, I mooch off my friends, and my parents, and my ex-girlfriend, and my ex-girlfriend’s friends…

Duderstadt Library, 1:00PM, 3/28/2025

those bygone years make fools of us all. the cherry blossoms trace the streamline of the river breeze and i wonder if the petals will reincarnate, if the koi will nibble at the pink and grow streaks of coral and rainbow. there is a songbird in the harbor and it sings of a better time, a distorted dimension, a eulogy, or perhaps a confession: who i would have become, and who would have taken my place. in another spring, the sky is falling on our heads–the impact will, for better or worse, make us none the wiser.

Plus it opens up a whole ‘nother half of the world.

Yeah, and it shows that you are capable to love so much.

7-Eleven, 9:00PM, 4/10/2025

the art of imitation: copy the sleight of the smile, the sway of the hips, the twitch of a thought that pulls the corner of the mouth upward. i would like to love you, i think, incandescently. how did Humphry Davy feel when he invented the arc lamp? when he watched a wire burn without flame, cleaving light from darkness? a black so deep, a pull so strong, a filament that shines with the weight of the world. a backdrop, illuminated: i am removed from my thoughts, scaffolded, sterilized. destiny is chaos and chaos is disorder and disorder is the fabric of the universe, the term for a man with nothing to lose.

I’m growing less tolerant of the people I work with, the people I live with, the people I want to be around.

North Quad, 5:00PM, 4/3/2025

the drip of the faucet, the stutter of the metronome. a parasite of the mind, i know that now–i see it in your face, a quiet strength, the concentration of someone trying to forget someone else. we must grow into death, an acquired object permanence: a child playing peekaboo and looking for a parent who is not there. a grandfather clock chimes from the ashes; winter weeps for the man buried below, and as persephone turns her cheek the snow dissolves without a trace.

Do you know anyone in high school right now?

Yeah, my sister.

Is she a tweaker or is she normal? My brother’s normal.

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

imagination is a gradient of experience charted against naïveté. it is the tightrope between consciousness and fear, where a knife is seen as shiny instead of sharp. to be able to listen to a house and hear the laughter through its membrane. to be able to look at a cloud and see a cloud and not a butterfly, or a hibiscus, or a tragedy. a contraction–a contradiction–in a mirror we crystallize infinity and sell it back to ourselves. in this crystal, a tombstone: you are a name, and then a last name, and no more.

I’ll be doing a lot of things this weekend, and by a lot of things, I mean doing nothing.

Chem Building, 10:30PM, 3/23/2025

there is a summer hidden behind the curtain of a weeknight, an eternity nested within itself. every day is a sacrifice and every sacrifice demands a savior. the sky opens like a slit throat, warm and gushing with the promise of a sunset, a scar that will wrinkle in the sun. in the shadow of the moon–in the interval between now and never–you will disappear into the black and i will not even have the thought of your face for comfort. oh, martyr! on that summer weeknight you became a hero to the world and the memory of a hero to me.

With this message, do you think you are blessing him or do you think you are cursing him?

Palmer Commons, 4:00PM, 4/9/2025

and then suddenly, a tilt of the head and the heart is gasping for air. each sentence a slipknot: a mouthful, or a minefield? a rose, freshly cut, stem against cheek, dying between breaths–who is the one dying? how easily the words spilled from my fingers and onto the page. the ink bleeds transparencies, truths unveiled and secrets deciphered. your glance dissolves muscle and unzips bone, a medusa in media res, where serpents shatter glass with their tongues and turn beads of sweat into reams of stone.

Over Christmas I started making it for him, my dad has a workshop, so I made him a wooden cooking spoon!

RoosRoast, 10:00AM, 3/29/2025

a sleight of your hand and the coffee has splashed across the white: the countertop a constellation of heartbeats, the marble annotated with stars. a sleight of your hand, this falling. your soul is stitched into tragedy and still i pulled the thread, hanging on for dear life, unraveling us both. the fourth law of physics: inertia is the toil and ecstasy is the reward. my autobiography will spill your name all over the margins, each footnote an explosion of springtime. do you remember the flowers? i wish you would.

I am learning how to make a crème brulee!

Do you have a torch?

I have a very big torch.

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

the fire burns bright blue, a blue that cannot be caged or stoked or photographed. the kind of blue that can be only described by a look–sapphire and cerulean and the teal from a thick stack of glass–the kind of look you never forget. i wear your lenses and they distort my vision: they turn you into stars, a bright pulse of glowing light. no one has ever looked at me this way. did you ever ask me what i wanted to tell you? a scar in my retina, long after the sun sets, long after i get my answer. there is blood and there is sky and there is nothing in between. a face so white, you would have thought i saw a ghost–

It reminds me of your mom, because back in high school she used to do it and then she would flip her hair back and I thought it was the coolest thing ever!

Ann Arbor City Club, 10:00AM, 3/22/2025

we are always evolving, though not necessarily in the forward direction. i met a man who claimed he could change the past–isn’t that funny? we can all change the past, if we choose to remember it differently. our neurons are built on a foundation of quicksand, always moving, always drowning; quiet your mind and they lose their tension, sinking, never to resurface. flushed away, a bitter flavor seeping out of filter paper. diffusion, effluence, transition state. a recipe for a coffee stain on a countertop: a sprinkle of indifference and a dash of luck.

I have no clue what’s going on, but these are some of the smartest people on campus, so I wanna stick around.

The Graduate, 12:30PM, 2/8/2025

there is a lyricism in our thought process that cannot be accurately transcribed. in linguistics class they teach you how hard it is to explain the grammar of your native language. our way of thinking is shaped by the words molding our subconscious. if you slice into the brain you will see sheets of flesh–sheets of metal-rippling, wrinkling. the brain is not proof of a deity, just as the goat is not proof of the devil. the others grow pale. they vomit, they always turn away–but i am used to blood.

I’ve been working here since 1987, which means I’m as old as dirt but I don’t remember anything…

Ann Arbor Thrift Shop, 1:30PM, 3/10/2025

it pains me to think that i dragged you down, an anchor dropped in the middle of the ocean. perhaps i must birth a child and continue the cycle–i have wasted my potential on my youth and now it is my responsibility to move forward. to settle. a term used for dust, for sandbanks, for pioneers on conquered lands. a snake of a word, writhing on my tongue. i lick my teeth and purse my lips, like you and your mother and your mother’s mother, a branch of coral crystallizing in the cold. a deep breath–the kind that comes before a deeper lie–and you take the plunge.

When you start digging, you’ll start finding things you never knew. Like even just right down the street from me there’s open writing workshops. I had no idea! It’s in the next block!

Duderstadt Connector, 1:30PM, 3/25/2025

i pick and pick, your face a scar to remind me of the slit, of the risk. of the consequences–it will hurt every time i sneeze, or fall asleep on my side, or draw a sharp breath. the heart is a forgetful organ, though it might insist otherwise. it will pulse frantically at every outline, every shape and figure and song and recipe. like a dog leashed to a pole, wagging its tail at every passerby: hidden underneath, a cry for help, in the only way it knows how. the heart knows nothing except expansion and contraction, so it beats and beats, and cries, and cries. i pick and pick, until there is nothing left.

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.