Author: a-spider-on-state-street

That is my biggest pet peeve, dealing with the Sun in my eyes. I can’t do it.

Pierpont Commons, 5:00PM, 2/6/2024

what if the world goes white as it dies? we are taught to fear darkness, undiscernible shapes, figures we cannot recreate. we forget that sight is a blessing, that light is a byproduct of our universal fortune, cast upon by a star too angry to cool, too forgiving to combust. allow yourself to be blinded, like a screen burn-in. the rods and cones permanently fixate on colors that are no longer there. spangles of sun, once streaked with rainbows, now shine mutely. a wavelength of contingencies remain out of sight, but never out of mind.

Ten minutes after I close, I look outside and it’s snowing? Why are people buying ice cream right now??

Couzens Hall, 2:00PM, 3/14/2024

a long time ago i learned to measure the time in increments smaller than seasons. before it was just the summer, a time when i could walk outside and find sweet drops of ice cream dotting the sidewalk. in fall these dots became leaves, and in winter these leaves became snowflakes, which blossomed into sprouts in the spring. there was also a different time of day that the seasons could not measure, an ache that cannot be expressed in words. the sky swirls blue raspberry and the sprouts are strangled by weeds.

i see the clouds fading from vanilla to strawberry to hazelnut to chocolate. tongues do not melt on lips, but i shiver just the same.

You’re ready for cold and it’s warm, you’re ready for warm and it’s cold…

Traverwood Library, 1:30PM, 3/17/2024

the earth does not pause for a second, a marble scarred with the ironies of man. a sorites paradox on the surface: when does the sun give way to cloud, when does the cloud overflow with rain? a single gust of wind, a splash of heat, and the future is completely changed. how can fates be charted beneath a horse’s hoofbeat or a bison’s breath? one or two gives way to band or herd. at a quantum level, the act of observation changes the result–we are simply grains of sand to be brushed away, discarded, glued to the corner of a different piece of the planet.

How is St. Louis? Is it St. Louis-ing? Is it Arch-ing?

Ahmo’s, 6:00PM, 2/1/2024

the metro is a closed loop, a sleeping dragon. you point out one of the buildings, veins throbbing, heavy against the rain; the train squeals against the track and you are robbed of my reply, my sympathies, as if they would do anything but raise the hairs on your arm. what happens when you let stitches sit in too long? your skin shifts, a chameleon in twilight. the sun sets, the skin darkens. the leaf-rot smell of autumn returns, and i know you will not be around to watch the flowers bloom in the spring.

What if I get lost?

You’re not going to get lost, you just need to walk in a straight line. If you get lost, that’s on you.

Markley Hall, 3:00PM, 2/8/2024

the world is full of lines, hard and soft, good and bad. sometimes the world is grayscale, allowing me to sort everything into sets, rigid containers, labeled and discarded. road lines = good. scars = bad. cracks in doorways and mirrors and cement foundations? // then the world resumes in color, and the containers begin to spill. the cracks pile up, multiplying, threatening the edges of my vision. in trying to blend the lines, you erased the figure; in trying to straighten the branches, i destroyed the roots…

Nah, I could barely see it… don’t ask any questions about that night, I don’t remember any of it!

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 1:30PM, 3/3/2024

we have learned to associate lack of memory with a good time. if something went south, we would remember it, right? the brain fills slowly, in hindsight, fabricating memories, forging alliances. you call it breaking down problems with a hammer and a drink. the worst punishment of all: force-fed my own thoughts until i choked them up and spit them out. my reality lives on, isolated, trapped like chac mool: free and fictitious ocean, only real when it imprisons a snail.

I proofread as I go, so it’s fine…but I wrote it at midnight so you tell me!

Pierpont Commons Lounge, 12:00PM, 11/14/2023

there is a perverse form of art in letting go of what you have created. eradication. the disconnect between writer and editor, a nurse ripping a sick baby away from a grieving mother. fatigue brings discontent and discontent accumulates like tar in the liver. my tongue forms a sentence and dies on my lips. my breath carries the corpses, hairs against needles, nails against plastic, floating through the air. is it poetry, or is it unspoken word?

Look, you went from not knowing anything, and you tried, and now you’re killing it!

Tech Shop, 11:00AM, 1/25/2024

goals should be driven by effort. using achievement to measure success is like orienting a telescope at the glare of a mirror. there will come a time where the sun sets and you are left with the shadows of the past. you will forget the sun rises the next morning, beautiful and breathtaking, as you struggle with an eternal night. the easiest way to believe something is permanent is to neglect the future. if you sit and stare at your feet during the train ride, you will think that you have never moved…

You studied, you put in the effort! There are going to be a lot of people in that room who know less than you…

Union Basement, 11:30AM, 2/19/2024

comparison is often the thief of joy, but sometimes we are dealing with a different type of thief. a reverse robin hood, stealing from the emotionally poor and feeding into the rich. what was once seen as a burden can be molded, reversed, shaped into an instrument. an instrument of what? intoxicated by our dreams. empty or not, our emotions still take up space, like a small glass jar wedged in the side of the temporal lobe. fill it up with sunshine and don’t look back.

Put your hands on your hips… one leg up… yeah!

You know how I do it? I don’t even take photos! I take a video and screenshot!

I take live photos!

Ichiban, 7:00PM, 11/11/2023

our strongest memories are linked by sounds and smells. the running exhaust, the radio leaking through the window, the heat gradient running up the side of my arm from the incandescent lightbulb. photos can only take us so far — they are shortcuts, figures without depth or dimension. try committing these words, this moment, this raindrop of time. let it disappear behind the veil. sights, smells, sounds, me and you. point, grip, pull the trigger.

You look at pictures of your relatives and that’s the only thing you know them by… when people only know you through photos, it’s important to be present.

Couzens Hall, 8:00PM, 1/24/2024

there is a bin of photos for sale at the scrap center, fifty cents per stacked inch. they are shaken out of albums and cards, tossed aside, ink yellowing in the sun. i look through them and i imagine you looking with me, behind my shoulder. i have no photos of you — deleted or neglected, i do not remember — but it does not matter. i think about going to art school so i can learn to draw your face. what force flows through a pencil when it etches the subconscious into reality?

Actually, I didn’t show my teeth because I was insecure, so I didn’t smile.

Glen/Catherine Inbound, 12:00PM, 2/18/2024

an insecure mouth suffocates laughter. it is a cinch, a noose, like being shushed as you are strangled. the snaggletooth peeks out and waves to the camera. your eagerness betrays you, but only for a second. your grandparents sit on the top of the fridge, tight-lipped, stone-faced. i’m sorry, you say. what for? i grab your hand as the shutter clicks. carved out of paper, nonetheless, but a smile preserved.

I have two dogs, one of them’s a rescue. Because my own dog’s name is Daisy, I wanted to name him Gatsby–you know, from the book–

That’s so cute!

Yeah, but he doesn’t respond well to it, so we call him by the shelter name.

Walmart, 2:00PM, 12/12/2023

english has condensed a singularity into the word love, a tricky thorn in the theory that a language is able to encompass our feelings. thus we turn to pictures, worth their weight in words, yet still unsatisfactory. interpretive. a cupped palm, water dripping from the cracks. a crossword clue: what will i see if i look into the dog’s eyes? what will i see if i look into yours?

it is a clash of preshattered wills. he stands over the water, over a circle of light–a broken halo–scrapped from leftover sun. the green light blinks once, twice, and disappears.

He was with a girl. That’s why he pretends not to notice us.

Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 10:00AM, 11/25/2023

a burial is hypothetical, until it’s not. the relationships we forge are perfect to the ones that see it. mix up the recipe and it brews disaster, strong and seductive and fragrant. do not lose yourself in the pursuit of others–what if they do not exist? we are nothing but the brains that perceive, you and i. perhaps one day i will run into you, dear reader. perhaps we will part with nothing but a smile.

I don’t have a valentine! Maybe I should hit up my Michigan Marriage Pact…

Central Campus Transit Center, 7:00PM, 2/10/2024

no tax is placed on the mouth–talking pays no toll. rose between your lips, gum bleeding from the thorns… carry your tongue in cheek (yours or otherwise), a novelty, naked and unashamed. golden in the purest sense of the world. momentum carries you forward, up and above, standing on a slice of mountainside, hidden by a reef of red clouds. you will look back, breathless at your own audacity, at the world you created, at the richness of a newly vanished earth.