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.
