Tag: asoss

…and she responds, and doesn’t get weird, or defensive, like you.

[mouth agape]

Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. Me too.

Trader Joe’s, 12:00PM, 11/24/2024

every shipman is aware of the dangers of slack, a knife of potential cutting across the air. and yet we have tiptoed around the topic for too long, each of us too scared to wake the current and lose the line. like a cruel childhood game–whoever moves first loses!–your hands are at your mouth and i am on one knee (as if to tie a shoe, i tell you, but really, do you believe that?) and the moment is frozen in a dream, so vivid a memory could not do it justice. the orange is left to rot on the counter, unpeeled, unsplit. pure and perforated and rotten, at the same time, in all the wrong places.

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If you don’t like it, you just hand it to Eileen, be like “cool, now you have two!”

Food Mart, 12:00PM, 12/26/2024

the vice of the human condition is the systematic approach to an unstructured life. you have been tasked with falling in love: go and sit on the bus and hold eye contact and brush the snow out of her hair. a look of surprise overwhelms you. even the most artistic are drawn to scientific conclusions, eliminating every variable at once. everything must go to plan or else it is not the plan at all. a senior thesis: is it, or is it not? the numbers quiver in their sockets.

when you board, the bus is empty, the driver wears sunglasses, and all the snow has melted.

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That’s my job, and yeah, you and I have to stick to it because we’ve been way too accommodating!

Traverwood Library, 5:00PM, 1/14/2025

the tap water runs clear and straight–an ominous sign. it was the vietnamese activist Duong Thu Huong who wrote there’s no river without a bend just as there’s no life without its unhappiness. i look around; the room is littered with peanut shells. i am an elephant with a blanket on its back and the room is nothing more than a cage. outside, panem et circenses. the carnival band starts to play and the world is filled with all the notes of an obituary.

I never know the next time I’ll see you.

I’m always at home.

By the time I come home it’s 2AM!

Well, I’m probably awake…

Weiser Hall, 3:30PM, 10/19/2024

for Edgar Allan Poe, remoteness is a necessary ingredient of literature. we must detach ourselves from reality in order to best portray it. Muñoz Molina writes that he lives through the death of a beautiful cigar girl. He writes a story in which Mary Rogers becomes Marie Rogêt, substituting Paris for Jersey City and the Seine for the Hudson. like an outsider swiveling a telescope, sweeping the curtain aside, peering into the void of human nature from the neighbor’s window. her murder, of course, is never solved.

the cold is a sedative, the snow a sterilizer. you are across the world and only now do i dare to loosen my tongue. i brush your name onto the paper as i once did to the tears across your cheek.

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Registering for classes now is wild. Go inside, they have more wifi inside than outside.

More wifi?

Pierpont Commons Outbound, 11:30AM, 12/6/2024

hey, it’s me. yeah, it’s been a long time, huh? i just got your letter, the mailman told me it was a miracle the machine could read it. he said you have the worst handwriting he’s ever seen, haha. there are just piles and piles of stuff in the back of the room that they just can’t send. can you imagine that? terabytes of information is just lost in transit, as if it had never existed in the first place. isn’t that crazy?

hello? is anyone there?

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[holding a plate of cucumbers, hummus, and peppers] I like to get creative with my meals.

Yeah, I guess you could call that a meal…

East Quad Dining Hall, 5:00PM, 1/7/2025

the act of eating with someone is perhaps the quickest way to rewire the neurons. do you think our brains misattribute this relief of hunger? your fork vibrates, ever so slightly, attuned to the heartbeat pulsing through your fingertips. there are things we are not in control of and this is one of them. once bitten and twice shy, why do you keep your distance? the stomach rattles its chains.

Oh yeah, how was your birthday?

It was nice.

How old are you turning, 17? Hmm, something’s not adding up!

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

it has been one year but not quite one birthday. the ball drops. you used to think it would shatter, that the people in the square would be pelted with shards of glass, the previous year burrowing into skin as a final act of rebellion. now i think it is not too far from reality, that the more we celebrate, the more of the self we sacrifice. i tear off the last page of the calendar and notice a message carved into the cardboard backing. you made it! perhaps not everything requires a celebration, but today is an exception.

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[pointing to price tags] five, five forty, five forty-five… nothing is cheap!

NCRC Building 20, 4:00PM, 11/19/2024

red circles around black squares, a day to be dreaded either forwards or backwards: either living in fear of it, or looking back and mourning the wisdom gained with hindsight. a markdown on the quality of life, some would say. humans are creatures of structure. we are not beavers, we do not need to live our lives regulating the currents of space, stemming the flow of time. and yet we construct our own complacency. we convince ourselves that our habits pass for our happiness. the red circles have been relegated to excess inventory, to clearance–cash in on the memory today or risk losing it forever. the price to pay? you must tell your story.

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They have price tags under their tags that are cheaper…

They’ve gotta pay rent.

We’re not helping!

Rally House, 8:30AM, 11/29/2024

telling a true story is impossible. it is deceptive, the folds of detail stored and scrambled, this perverse act of remembering. in reality, remembering is the easy part; stripping the petal from the stamen, sterilizing the thought so it does not reproduce, is much harder. any emotion associated with an action is boiled away, a chrysanthemum tea prepared for the hanged man–a scribe, tasked with an unbiased account of the emperor, a death sentence in this life and the next. tomorrow I will waste another hour regretting yesterday, whispers the man. a wisdom, distilled in blood, paid for in sanity.

How much you wanna bet? Quick, quick, quick!

None. He’s right there!

Coward. You’re a coward.

NCRC Building 28, 5:00PM, 11/19/2024

it’s true: only cowards yield. i walk outside and avert my eyes at the inevitable sunset, the reunion of sun and moon, if only for an instant. one, perhaps fearing the stare of the other, blushes and peeks out of sight. there is a boy picking at weeds, at the flowers that have managed to sprout. there is no object permanence; every night is eternal, every morning a razor against the stem. above, the universe looks on, forlorn. for what being it has created, this parcel of stardust living on a speck of sand! we are sunrays, stones, cycles, and as such, condemned. swallowing words, yielding glances, circling the event horizon, knowing that time dilates, and perhaps preferring this unknown to the unfathomable.

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I’m all for feminism, but there is a part of me that wants to go home and stay home and just eat pie…

Trader Joe’s, 12:30PM, 11/24/2024

after Susan Ertz: “millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon”—

it is an anger in the sky, cared for like a seed and cursed at like a storm. i come home to a polygon of light, green and pulsating–alive, as you would call it, though it is not capable of thought, or is at least intelligent enough to hide it. a modesty born of horror, you and i: an acid in the rain, a tangible tartness in the air. the door creaks open and you emerge, handsome as ever. i take your hand, as your woman, your man, it does not matter. arm in arm, a reversal of mitosis, two cells merging into one. the light begins to sing, an angel harmonizing with mother nature’s screams.

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It’s a mess everywhere and you want to complain about a spot on the carpet?

Detroit Metro Airport, 6:00PM, 12/16/2024

consider the idea of a memory palace, a world within worlds, a dam to filter your stream of consciousness. watch as the beaver lays the foundation, mats the cracks with mud and other antiquities. you spot a marble wedged in one of the crevices. blue, brilliant, too smooth to be natural, too beautiful to be manmade. we dust ourselves in metaphors–allegories, alleged and analogous–when we are missing the words. in another universe, another parable, there is no Joy. no Disgust, no Anger, no Sadness. in place of a control panel, a river: wild and untamed and free.

How have online sales been going?

Too busy. I have had absolutely no time to do anything besides this and deal with the construction people…I still have unanswered contact emails from two weeks ago!

Scrap Creative Reuse, 1:30PM, 11/4/2024

december is the culmination of a series of unfortunate events, one month crashing into another, a pileup on a highway slick with ice. the snow masks your face, reflects the sun into my eyes. you believe punishment precedes trial, as did i, once upon a time. that time is no longer upon us–its passage should not be mistaken for an apology. i look into the bottom of my cup, at the tea leaves and the tarot cards, as if the swirling dredges could pull a lifeless body from the shore.

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I got the job back, and I’ve been in meetings all day, all the guys at the house are really nice. So yeah, I’ve been sober for about five weeks now—yeah, thank you!

AADL Downtown, 4:30PM, 10/29/2024

it’s interesting that most of our limits are self-enforced, biological or not. in a society composed of chance, where do we draw the line? you and i do not hold the same significance. you see a miracle when you look out the window and i see a miracle when i look at you. both are true, in a sense. Darwish would profess an act of love, Marías a curiosity (“the window of a lover is more interesting than our own will ever be”). the window is a physical limitation, the infatuation a mental one. history always repeats itself; man must do as man did once.

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You can each pick out one ornament for the tree. See they have Barbie, Minnie and Mickie, all the princesses… Grinch, Hocus Pocus, Harry Potter…

Walmart, 11:30AM, 11/30/2024

salem, 1690.

a body surfaces, frozen eyes and blueberry lips. a prayer, coughed up from the lungs. she’s alive! a miracle! the women weep and grow restless: they know what is coming. the preacher accuses, first with his eyes, then with his fist. a promise, jerked upright, throat wringed like a wet dishcloth. the floor opens and swallows the body. who’s next? the yew adds another ornament to its branches. inside the house, a silence borne from fear. not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse.

I wish that would help… like, abracadabra! That’s how you do the [-] problem! Gee, thanks.

Central Campus Transit Center, 9:00AM, 10/18/2024

i am seven and the dust bunnies morph into a creature under the mattress, tickling my ankles and stealing my socks. i am fifteen and i learn the taste of love from from a dog abandoned on the roadside. i am thirty and you speak to me in whispers, your voice like tendrils, bending cartilage, bypassing cochlea. i am sixty and the conscience is subdued, the voice tragic. the magic, left to rot with the monster under the bed.

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I’m sick of looking at screens! I mean, that’s what you’ve been doing all day… my eyes feel like I just wanna take them out, wash them in the sink, and push them back in.

Chem Building, 4:30PM, 11/14/2024

at some point the force of habit kicks in and your mind checks out. this is the death of a life, this drudgery. routine makes the mind numb, the soul weak. a counterclaim against optimism: if the rest of the journey is forgotten, you have converted your adventure into a chore. one foot in front of the other, nothing more than a machine. my fingers beg for rest, one letter scribed, one letter typed. this hope hovers above all of us, a claw half-grasped, holding us in place. step out of bounds, slip up, and you will be crushed–the claw does not care, it suffers from the force of habit as well…

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They’re in the nice heat of their car, we’re in the cold. They can wait!

Central Campus Transit Center, 9:00PM, 11/14/2024

a beam of sunlight washes down the flank of the mountain, a bear in hibernation. some days the snow recedes and exposes the conspiracy of survival: the weeds that bloom false flowers, the dandelions that slither between sidewalk slabs. concrete yields to tree roots, roads forked like lightning and runways cracked like eggshells. an apocalypse, a tragedy, a return of equilibrium. the gardens have long degraded, but the soil is still slick with sorrow: a name mother nature remembers, but a face she forgets.