Ruler
your posture needs
bone cracking
joint yanking
vertebrate tugging
fixing
nobody will take you
your words
seriously
without a ruler
against your spine
become a tower
burn the bridge
extend your praise to the heavens
for height and highness
stretch past self-obsession
and paused glances
breathe
in the world you call yours
I’ve decided that if I’m not going to succeed socially, I’m going to succeed professionally. I gotta make use of something… if I can’t be in a sorority, imma be in a business frat.
Alice Lloyd Hall, 9:30PM, 1/21/2025
relegate your goals to the backseat. how low is the bar, anyway? along the margins, the minimum viable product that you need to sustain yourself. don’t you know? you are living in a dream and all dreams must end. i sit and watch the advertisements fly by on the wall of the station, a square meter of air compressed into a single breath. an inhalation of eternities, a sunbeam of love: i am speechless at your gallantry. you press your mouth to mine and say that you have found the words for both of us.
His technical skills were crazy because he would put in twenty hours a day when he couldn’t sleep!
DOW Building, 11:30AM, 1/16/2025
the steps to greatness and the steps to madness are often interchangeable. like a genetic sequence, one misplaced brick can rebuild generations and shatter entire worlds. on this climb, a fall from at the beginning and a fall at the end are of equal heartbreak. it is a fall in the middle, when you have gotten comfortable with the ascent and are just beginning to hope, that hurts the most. take fortune away from a poor man, he will think nothing of it. take fortune away from a rich man, he will think he deserves it. but take fortune away from the man who treads water and watch him sink like a stone.
That’s all you need: nice pizza and windows and a bed.
Markley Hall, 10:00AM, 1/17/2025
there are two ways to approach life: directly, or not at all. change your perspective, accelerate your reference state–as if your room were a prison and not a shelter! a deluge of thoughts, liquid gold, envelops your brain in a cast. the migraine spills over, sharper than lightning, splitting teeth and tongue. your nails leave indents in my wrists like a paragraph. essays have been burned and blood has been spilled over less.
I Took a Picture of an old lady taking a picture, in awe of a naked tree. That tree attracted her admiration because it was stripped of its bark is what I thought, until I realized that tree was just like that, and not diseased or traumatized. Did the old lady taking a picture know that? Maybe I never actually took a picture. I can’t remember, but I remember wanting to, and if I had actually took a picture, I deleted it right away. I remember wondering if it was creepy of me to take a picture of the old lady, too, but what I took a picture of was her taking a picture. - Sappy
Content warning: Suicide
Dying Ritual
Put on shoes—your best ones–or regular ones; tie them tight for white toes and pink ankles; start walking; walk with purpose, on a time crunch to nowhere; cross the street; watch for cars; don’t trip; remember not to trip; not tripping is important; round the corner at the stop sign; there’s a bird on a wire; don’t stare because that would be rude; keep walking; another turn; do you remember where you’re going; reach the gate; bend your spine; duck beneath; don’t let a car snag your side; up the elevator; press down; top floor; wait a moment; think of nothing in particular; wait some more; the doors shutter open; step onto the roof; find the courage; take a step; remember your shoes are tied; take another step; look at a bird, which could be the old one but isn’t; take a large step; how would one know if it is the same bird; take a larger one; step step step onto the ledge; is anybody watching; watch the bird that hasn’t budged; move an inch, a couple more; how many centimeters is an inch; the wind is cold; breathe a breath; make it good; don’t go slowly; say a prayer; don’t go slowly; don’t look down; but do; should you look down; is that what people do; look down and fall—or don’t; you’ll see it through tomorrow.
…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 spoil on the counter, unpeeled, unsplit. pure and perforated and rotten, at the same time, in all the wrong places.
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.
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.
PMS Pardon my speech. As a poor, malfunctioning soul, pleasantries might not suffice as I pacify this major s*** of a time. Pre-menstrual symptoms popularly include munchies-- pizza and milk-chocolate-coated strawberries. Problematically, my sanity is progressively missing, so please my satiations and perhaps I might sincerely produce my pretty smile. - Sappy
