Tag: poetry

Capturing Campus: Washing Ritual

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Content warning: Obsessive compulsive behavior, gore

Washing Ritual

Close the door; lock it for privacy; check again, for privacy; remember to breathe; turn the faucet; let the water pour pour pour into the basin; watch the steam build up; pump the soap; press down one, two, three; like a cloud; scrub the palms and the wrists; the palms again; get the fingers: three, four, five; the frog webs or minor syndactyly—it must be one of the two: three, four, five; dig in the groves and under the fingernails that don’t have dirt under them but maybe they do, they always could: one, two, three, four, five; move to the left hand; one, two, three, four, five; one, two, three, four, five; one, two, three, four—the water should be scalding, just enough to blister, but not enough to regret; scrub hard, scrub very hard; scrape at the holes and the raw patches; rub away the fine lines, the creases, the folds in the flesh; keep going; the blisters will go away in an hour or two—maybe three; another pump: one, two, three; again—the right hand; the left hand; keep going; don’t stop; it burns because it’s working

aSoSS 39 | Suspicion

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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.

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?

[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.

~Sappy Daze~ Day 11

Sappy Leave a comment 
The  night  I got stranded  in Kyoto,  

the weeping  willows charmed me  more than  the  Sakura. I watched  the streets crawl  out of  bed and  join me  greet the  large crows.  My eyes  nestled on a fluffy one’s matching winter coat.  Led by the screeching subways, I lead the way past the bridge away from a Family Mart’s jingles. The trains filled at 6:40 AM reminded me of the temple night and  day  with  the  club.  The  fleeting  city  trickled  the  compartments  empty.   The  stragglers  tickled my curiosity. Did they wonder about my journey or did  I imposter their lives wandering?  I  questioned my life  cycling in the  ptptptptptptptpt  of rain towards the  fshfshfshfshf  of  waves. The  night ended  with falling off  a bike  hearing  opera. The  day  started  with   falling    asleep.

- Sappy

Capturing Campus: Feeding Ritual

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Content warning: Eating disorders, binge eating, rituals

Feeding Ritual

Keep the food in the fridge and out of your mouth; disregard the growling; don’t consider the taste; come up with guidelines to follow to a T; that means no chips, no bagels, no pasta, no pretzels, no fried foods, no Diet Coke, no fatty meats, no butter on toast, no ice cream, no cone for the ice cream, no school lunches, no holiday dinners, no Krispy Kreme donuts (that one is important); bread is a trap; chocolate is a lie; don’t drink your calories; eat exactly half your meal; turn down the offer; it’s Halloween: too bad; it’s Christmas: He starved or bled to death (one of the two); it’s best not to consider the feeling of fullness; run to feel better; run until your legs burn; run until long after your legs burn; move at a crawl because your legs burn; don’t lose control; people are good at spotting those things; but search the cupboards and fridge anyway; grab something, anything, everything; don’t stop for air; keep shoveling, and it’s all well and fine; eat until the world has turned upside down; feel embarrassed; feel hateful; feel envious of prior bodies, of other bodies; be out of control; be angry; be ugly and spiteful at the world which births and suffocates; be proud of the mess; deny it all; keep killing yourself; don’t stop.

aSoSS 38 | Markdown

a-spider-on-state-street Leave a comment

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.

[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.

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.

~Sappy Daze~ Day 10

Sappy Leave a comment 
Whisper 

i remember thinking i could channel the 
energy of the earth in gym class while 
on the verge of losing dodgeball 
i crouched down and touched the sticky 
gym floor i don’t remember if i won or 
not only that at that moment i truly felt 
the power of nature and used it perhaps 
that’s one privilege children have their 
ability to ask favors from the soil burying 
their mother the earth that will one day 
bury them too

- sappy