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I can hear the earth breathing. The land comes alive, the flowers bloom after having their fill of the rain. The gnats are ecstatic. In my mind’s country there are wild horses running free in a way I will never understand because I have become too domesticated. I look out over the neighborhood, at all the facades of terracotta. There is never any true privacy. The mountains are flocked constantly by helicopters and power lines. People are always getting lost because there is no place to exist freely. No one told me what day it is today. I have mastered a detachment that a prior self would have been very proud of. Now I can only stay quiet and watch.
Summer is already collapsing, and it feels like it never really began. I observe the corpse of a plant: the branches, the stems, the leaves have had all the life sapped out of them. I maintain my vow of silence. In the mornings the trees and grass are damp. There are the voices of the fog just waiting to gather, to cover the world, to make us disappear, to divorce us from the rest of the city. I love the sun. I also love and hate my distance from other people.
I make eye contact with a butterfly with silver wings, it is my most significant social contract of the day.
I’ve buried the hatchet. Now I am only interested in categorizing trees. Do I still need to confess how the time envelops my spirit? I’ve decided to become an arborist. I will spend my days writing love letters to the weeping willow. Meanwhile, my double takes a sip of motor oil. The noise of the world bears down. I want togetherness even if it is a foreign concept to me. I have always taken refuge in distance and now I am paying the price.
I am thinking of a life in touch with the varied and shades and moods of the grasses. I don’t even care about the weeds. I happen to think they are blissful. There’s been an eroding of the ego carefully taking place over the course of August. It is a feeling I am all too familiar with, a yearly tapping at the door. This time is softer though, the pain cascades like honey from the hive. I have to remind myself of my place, of who I am really talking to, because I address all my thoughts to you. And I try to be reasonable, and try to pretend it doesn’t matter too much, but in reality it means the world to me. This is the discourse of the open wound, in which I will gladly share with everyone, because I don’t have to confront anything real in the confession. It all falls from me, it is all taken away and turned into a specimen to be preserved under glass. I would never admit to the depths of my thoughts, to the sinking and breaking of
my heart.
I work in the ghost of a factory. The assembly lines are long past but the machinations of monotony are clearly still present all these years later. It’s a sinister operation. An unseen exchange happens under the table. Somewhere. The bodies are in constant motion. I look for an empty stairwell. I look for signs of life in the concrete. The heat in the city feels concentrated and oppressive. I take a sip and try to save face.
The afternoon is hot but not exceptionally so, yet it’s silent as if it were which I find unnerving and unnatural. It makes me think there must be something foreign burning in the sun’s rays. It’s entirely possible my skin is radiating. I find small omens and tokens of affection. I keep wanting to play the bleeding heart but my ego has been broken down. I have an endless current of phobias. I can’t stand being so aware.
I hang my laundry on the line by the river. The boats go by, in the sky the seagulls are crowding, anticipating the pull of the ocean to take them away. There is the fragrant smell of burning coal in the air. It passes by. I have been here before and I will return one day, when it is my time. I’ve seen the brick buildings and broken windows. The city fades into anonymity, into a losing glory. The gold is chipped from the fountain and the memorial. I am pulling my heart by it’s many strings, I am maintaining control (that’s what I tell myself to survive the day to day).
In truth I am falling.
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