books, there can never be enough books
i wished she would say that. i wish she would believe that. and i swore, i swore one time she did believe that. but now, now walking between stacks of books, she told me no, she told me in front of the children, no. she told me in front of the children that there were too many books to be had. we had enough books. we had to stop it already with the books. and although i smiled, although i chided her, kissed her, pleaded with her, i felt odd, i felt distant, an immigrant who, having spent a long duration from home not only no longer recognized it, but was now no longer even welcomed.

it all began with lines and boxes, straight lines and sharp right degree angles. i loved algebra as a child because of the demand for precision, for exacting angles and stalwart lines. Quadratic equations were the best: both sides had to be made whole and equal, the beauty of symmetry. i would map them out across an imaginary grid, as if all of space and time could be simplified to quarter inch squares stretching across a finite boundary of paper and lead. as if i too could be made clean and perfect and graceful through extraction and exactness. as if i too could fall from grace like a meteor but rebound before crashing into the zero point, into the hard nothing, and triumphantly ascend, rocketing off the page into the infinite, into a pure state of bliss.

and quiet falls upon us, the hush of winter, the hush of promises waiting to be fulfilled it’s christmas time and we’re waiting ever so carefully, like orpheus, fearful to turn around, fearful to look over our shoulders and to see what we’ve lost, what we’ve worked so hard to acheive, fearful and hopeful and expecting and snuggling up under the covers, keeping warm against the seeping cold, reaching to each other through the dark, entangling each other in the dark, candle light spirits, flickering against the drafty windows and creaking doors, waiting quietly, patiently, for winter to envelope us and deliver us unto christmas morning

no you don’t have to listen. i can’t make you listen. i can’t make you do anything. but you can watch. you can watch me fall apart, you can watch me scratch at the scabs and gnaw through the callouses. you don’t have to listen, but you can watch how i disassemble, how i grieve, how i mourn, how i choose to no longer breathe. you see watch me struggle through every move, every step, the agony of getting out of bed, out the door, into the world. you can watch how i strive for oblivion, for anarchy, for entropy, for collapse.

isn’t it funny? all these metaphors for life: computers, language, music. all these things, a thing for something else, a place holder for something we know is there but do not yet have a word for it.

how long how long how long until this madness ends and the world finally falls apart leave boiled meat sloughing off the bone and it’s all asunder and done and finished and finally finally finally we’re at an end and we can breathe because it’s the last.

there were dreams, streams, screams. here we were, where was i. in the distance, like a mirage, like the heat that scorches tarmac and long dead river beds. there i was, a phantom of regret, of desire, of peace.
“and a mother’s hand is the single most beautiful thing in the world because it eclipses the son and brings him forth into the world before night swallows us whole.”