In waking and more often,

beneath closed lids

Statues rise like charging knights

To whisper the significance of Kerri's bones

Never present but beneath the ground

Where my summer feet rushed and tip-toed

--Hello to you, a seasonal ghost.

With your eyelashes like yarn and tar-black palms

Where are you in the new world?

Did you hear my sunrise entreaty

Gather it up and stare at its fragments

How will you and I ever know each other

Stone-still moments knotted as they were,

In time

Given back by no one

Our whispers must travel through

Centuries, fissure

Left here they are known to none,

But God's eager hands

(A laugh, caught in the wind)

All that I know makes me so tired

So, he rakes on.

He wonders if this whole lawn will ever one day be dirt. Simply dirt. After the apocalypse or something. Full of holes with one million funnel-web spiders with eight million eyes staring up at him, like he saw in Chile last year. 2018. His sister—Erin Kelley—is there now. Drinking or something.

His younger brother—Sean Kelley—sits on the umbrella-shaded deck. Staring at his broken phone. Drinking a thousand Kool-Aid Jammers. On the deck railing is a speaker playing CPR. The shitty DJ is hosting. Liam misses Mike Flanagan.

As a song he wishes was anything by Devo plays—Mike Flanagan used to play Devo back in 2013—the rake handle becomes slippery in Liam’s hands. He is loosening the dead patch to put down grass seed. His parents care about the lawn. And since the tree was removed, the grass hasn’t grown. The bag of billion dollar seed he bought at Home Depot sits nearby. He trips on it as he rakes and swears profusely.

The dirt doesn’t seem to budge—the blemish remains.

Liam thinks about the inherent colonialism of American lawns, which brings his thoughts to John Smith—husband of Pocahontas—who he read in 2014. Not at his parents’ house, but at Colorado State University. His freshman year. John Smith wrote his accounts in the third person. Liam thinks about writing in the third person as he scours the ground. Liam thinks meta-writing is cowardly. It allows for too much separation. John was probably not addressing something, or exaggerating. Sean complains about the music between Kool-Aid Jammers. 

After a particularly forceful pull, the dirt comes loose. Or, at least loose enough. Liam throws the rake aside. He remembers that in 2006 (or 2007?), he threw his father’s high school lacrosse stick at a tree. Both were green and old. The lacrosse head broke—impaled on the thin trunk like a horseshoe around a stake. It was an accident. Mostly. Liam dumps the expensive bag of seed on the patch in the lawn. The spot sticks out like snot on a shirt sleeve. Or pee on a carpet. Liam uses too much seed—dumping it on the exposed ground with wild abandon. He wants a cigarette, but decides against it. He lives at home. He wants to be a good role model for—

On the side of the house—by the deck—the hose is coiled like it was done by a high school drama student learning to wrap mic cords in 2012. That would be Liam’s mother’s—Lina Kelley’s—doing. Liam turns on the faucet, drags the hose over to the smear (struggling with the absurd amount of kinks) and sprays. The seed expands. It’s expensive seed. Billion dollar seed.

A song by Devo actually starts playing on the radio. “Girl U Want.” Liam is now plagued with cognitive dissonance. He continues watering.

“Dad does that differently,” Sean says from the deck, not looking up from his phone.

“Fuck you. Dad supposedly fixed the fence. I know what I’m doing.”

Through the hole in the fallen fence, cars pass at speeds between thirty-five trillion and forty-five trillion miles per hour. Liam sees that across the street, his other younger brother—Noah Kelley—is leading fifty zillion elementary schoolers to a local park. Summer camp at his old elementary school. He can tell it’s Noah because he’s wearing an oversized pink sweatshirt and backwards Star Wars hat.

Digging—or perhaps scratching—at the recesses of his mind, Liam tries to remember 2003. Elementary school. Recess. Running around the field pretending to be Gimli from the second Lord of the Rings movie. He can’t remember, really. He waves at Noah through the hole in the fence. 

Noah doesn’t see him.

Liam now realizes the seed is piled too thick. Picking up the rake, he spreads it out thinner. Waters it again. Soaks it. He looks at the patch for a long time and lets his hands rest on his hips. He thinks about 1996—the year he was born—and wonders if that was a better time. A simpler time. This lawn was probably all dirt back then. His parents hadn’t moved here yet. They were away—only Liam, Bill, and Lina. No thoughts of Erin, Noah, or Sean.

The zillion elementary schoolers pass by. Out of sight behind the fence. Cars obscure their tiny bodies. The song changes. He looks up at Sean, but he has gone inside.

Bending down, Liam crumbles the used up bag of billion dollar seed in his hands and turns to look out the gaping fence hole one more time, then walks to the side of the house where the trash is. He throws the bag away, letting the lid slam and bounce beneath the window to the bathroom—the window that looks out into the yard. He wonders if he actually knows how to fix stains on the grass or not. He sees Sean through the window peeing. Liam thinks about it in third person. It’s 2019.

Warm, wet, right between my legs as I was in a meeting with clients. We were talking about how much revenue they made from X campaigns and how the email open rates were—a realm of life that wasn’t real except between the hours of 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, god willing.

What I knew to be visceral and tangible was the blood now seeping into my underwear and certainly through my pants. But it was also comforting and cleansing. It was another confirmation that I wasn’t pregnant (because I didn’t want to be), another realization that I was solely tied to the moon and the revolving days around the sun. I could count the days perfectly between my cycles and it felt calming that I knew my body so well, that when my breasts felt heavy and my moods turned red, I could count on blood to pour out of me. 

I knew myself as two parts, my mind and my body. My body was telling me that I couldn’t just sit there and talk about useless economics. I needed to go to the bathroom. My body was telling me that I was much more ancient than the computers connecting me to my clients. 

The language used between my clients and I was fictional, created only because everyone had to pay their rent and mortgages. I would never have crossed paths with my client had I not been tied to the green symbol of America. 

The language between my body and mind, though... that was the truth. There’s a third part of my identity I have not found, yet I search for it in wasteless efforts—the soul. 

Perhaps the soul is the grammatical structure between mind and body. Perhaps it’s the language that allows our limbs to tell us that we are tired, allows our mind to tell our body to give it just one more go. Wake up. Don’t forget you’re bleeding, that your heart is beating, that you have to wake up today. And tomorrow. And so on until the soul decides it’s spoken enough and has nothing left to say.

All of this thought in an instant as my client continued to ask me how the open rates were doing. With my legs wide open, I said great, showed the data, ended the meeting and walked to the metal bathroom. 

It was so sterile compared to the bloody mess staining the inside of my thighs. I thought of grabbing a tampon, or stuffing toilet paper inside my underwear, but what was the point? 

The janitor cleans the bathrooms every single day. I wash my body every single day. I pray to god for my hair to be less greasy when I wake up. I freak out when I see a pimple pop out. I wash my hands, take my vitamins, moisturize my face—all to look beautiful and stay healthy. 

My body laughs at the thought that my mind and its actions can control the aging process. 

But the blood was my blood. The feeling of stickiness was one that only I could produce for myself. I sat on the toilet and stayed there for a few extra moments to hide from the unreal conversations I was about to re-enter. 

The conversations were meant to grow more money—money for the clients and money for the corporations. Money comes from the word mint and the word mint means pristine condition and brand new. 

Money is trying to eradicate everything my body is turning into. 

Soiled, wet, aging, outlines of vein appearing on my calves, wrinkles crowding my forehead. With money, I can become brand new.

America wants us to trust and say, money can solve all of our stains. But women trust that our bodies will continue to bleed until the soul language between mind and body says, just rest.

Remember when you fell down the hill

Remember when you snorted whiskey

Remember when you ditched the play in the forest

You ask who they are and I start to explain but water is filling my mouth and pouring into my lungs. I cough some up every time I try to say something, "they're not wrong"

The men in the corner smirk knowingly

In my stupor I have a premonition that I'll move home and run my hands through your hair again, stay quiet and hope the life in me causes you to live

I try to tell you but your eyes are stuck on something else, smoke fills my nostrils and my eyes
I am slumped over, my posture is no good. There is no hope of correcting it. I stare ahead of me like someone staring at a disappointing dinner, my eyes hooded

I rub your back and your back becomes slick
You don't notice me becoming a puddle
There goes an eye, an arm, my neck
Like in a Salvador Dali painting

You finally ask me another question, you're beginning to remember, but all the light drains from the room before I can answer
I am water
And you are swimming away

Licking it off my pre-teen teeth
My reflection grinning loudly for me, alone
How much have you
Lived outside the law?
Under, above, behind, ahead of
You can still vote
And get makeup for free
A little secret

In case you have none

I can cheat the system
But you’re not the system
I can’t steal you
And paint you all over me
Shooting for beauty
When I grin too wide

The law, a contract
Human bonds, a gamble

I have felt that gut-wrenching shift before, and likely will again, but most of my head-nodding pre-naps on the highway and near-drops of new phones have ended without disaster or lasting damage. One particular loss of control, however, stands out from the rest, as it came while I was flat on my back, in early winter, naked and topped by the Woman, my partner in crime at the time.

It had been one of those early evenings where boredom, physical proximity and two nearly finished days of work congealed in a spliff and golden hour sex. It was warm in the apartment, despite the season, what with the radiator humming and the sunlight dripping in hard through clear sky, magnifying the heat of pumping blood. I remember stripping down fast, our hands indecisive about what to pull off first, and in the flurry, I forgot the other stress my day had held. Sex with her had always been like that—an all-consuming cocktail of whiskey, need and speed—no questions asked, no desires questioned. The apartment could be burning and my mind would have filed it away for later, but on that day, I should have paused.

We were both slick with sweat and had tumbled through the room, laughing and rolling, kissing and craning our necks to reach freshly salted sweat. She came on top of me, looming with mischief, and began rocking slow, in no real rush, then harder, her hands pressed down like pillars, her fingers curled into me just enough to stay steady, her weight squeezing the blood from my rapturous chest, her hair swinging like delicate blades. As I matched her pace, my muscles tightening to prolong each stretch of pleasure, every crest of her rocking waves, my mind drifted towards that corner at the edge of ecstasy and death.

That's when I felt it—the lance of pain through my nerves, the signal that my body's defenses had given way. I could feel the wound tear in my gut, and seconds later, the blood mix with sweat, as the tang of copper leeched into the air, spoiling the lingering scent of sweat and cum and need.

I knew in the space of a breath and my body froze, her momentum grinding on my stutter; the shutters closed and the shivers of sex died on the vine. She sensed the shift immediately, as a woman does in the throes when that oldest rhythm breaks. I felt myself diminish in every sense of the word.

There are no words in such a moment, or at least, I had none. If I did, I have no memory of them. I only remember my stomach knotting at the agony of the instant, at the unfulfilled hunger for a fuck we both wanted. I can still see her face looking down on me, that glimmer of a question, wondering whether she had done something wrong. I wanted to cry, or laugh, or turn back time by an hour, until the moment before we rolled the spliff and let the sunset do the rest.

She left the room—confused but wise, her inductive reasoning intact—a blanket loosely hanging around her waist, cupping the whorled dimple beside her gentle spine. I wanted to follow after, to leave that room behind, as though it could be so simply forgotten, but the surreal flash of passion was over. Reality remained.

I finally sat up, fearful of what I'd find beneath me, angry at what had been stained by my body, at what further chasm had been carved through my heart.

*****

We blow our noses when they get stuffed up. We wipe away tears with tissues, or even let them run freely down our face. Our daily flesh is caked in quickly forgotten sweat. We empty our bladders and guts into toilets in every corner of the world. Bodily fluids moving from inside to outside is nothing strange, yet blood stands in a class apart. This is perhaps due to its more intense associations—with family and birth, death and pain, seeping across a dozen spectrums of meaning and emotion, many of which are taboo or “better discussed in private”.

For men, blood is most easily associated with violence where control has been lost—a fight, a wound, an accident. For women, it is often considered the essence of womanhood—a symbol, a burden, a blessing. But again, the emergence of blood from women is not something that can be controlled, merely monitored and managed, kept sacred and shielded from the shame it has long been designated by men.

The fact is, I have a disease—a slow-burner in terms of killing me, but an unpleasant reality to suffer on the daily, nonetheless. It dehydrates me, steals my appetite, robs me of energy and occasionally confines me to bed. I have felt the sense of life leaving my body; I have bled until I was weak in the knees, 'til the spins drove me cowering to the floor of strange bathrooms. I have left music festivals in embarrassed tears and holed up in lonely campsites for days. Nothing in my life has generated such an intense, debilitating sense of self-loathing.

Odd that my shame is so heightened around the opposite sex, particularly when it comes to intimate situations. The conversations surrounding it are torturous, even if my partner du jour doesn't know we're having one; it is far easier to lie, to cancel plans and invent other excuses to “just get some sleep tonight”. I have. Often. I rob myself of the chance for honest intimacy because mine is a truth too uncomfortable to explain, and too unpredictable to prevent.

If anything, I would expect to feel more comfortable around women, all of whom understand the toll of blood loss on the body. Long before this affliction, I felt more connected to women as friends and partners and collaborators; I was raised by grandmothers and sisters, after all. I find men too often dull and lecherous, interested only in exploring the world like hammers looking for nails. Weakness is something to be leveraged in too many of their eyes, and blood loss is the most obvious sign of deficiency from the perspective of natural selection, survival and traditional gender roles. Suffice to say, fraternal chats about regular blood loss come few and far between.

I cannot speak to the sensation when a woman starts her period, nor do I presume to understand it. However I imagine there is a gnawing anticipation in the days leading up, a stomach drop the moment it begins, and an unavoidable, niggling awareness of its procession while it runs course, when one's mood and habits and schedule inevitably shift. Perhaps there is relief when it ends.

I can also sense when a break is coming, when my body seems to dry up faster, and my stomach churns on empty, and sporadic nerve ends start to tingle with fire. I sense the moment when the dam breaks, a bolt of pain, and then I suffer through its ongoing presence in my mind, for hours or days, wanting only to be fully alone, to keep my body away from other eyes. Until that relief when it ends.

There is no cure for this disease, and until that changes, I will deal with this in some form for the rest of my life. I also hope to be dealing with the opposite sex for the rest of my life, in some form, so this struggle of comfort and shame is not one I can avoid; it is a bloody battle of attrition in body and mind, and I don't like my odds of winning them both.

White? Haven’t you learned?

The coffee stain is as inoffensive as a coffee stain can be on a cream-colored sweater plucked from the bottom drawer while you ran down the clock of your morning routine trying to figure out how to dress for Denver weather, another failure to add to the pile. You wipe the rest of the coffee off your chin like a toddler elbow deep in birthday cake. Like yourself in those photos in your mom’s closet that you always stare at for too long when you find them. Last time you visited, you held them up close to your face, looking for something only your toddler self can reveal to your three-decade-old self about happiness, about abandon, about not caring what others think even when they’re cooing in your face.

You did not find it.

The elongated drop now settling in on the fabric covering your belly doesn’t seem to have any answers either, even though it is both the center and the entirety of its own universe of misplaced and broken things, including yourself. But this blackness is not barren. It somehow sprouts life daily, buds of bitterness and deep-rooted weeds of angry thoughts and dismissive self-loathing. Somewhere deep in this swirling collapse of gravity, somewhere in the constellation of what it is that makes up this universe, the blackness froths and spits, pulling all these precious little thoughts into a dark and disintegrating center, and getting some of its mess on your sweater.

You push back from your chair and meander to the office bathroom to survey the damage. It’s less noticeable than anticipated. The ribbon of yellow at the bottom of the sweater and a scattered few black pinstripes sort of run optical interference, but the stain is still peeking out for the lucky visual scavenger with more than a passing glance to spare.

Now, the truly hard decision confronts you in the mirror, along with the stain that might have been larger, darker were it not for that last-second jut of your chin.

Let it dry and hope it’s less noticeable? Blot it out with a paper towel and spend the rest of the day dusting off those weird little pilled balls? Soak it with water and walk around for another hour with a big wet sign that lets everyone know you’re incapable of keeping food or coffee in your mouth and off your clothing?

The path of least resistance has spared you from further self-humiliating exploits before, so you leave the stain be. It’s already dry anyway, straddling two territories separated by a black stripe. It answers to no organized government.

The offices lining your floor are mostly empty at the moment, so you let your body move loosely in the way you do when no one is really watching. You notice that your arms are swinging almost cartoonishly when you walk back to your cubicle, which you sometimes call a “cubby” because it makes you laugh for some reason. Your swinging arms remind you somehow of your first plane ride, or at least the trip to the airport with your dad, your brother and your stepbrother, back when nontravelers could actually follow travelers to their gate and wave from big glass windows. You swung your arms like any 10-year-old would bounding through an airport and spending an entire hour watching big metal birds take flight before you would do the same. Nobody ever told you that you couldn’t fly, and now it was nothing but true.

You remember feeling like such a grownup, flying to see your aunt and uncle more than 1,000 miles away in a different state all by yourself! You didn’t care about your brother, three years older than you, batting your ponytail. You didn’t care about the comments he made that were meant, but maybe not intended, to make you feel something bad about yourself. You vaguely remember your dad acting like he was the same age as you or your brother or your stepbrother. You vividly remember their shadows waving at you from behind a large glass window as you looked back at where they were supposed to be from the plane, all while the flight attendant that was supposed to “escort” you struggled to tighten the strap over your tiny lap. There might have been a stain on your overalls because your dad cared less about perfectly polished children than your mom did, but only by a little.

But you honestly don’t remember. Probably because you didn’t care.

You look down at the blackness left in your coffee cup, dubiously and treacherously still, and you wonder if the blackness--the swirling, collapsing, spitting one--knows where your sense of self has gone, an amulet lost in all the frothing chaos. You wonder if it swallowed her or simply hid her like an omnipotent smoke bomb. Where else would she be? How long have you been trying to find her so that you may revive her, breathe air into her lungs in a final act of kindness to the person you want to call yourself? Where could she have gone if not into that blackness?

You’ve been staring at the black coffee left in your corporate white mug that isn’t really yours for longer than other sane people might. You realize that you might be addicted to the cyclical masochism of convincing yourself, as you lift the barely warm mug to your lips, that maybe she lives in the moments in which you find some reason to love her. That maybe, just maybe, you can accomplish something as simple as drinking coffee in a white sweater.

You are what you eat, so

I am a few bags of vegan gummy bears
Considered for too long
Minutes I could have spent
Doing anything else

I am also
A tray of sushi an orange some pop chips
That cost me one third a shift to buy
And no extra worry

But for a few glances in the mirror
Around my fellow self conscious
Brainwashed, burdened ladies
Washing our hands

When I lay down at night
I think of the perfect
Chocolate bar
Sprinkled in salt
80% cacao
Straight off the tree
In Ethiopia,
Where I’ll never visit

When I puke up sherbet
And the toilet becomes a rainbow
I echo my mother
Days before death
In a client’s house puking
Their hard-earned pantry snacks

When I bike past a girl saying,
“I don’t know which side is my good side”
Posing for a photo
I know her neurosis without
Knowing her

I know her lived experience
Of suitors sizing you up
Fitting their fantasy or Not
Ultimately
Admiration is not affection

If I could be judged
Through the kind and
Sunny parts of my
Still young brain
My overwrought idealism
And my human weight
That would be so
Delicious
I can almost taste it

I don't typically find the work of Haruki Murakami to be relatable. His writing is beautiful, certainly, and his complex plots are enrapturing, but magical realism tends to keep readers at arms' length. Reality stands on shaky legs in Murakami's world, and he freely blurs the line between dreams and waking—or even life and death. However, after finishing the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle last week on a long flight, I felt kinship with this mystical man for the first time.

Without probing too deeply into the plot, suffice to say that the main character, Toru Okada, mysteriously acquires a small blue mark on his face about halfway through the book, after magically transporting himself through a stone wall at the bottom of a dry well. Toru is also nicknamed “Mr. Wind-Up Bird” by an enigmatic young neighbor, which is a reference to a magpie, a bird that is only able to recognize itself in a mirror test when a mark is applied to its face. Toru is initially frightened by its appearance, and embarrassed, refusing to leave the house, but gradually comes to accept his new reality and show himself to the world. He later learns that other distant figures in the novel's unfolding drama—separated by both time and space—bore a similar mark that altered the course of their lives and allowed them to transcend worlds.

My mark is not on my face, nor is it blue. It is a scarlet splotch with uneven edges, shaped like a cross between the state of Tennessee and a Space Invader. It sits low on my neck, just to the left of my throat. It turns blood-red in the summer and fades to a quiet pink during colder months. For the first decade of my life, it was something I rarely noticed. It was just a part of me, like my unruly hair, blue eyes and pigeon-toed gait. However, once I started middle school, the blemish could no longer be ignored. The location, color and size of my birthmark made it a prime target for teasing, even though I didn't know what a hickey was the first time someone called it that.

I had never even kissed a girl, let alone reached the level of hormonal mania associated with giving and receiving hickeys. Considering that I was a bookish, self-identifying nerd, the older kids likely knew I wasn't some prepubescent Casanova on the sly, which apparently made the mockery even more amusing. Furthermore, I was a musically inclined kid, heavily involved in choir, band and drama, so those same bullies also liked to call me gay, years before I really knew what that meant, or why someone would think of it as an insult. I just know that my birthmark made me different, even in a small, superfluous way. I still remember the first time someone called me a faggot from the back of the bus. There were always new angles of attack—Who gave that hickey to you? Was it Sarah? Or Emily? Or was it your mom? Did you let a boy suck on your neck? What else did he suck on? Who would even want to kiss you? I bet you did it to yourself...

I was fumbling awkwardly in that transitional age between not liking girls and really liking girls, so I always tried to deny it. As I learned, however, bullies don't care about facts—just reactions—and there wasn't a positive “spin” I could possibly put on my crimson stain. Instead, I started hiding it whenever I could. I tossed all my t-shirts with stretched-out collars and refused to wear polo shirts. I made it clear to my parents that all future clothing purchases had to have a tight neckline. I began to compulsively tug on the back of my clothes throughout each day, ensuring that the fabric hugged up to my throat at all times. I tried hiding the mark with makeup, rubbed on every kind of lightening cream I could find, and even researched the cost of having it surgically removed.

I didn't wear a V-neck again until I was 25.

In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the mark on Toru Okada's face doesn't clearly symbolize one thing; at times, it signifies an incomplete task, while at others, an inner darkness or suppressed power. In the book, it is described as a living thing, variable in both temperature and intensity, responding to emotions and the mindset of its bearer. The mark isolates Toru, but also drives him deeper into his own story, leading him closer to his ultimate goals—true peace and an unbroken heart.

My birthmark doesn't allow me to pass through walls or escape into alternative worlds, but it has had an undeniable impact on my life. Its effects have not always been subtle, but they were difficult to identify until I gained the perspective of age. That mark introduced me to the toxicity of unwarranted cruelty and homophobia. It forced me to sharpen my instincts when it came to choosing friends, or picking battles. The rosy smudge on my neck encouraged me to master my own words, and taught me that there is no need to be stronger than a bully, simply smarter. I trained myself to ignore the taunts of lesser men. That being said, that mark remained as an unhealed wound that ran deep, laying the foundation for undeserved insecurities and body image issues that still test my psyche to this day. The link between my physical appearance and my worth in a social environment, albeit a self-destructive bridge, was forged too early and too well to be completely dismantled.

I returned to wearing shirts that showed my neck about 6 years ago, and the mark has nearly receded back to invisibility when I stand at the mirror. Unlike magpies, I can recognize myself without the mark. It defined me for years, it seems, but my newer scars tell far more relevant truths. Even so, when I meet new people, I can't help but clock the quick downward flick of their glance, or a quickly furrowed and released brow. Some people even go so far as to ask whether it's a burn or a scar. I suppose it is both, and neither. I can't control their curiosity, just as I can't control the mark's presence on my skin, but I can control the story. So, when some memory of the blemish rises to the surface, or is summoned by a stranger's innocent question, I take away the power still left in that stain when I answer:

“This? Nothing. Just a beauty mark.”

Often, like visiting the quietest chamber of some empty church,

I turn out my pockets on a long winding walk

And pretend I am seven again

Calling myself a witch in the forest

Laughing at how silly that is

And startling friends because

My body and soul are so close

You remember the days when

Your forehead sweat and dirty palms were all you knew

Crumpled dollars in an abandoned car lot

And the carcass of a wildcat in a cornfield

Its feral eyes fixed on a grimy patch of earth

Colors were like celebrities

They sang to you their warmth

And you cradled an entire sun inside your little chest

--Now packaged goods in a basement

Though your feet were never calloused quite

Enough, you say,

And sigh.

“If it fell in there, it's yours now,” she said matter of factly, staring past the necklace dangling from my fingers, saying as much with her eyes as her words.

“Are you sure?” I stood uncertainly in her childhood bedroom, an attic loft, on the southern coast of England, in a town where people still believe in fairies. We had left London and our university housing behind on a train earlier that morning.

“My sister gave it to me years ago, but I don't wear it anymore. That's why it was hanging on the door. And it fell in your bag. So now it's yours.”

Phoebe took the necklace—a worn pewter carving of the ohm symbol, battered smooth on the edges—from my grasp and placed it over my head, letting it fall directly in the center of my chest. I clutched the warm metal in my fist, letting the curves bite into my palm, and felt a surge of blood in my shoulder blades, a shiver that ran up my neck and into my cheeks.

“Thanks, Blades.”

“Well, you're the closest thing to spiritual perfection I've ever met. I want you to have it.”

I wore that necklace every day for the better part of five years. It became a lucky charm, my most prized possession, a tool for my idle fingers, and the familiar weight on my chest as I drifted off to sleep. It was a daily reminder of a distant world full of people I loved; Phoebe's necklace became a portal of memory to my life in England, even when I was floating in the Baltic Sea on my way to St. Petersburg or dozing on a bus somewhere outside Tokyo.

Through dozens of countries and a hundred sweaty summer nights, the ohm had begun conversations and forged bonds; the chain had bled metal streaks on my skin and been replaced on two continents. The small carving had been sucked on, kissed for luck and used to scratch lines of pleasure in eager flesh. It had chipped a tooth and drawn blood. Over the years, I had a number of scares, when the necklace slipped between two couch cushions, or got lost amongst a plush patterned carpet, but after a few frantic minutes of searching, it would always be found. Between airport security checks, cabin reassignments, ocean swims and roughly removed shirts, it was a miracle the necklace had remained securely around my neck through the throes of my early 20s.

My luck held until one fateful morning, after flying in late to Ft. Lauderdale from Frankfurt and collapsing into a hotel room. I was set to join a new ship the next day, and the mental gymnastics of shifting itineraries and teams for a one-week fill-in posting was exhausting to consider. The next morning came too soon, or too late, my body was unsure, but my mind was far from functional. It wasn't until I was already onboard the ship that I noticed the lack on my chest, the absence of my outer heart.

Panicked, but knowing that getting off the ship and missing our departure time for a single lost necklace would cost me my job, I proceeded silently through the onboard insanity of embarkation and orientation. It wasn't the type of physical loss that made me cry, not that I had time to mourn, but it was an awareness of loss that made my emptiness feel larger. Without that talisman around my neck, I felt a wobble in the bridge to a stable life—my escape route to reality felt more distant.

The week passed in the flurry of a cruise ship drenched in Caribbean summer—all linen suits and fruit-rimmed cocktails, afternoon escapes to secret beaches and evenings spent hawking art to passing drunks. Each time I buttoned up my shirt that week, I couldn't help but pause at the blank space in the center of my chest. By the end of the short island run, the ship had come full circle, and my only goal once I left the gangway was heading to the beach. A new lover was meeting me in Miami later that day, and we had three days before we left on a cruise of our own, she as a performer and I as a passenger. She was a singer, a star, a splash of Alabama attitude who had sharpened her pipes in New York for over a decade. Even with my eagerness in those hours before her arrival, the hollow feeling remained. My fingers kept finding their way to the empty space on my sternum.

Restless, I went to an internet cafe, scrolled back through a few years of social media, and found the picture I needed. I printed it out and headed for a tattoo shop on the same street. An hour later, I walked back onto the same beach, restored, with the outline of the ohm necklace, firmly inked to scale over my heart.

That night, I stayed in the same hotel as I had been in the week before; my company at the time didn't believe in variety being the spice of anything. On a whim, I asked if I could have the same room as my previous reservation, and they obliged. I hadn't made the request with any real intention; I had already called from the ship to ask if housekeeping had found a necklace in the room, and had come up empty. However, once the door closed, leaving me in the sunscreen and chlorine-infused space, I began peering into every corner and crack, drawn to one potential hiding place, then another, like the tattoo on my chest was a magnet for its tangible twin.

Within minutes, I found my necklace behind the dresser, tangled among the lamp wires. It didn't seem possible, yet there it sat, back in my hands, not two hours after I had its image permanently stamped on my skin. I pulled off my shirt and slipped the chain back around my neck. My shoulders pulled back for the first time in a week and I smiled into the mirror at the two symbols lying side by side.

By the very nature of tattoos, I was never without the ohm after that, which left me open to welcome other necklaces into my life, and even pass the ohm to one who deserved it, another with that spark of spiritual perfection. However, I recently returned to wearing the necklace, about a year ago, more than twelve years after it had first been given to me in that English attic. It was my companion for one last journey, and bid me its final farewell, left behind in an airport security bin somewhere in South America while my mind wandered forward, always, to the next leg, the next departure.

By the time I felt that old absence on my chest, buckled in the window seat, I knew there would be no miraculous return this time around. I wept quietly on the flight, watching the ground recede beneath the clouds. I left Phoebe a voicemail when my feet were back on the ground between my second and third flight of the day, explaining what had happened, allowing the sobs to come, the culmination of so many different points of pain and exhaustion, the conflation of past sadness and the bent mirror of time.

Upon landing back on American soil hours later, a message from Phoebe pinged through on my phone: Please know that you have not lost a piece of your heart. It was always a symbol of love and friendship. It represents something; it isn't the thing. The thing could never be lost.

She was right, of course. My life is filled with items I can't bear to leave behind, old triggers of memory and pleasure, childhood tokens and talismans, but they are merely symbols for the foundation that exists forever in my flesh, in every word I speak and friendship I tend. Our cornerstones do not crumble, even when the grass grows to block them from view. We can leave them without worry as we search for other treasures, more portals to distant lands, new marks on our skin and fresh memories to mine, even when the things we worship are lost, and found, and lost again.

There are few things cuter, and sadder, than a mouse’s unaware butt inside a mouse trap that you’ve caught him in.

You open the trap in the midmorning winter light and there he is, the mouse’s butt, facing away from you and toward what’s left of the peanut butter that enticed him into the trap. And settled down in the leagues of pee and shit that he’s soiled himself with since becoming stuck in the trap and literally getting scared shitless, of course.

You marvel for a moment at the fact that you’ve really been successful, even in this, the most minute of ways—you’ve caught a mouse!—but then realize that you have to get to class shortly, so you set the trap on the ground with the gate open and wait for the mouse to crawl out.

And wait.

You’re in a park.

You wait some more.

You’ve brought the mouse to the park because you reason it’s far enough away from your house that he won’t just come traipsing right back in. And, it’s a natural setting.

Still very cold.

Frustrated and more aware, now, that you’ll be late for class, you pick up the trap again, angle the gate toward the ground, and shake the trap around so that the mouse comes tumbling out, cute butt first, dazed and still soiled.

He is wet with his last few days’ excitement and oh so bewildered and naked.

At this moment, you realize that he’ll probably die out here, anyway: it is cold, so cold that you can hardly bear to wait around to see what happens, and there are predatory birds out, that can see the mouse, and there isn’t much food here… just some berries that the mouse stops half-interestedly to sniff. But you urge him on, away from the berries, and toward a bush, because you want him to hide himself in the bush and dig a hole for two of the aforementioned reasons: it’s cold, dreadfully cold, and there are birds all around that can see and probably want the mouse.

Why have you killed the mouse?

The mouse was in your house, you remind yourself; he didn’t belong there.

But it was cold. You would have done the same thing as the mouse, if you were him.

Maybe he’ll survive, anyway? Who knows… Mice are resourceful.

At this you do leave, knowing that no matter what, you and the mouse will never meet again, at least not you and this particular mouse. It’s dreadfully sad, somehow… What might have been, had you found a way to live together, or to collaborate, rather than leave him out in the cold.

–Jackson

Sitting here, facing a blinking cursor on a blank page, the nail of my ring finger robotically picks at the nail fold of my thumb like a metronome. After I get a bit of traction in the flesh, I switch to the sharper tool of my first finger, which is slightly serrated thanks to a sloppy bite a few hours back, or perhaps yesterday. I don't need to look at my hands to work an itch; I know exactly when I've cut too deep or pulled too hard. I know what it feels like to bite into a nerve. My first memories of pain came from these fingertips; I can trace the valleys of a cuticle blind.

Chewing on my fingernails is my oldest vice, the first habit I could never break. My parents naturally tried to intervene, making me wear gloves, covering my nails in foul-tasting gunk, and warning me that I'd break my teeth if I didn't quit. Nothing stopped me then, and I see no realistic end in sight. My cuticles are a wasteland, my nail beds exhausted from the endless cycle of self-destruction and regrowth. I have left a thousand tiny bloodstains scattered across the world. The satisfaction of yanking a ragged hangnail free is simply too great; that sharp pain of loss and the vacuum of release was my very first drug.

My fingernails were only the beginning, of course. My nicotine receptors have now been howling mad for hours. I have holes in my soles and sometimes spend more money on gas than rent. The memory of a joint I smoked in the parking lot is still clouding my mind and clinging to my hair. My iPhone sits silent beside my MacBook, the screen black as a mamba coiled to attack and distract. I've been amplifying my heart rate with coffee all day, but I'm nearly due for the switch to wine. My habits are stepping stones in the river of time.

I have grown into my addictions like skin, and wear them as such, not with pride, but indifference. I no longer hide my halo of smoke, and have watched, dumbly detached, as my teeth incrementally yellow. I lean into my caffeine jitters and walk the streets with bloodshot, hungover eyes. Hiding my habits isn't an option, as I commit crimes against my own good health in public view, stupidly defiant, shouting into the void with Vonnegutian cynicism. In a world gone shallow, there is some honesty to be found in our self-inflicted scars.

There are parts we show and things we hide, but that line is drawn differently by everyone. Of course, there are also those things we can't reveal even if we tried. You may see me whiskey lounging, cigarette in hand, carelessly calm, but you will never see my ashen lungs or pockmarked liver. I can see the $200 jeans and the newest phone model bulging in someone's pocket, but I won't see the empty bank account or inexplicable sense of dissatisfaction. You might envy the photos from a mountaintop, but not the calloused pacing behind closed doors, the sleepless sweat of long nights that make hiking more of a fight-or-flight response than a seasonal hobby. You will hear the anonymous ding of a notification, but not the silent drop of dopamine as someone slides their phone obediently into view.

Witnessing addiction in its variegated forms, and experiencing it in ourselves, involves (and conflates) more emotions than we like to admit—pity, self-loathing, anger, joy, desperation, determination, stubbornness, depression, stupidity, judgment, superiority, arrogance, ecstasy... These slowly get tangled in our heartstrings, knotting together like a noose, growing ever more difficult to separate the strands. It becomes harder not to qualify yourself, to try and distance your mental state from the masses, to settle on a—“Well, at least I'm not...”—step in the flimsy hierarchy of your own perspective.

The effects of the actions themselves—drinking, smoking, fucking, snorting, tweeting, lying, shopping, eating, stealing, jogging—can manifest over a lifetime, but also sucker punch you as a terminal diagnosis, or as a cop kicking down your door. Some of the consequences have been shoved down our throats and into our family rooms by awareness campaigns—anti-this and pro-that—or perhaps by those closest to us who have fought and lost the same battles. However, most of the stains left by addiction are hard to identify, or warn against, or fetishize. They spread like glaciers, imperceptible but inexorable, slowly altering how we spend our time, energy, money and attention. Even if I know the risks and have read the science, even if I recognize the daily burden on my mind, even if I see the damage being wrought, that tangle in my heart reaches up to grip my throat, and is relieved only by a drag, a drink, a like, a purchase, an orgasm.

My thumb is bleeding now, as even the recollection of vices is enough to stir an unconscious nibble. I suck hard on the cuticle, wishing that the taste of copper made me vomit, or that the sight of my insides alone made me collapse. On the contrary, like the good Pavlovian case study I am, my neurons have been unplugged and reshuffled, linking satisfaction to blood, and pleasure to pain, urging me to choose short-term release despite long-term discomfort. For a logical human, one bent towards self-awareness, the cognitive dissonance in observing one's addictions is maddening, but having a flexible mind is not the same as having a strong will.

No... nothing will be learned from this latest rending of my flesh, this anxious evening indulgence. Nothing will remain but the faint taste of iron on my tongue, along with new wounds for my body to hide and my lizard brain to forget.

In splatters of oil—hot wax covering the body from head-to-toe, and you still work reception without screaming—the lamplight badly hitting your shorts or movie star shoes—burn after wearing. Burn after marring. (Burn after first sign of a mistake.)

We need no marks or blemishes. Use everything once and toss it to the brains in the gutter choked with leaves and butts and leaves. Leave it there to be forgotten. Find something new and adapt that as your own personal fad. It’s better that way. There are no personal stories here—only a heap of clothes and metal: that is to say, jean jackets plagued by mucus and scars—overworn and juicy. Burn it. Ditch it. (Can it and sell it.) It’s marred.

We have no use for the hair dye box you used and then subsequently questioned for four months before crying and tearing at your arms and finally running down the cul de sac (channeling your ten-year-old self) threatening to kill yourself with a tiny, rust-filled pocket knife you probably stole from your father: irrelevant. Far from use. Don’t use it. Forget it. Fuck joy. Fuck beds. Fuck the bread you made with your mother last December. Or the vegan food you found it the goddamn encyclopedia. Or the meat fest you over-salted with your cousins in risqué cigarette haze on the balcony.

Smoke at the table and horrify your extended family. Burn after wearing—no, marring. Marring is wearing and wearing is tearing is marring is to burn it so no one can see.

Put that hat on once and incinerate it. Tell yourself you don’t need Brian John hair—that that tome of ridiculousness has passed. (It reminded us of a book, after all.) Bail on it. Art is consumption. That’s not art. Art is a big wheel. Or a tunnel of hate. Or copyright infringement. Throw it in the trash. A hat is not art. You are not art. Your mess isn’t art. Nothing is art unless you—unless you—give this shit-hole of a parking lot a taste of don’t turn right. Expel everything. Expel excellence. Expel education and teaching and thought: the job you should be looking for tomorrow.

Write a blog instead. (The pinnacle.) Ruin satire. Ruin every poem you’ve ever attempted, gotten published, or kept because you thought you’d submit it later. (All work ever.)

Don’t watch movies—or, for Christ’s sake, make them. Don’t make Harry Potter or Raging Bull or When Calls the Heart or Tuck Everlasting or Hidalgo or Spirited Away or 12 Monkeys or Legend or Star Wars or The Godfather or—spit at it—spit at it and don’t mark it—like rubber in games. Signs on the material plain. Ethereal cacophonies of cartoon daydreams. (Oh, brother—burn that suit after your interview.) Kill it. Eat it. Shit it out. It’s, say it with us: marred.

Digest chandeliers. Digest bushes. Digest mountaintops. Digest Romeo and Juliet. Digest toasters. Digest taste itself and utterly misuse it in the pursuit of that which we believe tickles our organs best. And forget about those too—too many stains: bodies, rags, toilets, bedsheets, showers, grass patches, back seats, and irons. Forget about satire. And the Fender Rhodes organ nobody can afford. Stratocasters. Ghost trains. Rings of graces. Races. Rhyme as a concept. All of your clothes if they have ever once received one single mark or blow. (Even that jacket that we looked for for hours at my insistence even though you found it in one minute and wore for the rest of our sweet time.) Time. Time. Time wears everything anyway. So fuck it up. Burn it all. Throw it out. Throw out art if it leaves a mark—and don’t bat an eye.

Then burn after tearing up. Tears stain, too.

I never like the stale feeling
Of a poem that doesn't pick up the pace,
Leaves you wondering
What can be done, But
Maybe it's because
I can't find the poetry
In losing my love and
Regaining it
Only to lose it
again

If I could I would truly
Move the whole galaxy
Dismantle governments
Fast for a year
Starve my senses and
Trash my ambitions if
The fabric of the universe
Shifted to allow
Kept promises
It would be hard work
But even if it broke me
It would still be easier
Than wishing there was
A button for release
And wondering, why
Can't I hold one thing close
Forever

Photograph by Rebecca Hannigan

The bad days still come on fast as summer storms—violent and unannounced. They might be beautiful if I could find shelter. The air clings to me like drying blood, the empty edges blur and the space around my body shakes. My breath comes in gasps, no longer natural, but consciously made. Each inhale is a decision to live. Have you ever felt a code red in your bones?

The triggers are innocuous, or cleverly disguised, lunging for the throat from the corner of my eye—a street name or an ingredient for a meal I don't make anymore. I've been broken by circles on a map, overheard conversations, and the feel of certain sweaters on my skin. And then I spiral, as that single trigger sets off all the alarms I've set, deafening me down. Blood pounds in my temples. Sweat leaks free and my gut tightens like a noose. My heart curls into a fist headed for my own jaw. I slam the doors, drop the shades, abandon the groceries, stop the car, close the atlas and try to seek silence. But the thunder comes. It's faster than me and I can hear it through the walls. Have you ever tried to outrun your mind?

The storm shatters the sky, racing in angry and cold from over the horizon, where it was growling and brooding, waiting for the winds to change. I turn away and the tempest follows, hungry, knowing which roads I'll take, blocking every escape that has worked before. It licks the back of my neck and thoughts boil over like poison making an escape from my blood. Words I would never speak echo beneath the folds of my tongue. Things I would never do unfurl like a grim home movie, cigarette burns and all. Each scene spiderwebs to a dozen more, a hundred, impossible to follow or contain, ravaging my defenses with the cruel quickness of lightning, finding every weak spot in a blink, pulling me under, back, before. I stop breathing to see how long I can last. Have you ever drowned yourself in a memory?

The squall hits fast and low, but fades slow, dissecting my time with a dull blade, severing the branches I've bent into a basket, a cradle, a womb. The trunk of my tree is rain-slick now, harder than ever to climb, so I slip down among the roots, to a temporary haven where I can check for vital signs, where no one can find me, where I can stop the bleeding. Have you ever hidden from yourself?

When I finally crawl out—minutes, days, hours later—the sky is empty and innocent, yet my nerves are soaked and I can't wring them out. They stumble my steps and fill my nose with the trace memory of mildew and rot. I rub dirt over the new scars and plead with each hint of wind to blow me dry and home.

They are south of Castle Rock—I mean, Colorado Springs. They should have stayed another
Night. They’re saying Castle Rock’s gotten six inches, which is actually—see, the Mountains I think were fine. Like—deep in the mountains. I do remember in my youth—
Steamboat got only five inches. I do remember in my youth, I do recall—

Yeah, well—I doubt—I mean, I think they made a very good call. No? This was a good addition.
Two hundred outages reported in the Denver area alone. I’m very superficial. Oh. Three Thousand people in Douglas County don’t have power. And Arapahoe—well, we’re the Most effected. Wow. That’s really bad.

If she would only just say, “We really miss you guys, when can we make plans to see each
Other?” But she won’t do that. I’ve got a snake coming out of my—It’s always me who Has to start these things. And I’m done. If I reply to her, then she will just keep texting Me.

What is this? This is not our thing. Is this an addition without my permission? What the hell is
This? Look at it out front. Holy Moses. Did you change it back? Oh, because it ended? Because it ended. What do you want to listen to? Hello, it’s me. I thought we were going To watch the movie. Hello, it’s me. I’ve thought about—

Trump said he wouldn’t cut Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security—and guess what? His new—
His new lovely—in his new budget. “Parents accused of the college scams could face Some serious time in prison.” They will be used as examples, don’t you think? They’re Screwed. Smoke and ash. See, this is my question for you: is this really a good place for These people? Jail?

That’s what my mom said, “They’re taking a person who’s rehabilitated and dehabilitating—”
If I had been in the picture, there would have been some things said—and another thing, I think by taking that plea bargain, he forsook—he made a lot of mistakes, as my dad Said. But I don’t know. Well, I did my best—Let’s see what DIA is saying.

See, there’s no waits. Security is super quick. Whatever happened to early mornings? Because
I’m still here. I don’t think they could even get there. I love how my insurance lady calls Back—like a fucking asshole. There’s got to be a few small changes made.

Teachers are working like dogs right now. I think everyone’s catching up on all their grades and
Stuff—Don’t you think? Over the years—You should see this shithead’s grades. What? This shithead’s grades. Oh, that’s good you’re not being a dick in class anymore, but Your grades suck. I can see your body line. It’s a shame you have to die.

Maybe we’ll disappear. What do you want to do? What? I’m not taking you anywhere. Yeah—
What about three o’clock? “Three o’clock on a snow day.” Oh. I told you to make lunch a While back. Tomorrow’s Pie Day. Wow. And? It means you gotta have a pie. What are You making?

Look at the front. Wow. You can cut it in half and put it in a bun. How would that fit at all? How—
How would you—you dope. You know what doesn’t work? Your cute face with those Glasses. That’s not even my name, so I don’t know why you do that. “Give me your
Birth certificate.” So when—I don’t know, okay?

Say what I say—yeah, yeah, yeah. What is going on here? This is not good. Should I change it?
No—I used to love this song. What do they say? Things I don’t understand. Who sings This? I don’t even know. My mom’s power came on. You know, and they don’t have any Blinds or anything—you know what I mean? It’s a cruel, cruel summer.

What does this mean? What’s a mass service? Does this mean he passed away? No, no—
Okay. They’re saying he’s struggling more today. Okay. Maybe that wasn’t the right Wording. It’s like they’re—“We would love for you to all join us tomorrow for a mass Service—” But I think it’s like a—a prayer thing. I used to be a nice guy.

I do remember this lady—did I ever tell you this story? “No.” He was in a band, it was in Sept—
Wait a second. So, you know, and in—her nephew was in California doing a show—and, It’s kind of a crazy story, he was adopted—they couldn’t have kids, but—he was kind of Really into, not like punk music, but he was tatted-up. He didn’t drink or do drugs—but There was a belligerently drunk lady, and he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt—

Well, that’s kind of encouraging. Today you would think would be kind of a turning point. I went
To a radio interview—so she hit that, and it made the car spin. I ended up alone with the Microphone—like multiple times. So, I do feel that there is a comeback here, but—
You don’t think that he would know?

Get out of town—I think I’ll get out of town. Are you looking at the weather? Why, is it worse?
I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t know if we’ve gotten a ton of snow—but, but look at the Front. It still looks like it’s a blizzard. “Did you crank the heat? I would. It said that a Hundred and eighty-four people are without power—” Okay, you must be in this crew. Even though we don’t got money—everything will bring—

Are you going to clean that up, or am I going to have to do it? You need a sous chef. I am not
Your sous chef. Smell that—Rebel Rebel. I don’t know if I like that smoky flavor—If I liked Whiskey, I’d have one. I’m going to pour myself a glass of wine. You’ve got your mother In a whirl. She’s not sure if—You leave your shit all over my house.

They had power, but the power would go out for a minute. A flicker—yeah. A family where there
Once was one—In the morning—because of the wind, but whatever. Well he died. You know what I’m saying. The car has about eight inches on it, but in the back it doesn’t Look like eight inches. They did this last time. Castle Rock—they should have just stayed Another—Everything's gonna be alright.

Everything is going to be alright, Liam.

I am told to work it out
Work out my impossible questions?
Work it out. Your circus of dreams
Your day in day out
Years in years out
Submitted without comment

I’d like to submit
A request for wishful thinking

That we all just
Take it down a notch
And find a soft revolution
Behind eyelids
Like curtains
Stealing time,
Letting life play back
Like a comic strip

I would sleep like Sleeping Beauty
Like shrinking in the light
and vastness
At the seashore on holiday
Like fourth of July fireworks
Fizzling in the mud

Like the dinosaurs
and the dead parts of the forest
like the mummies 
And ancient pictographs 
in hidden caves
Like the museums
honoring death and life
Quietly

Like Pompeii
Whose sophistication
We’ll never *really* see
Like bears in the winter
They understand me
or marine life
On the ocean floor
Holding the earth’s
Oldest stories
(unfathomable, unreachable)

I won’t be making
anyone happy
Neither capitalists
Nor the government
Surveilling me from afar:
Me in a hurry, me out of step,
me out of tune
Me asleep.

—Maddy Hughes

what is this on the couch what is this
kind of stain like coffee like really what could this be maybe the
curry you sat on a bowl in your lap or maybe the
beer you spilled when you missed your mouth or
later, when it came back after drinking so much
you were drowning, almost drowning, always drowning,
but then you think, you know, you were the one who
wanted to drown

—Rebecca Hannigan