I’ve missed writing a little email and pushing it off its tree branch and into the world. The world is a big inbox. You’ll have to take my word for it!
Winter is driving me mad in an unoriginal, boring way. So are all my neuroses. I am bored of my repressed anger, my disordered eating or eating disorder, phrased differently depending on the day, my obsessions and compulsions… my my my.
There is also the world, which I don’t need to remind you of, I’m sure. It’s with some level of balletic efficiency we can spin between topics of the self-contained life and the out-of-control world. If I say the word ‘world’ one more time, you can click away. No hard feelings.
I have always liked jotting something adjacent to poetry in my iPhone notes because the app forces me to break lines sooner rather than later. Consider this a hack. When I was writing more properly in college, I never got the sense I was doing this aspect of the craft right. I’d sit elbow-to-elbow with classmates who seemed much more confident about the placement of their thoughts. I suppose the real hack is that you should do what you’d like with whatever you decide are little poems.
Here are a few, which reveal rather plainly that I’m preoccupied with the same things constantly. I hope you can tolerate them.
When RFK makes my ssri illegal, intersections will once again become impossible places designed by Ari Aster I'm at a point where I enjoy finding gray hairs and more than two drinks means my muscles will be sore tomorrow in a way that encourages estate planning My brother Cody already has my clarinet so you'll have to let me know if you'd want that specifically. He doesn't play it anymore because there are thousands of episodes of anime to watch or something On the phone my mother is pretty ambivalent towards all my hypochondriatic psychobabble for being the exact person who installed this needy demon in me Why must Frankenstein turn on his creation! Why must it be that single women in movies always choke on Chinese food or peanut butter alone in their apartments Recently I had a medium-grade panic attack during the movie Queer because I could. It's like if shoplifting was somatic and you got nothing out of it I panic at movie theaters often because I am routinely anticipating and evaluating the possibility of such an event occurring in front of other people in public places In some ways it's like a homecoming In some ways it's like sleeping in your childhood bed and being like oh yes that's how these sheets always feel on my skin. But then instead of counting sheep you decide if you had a good life
Grief Reunion #6
There isn't much of anything new I could tell
you about grief since the last time I tried
I burned my tongue from sucking on sour
candy the last two days and now I'm
spitting blood
You know how when you spit blood you feel
relieved when you can find the source
That's how a lot of things are I guess
The candy I bought had such a crazy slogan
on the packaging: Embrace Your Punch.
Love what makes you unique. Appreciate
what makes others different
Good grief, in the Charlie Brown way
When did Candy get condescending
I am so bored of what makes me unique
because it's also what makes me so tired
and also loca
Like pain, which is always some kind of
competition. Look at me and how much
suffering I carry for myself and others
yessssssssss I'm learning that Jesse Eisenberg
and I feel the same about a lot
One day more of you will have dead parents
and I'll feel just as bad as I do nowI'm setting a new record for how many times a person can spit after swishing around her nightly mouthwash It appears I am more concerned with a drop of the stuff hitting my stomach than the countless microplastics swimming in my brain. Oh well I'll offset it with an apple kombucha and a walk around the block, listening in to a smart podcast, tomorrow What if I have an asymptomatic chest infection What if I forget to read Moby Dick We parked it by the Carrie Bradshaw steps and watched women with tripods stage little videos of themselves walking past, tossing balayaged hair over suede coats, smirking I hope their Mr. Bigs shoot off a storm of fire emojis but do not reply to unanswered messages I don't think I've truly ever gotten over anything Just busied myself with newer, shinier things to never get over. Chromolume #7, if it paid homage to another folkloric heartbreak Aren't we all so miserably selfish Isn't it so beautiful to climb up the wet stairs to see rainbow ice crystals crowning the moon
Big love,
kaylasomething