as if the worship of a thing might be the thing that breaks it.

This river, which is life, which is wayfaring. This river,   

which is also sky. This dipper, full of mind, which is   

not only the hysterical giggling of girls, but the trembling   

of the elderly. Not only   

the scales, beaks, and teeth of creatures, but also   

their imaginative names (elephant, peacock) and their   

love of one another, the excited   

preparations they sometimes make   

for their own deaths.

It is as if some graceful goddess, wandering in the dark, desperate with thirst, bent down and dropped that dipper   

clumsily in this river. It floated away. Consciousness, memory, sensory information, the historians and their glorious war . . .

The pineal gland, tiny pinecone in the forehead, our third eye:   Of course   

it will happen here. No doubt. Someday, here,   

in this little house,   

they will lay the wounded side by side. The blood

will run into the basement through the boards. Their ghosts are already here, along 

with the cracked plate wrapped in old paper in the attic,   

and the woman who will turn one day at the window to see   

a long strange line of vehicles traveling slowly toward her door, which

she opens (what choice does she have?) although she has not yet been born."

 i scavenge for something that compares to the way i feel like i bake in this sickness, 

like when the heat of summer stews you into a sense of confusion and contamination, when you’re only here and there and the only thing you ever really know is that the sun is too bright and the grass is too green and you are going absolutely nowhere. 

this feeling of fall is confusing to me, 

as it’s a strange blend between the sickening scorch of the summer and the forlorn freeze of winter. 

fall is a million memories and a complete blur in my mind, the pieces put in wrong places where i’m not sure what’s what. 

it is heartbreak and happiness and a hidden aching i can find on the inside somewhere when i pass by all the spooky decorated houses framed with mitch matched trees and lost leaves scattered on the ground. 

sheet ghosts and indie rock dances through my head as i wonder what all is really left to pick apart in my mind. 

i can’t say i know what to think, for i don’t believe i was ever really there at all. 

all i know is i was there once and i never will be again."

wandering through a unforgiving wilderness.

i will remain in a realm of white brick walls and sunshine breaking through halfway covered windowpanes, 

and fluorescent light flickering over the sounds of video lectures and brand new shoes scuffing the tile floors, 

as the latest school shooting is being seen on a snapchat story. 

i will never once truly touch the outside world, nor be apart of it. 

i believe i died a long time ago and was left to haunt one of those spoiled summers or wistful winters, 

when there is nothing more than the bitter sun outside and the absence of yourself 

in a room with filthy sheets and succulents sleeping in the sun the creeps through the window, where the buzz of the tv never seems to end.

 however much i may hate the forbidden frost that glazes the windows from late fall to early spring,

or the violent rays that roast the grass dead, 

autumn holds a special place within. 

there has always been silently slipping through the cracks and nice clothes 

and friends who weave through your circle 

and fading interests 

and the way i find myself gripping my bedding at night as i try to hold on to the threads of myself while i do my daily unraveling quietly in the night."

and a darkness that lurks even in the brightest light 

and enjoying the little things,

and the nostalgia you try to revisit through the passing cars on the way home,

and that one acoustic playlist that you mindlessly enjoy on your daily commute or 

curl up to at rock bottom-

is always there. 

the chilly winds that warn of the coming cold remind me that all my friends are blowing away like the leaves 

and reveal the barren frame on the inside like the trees who have been stripped of their foliage. 

for fall is not a memory or a time, truly, but a friend, or an acquaintance maybe,

not one that’s ever really there or tells you good things,

but tells you how things really are and provides you the opportunity to resonate with yourself more than with them.

it lets me know how the time is passing and how i have begun to fade away from the people and the places 

like the color draining from the earth as summer slowly dies, 

surrendering itself dormant to a new unforgiving wilderness 

with nothing but the chill of the sleeping earth."