I am at a loss. this weekend was a sucker punch to the jaw and now I’m desperately chasing my own silhouette. oh and it’s finals week?

when I was 16, I had a string of panic attacks and a recurring nightmare about a lion chewing off my hands. my parents sent me to this wacky therapist who told me I had no cognizant sense of self and that that was the root of my disarray. I said but if that isn’t freedom, I didn’t know what was.

she said yes. and no. lack of personal identity was a dangerous thing indeed. I could slip through the cracks of adolescence. I could be, god forbid, insignificant.

she asked “who are you?”

and I responded with “who are you?”

“no!” she scolded, like I was a disobedient dog. “deflection is a defense method which…” I honestly don’t recall much of the therapy gobbledygook because I was probably zoning out and wondering what it might be like to be a coyote. or if the ocean ever felt lonely. some super zen shit like that. I remember she slid a blank piece of paper to my side of the table and I rejoiced. fuck yes, I specialized in de-blanking pieces of paper. she told me to start with the basics. “who are you?” I ended up writing some stupid story about a llama gifted with a lovely falsetto and how it conquered the Midwest.

the therapist  read it and tore it in half, and frustration curled between my teeth. it tasted metallic, like blood. she went to her computer and printed out some sort of resume and slid that over to my side of the table. I quickly realized she stole it right from an infamous online dating website. “we’re starting with the basics” she said again. and she waited. I remember thinking it was such a bullshit exercise because everyone always lied on dating resumes anyway.  so I ended up answering as if I was a member of the Glass family. I thought I was being clever, but she didn’t care, she didn’t even notice. in her eyes, she saw that I had overcome a certain aversion, of myself, of talking about myself. even if “myself” was a fictional character I plucked from a book.

 I’m not going to do that now. I’m scared right now, terrified even. my fire’s gone out and I’ve lost my way so I’m falling back to the surefire ashes, the fundamentals. 

today I spent most of the day sitting on the couch playing xbox skipping my classes and hating myself. around 3 pm my housemate came home and began making salsa in our kitchen. I said hey and proceeded to zone out, watching the rain hit the window. 

I really hated myself today. most days I feel pretty indifferent about myself, and devote most of my headspace to liking other people. but today all I could focus on was the self loathing welling up inside me. I skipped class. my employer hadn't called me back with holiday hours. the short story I submitted in int fiction the day before was so badly editted and riddled with gramatical errors, I could no longer look at it. 

around 3:10 my housemate said my name and I blinked. "hey" I said. again. 
she said "I think I'm an aromantic." she said this while chopping bell peppers in the kitchen. her hair was blacker than obsidian and pulled away from her face. 

of course, I heard "aromatic." so I said, "you do smell very nice. like ozone and daytime rain."

she began to cry. 

"no." she said. she turned toward the refrigerator. “maybe not aromantic, but surely asexual, I don't know, I don’t know why or how."

asexual. my eyes rested on our basil plant outside, saturated and green. It looked very happy to be in the rain. my housemate followed my gaze. "oh god." she said in a tremor. "I'm not a fucking plant, dan." 

"but I think you'd make a lovely plant." I said. "you could be a cactus flower. or a pond lily. or a redwood tree or a poppy.” I turn off the xbox. “it’s illegal to pick those in California,” I said as an afterthought. she made a strained sound and slapped a palm over her eyes. I couldn’t read her expression.

“you can be whatever plant you want, really.” I try to emphasize this point. “you’d still be one of the best people I know. or plant I know. whatever.” she began to cry harder and I began to worry I was being insensitive and very un PC.  I stood up and made it to the kitchen in two leaps.

 “it’s not really like that.” she said. 

fuck. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t really know anything about what it’s like. 

“tell me what it’s like. also, can I taste test the salsa?" 

she rolled her eyes. the salsa tasted spicy and sweet and amazing. she left the kitchen and returned with some basil from outside. “it’s more like I’m metal. sterile. barren. metal.” she said each word in the same tempo as the staccato rain drops on the roof. “it’s like no one will love me like this.”   

words stuck to the roof of my mouth. you are loved you are loved you are loved, please please please believe me

it was 3pm and the fog was still curling around the tree trops in somber gray crowns. when I want to get really out of my mind, I walk into the woods. right then I was walking pretty aimlessly, alone, save the hibernating leaf litter phantoms.

there's this sunday school bible verse in which the body is the temple of the holy spirit. but I also read from a poet that a human being is made out of forest canopies. I decide on the latter and give myself to the anomalous sort of hopelessness settling into the threads of my sweater. for a mile or two, I pretend to be robert frost, but I was never really cut out for the transcendental club. so instead I drop my backpack and dig for earbuds. I dig for my earbuds for a good 5 minutes and the split second I realize where they are, my phone rings. the sound is deafening and I feel the forest toss and turn, like who knew you could even pick up a phone connection out in the backcountry? I apologize to the trees profusely. 

on my phone, in my hands, your name sends a shot of warmth through my bloodstream, like espresso, diluted by a panicked "hello?" you voice is angry. and abrasive! and amplified by the fog, asking why I left my earbuds at your house. you told me not to leave any of my shit in your apartment! you asked me twice if had everything, and I reassured you I did. what kind of game was I trying to play??

I tell you to just throw them away. the earbuds. my thumb reflexively brushes over the end call button and the fog crackles. I am jack's complete lack of surprise.

but it still hits me hard, it still brings my knees to the wet leaves that seep their way deep into my patellas. the fog shackles my wrists to the ground and I sit there for a long pathetic time. I know why you're angry at me, but they're just fucking earbuds. they have no haunt potential.

but then I think of your stupid bobby pins, which I still occasionally find on my bedroom floor, sometimes with rogue strands of copper hair still attatched. I think of how they probably got there. I think of your red lips, your fingers tugging at hems, my fingers tugging at rubber bands, carefully plucking out each pin until your hair fell to your shoulders in red rivers.

like what is it about breakups that makes me romanticize the shit out of girls and their hair?

I think about the events leading up to this point with my knees and palms pressing against the forest floor. I think about your won't-ever-happen-again face as you walk out the door.

ok

I was supposedly incommunicado and there was someone else.

ok

not that I'm jealous or upset or feel strange in anyway.

well...ok  

set aside today specifically to write and I can't fucking write.

okay let's try this –

red blossoms are falling on my fingers which are stalled on laptop keys –

maybe this would be more romantic if it were pen & paper but my pen hemorrhaged a week ago when I bumped into you in the garden. your eyes met mine and my pen literally burst, ink smudged my palms and my jaw which I ran a shaking hand over. nauseated, I dragged my eyes away, thinking "be like water to rocks, be like water to rocks." 

that was a week ago and I still wish I was in the Japanese countryside, at least then I'd be justified in feeling like a gaijin. 

darling, I really liked what we were doing, but the honest truth is that I was using you for your sexytime playlists. I picked up the best music when you turned the lights down and the speakers up. 

that's not the whole truth. the whole truth is I liked you a lot more than I was prepared for. a shame our rhythm was like two ticking clocks left to their own devices.

once had a friend who was born with perfect pitch. I would run through guitar chords over and over until he would pick up on something average ears couldn't dream of, and his fingers would shoot out like lightning to nudge a peg ever so lightly, back to equilibrium. 

that's what we were like. something was dangerously out of tune, but both of us were wearing the same earmuffs. or maybe you took them off ages before I did and chose not to say anything. fuck. why didn't you say anything? 

I really hate the word "banal" if you say that word to me more than once a day in casual conversation, I think youre banal as fuck and what's even worse is that people always switch up the pronunciation, like does it rhyme with "anal" or "canal"

sometimes I feel like I'm swimming in an anal canal because the area around my apartment smells like a sewage plant and I'm already a bit compulsive about how often I do my laundry. 

there's this huge bruise on my ribs where I fell off the fence I was trying to climb. I was on my way to a job interview and thought taking a short cut was a genius notion. the hiring manager was like "blah blah blah the banal realities of this industry are determined by the blah blah ill informed blah blah mass produced customer " and I'm like "no freakin duh can I please have a job though?"

now the bruise is yellow and black like smoke trapped beneath membrane. the under armor I'm wearing is pressing against it in an unbearable but slightly pleasurable way. is that messed up? 

I think I'm having a bad day. 

when the temperature climbes above oneohfive (which happens often here right before the crack of autumn), I crawl into the walk in refrigerator in the warehouse district. I quarantine myself. pull the door shut, turn off the lights press my cheek to the cold concrete. 

I think about Dr. Seuss a lot. my man, T. Guyzel. he said you have to be odd to be #1. which changed my life in my wee youth because I was a pretty weird kid. not in the special snowflakey way. I suppose everyone is weird in childhood. I mean children are fundamentally weird. 

it's the things I remember that are weird. the dead grass. the neighbor girl who left me notes in the communal dog kibble. the piano lesson in which I finally learned to read treble clef. the cat powers album my mom listened to when she was drunk. the recurring dream of that scene in jurassic park where the velociraptor overcomes the mechanics of a door handle. could he figure out a revolving door which has more of a learning curve? I didn't know. I worried. 

now all I worry about is how much I relate to that "high all the time" song on the radio. I lay face down in cold storages and think of the face I'm supposed to be looking for in a week at school. I hope I find her. 

fingers grip the steering wheel and I twist the volume to drown the sound, to drown out this small talk. modest mouse. this is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about. Dad, I love you, but right now I love Issac Brock's voice more and I don't want to talk about the world cup. 

back home to the desert, I'm chewing dust and gulping excuses. making plans not to make plans. I've kept my entire family up with my tireless coughing. my sister thinks I have valley fever. my mom told me my lungs just need to become acclimated to the air quality here. I tried to tell her that's not how it works, but whatever parasite is scratching up my esophogus  cuts me off.  it's fine. I think the parasite was on my side all along.

god I miss redwood trees. 

god I shouldn't listen to simon and garfunkel and write porn. (yeah it's an assignment ok)

trying to hard - I mean, he's trying to hide. god. he's trying to hide it. it's hard. it's hard to hide how hard... 

I used to be in love with this Vietnamese girl who I swear was a cat in a past life. she was all lithe limbs and pounce and indifference. her smile was sharp and feline but when she was in a good mood she would crawl beside me and tell me stories. 

one time she told me her dad abused her when she got bad grades, and I promised I would never lay a hand on her. unless she asked. admittedly, I spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to kiss her. if she would shut her eyes. if she would sink her teeth into my lip because it wouldnt be a real kiss unless it hurt. 

meow.

her parents didn't like me because I was a stray caucasian dog with a tucked tail and I always forgot to take my shoes off in their house.

she was a cat. he was a dog. can I make it any more obvious?

what am I doing?

anyway, this afternoon I took a wrong turn and ended up at a fenced isosceles triangle of green grass and birch trees. and dogs and their suburban owners. I sit down and stay there until it gets dark and cool and I tried not to cry at the dog park because she left and although I'm no longer infatuated by her cat creep I miss the way she would curl into my lap and fall asleep like I was the safest person in the world. 

we're sitting around a circular table, in circular silence.

you're late to class, Miss Wrinkled NASA Tshirt With The Sleeves Rolled Up with hair the color of dirty pennies. workshopping poetry, chin lowered and doubled but countered with a defiant freckle scraped nose. eyes hidden behind bangs behind sad sonnets about broken relationships. those eyes might be green, I'm convinced they're green, but you look away every time I try to double check. 

look at me! I'm trying to profile you for our next assignment and you're a catch! 

but no you turn to the squrriely greasy author of the poem we're workshopping: "this is lovely, this breakup poem puts taylor swift to shame." the class laughs and the guy says "for real? thanks!" and turns to the next commenter, and I'm the only one who catches your smirk, flashing and fading and gone. 

your own poem might be about suicide but I can't know for sure, it's hidden behind a limerick about a fucking fox. 

I'm onto you, babe.