i haven’t written you in a while.

i guess i haven’t been sure what to say.

people say time is a construct; temporal lines converge, diverge, transmute, but never decay.

bodies collide; perceptions shift; distort; change.

sovereignty is a ruse

a betrayal

we co-create.

you are me; i am you.

I remember, and re-member,

and yet

resist:

i don’t want to learn this lesson this way.

but daemons whisper of

secrets bespoke

of dying limbs and the gifts of decay

and so i let you

fall apart

decompose

because matter and time are (not) the same

and a smoking mirror

is not

a saint.

i cross my fingers.

pray for rain

hope you grow.

such tender

tinder of the soul

these new bones

without yet a name.

can you hear the trees?

Can you hear the trees?

their gasps of grief

patterns of reach

extend

straining

for your

attention

the ground you walk

breathes

murmurs

pleads:

kin,

children,

beings,

this harm you bring

cannot offer

immortalization.

when the water becomes laced

with the septics;

the waste

of narcissistic incontinence;

in the violence;

the blooming wound

of the human wake

will you finally allow yourself

to face

the wretchedness

that has

befallen us.

when the beaches become

a procession:

the waves a mourning hymn;

requiem

for the dead

of the ocean

finally therein,

will you bring yourself to drink? to taste?

the fruits,

the remains,

of that which we are

and of that which we

are beholden.

will you finally admit that you are angry?

heartbroken

afraid

or will you remain muted

complacent

to your own pain

your own

destruction

can you hear the trees?

look around

hold their gaze

do you not feel how deeply

you are loved by them.

do you not exist

because;

within;

and of;

in utter dependence;

salvation

to this utmost relation

of love?

do you not breathe?

bleed

hunger

thirst

is there not truth,

in your death,

in your living?

that you too, are of the trees,

are of the earth.

tell me, friend,

are you listening?

and I’m sorry

for all the years

i held my hand over your mouth

suffocating

all of the ways

you might sing.

afraid

of all the words

all the being

that begged

pleaded

longed

To be released.

and i’m sorry for all of the ways

i did not understand

that a flower is never a flower at all.

that petals become dust

become particles; perpetual

indefinite

wherewithal

And I’m sorry for all of the ways I did not accept

that fate is a current

not a coin

that chaos is creative

inertia

cataclysmic intention

sacred entanglement

tragic;

divine.

i didn’t then—but i know now:

that atoms never still;

never silenced

have a will

a sorcery

a versing

a flow;

bent only by the will of the infinite;

a magic

of their own.

i’ve been playing at the edge of perception lately.

the tipping point

before the fall.

looking over the edge knowing, once you take the plunge there’s no guarantee you make it back.

how we cling to self-hood. to ego. to mind. manic over identity and the ways it orients;

grounds us within the world and experience.

the ways we imprison ourselves in ‘safety’;

being held firmly in place by the stories we accept as foundations to knowing.

forgetting that all we ever are is a moment in time. a blink. a breath.

that the indeterminacy, the infinacy of life, of living and dying in the world,

can never be contained within a singular entity; body; self.

how this ruptures fear; judgement; perception; truth

not by way of irresolute chaos; nor nihilistic relief.

but rather, it gathers and spreads in profound patterns of vast and variant degrees of excruciating beauty and suffering.

if we might find a way to perch upon this vantage point of perception,

to experience, if only for a moment, the greater depths to being; life; matter; meaning

—how might we be freed?

theres a space between me and the world.

a quivering expanse of experience.

a feeling that transcends mind and body.

a precarious coherence;

a curious skin; particles spin; subatomic cells;

a spectral realm.

it pushes, pulls, lingers.

tugs at the edges of sight and sensation.

bending space and illusions of self.

the sidewalk’s turned to stardust

engulfed by the depths of experience.

equal parts freedom and confusion;

freefalling;

cant seem to ground myself;

“solidity is such an illusion”.

fantasies rule the mind,

paint narratives across experience.

silver tongues, like razor blades

speak the world into delirium.

what stories do you tell yourself?

what lies?

what myths?

how do you shield yourself from the world?

how is truth set adrift?

how do you cope with the infiniteness

 of the a b y s s ?

trust seems to be an oddly visceral, yet completely shape-less and slippery concept.

we tend to think we have a sense for how we “trust” people or things, that we actually have a sense of what trusting entails; what it feels like. we tend to think we find it in people, behavior, or words, in institutions or fancy documents & signatures.

a loaded notion that relies on belief and expectation, it engages both hope and dependence; sureness and obligation; it is performed through assumptions and actions, both conscious and unconscious.

these assumptions are based on our beliefs and experiences, rather than any real “trustworthy” attribute. what we trust and how we trust, evolves in relation to what we do and what we take to be given about experience. trust lies less in objects and others, and more often in what is unintelligible or unnoticed. explicitly, through what produces comfort. security. certainty.

trust feels like being surefooted, but hinges upon the wavering, ever evolving conditions of complex relationality. read: trust involves relations. but emerges from our choices and beliefs, of which are shaped, and shape, our relations. trust is personal, but shape-shifting and dependent. entangled in the histories of affective memory’s past/present/future.

i think i am already dead.

maybe you are too.

drifting between states

of horror and hope,

fucked up and spinning

in this divine ruse.

tell me, what’s it like? pretending to exist.

is there salvation in the performative,

existential grid?

every upload, a hail mary, let there be life, proof.

isn’t it funny, how we make believe importance,

dress up existence in costume.

into nothing we cast what is,

then in ceremony,

we consume.

thou shalt deliver us, in simulation.

eternal life through the perpetual new.

ashes fall from the heavens.

the sky, bleeds red.

heads bow to the will of threshold

i think i am already dead.

sometimes i lock myself in to watch the dust gather,

each particle, its own mess of infinite.

settling in along the shelf, amidst the bindings of books.

as i sit, the world spins.

and life

outside this room

unravels.

i am reminded of the insignificance of my personhood,

when i remain

static, frozen, still,

in the wake of existence.

moments pass way like petals of a dying flower,

slipping from life with ease, and yet

with permanence.

there is truth in the roses,

who find their final resting place as the dust that gathers,

on shelves, particles of existential mercy, lie still

at ease.

outside

the world unravels

with permanence,

that not even the eye can see.

lurking.

keep looking for something. peering across the grid. hedging my responsibilities, trying to catch a glimpse. what is this feeling, succumbing to what might be, casting aside what is. sinking in what makes me feel something, avoiding the skin i am in.