I am making a bet that if I run from what I think we call “happy,” the odds that I’m living will be less absurd.Somewhere in me there is a plot towards myself. Somewhere in me I must know what decisions to make. Tell me where to reside, where to hide from the cavities. I will collect these whispers stuck in my skull. I will make sense of the madness.

I don’t know what to do with these feelings. They come up and strap me down, pain is holding me down to life, griping me with spores like velcro on something too soft to catch. I can’t get past this one moment to get to the next, except I do through shivers and smiles and sleep. I escape my uncertainty by causing my pain. My body won’t break down even when I’m begging for it to.

I try to recognize the pinch of this, trace of that, hint of what they make of me. In the model they make of me I see the parts I want to see. The “who” and “what” and “why” of “how are you” stink of times I hardly remember. I hear them say it’s me or you. The one who makes it is the one they will know.

I want someone to set a score to my life, to make a shirt made of magnets, faces for letters to explain how I’m feeling. There are worlds in a box full of method and mission where purpose is found in a sound bite and time catches the tide of attention. I believe in this magic I see on the screen where a yes and a no can print enough pixels for an icon to grow. I thrive on this ride where parachutes hide. This is not what I had in mind, some sort of passover action. I want to skip a double tap on the pavement over all the minor discrepancies and parts of my story that fall out of line with the version we’re playing. I’m here to phase out the binary action and make fast bucks in fashion. But In fact I believe I’m missing the… That’s a roundabout way of saying I’m a z for a zebra out and about on a stroll.

Did I tell you I believed in something, something far from real, something about where cameras came from and the problem with sunglasses. Did I tell you I believe in fate and fortune, and rocks around railroad ties. I put them in my pockets and I walk until there is no more room between my skins.

Sometimes it’s safer to stay half alive.

Something flashes between my eyes and suddenly I want to use words instead of figures, as though something in a set of characters could unleash the herds inside of me, obsess the wranglers and maybe give me an inch of freedom, a gap between me and the insides of me. To make this intolerable condition and edible portion, that readable nugget. I mean, all the sheep, they have to feel something when we start feeding them bacon. Can this passion become what I think it might be?

I can store the world inside of me and wait for it to digest. I can’t tell when things are right or wrong for the same reason I can’t tell how much food I have eaten. I have stretched my stomach like I have stretched my soul and I want it empty.

I want to suck these things, whatever they are, all the way out of me for a change at a moment free from confusion. I need the relief of something real coming out of me. The chunks of flesh and slime erupting from my insides, converting this endless bloating into a jet of possibility. It’s a private process, destroying yourself, or rather everything but yourself.

One has to ask if the cost of saving this life will hurt more than letting it go, like at what point have enough ribs cracked or enough backs broken over consistent attempts to revive the undead. Maybe I can write myself into something I can’t sell. Maybe somewhere in these words I’ll get time to change gates, get the future to saunter towards me, me the rebel and me the cause.

Sometimes I meet people and I can feel the darkness in me bowing to the darkness in them. It must be death that they see when I stand on the stage and act possessed so easily. I must let it win, one loss for the sake of the lot. The evil will stand as a bright shiny thing. Right here is the part where we learn what I’ve got. I had high hopes for the living, and all the listening they do. Dear god, can you tell me whether this is really a run? 

I’m holding onto the seconds hoping they won’t betray my uncertainty, hoping to hide the trace evidence. Will they see that I’m trashing my future or will they know I’m packing the wounds simply to leave a small mark. 

I make decisions like nobody’s watching. I watch tv like it will save me from fate, or bring me there sooner. I stare at my lap like it’s hiding a message.Wild at heart is what they call it when you drive to the sun and fall in love with your shadow.  I believe in miracles, solutions and I Spy novels. I believe in fame and freedom and a junction box in my chest.

I don’t want to live a life where I almost became myself. I must make a figure of this to figure it out. I want to make out if this with paper dolls strung like liquid courage fluttering like latent leverage I used to have against myself. Either I made it all right or I made myself mad.

I will make a house of the signs we tried to ignore and dress of the mess we tried to conceal. One day we’ll attest to this time honored test. You get lost when you’re young, at least that’s what they say. So at least you’re expecting the birth to be fine. Tell me, please, what happens now?