Occupation Day

occupation day

a girl walks in wearing a NASA shirt and galaxy print leggings, everyone thinks oh, rockets, she’s got the glasses to be an engineer. she raises her hand to ask, is the never-ending void an acceptable job? there was a help wanted sign on the desk of the universe and i’m attempting to fill the position. a pencil two rows over gets pulled in by her gravity (purple with black and blue sparkles) and she just smiles, tosses it back out past her edges and says you’re lucky it wasn’t turned into spaghetti. the physics goes over their head. all over her paper she observes and draws particles and she knows that by doing this she changes what they are but maybe if she didn’t notice them they wouldn’t exist at all. later when the teacher calls on her she says quantum mechanics and the formula for how long it takes to reach the ground because this time an entire desk rolled over to her, the focus of the room. it's an occupational hazard, drawing things in. red and blue logo and she thinks there’s some light inside it just can’t get out past her event horizon and she wants to know has anyone ever heard of something coming out of a black hole, or anyone coming back? her shoes have constellations like her freckles and no one noticed when they winked, twinkled, she shimmered out of existence. she was going to prove wormholes and timeless stars and maybe dead cats she was just waiting for her rocket to take off the ground. empty desk and David Bowie and the occupational hazards of being a black hole that even in your lack of existence everyone is pulled in by your void, the spaces in between stars and the letters on her t-shirt spelling out G A L A X Y where she left blank spaces for compensation. she’s somewhere out there tearing up a storm or aurora borealis, shining green-blue lights so far past herself she could never lose them. entire worlds and universes she could swallow in an instant with her big, hungry eyes. always looking up saying is there more? and knowing every star by name. a girl walks out of the room, into the office of the universe and applies for the position to fill the spaces, checks all the boxes until she’s told yes. supernova bursts forth from the room but she still says do you think anyone could ever find the edges? and runs chasing after it, laughing, crying, filling up the void.

a love poem to the universe, beyond comprehension

how do you tell someone that without them you would be dead? without this i would be nothing. out of the entire world, i can only think of three things that saved me, and the universe is made of this in its entirety: flashing lights, the dark vastness and the endless possibility that lies within hope. you may be an atrophy lying on a white hospital bed. do you think the world is ever scared of its own existence lying restless in the middle of the night always tossing and turning in its bed of stars, it never stops rolling across the empty skies. always dreaming fitfully through the spaces. do you ever think like the world says “we are the thoughts some mind misplaces” are we accidental miracles not miracles catastrophes almost forgotten not forgotten misconceived for misconception. the world is larger than the girl. the girl still thinks like the world can hear her, crickets with broken wings and no violin strings to play. not everything is magic in this infinity, some are larger than others like this flower is faker than this flower is still realer than you. this bag is larger than the things inside it, it is a vessel or a container for what it holds but it is more. asks is there more is there more is there more said the girl when the universe answered said that can’t be all there is to this said there are no edges said the people assembled in the front row to watch the universe explode, behind a glass box that someone found to keep out radiation. you are a container and the universe said duly noted kept containing like it was supposed to, all the black matter anti-gravitrons particle accelerators science experiments, every paper mache volcano with mentos and diet coke it could remember, didn’t know it was larger than what it held inside it. couldn’t remember past the galaxies careening about laughing and screaming past each other or the flashing lights or the supernova or the little girl who wouldn’t let the crickets die in their own arthritic apathy because nobody wished for wishes any more and nobody asked but she did saying a list of things she had decided were true in the absence of anyone to tell her otherwise and the first thing was irrelevant because it was an important concept to know and the second one she couldn’t remember was a good excuse because everybody believed you and the third one was heartbreaking, beautiful and sad and it said that you are larger than the things inside you you are more than you contain added together even multiplied, the girl is smaller than the world and without this she would be dead and nobody quite understood what i meant when i said this saved me but the universe loved her for it, in its own way.

DEPARTING FROM THIS LIFE

this leaving is not fire or burning or catastrophe; instead a hung rope, knotted with careful precision a blade cut deep enough but not too deep. quiet. gentle. drawn out like a noose wrapped around a thin neck. frantic gasps of breath like starting to drown, the thought that you can breathe water and the ache inside of flooded lungs. everything in this world will one day drown. from love or from absence a lack of oxygen with a knife’ precision cutting through, you with the sad eyes know what this means this leaving, how it is a loss of air in a void no fires can burn don’t call this a catastrophe-destruction, and i cannot tell if the word i am looking for to describe this is tragedy or eventually and i am not sure of the difference in between.

tell him that there are other ones and zeroes

10100 / 101 / 1100 / 1100 1000 / 1001 / 1101 10100 / 1000 / 1 / 10100 10100 / 1000 / 101 / 10010 / 101 1 / 10010 / 101 1111 / 10100 / 1000 / 101 / 10010 1111 / 1110 / 101 / 10011 1 / 1110 / 100 11010 / 101 / 10010 / 1111 / 101 / 10011 00000000000000000000000000000 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111

recovery and frank sinatra

snow on telephone wires and fifteen years of weathering this winter. i cannot believe i have made it to this day, a future in advance, waiting to see which way this life unfolds. 
an old phonograph scratches at the record’s ends, static over roof tops, sound waves breaking through crescents of white. a wave through foam and bursting colours. 
i keep asking the same questions over and over and i guess that’s what keeps me living, trying to find the answer. is that what Jean meant when he said, who am i? without and within. music, piano fading so i flip the record. 
frank sinatra and i have learned a lot together. we know what happens when you fall in love, when you fall out, in between. we go together, him and i 
through these telephones and microphones and static, empty nights. 
outside it’s cold, enough that the table shakes with it even, the house trembling in the wind. we are fragile but somehow still standing if that is a miracle. 
someone left the door open and now everything’s come in. i don’t try to stop it anymore and they sit quiet, listen to the record play while the snow falls. in this way we have learned to wear the days together and now fifteen years later i am still standing, frank sinatra in my hand, before i sit and listen until i fall asleep.

prove to me i'm not gonna die alone

you start talking about me when you think i am asleep but i can still hear you. on the phone you wonder how i can be too much and too little and nothing all at once, giving voice to your concerns and things you would never say if you knew i was awake.

you are afraid to leave me alone when there are sharp things around and sometimes you wonder if i love you or if i just think i need you. while i am sleeping you watch me and simultaneously beg me to wake up and wish that i never would. you don’t know what’s wrong with me and you don’t know if you ever will. your life would be so much better without me and my “condition”. you are afraid to leave me.

i have forgotten to breathe for the last few minutes, desperate to hear you when you think you are alone and now i am heaving quietly (is that a contradiction? can you be suffering and shaking but still be quiet enough not to be heard? i think so but according to you i am made of contradictions.) until i am crying silently and for once i actually know why.

you and the phone continue your wretched pacing while i weep and you keep wondering why i am like this. the list of reasons and questions i cannot answer keeps growing, multiplying because you won’t stop asking.

during my angry days you want to hit me and scream and you want to do that during my sad days too.

come to think of it, you cannot remember the last good day we had and i am sorry but i have no control over that. your good is not mine because every day i live is good for me.

someone on the other line interrupts and you are left standing still. i don’t know what they ask but your answer is that you are afraid to leave me because i cry in my sleep sometimes and you’re afraid that if you left i would have to die alone.

one time when you found me i admitted that no one ever tried to stop me before and now i am shaking on your bed trying to prove that maybe you don’t have to die alone either.