at temperatures below zero celsius for years twice-over, grounds preserve as permanent frost. a collage of sediment and biomass deposits over time. the shock-still of a landscape, once humming and breathing, rendered inert. like robert frost—clings, hangs, occasionally bites beyond the apocalypse. some slow death, protracted in the snow.
what are all the ways to preserve something?
confess these truths after the sun goes down. keep the words rolling under your tongue; unbitten, unbidden. one day you might let it slip, without accident or worry. and who are we, but little people who desire all the things that will destroy us in the end? twitching for sparse sway over our own beings. the end is near, somewhere around here. fate is unkind, but we can at least command our own fatality. spit out your vices (or don’t; your choice). name on them on your hands, put a finger down if you already have, and soon you will have a closed fist.
why do we insist on knowing the worst in people, to plunge ourselves in their murky depths, yet still hope we will recognize the surface? dig into the calloused practice of compulsion, sink those nails deep enough they may draw red again. gnaw those cuticles raw and ripped, clench fistfuls of hair from a wounded scalp. feel good, long for greater. that’s all it is: take before you can feel the give.
lose yourself to find yourself; can’t lose what’s never been lost. as if you’ve always known. at a distant precipice, you’ll remark that you missed this. the current of homecoming roars so close to the skeleton, nearly marrow.
i can feel myself fraying, the edges of my neural connections stretched out as my limbs spread across the expanse of the seven seas and continents, and i swear it will still not be enough. a braided rope coiled with tension, wound upon itself, devouring itself when the end meets its beginning. ouroboros, can she eat herself alive before the living eat her? it’s the hand that feeds the mouth, the head that plunges to depths in greeting of toes. pick me up, for i’ve fallen: imagine my forehead against the cold ceramic title, my temple resting atop memory foam. sink me before i am sunk. i am crushed beneath something, weightless breaths in a heaving chest. i want myself back, i’ll whisper to no one in particular, to some soul out there who may still be listening; or maybe i’ll simply think it, and if i think hard enough this time around, it will come true. my mind’s eye is astigmatic, misshapen, bent out of shape because none of the light is hitting where it’s supposed to. light is meant to illuminate the important bits when we are abandoned in the dark, but obsession in the dark swallows whole. opens its jaws wide and clamps shut, could almost lick its lips for more. consumptive. unsatiated, unslaked. might these compunctions kick in, eventually. purge my system clean, detoxify. let go, let me go, grant me the favor of release because we cannot go on like this. but most days, i could go on forever. in the throes, in the valleys. find me curled up, cushioned in a bottomless pit. some stubborn, craven flame keeping warm; stupidly begs for more, clumsily oxygenated on impulse. regression to my means. who was i before i found these marks on my skin, my scriptures, my synapses. i’m so sorry.
i traded my mother tongue for fluency in assimilation. i would have cut it out myself, muscle from membrane, if it made me sound more like everyone else.
my ancestors could not recognize me. i am saturated with a culture that does not belong to me, or anyone who looks like me. repeat after me, the pundits bade me. familiarity, too, can be outsourced for manufacture—made in elsewhere. my repertoire of practiced references play on loop. they fall easily and cleanly from a foreign mouthpiece.
these are not the old songs or icons my parents grew up with. i have the influences of a ghost generation, postured on borrowed capital. look at my nostalgic farce in the mirror, the wistful gaze of a past from a different continent. i am scrubbed clean of their homeland; found a new home in this western palimpsest. if i looked all the way down the barrel, there is no heritage of mine to claim.
this is the last time i ever saw you: exit row, boston bus, holiday market, R train, tower elevator, fifth floor, brattle st., unknown