school finished itself off with a gpa not entirely depleted but going mad from lusting an up. & winter break? xmas proved boring at my parents house, on the couch, five hour’s watching mtv’s next with my sister & her boyfriend. mom dad in the back bedroom wrapping/unwrapping gifts for the relatives.

(also: avoidance at friday's party. a girl name shannon tugging my hair come sit. i attempt to escape via alan; i grab his shoulder: im really not prepared. but still. on the sofa: shannon as a mouth, a girl it started at age four. & there liz sits, wondering why, please god, couldn't it have started at eighteen: the crux of her emotional distress. her emotional unrest resulting in overdose, AA meetings twice a week. i think: where the hell is her girlfriend? outside smoking, safe from shannon’s im so socially awkward. if this were highschool. i just have so many feelings.i am already gone. i climb the seven flights to the top of the parking deck where stephanie & shannon's girlfriend are sprawled out giggling on the concrete.

a boy from oklahoma writes me confessions of acts he’s never committed. he requests no responses unless its to fess up to my own actions. i stopped writing after the first few. such redundancy on my part. my body, existing.

on fridays tanya calls me while i sleep so when i answer the phone i sound like milk. tanya says her sheets are full of snow, that the boy in her bed smells like cedar & fur.

every night i walk through the lit streets of my neighborhood, watching the porch lights snuff one by one, the shadows of bodies shifting, imagining conversations that almost always end in frustration.

stillness cloys. rub my feet across the floor for friction; apartment taut with want. at night, the neighborhood's bugs slink between my floorboards, their hiss fills the rooms full. when morning comes, the apartment's silent & a dead moth's stuck to my chest..

slow fold inward. body can only crumple so small, into a ball, limbs roll tighter & knees bend. rip the phone from the wall; the receiver fills with sulk & the dresser clock blinks at you, it’s obscene tick. if you could stand still, stare into the sun for hours on end. if you could move. yr mind’s a knot of exhaust; the morning tried to untangle but botched & as result, you contradict. stillness or movement? both. cause crawling cross america’s wilted flesh means nothing more than standing motionless, your hands in your pockets, biting your bottom lip. the fact all yr suitcases swell with silk slips & nectarines differs none from leaning at the kitchen sink scrubbing clean yr wine stained sweater.

lying to reduce my words to nothingness, to create streams of syllables so muddled with falsehoods, even the sound of my voice is a contradiction. my body as well. the mere shift of skin on the couch, bend of knees, click-click twist of my wrist as i open a kitchen cabinet cuts a lie through the air so thick it swells, splits, exposing all the oxygen till it browns. wherever i sit or stand, any moment along time’s sticky filament, i'm utterly meaningless. a mouth emitting incomprehensible vibrations, movements disrupting nothing.

last night i dreamt America became so paranoid of conspiracy that fat legislatures with filthy fingernails stamped a law mandating lucency. citizens were required to exist without whisper, exposed wholly by living in glass houses with clear couches, drive see-through cars through see-through neighborhoods & swallow transparency pills every night while tucked in bed in order to drain all pigment from their skin. as if the citizens held within their bellies a thousand spies, between the notches of their spines, a hundred blasphemous betrayals. or as if the body was a secret in & of itself.

"tell me about your love life"

the entire weekend dissolved under exhaustion’s white flame. no work accomplished only sleep & sleep till i could at least stand, perform the daily functions of brushing my teeth, feeding the cat. my exhaustion surprised, welled within for weeks, then burst suddenly. me, cotton-mouthed & near collapsing at work, a headache that warranted smashing my skull into the brick wall of super-target till beads of relief trickled through.

the night slips, surprises with how quick it stumbles from your body, bed. dawn takes over, spreads its day glow. everything, smoke. all day thoughts converge—sinking & sinking into sleep’s plush red flesh.last night your body was not a body at all but a clumsy machine. you took too seriously the words of a poem touch any of these & something of yourself disappears. so you touched nothing, no one. at dinner you sat utterly still while the waiter poured your tea & when you opened your mouth to say thank you, nothing came out. in the parking lot you shuffled aimless with your friend trying to find the car, find a reason not to find the car, not to drive home where shadows waited for you in all the corners.

the trick’s not existing. no, simply exhaling is easy as spinning. your body a whirlwind as yr friend raises drinks to starvation in foreign countries with names longer than their longest rivers. you spin all night & your friend passes out on a couch. breathing, body shifting room to room—that’s never been the hard part. its everything else. then you remember the night you felt alive, walking five miles to the city graveyard & back. the wind slight, moon flushing light. how even the trees bent forward as if in awe of you.

sleepy in math class. the room’s all chalk, the teacher coughs. eyes open but asleep? no, not actually asleep cause i see. all the students shift, morph into body blobs, sticky gum drops. i want to eat them cause i’ve not eaten since yesterday, but i don’t need food; my body’s full of sand, skin parched. when i move, i make sifting sounds.but life’s good, a comfortable slouch. i work mostly. & school? not so bad; its really just showing up & smiling when the teacher winks at you. i mean, i still don’t sleep, but considering i’m alive & healthy, i suppose i owe God something more than a shoulder shrug.

wake confused. sleeplessness distorts. my entire apartment has morphed, or so it appears. my room’s smaller, the walls a duller shade of white, actual grey? even the windows have rearranged themselves, blink at me bewildered. i sit in bed, push tendrils of matted hair behind my ears & wonder how i got here. i know the apartment hasn't morphed at all; in actually, nothing's changed or will ever change but the air. & the air? just a million exhales slipping room to room.

night blooms outside, folding the day inward. yr in a room full of ash, of people leaning against the walls like velvet drapes. you think of touching them, running yr fingers across their shoulders but realize their softness is an illusion. in actuality they’re gaunt things with glass knees that slice the air as they walk to the bathroom. you keep yr distance, on a couch where two girls curl by yr side, not talking with but at. you tilt yr head back & grin; you watch their words drip, brown at the touch of air, rot so soft sweet you can’t swallow. so sleepy, everything you touch slouches an inch closer to the ground. you ask can we go now? & the girl you came with tugs yr shirt yes yes. earlier she cooed with excitement, the moon seducing her silly, out so late; she was pure giddy, but now her eyes sag with sleeplessness. you grab the keys & as you speed home, you see a dead deer eaten from the inside out. you wonder what it must sound like to hit a deer. & you’ve wondered this everyday for a week.

the windows yawn, entire rooms blink in a sleepless stupor. at five a.m. you wake to the cat’s milky mews clawing yr brain. the cat perched on your chest, jaw filled with cries, skull smacking yr chin. she is insistent, won’t settle till you pet, till she falls asleep & you asleep & sleep till morning browns into afternoon. the day crawls into your room, covering the walls with its furry fingers. heat. you sit on the edge of the bed, try to stand, fall back down.

three girls shoved into a backseat, thigh to thigh, elbows collide. the girl to yr left sips hot coke & whiskey, passes the bottle mouth to mouth. the girls grin. their syllables rise & smear across yr brain. you start talking too, move your mouth so fast. imagine yr words, inreccognizable now, as a pond frozen over. you skate across the syllables—boots laces tight, face flushed white. when the girl to yr left taps yr shoulder want any? it takes you five minutes to shake yr head no thanks then turn to stare out the window. the night has no moon, no light at all except the whites of their eyes.