I

1.When Saceras, the sky, first breathed in, all erupted.

2. His great lungs, forever still, expanded and all was pushed outwards, until Saceras lay open, his heart exposed.

3. And in that eruption, there was created space, contained by the area outside the reach of Saceras

4. This limit became the earth

5. With each beat of his sacred heart, Saceras came closer to death

6, And with each beat of that sacred heart, more blood was spilled onto the earth

7, On each point of earth touched by blood, rose up a stone

8. And after 8 pumps of the heart, eight Godly drops unto the earth, the sky laid dead

9. The eight stones stood in a circle, their father’s corpse above them

10. The first stone split, and from the split rushed out the wind

11. Seeing his siblings had not yet emerged, the wind collected them in his swirling form and began to fly away

12. He did not realize, however, that the stone across from him had split as well, and out of that stone rose the sun

13. The sun could see all, but no light came from him, as his father Saceras not there to transmit his rays onto the world.

14. The sun, seeing everything, watched his brother the wind steal away the others, and the sun became enraged

15. Unable to intervene, the sun watched as his siblings were taken away

16. Within a few moments, another stone split, this one still contained in the clutches of the wind, and out of it the soil of the world rained down.

17. The wind was too powerful however, and none of the soil reached the earth.

18. The soil, moved by the wind created massive clouds that blocked the sun’s vision

19. The wind moved on, his lack of eyes rendering him oblivious to the billowing clouds of smoke

20. Another stone burst, and the seeds poured out of this one. Large and small, seeds of the grass and of the trees, and even the seeds that grow into mountains, which were all too heavy to be carried by the wind, and immediately fell to earth

21. The rest of the seeds however, flew in endless circles among the soil occasionally hitting the sun.

22. The sun, alarmed and hurt, yelled every time a seed hit him, something he had not known how to do.

23. The sun, directly next to Saceras’ ear, caused him to stir ever so slightly

24. Little by little, unseen by his children, Saceras began to reform himself.

25. It was during this time that the three twins, the ocean, rivers, and clouds, also poured out of their stones, only to be caught and carried by the wind, choking the sun.

26. And as the sun began to drown, Saceras managed to raise himself up again.

27. His breaths no longer explosive, the sky contained the sun and wind, who had so bitterly fought.

28. And now that the wind was in the sky, the soil, seeds, oceans, rivers, and clouds fell onto the earth, and created nature.

29. The eight stones of the gods fell as well, and only one had remained whole.

30. The last stone split, and from it emerged mankind.

31. Mankind who has known only tranquility, and must be thankful every day for the sky, who maintains peace in the universe, and the for the sun, who through the sky brings us light.

My mother broke every plate in the house that day. She had come back from the doctor, and wouldn't look us in the eye. Her hands trembled slightly. My brother Herman and I knew immediately. We could smell the sick on her, it pressed on us like the mass that it was. Mom went into her room and for an hour things almost went back to normal. Herman built a puzzle, I paced in front of her door hoping she would come out soon and be with us. I didn't dare go inside. I was afraid of the darkness that we had felt earlier. I didn't want her to swallow me up and take me with her into agony. When she came out, she looked beautiful. She had spent the hour putting on makeup, fixing her hair, making herself pretty. She smiled the most radiant smile I had ever seen and proudly marched into the kitchen, Herman and I following, curious. Her movements didn't have a chance to register before the plate crashed to the floor. Herman and I jumped, terrified. She was still grinning that radiant smile, and while Herman and I watched her with trepidation, our mother began to laugh. A clear, emphatic laugh. An honest laugh that draws listeners in. A true laugh that can't be impersonated or faked, the laughter of innocence, of bliss. She grabbed us by the hands and started to spin us around her and jumped and continued to laugh, whooping and yelling until tears flowed freely from her eyes, and Herman and I forgot to be afraid and started laughing with her. We danced for each other, trying to elicit more laughter with our bizarre movements. We made faces, or tried to in the spaces before our laughter took over and forced us to gasp just to retain consciousness. And we broke more plates. We threw them down with hilarious force, shattering each and every one. And when the cabinets were empty, and the floor unnavigable, we sat together and gasped every once in a while. In the void left behind by the plates and the laughter, we held each other and accepted the blackness inside our mother.

The elderly couple who traipsed past hand in hand had been lovers in a past life, and when the elderly woman had left her elderly husband for the elderly man she walked with, the elderly man began to feel the pressures of commitment and began to resent the elderly woman he walked with. Then they kissed in front of my bench, and I knew that I was wrong, but I didn’t care. It was their problem that they didn't fit into my world, not mine that I couldn’t interpret theirs.

Jim had been thinking for a long while before he gave up. He had been asking himself why it was that the best books were always the ones read out of boredom and found on an aunt’s ancient bookcase. At first, Jim proposed to himself that words simply tasted better if one had an appetite for them, but then he decided that this could not be. Indeed, the books that Jim had read in the assorted homes of his assorted aunts invariably proved to be well regarded by critics and readers the world over, and Jim had trouble believing that all of these men had read these well-regarded books while they were bored at their aunts’ houses. Then, Jim ventured for a moment that his aunts all had outstanding taste in literature, but after considering the various flaws of his aunts, coupled with the copious amounts of dust that usually covered the best books on their bookshelves, Jim decided that this was not the case. After exhausting every possible explanation (all two of them), Jim became convinced that he was simply a superior selector of books, and that he was doomed to learn from, and enjoy, everything that he would ever read.

11-year-old Jim replaced his aunt’s copy of Extreme Weather Patterns on the shelf, and scuttled away to find another pursuit in the cavernous house. Jim was tall for his age, or so his relatives and their acquaintances told him. He was also an especially beautiful boy, with a brain as sharp as any child these same adults had ever met. This he knew for a fact, as they had all told him so at least once, and if everybody said something like that, then they couldn’t all be lying. That was how Jim saw it in any case. Jim was spending the summer at his aunt Melisandra’s home in Ontario. According to Jim’s family lore, Melisandra was originally supposed to have been named Melissa, but when it was discovered that she was actually a pair of twins (the other fetus being Jim’s mother), the name was quickly bastardized to accommodate the volume of expected Melissa’s. So it happened that the first born twin-though it was only by a margin of about 7 minutes-would be called Melissa, and the younger girl be cursed with Melissandra

The ocean opened up with blue newness

Beckoning, calling to my new blueness

And in its timeless abyss

The sirens wailed

The children flailed

And all else paled

In the face of a vastness that never failed

When the songs of innocence had fled

When the hearts of the people had bled

And the shrines to the ego had crumbled

All that was left was crash and tumult

The sound and the fury of triton forgotten

On the banks of the River Styx

Bereft of all my silly tricks

Bare except for what lay betwixt

The heaven and the earth

The airy notes of little worth

That teased and pleased

and screamed their pleas

They said they were happy

They said they had had fun

They said they were content

And had no reason to run

As they fled, as they bled

As they realized their song,

was the song of the dead

Upon my pillow the demons whispered

Their contentment into my waiting ear

Telling me what I wanted to hear

Making sure I felt loved and dear

And I knew that the rumble of the sea was near

And in that timeless abyss

Nothing nothing seemed to be amiss

     His skin smelled vaguely of broken vows and broken hearts. He smoked, not because he thought it was cool, or because he liked it, but because he was addicted. He had been addicted to many things in his life, most frequently, love. He was infatuated with the taste of a woman, and it didn't very much matter to him which woman it was. He had no filter and no limits. He was intimate in the most awesome sense of the word. He invited people into himself and explored them thoroughly before getting bored and moving on. He had seen the mind and the body work together and knew that the latter was the more powerful of the two.

     He was small and meek and demanded pity. He was selfish and arrogant and saw the world as a means to an end. He ruined people, because he was alluring, and prone to fantasies, and they were weak, and eager to fall in love. I envied him, because he had what I wanted. He knew sex, he knew art, he was engaging, and he was beautifully broken by his own account.

     I had known him for three years before I met him. Through the eyes of one who loved him I saw the truth of him. I could no longer envy him, yet I still attacked his shells. I wanted him to love me in some way. He didn't, but he pretended he did. He ruined people. Because he didn't see the irony and he asked of us to forget our own. Because his words were honest to his heart, and his heart was seductive in its chaos.

He wrote beautiful poetry, riddled with spelling mistakes. He was brilliant in his astounding stupidity. He read deeply and understood shallowly. He hated those who loved him, and loved those who hated him.

     He was one of the worst people I'd ever known. I think about him a lot. He's still around, but I can't look at him. I hate him. I hate myself for having loved him.

     He ruined people. Because he was broken, and they wanted to be. 

     Rick glanced at her before turning off the car. It was nothing more than a confirmation that she could survive without him in the cold for a few moments. Nothing more than a primal instinct to protect and provide.

     Without really looking at what she looked like, he shut off the engine, and pulled himself out of the too-high seat to unscrew the cap that sat behind his license plate. He had already checked his bank account and knew that he could afford exactly $10.81 worth of gas. He was unhappy with how little money he would have left over, but decided that once you leave home at 3 AM on Adderall, you’ve forfeited any right to begrudge your wallet for the lifestyle you can’t afford.

     The machine asked him for his zip code, and he dumbly stared, confused, as it rejected his credit card and prompted him to go inside and pay with an actual person. He did not say anything to his companion, but could notice her eyes on his back as he hunched over his pocketed hands and lumbered into the fluorescent purgatory a few feet away from the pump.

     “How much do you need?” A small, dark man mumbled at him. Rick couldn’t help but wonder for whom this man was wasting his nights. A family no doubt slept without him in a too-small house. Rick threw another look over his shoulder at the silent car in which Lola sat. The flash of her phone screen managed to cut through the night and make its way through two layers of glass to hit his eyes. She was safe.

“I would like exactly $10.81, please.”

     Rick was proud of himself. He had gotten his point across easily, efficiently. After his card was handed back to him, Rick pushed the cheapest option on the pump and leaned down on the handle to keep the flow from stopping. Within a minute the amount had been met, and the car was ready to make its way to the crashing waves that seemed to hold answers for everybody but Rick himself. He stepped into the car, took Lola’s hand, and drove away.

He never realized that he hadn’t replaced the cap that sat behind his license plate.

Look at all my pretty friends

Look at how they read

Look at all my pretty friends

with all their pretty deeds

I know they wouldn't lie to me

I know they wouldn't judge

They wouldn't go and laugh at me

But I wouldn't call it love

And when they see my pretty words

and like what they have seen

I know that all they were was bored

as they stared into their screen

Yet I keep producing more

I keep producing work

for my friends, the ones not there

I want them to like me,

                                          These friends who do not care

Someone came to visit me today, but I can’t quite remember what they said to me. They seemed sad. I hope it wasn’t me that made them sad. I think they had black hair, like Papa, but it couldn’t have been him. He isn’t around anymore. I think the nice lady who comes to help me told me that a few days ago. What happened to Papa?

Him and Mother would take me to eat hot dogs at the park, it was very fun for me. Then Mother left, and Papa didn’t talk as much, he just looked at my face a lot more. I can’t remember what his eyes looked like, but they hurt my chest when he would look at me like that. Just like when Linda told me she was leaving. It hurt my chest the same way.

Linda and Mother were quite similar. They had to have been, they both left. Linda has beautiful dark brown hair. Maybe it’s gray now. I saw Linda a few days ago. She was sitting on a bench feeding ducks and I introduced myself and pretty soon we were talking and laughing and as the sun set, I kissed her, and my chest hurt again but it was different, and then Adam was born and my chest hurt the most.

The woman in the room next to mine keeps yelling and I want her to stop. The nice lady who comes to help me says she has a problem that I can’t remember. I’m sad for her that she has the problem and then she yells again and I’m not sad anymore, only angry. I have a problem too but I don’t yell about it all day. I wish I remembered my problem. I ask the nice lady every day and she always tells me. She is a very nice lady.

After the visitor left I watched TV. The man on the TV was very funny, he yelled too, but I liked it when he yelled, when he yelled I would laugh. Most of the time I don’t laugh though. Most of the time I just sit and try to remember. I can tie my shoes. I miss Adam. I wish he would visit me. The man who visited today sounded like Adam. I wish Adam would visit me. Most of the time I just try to remember. Today I saw a house. Most of the time when I try to remember, I can’t. Most of the time I just remember gray. Most of the time I don’t see anything. I just sit and try to remember. I just sit and try. And try. And try.

I can’t remember.

    The world slipped away without much aplomb and left me sitting there, shivering. The reality which quietly took its place seemed at first to be a friendly one. The colors here were bright and inviting, the texture of everything had been blurred and reconfigured clumsily, leaving a graininess that made focusing impossible. For a while I was happy in my colorful confusion, content to experience the little men which danced on my jeans, their feet piercing my skin with small icicles in a sensation that at once was excruciating, and yet the most pleasurable feeling I’d experienced.

     My reverie was broken the minute Adam spoke. His voice was disgusting, nasally and judgemental, it belied every delusion he held about himself and the world around him.

     “I feel like salvia is a crazy high, do you guys feel it?” He gloated at us, preening in the knowledge that he had done this before.

     A deeper voice answered, coming from the bundle sitting in the chair to my right.

“I don’t feel it yet, maybe it’s not going to hit me”

     During their exchange, my perspective had shifted. I was no longer looking at the porch from my position behind its railing. My point of view had slid away from me, until I was seeing the scene from above and in front, digesting information as if I were standing on the porch steps and staring down at the action. From my new position, the reality of where and what I was dawned quickly and without mercy. I was high. With people I did not respect, sitting on the porch of a cabin in the woods. The dancing little men had left. Now it was just cold. I was in the bottom of a deep hole, and as I stared upwards the light ran farther and farther away from me. I was trapped. It was over. Adam began to dive into a speech, cradling his speaker like a life raft as he timed his self-indulgence to peak with the ebb and flow of the music. His partner was nodding in appreciation. He reminded me of a bear, his movements were slow and powerful, and his mind though sharp, was sluggish and made connections slowly. Together they amplified each other, they forced each other into pretension and depravity, they took away the filters until all that was left was the raw stupidity of the proletariat. It filled the air and clogged the lungs. It choked my eyes in a cloud of impenetrable fog.

     This was the past, the present and the future. This was what I was hurtling towards. There was no escape on the east coast. New York was not a place of salvation, it was just a more concentrated bubble of idiocy. Then came the despair, the self-realization. Wave after wave of earth shattering, mind-altering discoveries.

     I am a coward. I am afraid of everything. I am afraid of inferiority. I am afraid of failure. I am afraid of work. I am afraid of the truth. I am afraid to be alone. I am afraid of conflict. I am afraid of solitude, I am afraid of being known, I am afraid of being unknown. I am afraid of intimacy. I am a coward

     The sensation came quickly and left quickly. It had all been true, but the second it passed there was no drive to fix myself. There was only a metallic taste around my tongue, and a fence wrapped around the middle of my chest. It was despair, true and utter despair. My head was glued to my shoulders and there was no escape, not from the situation, and not from the world. The music was still playing, the would be poets still discharging into each other’s waiting ears. The cowardice had left me weak, and when the song ended, and their expectant eyes looked to me; I had not the strength to do anything but weakly refuse, and then close my lips with finality.

     I could tell they were disappointed. They wanted to be there for me; they were still my best friends after all, and yet they had failed me. It was my fault, I held them to a standard they could not reach, and then cried as my esteem for them crumbled. I had been a fool. I had always been a fool, and I likely would continue to be one until I died. I was nothing but a cowardly, lecherous fool, and everyone around me could sense it. I had no purpose, I should have been dead. I wanted to be dead.

     The song ended, and a new one began, but this time I couldn’t breathe. Lucy in the Sky had crushed my lungs and squeezed my heart in fear. I cried for the death of my grandfather, I cried for the death of my innocence, and I cried for the shortcomings. There was no end to them, and they crushed me. They crushed me until I was nothing. They crushed me for an hour and a half, and then I got up, packed my chair and left; walking through the woods with my two confidants. We walked until we reached the hill leading to the street, and we walked into the fog that was broken only by the single bulb of a streetlight. We walked into a car, and I sat in my shame. We walked into death, and I cried.