without intention

observation: it is easier to live without intention. to breathe in the shadow of the storm and feel the moment of impact, the split second before water baptizes the skin. thunderclouds spill their sorrow into your skullbones and you let them. because sometimes, you want to unravel the truth and watch where it goes. and where it will leave you.

observation: the human brain has as many neurons as stars in the milky way. i long for starless nights in the same way i long for a brain without neurons. staining everything black, returning to emptiness i know i cannot live and be whole. i wonder if the first time will be scary. if the dark will gnaw at my insides, nothing but the sound of mildewed breath and damp uncertainty. a voice from somewhere says the days will pass soon enough until i realize there are no more holes for the light to poke through and i am trapped inside one long, long night. observation: perhaps the scariest labyrinth is the one that is not there.

my fingers twitch when the first lights go out, a morse code requiem for the unbelievers. error 404: "hope" not found. try another search? the body is a machine and it is as if i am meeting mine for the first time: involuntary movement reminding me that i am not the mechanic, but never telling me who is. at the nexus of a black hole, a pagan searches for god as the constellations vanish. a pagan lets herself be swallowed by the space-ocean tides. a blink, and then nothing. observation: some stars shine brightest before they die, splaying their last into my consciousness, passing their lives onto mine. then, i am solid, concrete compressing atoms. a sun-baked hand stills frenetic energy. i have tied the ends: a speck of nothing blooming into something and becoming nothing again.

there is no ‘self’ in this story. only extinguished stars and dead synapses in the shape of a body.