how to escape yourself.

_{monday the first.}

silence begins to break down
barriers of sound and we are out of phase
with each other. i can't hear you because we
always end together and the sum of us
equals zero. we need to be able to stand
apart and listen.

_{tuesday the second.}

the future is so much closer than our
past and ripples spread unseen toward
eternity, forging forward and backward and
sideways in every direction with the
different lengths of the doppler effect.
we take obvious shortcuts and move in
linear paths, never deviating from newton's
third law, waiting to ignore the stop and
go of traffic lights. i have realized this world
is not ready for me yet.

_{wednesday the third.}

all these concepts take over my days
and i see them everywhere i turn. out of
fuel and out of luck, i am so weary, so
wary of this life, nothing is as it seems.
i have given up on making
sense of the world because nothing
is ever static.

_{thursday the fourth.}

it's like the streets are sweating or
maybe crying, the sidewalks are flooded
with salt and i never knew the ground
held so much water. in every crack
float the forgotten tears spilled over
humanity and everywhere tastes
like love. you might be the one meant
to save or drown, but i promise, i promise,
you are not what i'm looking for.

_{friday the fifth.}

when i would rather be sitting
in a bookstore with trees and carving,
trying to not try brushing
up against you because that is off
limits and you, with your distant eyes
and fickle heart; you, who is pretending away
the world; you, who is leaving and not
coming back; you, who was never here to
begin with; you, who will have
nothing to do with me.

_{saturday the sixth.}

some days we're just ghosts living under
vandalized bridges, gritty concrete blocks filled
with syringes and claustrophobic lungs. we
can't be seen, we've been struck with chronic
diseases of ignorance and blindsided pain.
oh, save me from the festering corpses
of dead-end jobs, from fractured sternums,
from too little love
and
loving too much.

_{sunday the seventh.}

accept these awards for the plays that are
our lives because all the world's a stage.
we swear on our graves, we'd be noticed if we
disappeared without a trace and our centre
stage roles went unfulfilled; we're much
too [self-]important for that.

_{monday the eighth.}

we're all built like tomorrow.

_{tuesday the ninth.}

this is the inside of my convoluted thought
process and i am watching black-and-white films
through the back of my introverted eyes. i
mouth words i mean too much because
two-toned silence weighs too heavily to let
me flutter-tongue and i have not
paid enough attention. i have never paid
enough attention.

_{wednesday the tenth.}

we spin in concentric circles and there
is a force that pulls us ever inward. we make
one crippled revolution a day and each
time is invariably the same; it's not our fault.
here we go again.

_{thursday the eleventh.}

turn in and fold away into nothing
as if private black holes live beneath
our cellophane ribcages. fall
asleep as you compress into an ever-
shrinking point, shoulders hunched to
brace against the opaque images
of a perfect body and piercing joints jutting
out of your degenerating soul.

_{sunday the fourteenth.}

we are such fragile minds
but we throw ourselves convulsing in front of
stampeding trains and hurricane disasters
for a taste of stupidity.

_{monday the fifteenth.}

today she feels like breathing, so she does,
she lies down and stares at the
ceiling, counting the number of eyes
staring back. there are one thousand four
hundred forty, or maybe really only twenty
four; she isn't sure. she absently fingers
the insides of her veins, thinking about how
hollow they are, how empty, because all she
is she gave away to someone else who
doesn't know anything, but she
has nothing left to feel regret with.

_{tuesday the sixteenth.}

our mouths are bruised from all the
words we never get to say.

_{thursday the eighteenth.}

i wait and i wait for someone to forget
all the things i regret and the hole
in my stomach never goes away.

_{friday the nineteenth.}

sleep and relax and download these
diseases into your all too susceptible bodies.
we might know that this is stupid but we
have never claimed common sense
and the short term rewards are
too tempting to resist.

_{saturday the twentieth.}

there's a bounty on your head and even the
fluorescent lights are intent on infiltrating
through your bloodshot eyes. just grit your teeth
and work through it, walk everything
off like you are made of nothing but plastic.

_{monday the twenty-second.}

there are too many words about your
bloody heart and too much speculation about
what love is. one does not equal the other
and there are no clear definitions or boxes to
pack them away in neatly.

_{tuesday the twenty-third.}

the owls keep asking their questions and
there's something beautiful about grass flattened
by snow. i can finally breathe in deep outside
but the stars can't shine brighter than
ever when they're competing against pollution.
disappointment sets in deep and there's
a constriction pulling crosswise
across my chest. i give up my life and resign
myself to more and more.

_{wednesday the twenty-fourth.}

our languages are all dead and obsolete
now, no longer breaking barriers with direct
translations or pages of nonsensical letters. i can
say goodbye to wasted hours and
frustrated words from now until i come back.

_{friday the twenty-sixth.}

i know i'm bad at this and sometimes i
know it's not worth it.

_{saturday the twenty-seventh.}

i
am going to find love
in the arms of a stranger.
don't try to look for
me.

_{monday the twenty-ninth.}

when i do things i know i shouldn't and ignore
everything important because these are
the times when i don't feel like anything, but
i feel less like myself than anything. i'm
sure i should already understand all these
concepts and questions, but i know
i will fail anyway.

_{tuesday the thirtieth.}

i keep forgetting to keep up with
myself these days.

_{wednesday the thirty-first.}

it's in the way you
pretend yourself out of this world, out of your
body, out of your mind, and there is no
one who can touch you, with your arms
cradled
around your overflowing head, stomach
ripping its way out of your throat. people have
begun to expect too much from your
thinking mind, wanting for you to keep up
with your own body, dancing to
staystaystay-
here.
whole.
and it's in the way you
know you can only escape yourself by
being someone,
anyone,
else.