There is the anxiety of life pounding in my ears. Two years and six people I care about have died by disease, accident, misery and nature. This with it bringing an untold roiling of contemplation. As I began to stare and panic – to began to self-deactualize from the fear of squandering – I feel my childhood desires surface and beg me to take them seriously. I buy pens and paper and research and day-dream and connect dots that don’t yet exist in an array of personal goal-setting futurisms. Delaying and planning upon giving myself an extra night to think it all over. Allowing distractions and pertubations to tripcatch my foot at the door. What is a legacy of a young dead boy other than what he might have done? Yet I know dead-girls and dead-boys who even from the dust ask me to fall down a new hill and float down a twisting creek.
All I have ever wanted to do was travel and trod upon the untold corners of Earth. To dip my hand in every sticky jar and try every thickleberry. To mash them together and taste the suicide-syrup that erupted from personal choice and unknowing. So I remind myself to do it. To give up trinkets and set them down. Because my friend’s last thought was joyous-terror. Because a eruption through her head felt of sweet-oozing release. Because a father seeks his father but found his loving son. It will not ever lay down next to you if you leave the window open. It is the slow throbbing drain of saliva coiling out of your vomitting mouth. The ephinanous terror as you are being kidnapped. The erratic tumbling bubbles as you breathlessly spin in dark-green water. The roaring traffic below you atop the overpass fence.
You sharpen the knife so long you never get to carve your name in the tree you are killing. Stop it. Stop being a self-ascribed voyeur. Let it all spin down the drain for a second. It’s okay. It’s okay to never soak until raisins. You are here with us. You are here with all that out there. You are where they all once were. Then they shall ask, “Where are you? Where did you get away to?” As if you were going to walk through the door with triumphant laughter. Sit down beside us and tell us about where you had been. What you had seen. Yet you are still treading out there wandering between the moments and inspiration you let us gain from you. A collective unending embodiment between all the people who love you. Beyond a memory, but a person who still dwells deep inside of those of us who got to call you friend. Alive.
a street dog 