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Be Well and Please Take Good Care
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I set my phone on the nightstand, starting a voice memo to record what I said in my sleep.
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I listened to it that morning:
“I’m a deer carcass in a field,” I'd said, breathy whispers, disconcerting murmuring.
And all this time I thought they were applauding for someone else.
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At this point, it was about managing expectations like a toxic fish full of micro-plastics:
For so long, I 'd been but a brain in a jar, all my hopes and dreams counted out into sundry pill bottles.
I rode the Redline and drank out of brown paper bag,
telling anyone that would listen
what it was like to be dying.
I tried to edit out the laughter and the cigarette ash on my shirt -
this silver haired proxy, my trash icon.
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Zeroing out the scale as I scrolled on my phone.
"You should see my camera roll," I told the man.
Lurid screen shots and passwords in plain text.
a search history with things like:
How many people are naked on the internet?
“Let’s make a movie about this place," I said finally, pulling at this thread, pantomime, leaning into the penultimate,
my insides aflame, a burnt offering to appease.
What was smoke? Is it made of air? Or is it something in the air?
And so, I read the haze like tea leaves, my tendency towards paraphila.
“Leave the money on the table,” the man said.
And so I did.
What do you do when feeling good isn't good enough? I wondered:
a cat in heat, such explicit animal nudity.
How did it come to this, a gram in my pocket?
Cartel submarines
and dopamine dreams,
my teeth aching and fingers stained.
This place is mostly parking lots and rainbow oil slicks, and I knew this for sure.
Before pushing out into the night, I thought of my voicemails, left wilting in your inbox:
“Be well and please take good care,” I'd said.
My words had been sticky and self-adhering, a ball of lighter-burnt cellophane.
There are things that will never be OK,
this first-time human ache
all of us
rattling, spinning, lost to the doldrums of our time.
Writer
Photographer
First-Time Human