from V Trip 2

I was a ghost on earth and this meant that it was the time to follow through on my plan because the particularity of wanting it to be ceremonious was distant in the nexus of emotions and ceremony slowed things down by justifying the importance of preparation.

A man jogged up the street with a To-go box do you have matches?

I have a lighter Thats not something ur willing to part with tho Yeah sorry

I dropped my glass bottle. He kept running but apologized for my clumsiness and yelled something else down the street but I didnt catch it, it was similar to how I was talking to myself a few mins earlier yelling retorts in imaginary conversations with my sperm donor on the sidewalk. Actually there was a box labeled free with a bunch of items I didnt understand what the use was for, a stand for a Victorian water basin without the Uniquely shaped basin, I thought I saw a bunch of matches but they were backsplash tiles, gesture as delusions about reuse value.

Americas prince his face was everywhere, his ad campaigns even made it to my town which I assumed was a chlorine doused pond where no cultural larvae could foster.

My ectoplasm was a miasma of pent up emotions, I wasnt going to cry about my circumstances because I was just a watcher and wisher, not like I had any say in what transpired. But it enhanced my spectral sense of self, a chronic victim, the baseless reasoning that you might develop cancer if u hold anything in was the flashing notification Light in the dashboard of my needs, if this was the case hopefully it would kill the fetus first before me, battle royale.

another man walked by speaking Japanese to himself, I checked if he had any earphones in, he was kin, even got silent when he noticed I was there. didnt know any Japanese speakers even lived in this town, maybe the pond developed a moss that fed off chlorine.

I went to the pizza shop to see if I could occupy anyones body but there were just ghosts mulling around with pizza slices on paper plates turned to Opal from the grease and glass jugs of iced tea. I put my headphones on to overlay Madonna with binaural beats.

I started my walk to the next town because I missed the feeling of when I first moved and hadnt developed a map of where everything was. the streets spawned for me or I spawned for the streets. Walking bled the meter to return to earth. I noticed how many holes were in my plan, I was going to trek to meet the American prince and today I felt like I was going to kill him on sight. But why? The final action was too dependent on my mood. I was initiating a journey to enact a contextual consequence. I said I was walking to return to earth but I had an anchor inside of me, I was actually walking to saw the genetic connection of the fetus. And to fabricate a resolved acceptance that my picturesque familial visions were the ghost.

the Japanese speaker walked up the street this time while another couple spoke an indiscernible language, the town had an influx of new people and if not for the untransferable location of the American prince, I could stay here and pretend like I conducted my trip. The holes in my plan made the journey to be alterations inside myself, and the death or life of the American prince was ancillary. The beginning was imbued with the end but I knew that inciting anything with an awareness of all the factors invited unconsidered elements to prove me as the American fool.

I was smoking cigarettes. Fetuss first lesson being pumped into ur physical makeup was that no one cares if you make it. I wondered what lessons were pumped into mine.

I left my apartment to the mouse who I named Apartment prince.

xxx

The neighboring towns had droves of kids walking in mass in certain directions at the beginning of every hour of the day. The air was fresh from the sealing effect of the cold, but the temperature was warm.

xxx

I started talking to my new friend in the old way. Where its like a talent show, or Im in my Christmas dress, with toule and rows of glitter like sandpaper that scratch the soft underside of ur forearm.

Im into this rn because it reminds me of dating! I dont want things to end either! Must remember this isnt a show. Idk if its like that for you neutralizes the setting. The stage collapses in function like a cardboard box.

Same kind of. More so Im like now what. Which is kind of like dating.

We have cards of the 4 elements and I put up my fire card which was browned with dulled edges turned fuzzy from overuse.

He puts up his fluorescent light underneath a shelf card which means the conversation has ended. The cop card fell from his deck onto the floor. when I went to pick it up it pointed at me and gave me a stern look for having my shoes on the chair even tho we were under the dome of the town square where bed bugs proliferated in the walls like that Edgar Allen Poe story.

the fetus died in me and then kept getting reborn from its fluids, I couldnt sense it but Id get notifications on my phone right when I was showing something to someone November 7: the fetus just died from poor material hygiene again but thats okay! This one will be more tolerable to the fact that you feign elderly sophisticated presentation when in fact all of ur things are soaked in eras of secretion and if you werent concerned with the upkeep of deceit you would be able to discern the stains and rotted smell the notice would not crop and there was no way to change the settings for the 20 seconds it remained on and it was customary for strangers to hold my wrist to prevent me from pulling my phone away out of shame. This was a relieving custom despite the emotional hot plate, because I had a tendency to squirm and seize to relieve the washing of my brain while I imagined their penultimate experience of disgust. If I couldnt squirm then I couldnt imagine.

The town square would perform musical chairs and tables for 8 hrs a day after the sun set and city hall was the fabricated sun inside the dome that was split into 23 hanging pieces. Each was a different office, labor, city planning etc. I sat at another table. Youre a healer did you know that? And this person that puts u to sleep every time they talk about how excited they are making you think about the time u did that to others is ur life partner! What do u think about that?

I thought they were mocking me because I was a carrying a scroll with a compass embedded that said the exact same thing but the person who put me to sleep was south and the person who woke me up was north. And love and exhaustion were east and west. It changed, sometimes futility and fruitfulness replaced north and south. there was a clock that grew metallic icecap mold that eclipsed the numbers but there were words that said: Youre strategizing your manipulative route again and I knew it was time to leave.

Before I could pass the guard to exit he asked me to recite my imaginary argument. And I was neither to feel smug or cringe when I said it and had to accept I had a propensity to waste my time before I could leave. I would like to leave it out but the text is the town square and its battery was depleting, sentencing me and the people inside to darkness each moment I didnt speak.

I dont want to hurt youI began. The guard picked his nose. Dont subject me or urself to this, just go.

Sometimes I was the ground and the fetus was the groundhog. And sometimes I would see its fingernails protrude and and refine its form through the latex of my skin as it ripped away at the womb, I would just zip up my jacket anytime I noticed.

people said things that they wanted to hear back. To the tourist things were contradictory and weighted with duty like when u let someone push u around. I bet that irritated you meant they were irritated. I refrained from replying because I thought I understood how to deflect it and expose the process for what it was which I imagined would repel people and even incite them to strike me.

xxx

Moving between towns I initially imagined would be like walking through vast desserts like the way stretches of highways compromise the land but contribute back to it by allowing the experience of NPC trees, stone, and billboards run a sequence by ur eyes like a revolving backdrop perpendicular to a treadmill. But i was pleased that each town bled into each other to the extent that I didnt know if I was in my original town. Some parts of town were located entirely in my head, erected rectangular conversations, disordered 4 hour meditations, tangled CCB bead necklaces from every person you felt close to.

I got to evaluate the spaces like when the only places Id be afforded to visit when I was in middle school were neighborhoods made of wax cardboard for military families only. I was bored of having a flippant reaction and the sustained one note of longing with a hook of disillusionment at the end. But with these towns you couldnt insert distance with your aesthetic opinion, they were your responsibility. I compared the weight and allure of the different towns, like the space that sits on top of a descending staircase and pushes the stair flat.

When an important message entered my consciousness it would hover above the stair without resting on it and it was my duty to take notes on what it was, it was usually a dark border with nothing inside from what I could see at the moment, a glass with a film of oil and where a body or a vehicle pushed off was where the oil would smudge the glass. Some towns made me lack in my duties and I felt like the ones I missed to observe sat on the back of my neck and tetris-ed up my head.

The dark border would alert me to something I couldnt put into my notes which demotivated me in my duties. It was about time. One asked me: what if your journey is shorter than you think. What if its not a firework or what if youve been breathing in the smoke from the gun powder since you started.

Taking notes helped me improve evaluation of what was relevant observation data. Like if the point in time when the messages landed or what part of the tip of the tower they fell from was important, was there a pattern to discern or was I splintering focus as a way to cheat and assign myself a star that only had value in my design. Some of the borders were scary and reminded me of pictures of my donors eyes, like the borders walls came out of the picture and stabbed me in a new vital organ. One border stabbed the beam that came out of the picture. My savior. but the impact angled the beam inside me to nick my heart.

The parallel race of mind and body, the first pain swelled and silenced by the physical recognition that something larger than the tower had parachute strings tied somewhere between my heart, stomach, lungs, and womb. It was the source of my inability to feel the tantrums of the fetus. The borders were the dead skin of the engulfing mass. It was both there and repelled out of sight by me, I either couldnt turn my head to look at it if I willed like an animal aware of its impending life loss or was looking at it and straining my eyes and the more I couldnt see it my imagination started to fill it in and give me the visual.

Being frivolous about note taking and observation was a survival reflex or an attempt to establish footing. My reactive My savior thought was an entry point. I felt sentenced to something so vast that it eradicated fear. Everything I griped about, not caring to even notice the parachute strings that were cutting off the circulation at my wrists, were porous to keep me bobbing above the massive mammal that swam directly below me that I had no awareness of unless u had an aerial shot. I made a note to hire camera men with certificates for the towns.

It was twisted and revolting that I had been carrying a WMD while hedonistically walking through towns and giving each person I fucked an icepick to have at its glass protective casing and atomic bomb the radius. Or that was my reaction to its scale.

I had two immortal parasites essentially. It would shock me how my cry changed this year, I couldnt do it with out hyperventilating which felt really good, but my mind felt calm so it was heavy contrast, the same way it wouldnt allow me to turn my head. It knew something I didnt. It was protecting me.

The strings turned black when I was asked to do drugs with others. I had one miniscule piece left, a small beige pebble, that vibrated in my hand in order to fall into the black pond under the new moon. My tolerance to the carcinogen was high, the person would die a horrific death if they saw me seize.

I imagined now that I would meet the American prince behind the curtain and his guard would decapitate me with a sword and Id have the classic headless fall to my knees moment. My torso hits the ground and sound like a pillow and my clothes would decompress like an airbed. But before that happened, I would show him my newborn, hed run his elegant fingers over their soft spot through hair that felt like lambs ear, and hed do the same to me, with eyes filled with awe like the WMD was actually a shroud of preciousness that I didnt realize before my decapitation. And when the blade began the tear he would say something like Im proud of you and the parasites would exit from the tears that slipped out of my eyes from my airborne head. The parasites would do pirouettes suspended in the tears. He would take the newborn from my still standing body and think it was the most beautiful thing he ever saw. Lol

Xxx

In this town every restaurant sold chicken and rice only. You had a choice if it came with broccoli or carrots or pickled tubers or sesame seeds or a sauce. I would get hot on some parts of my walk but knew it would get chilly at other parts and kept my heat as a reserve. I read a menu on a window for fun though I had tuna and rice at home. I never looked at anyone on the street but heard “hey!” And saw a body jostling to catch my attention. His flannel was the color of all of the ppl walking in the dark and the light from Dunkin Donuts and the dried shit on the street that turned to dust and the parking signs and the poles for bikes. It was a candidate for my sperm donor. I was thinking many things like my own deciding factors to leave a town, which was watching construction and when it finished the next day I had to prepare my departure.

Many parts in my expansive routine were subconscious homages. But they expanded so much they stood alone with origin. He did one of the things I liked and remembered earlier when I was looking in display cases of knitted stories in the décor of my routine. He pulled out his tiny Bluetooth earpiece Ill call u back, Ill call u back.

He looked at me with upturned brows like the prince but his look was riddled with shame. He gave me mixed signals. He lingered with interest and I inferred he wanted me to create the scenario for him to be a candidate again, and it was going to take a lot of pushing, circus display of absurd strength, like lifting a car, to convince him to be willing to be a candidate but I didnt want another fetus. I was leaving tomorrow and I cut it short in the warmest part of town. Though the excitement and the list of things I should have shared lasted a block until I was preoccupied with the quality of my notes, the warmth of the memory of his candidacy became an equiptable lantern for the darkness of my next town. I was no longer prioritizing homes for rest, though I still felt caught in the spectrum of my donor and the prince, I was the seal and they were the corner for the zip lock bag.

xxx—x

I was waiting to see how if and how the awareness of the mass would ripple. One night I sat up scared. Suddenly the town wasnt in my head but the buildings were like a broken elevator plummeting down my insides repeatedly. This was the towns in ur heads earthquake and I dropped the last beige pebble. Exposed answers on scrolls of fortunés in fortune cookies beneath the raised concrete. I was going to study the art of packaging fervently and begrudgingly to give gifts to ppl before I departed. I took scissors and went to yellow bathroom. I cut out a slab of my lower stomach like when pork has the skin on it and it plopped into the toilet.when the slab fell it showed the disproportion to the suction drain so I used the scissors to tenderize. The water from each wind up had little arms that held onto me, leapt out the bowl for hug to not say goodbye. From feeling the town collapse in me I suddenly felt pain and I knew it was going to come in its most powerful waves and I knew b/c of the parachute strings I couldnt turn to anything for help. I took out my despair from my new packaging hobby.I used the parachute to wrap around me to hide the hole in my stomach and crawled to my bed. I was going to visit my mom next. My father had turned into a house that I had left to decay and my mother was a shape shifter who had a stroke and was permastuck as an animal a divider a dream a wound a sandstorm a scarecrow.

I thought about her before I slept as the tag she tied to my ribs stuck out of the hole in my stomach peaking out of the lips of the parachute. Her sentence warped her vehicle, mine was at least pliable and subject to interpretation. I thought about the scroll and being called a healer. I wanted to heal her the tag was the IOU. I was lucky she didnt require upkeep like my dad. I didnt try to collect the fortunes in the rubble, I would let the words catch my eye, I chose the donor because I felt we were sentenced in a similar way and could create something free together, but that was just biological.

the next morning instead of my stomach healing, sinews grew out the cut and strapped me to the bed by tying itself to the boards. My skin developed a red lace of protruding blood vessels.

The house keeper came in around 2pm and felt bad for me. He dropped vials into my mouth, clear fungi tasting liquid with small beads in the center, and sprinkled sugar into my mouth. I told him if I relaxed I would cry. He knelt by the bed and said that was okay, his palm on my head was a thick banana leaf, his fingers were as fat as carrots. He showed me pictures on his phone of his house and his brother while I felt my muscles went numb. I was in many situations where I felt like predictive red flags were over reactive and dramatic, I would wait calmly until danger presented itself, and the sinews were the embodiment that an internal danger was close one that would split my brain stem on a chopping board. And I used to think that the world couldnt supersede the danger I could do to myself. He showed me pictures of buildings he took and held them in front of me for several minutes before switching the pictures and kept touching his screen when the picture would go dark. I had seen his house before on a walk and it had stuck out to me. I raised my eyebrows to express this and he said you knew we were going to meet.

He played me some of his favorite songs from the club to make me happy. He tapped the bed to the beat and pushed my hand into a fist and thumped it against the bed like he was holding a rock to strike a flame.

He traced the edges of the cut and assigned meaning to each one recognizing they were implementations of discipline and explained in detail why each cut of the rectangle was unnecessary. But to have someone understand me felt masturbatory. He could see how I inauthentically accepted it. He pressed the translator to my head and it text to speeched my request to replace my pillows with concrete to rub my face against it. My health was declining from the frantic attempts to assign my placement between the spectrum of the prince and the donor. The cut at the top represented the spectrum and I followed the jagged line until I felt the ends could erode away. I imagined a world beyond my cut and a town rebuilt where me and the housekeeper lived together but I wanted to work and not be at home. The housekeeper had a binder of photos in his cleaning supply bag and hung them from the ceiling like a mobile for me to look at until the sinews released their grip.

He had to clean other rooms but was concerned and said he would stop by again later. When the sun set his brother came by instead and sat in the arm chair in the canopy of shadows furthest from the bed. I could talk again and rambled with shame about how I was bothered by the reductionist idea that creating things while imagining phantom eyes of approval made the product less effective.

Doing things for urself can ere on excessive masturbation. I dont see any difference between that and the faith of ambition that says you can alter the train tracks to have the world come to u and say “I chose u!” Though whats wrong with either. Both have earnest packaging of a vulnerable idea to be useful.

He wouldnt say anything and in the long pauses I would apologize. The fortitude of the sinews told me I had to watch all of my momentum slow to a halt. He got up from the chair and placed a printed out picture of bread and pastries in a window over my face like I was dead and I began to cry with the divots of my face only allowing corners of tears to spread into the paper. After a while I tried to see if I could target the bread like a shooting range.

another man came into the room. I couldnt see if the brother was still there. When people entered and left the room there was no sound and I was only aware of a new man, unless the brother was overcome by the silence with a sudden impulse to share a circular story.

So it said 1.27.Was how the story started. Right, 127, thats miles per hour. Then I saw it said 145. Then I saw it said 160. I was in a 2021 blue Toyota Corolla right. We drove from the town to lake air. And we got there in an hour and 15 mins ok. Then we went to the capital and we got there from the town and driving to the lake from the town took us an hour and 50 mins. Ok so I saw it go from 127 to 147 and then to 165. I could hear him rustling through my stuff.

I dont have any money. I said with the paper on my face. I could hear his lips make a sticky noise indicating a smile. And then it was silent again.

A day must have past. I thought about the meaning in the lines of the cut, each represented a word, we. Should. Give. Up. We was endearment, should was self deceit and selfish possession, give was devotion and responsibility to see it through, and up was the sickness that bled into each other. The paper was pulled from my eyes by the brother, he had returned. He kissed me on my nose while he straddled me. I had great qualities in an incongruent life where Id have to unlearn them. He unzipped his pants and traced the head of his dick against the wall of the missing slab in my lower stomach. I was bored watching the precum bubble, one of the hanging papers sat on his head like a hat and said: high compatibility, 6x loving aspect 4x happiness 3x key part of your life.

When he finished, he packed my stomach with fiber glass and a quartz crystal shaped like a baby and taped it shut, then sawed the sinews meticulously with his car keys. Wash up and Ill drive us to the rave.

There were only two other people at the rave. I could tell this irritated the brother but I watched the hypnotic screens to soothe something that was posing as a problem. He did a harsh gesture to release his irritation and show it was time to leave. He grabbed my hand, my ears rang, the stores that were open from 8:pm-3.am. raised mechanically from the underground.

20 Jan 2024