i.

is there no way out of the mind? [sylvia plath]

the middle of june is a peach pit. tendrils of my life are still caught in the creases, the cavities, the calm. there is a certain calmness in waking up and living out your life knowing no one has an investment in what you did that day. i try to convince myself that it’s the same thing as contentment. turn the peach over in my hand. pick at the orange slime and try to think about what tomorrow could look like, if there could be a tomorrow at all. sometimes i wonder, halfheartedly, whether will be the day that one of the fates notices how insubstantial and threadbare my life has become, and whether my hands will start passing through the keyboard like i feel they should. like i should be condemned to the same fate as the flesh of the peach: a memory, sweet and tender, wafting on the breeze.

if i have to be a ghost, i’d like to haunt wednesday morning.

every cobweb connection to the past i find in the seclusion of my bedroom, the altar i built to myself in childhood. i don’t have the heart to throw away the scrap of birch, or the photo strips, or donate every book given as a gift by someone i no longer speak to. or, rather, who no longer speaks to me. loneliness is such an overrated ache. and i worshiped it, i made a cult of sorrow and sadness, and as soon as i had achieved the misery i sought to emulate i turned around and thought: this is all it is? my vile, vinegary heart and a couple of memories? surely no one can live on this alone. i keep proving to myself that living is possible.

this afternoon i was seized by an urge to rip every piece of writing you’ve read out of the clutches of the ghostly internet, refuse to relinquish the parts of me you once touched. after dying it’s easier for me to be at graveyards. all forty-five posts written with your love and approval and signature on the dotted line, tossed away. this document used to be a draft about the dance fever tour, what’s the point, if i breathe your name it’ll be my last breath. people know better than to mention it. they have gotten even less closure on my sadness than i have. in the car yesterday my mother asked: do you think you could reconcile with anyone? do you think these problems are fixable? and i looked out the window and i said, no.

you can do the following:

1. out of fear cast away the only real love you’ve ever known;

2. out of cowardice find a new boy, treat him like a washcloth that wipes away the blood of your real desires;

3. out of desperation lie to everyone saying this is what you want;

4. out of love keep calling even after getting ghosted;

5. out of revenge send away the only girl who’s stood beside you;

6. out of pettiness antagonize anyone who might have had a fond feeling for you;

7. out of exhaustion, dispose of the washcloth.

none of it will lead to the self-actualization you were hoping for, trust me. i am the only one who still grieves. my closest companion is a recurring eye infection.

it’s a hot muggy summer. storms come rich and loud in the fine hours of the mornings, where the line between reality and fantasy is so thin i can step over it in a dream. in dreams i am sharing a cigarette with a girl who loathes me and she is saying, speak to me. speak to me and be forgiven. in dreams i am driving a car around the block because i cannot sleep. even in my dreams i want to escape to the comfort of bed and the subsequent blackness it promises. hot, wretched summer, too many hours of dreaming and sleeping and grieving. too many hours to think. too many hours of daylight, waiting at the window, pestering me to live.

i say things to myself. i’m the only one who still thinks i’m worth talking to. i say things like get over it and this again and you’re going to die doing this, you know. and i wish i weren’t right, i wish i could change, i don’t know how the change might begin. only i think there is something that looks like a snake coiled up deep within my liver and if i try to get it out, the whole person i am will crumble around it. it would be valuable as a medical procedure only if i could see that there was something worth saving. right now, i’m not so sure, right now, i hear another motorcycle race down the block loud enough to wake up the whole neighbourhood. i think to myself: kids these days.

i've spent so long doing a mimicry of adulthood that it surprises me when i’m not the youngest person in the room. it surprises me when i have to do things like: file taxes, attend meetings at my job, schedule my own appointments. i think grief should surround my head and shoulders as a physical weight, so maybe people could come up to me on the sidewalk and apologize for your loss. if mourning gear were still palatable, i’d wear it everywhere, my last talisman of the world i knew before. i wonder whether anyone around can tell that i’m living in an endless fugue.

maybe they notice that i’m lethargic but chalk it up to laziness. truthfully, i’d rather be seen as lazy than pathetic, which is how i feel.

there are a couple of acquaintances i think would like to be friends, but i keep rejecting their bids for attention. if all of this happened again in a year’s time i don’t think i’d be able to keep moving forward. i don’t say that to scare anyone. i don’t want their pity. i have more than enough of that for myself, thank you. i say it as a statement of fact, an inarguable truth. since i’ve cut all the lies out of my life like a tumour i’ve grown obsessed with these words: truth, real, legitimate, which seem to imply that there’s something in this world which is worth having, worth pursuing, and that i might be in possession of it again. i would call it love if that didn’t feel so far out of reach. this is all to show that i reject the scraps of attention i’m occasionally offered. i sacrificed everything i had on the altar of my solitude, i might as well protect it.

where might i go that seems hopeful? maybe my home country, where in a week’s time i’ll be licking the orange popsicle drips off the side of my hand. maybe into the silver talismans i’m collecting as protection: the empty locket around my neck, the bows on my ears, my grandmother’s ring, forever the sole tenant of my left hand.¹ maybe, despite the bleakness of these words, they themselves are hope. that i understand what has happened, that i have processed it, that this grief has gone through my body and changed the colour of my blood and the contour of my heart.

sometimes i dream of you. sometimes i dream of a strange, unidentifiable, nebulous you, maybe a good omen. i look everywhere for good omens: dandelions, horoscopes, ladybugs. i drink lots of fluids now and i pray that i can change my life, if only a little. i pray i will not be stuck in june forever, raking over a past i cannot amend or change. now is the time, summer insists to me: change. i’ve sent a thousand silent letters from the tomb of my present, sealed with peach juice, overflowing with sorrow.

the ball is in your court.

i can only hope you come back to mine.

1. and to think i nearly threw it in the river last year…