Between Special and Character
Wherein community member seeks quiet fire...
Between Special and Character
π Intoxicated - Mel Chen
A neighbor gives me a ride to the platform. Arriving, I acknowledge leaving. I pass an hour, board. On east side of the transport, I sit, to watch the Moon rise (when that becomes a thing).
Nothing To See Yet
Blown out within minutes, as my wait on the platform begins: sunset's pink on spat of mammary cloud underbelly goes twilit into last bit of anything.
Transit personnel exiting to street keep turning to me. Gauge housing status, remember they're off shift, depart icily. One stares - a stop - is off. My mother's words play in my head (teen years in handmedowns): "you look homeless." A memory, less contract, charges.
(within) Her years in months, she sees me homeless. Finding me exactly how much words are worth. The divine fear. The most divine fear a lot.
Algorithms (terror, rapture, apology, feed...) note intensity, not texture; number, not character. Dressing in what I was afforded wasn't dressing to the nines. Wasn't β-lookingβ enough.
I love you. I am scared. I am sorry. I am hungry.
reads differently than:
I am hungry. I am scared. I am sorry. I love you.
like (not) knowing how many people are talking; Each period, divine, hits vague. Untrustworthy.
Like earning trust was always a thing (always transactional). When trust remains apart complete, symptom: belief you're not listening. Even as sentence finds the divine read to, by kernal body didn't eat present regardless.
Abusive Partners
Boarded, I look for paper, remember I lose all notebooks in eviction, pull out my phone, and write.
And write.
Neighbor with the ride also gave me earfull, capstoned with "every human is divine." My reply:
I consent otherwise.
"Okay," they say, speaking as divine.
I am not satisfied (vaguery augering). With container built on platform, I pour feelings. Write: "An operator, I carry channel between density and penumbra. What are you going to do?
"Shape me; you unshape yourself and call it me - "you." Sure, babe. Me: whatever you say, G[ ]d.
"Say divinity is your right to violate my consent (and be forgiven in the same breath). The fuck would I want that?
"The fuck are you doing thrusting that in my ear? My consent your coldest place, your last word, your first breath taken from me I never get back (What divinity, grace?). Abandoned. Forgotten (generatively): nothing asked for."
Water not divine. Water not to be worshiped; water to be pissed; run through; grow tired, dissolve to shore. Die inward, cast like nothing. Aside: watch me, homeless teen bike fourteen miles "home" (a bite of desert) carrying water enough to live. Then pour from the top of my glass the top layer onto dust, do you think I'm honoring the dead? humbling water. Reminding water: "you are nothing, and will always be nothing."
Assist This
As child, I watch algorithms learn when parents were sad, to sell them chocolate from bed.
I don't want love. I don't want fear. I don't want apology. I don't want food.
Where all you have are algorithms, I have yet to speak to you.
Where all you offer is divinity, I have yet to see you. Where what you are is all one (winning), come.
Be water. See I pour you from the top of my cup, might you remember. I forgive nothing; I forget you.
(consent) Here
Where is hurt?
What am I?
What are feet?
How are you?
When will this?
Do you know?
May I help?
what is this
May I go?