Some days I consider that I should shed some friends, tell them how I truly see them. I'm talented at spotting deficiencies in those closest to me, and woefully naive about the motives of a stranger. I don't have any enemies, so I lack practice in that arena. I have decades of time-strained friendships. The longer you pick at the cracks in the armor of those closest to you, the deeper you understand how human they are. How imperfect.

Evil.

Maybe that's love…

home is smiling when you miss someone, crying when you forget the scenery is repeated.

home is familiar, but new every day. it is forgetting you will be leaving too soon, no matter how long you were allowed safe passage. you know it will be gone, as all homes are, someday. you know it, but the safety makes you forget. you have this moment. some take a lifetime to create it. you have it now. tomorrow is for grieving the past.

maybe someone will join your fight when the settlers come. but you may become one, too. if they win. keep your principles true.

home may find you in a place you have already seen, in a place completely new, in a place that is changing at the pace which brought you there.

All of this, given, has tuned us into parasites. We, most of all, have lost the sense of graciousness.

I made a life exactly how I wanted, and I still don't like it. Where does desire come from? Where do decisions? That's the me I search for. I thought, all this time, that contentment was sloth--a sin. I was convinced I needed tension: emotional wreckage, insurmountable challenges. I need depth. Dig. Drown. Sink my bottom.

Why am I here? I find the next answer every year. Am I...? To see, feel, taste love? Respond to sensation. Or is this a test of freedom: to follow, defy. Search to never find.

the real me is a horrified faith, considering the future of each moment, cyclical, until the thought deep finds me on the surface of forgetting to enjoy the scenery. that faith says: "trust or not, i'll find you... here."

“patience. patience. patience.” i say it to myself, faster each succession: a mantra that outruns itself.

time is a comedian.

i often remember mistakes in the things i said, or did, and cringe. i remember the boy who raised me: the one petrified of life, perpetually unable to croak out a belief. he could barely talk without everything that wasn't him coming out. now i sputter to myself, and hope there isn't someone else around to see my inadvertent disembowelment.

who gave me all this power, the power of evil, that i have to fight every day with some unproven doctrine

with no reward

except more tests that keep getting harder

i know, i have evidence, i'm a bad person

you must be different, to believe

because you keep treating me like i hope the best for you

that's not me, that's the war i'm fighting

pinch me bruise me cut me break me. i need to prove that i’m real. the collective said, imagination, that’s all i am. a projection. i see the lights how i like them. most see them different. but i would never know. i’m surprised that i forget, there is so much pain to remind me of life. happening. it’s just happening, it’s said. not happening TO ME. i keep taking that personally. why do i have to keep being told that i’m not important. i already knew that. ya, ya… shut. UP! i didn’t need more voices. i think too often, so that my body gets mad, twitches. sometimes i have to slap myself, to prove that i can feel my inside from out. i wonder… where is the barrier of self? i’d guess it is the skin, until i cut it needing to dig around for a splinter. it feels different than digging around my insides.

i like charts, like converting numbers into pictures. i’m a visual learner. the internet is great to alleviate my curiosity. i ask: “how many civilians have died.” to compare the morality of war. as if there were rules anymore. have you watched those videos recently? they are like the movies. it’s fun to watch a building crumble, as long as you can turn the screen off. as long as it was part of the imagination. some people let their picture reels infect reality. some of them are in charge of armies. we all convinced them of their power, given decisions of us billions, to billionaires. even the communists have them now. i thought they weren’t allowed to invest in human dividends. wrong again, gotta ingest more information.

At this point, if someone gave me a button, and it said: ‘die to save a child in Gaza,’ I'd probably press it. But I continue my stupid little life, and complain about insignificant things, and get angry at people I love, and isolate, hide inside my emotions. Maybe I wish to die for someone, so that my desire to die would mean something. Surely, they will find more gratitude than me. Maybe their lust for life could be stronger than mine, as I feel weaker every day watching, helpless. Knowing my stupid little life can't save them, so maybe my death can.

But I have to stop that thinking, because the American savior complex never saved anyone. It created this. It made us into the demon that the world bows to.

When the songs said I would fall for you, I didn’t believe them, but I listened. They had tons of warnings. That I wouldn’t be in control. That I’d know so fast, too fast for my clumsy lips. That I wouldn’t be ready to know. That I would have those words lodged, incessant. That my throat would choke on my new favorite: you, a four letter word. They warned me of things a person could not believe. Some parts of life, must be seen. My eyes were tired waiting, so my ears kept searching for our song. The mind is bad at timing, the heart doesn’t care for clocks. Songs…

They couldn’t warn me…

I cannot be normal. I watch normalcy—visit the zoo—I am caged, watching the world meander towards predictable gatherings. I watch for the eye in the crowd that hides its empty in a sea of reflection: that shard of death slicing permanent. I glimmer on the surface believing that I could know the deeper side through a rift. Convinced to know you, that you, I cannot hide either.

Today, the future we could not predict: we have methods—immediate—to satisfy a replica of the one we want. The figment, chase the dragon, there is no drug more powerful than staring too long into perception. Perfect. Now. I see the past in every moment, too late. Falling, the vortex of the future I won’t have again. Another night, another manifestation, another chance to convince myself that our imagination is tomorrow. Another example from the small percentage, of luck, of anecdote. An example of what we can’t have… if we are to be unique.