{"id":384,"date":"2021-07-03T10:24:56","date_gmt":"2021-07-03T14:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/?p=384"},"modified":"2021-07-27T08:13:57","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T12:13:57","slug":"live-wire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/?p=384","title":{"rendered":"live wire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
i\nthought it was a mechanical problem. i\nthought it was my dialog. i was ob-\nsessed with beats for a while. it\nnever felt right. it never had\nthe right rhythm. maybe i\nwas looking for poetry\nwhere there was no\npoetry, poetry\nwhere there\nwas only\nprose.\n\nbad prose.\n\nbecause a life without stories\nmakes for stories without life.\n\ni\nwrote them to keep me company, one\ndimensional backfill for a four\ndimensional emptiness. rain\non dry soil makes only\nmud. handprints\nbake into ridges.\ni can't read.\nfossiliz-\ned youth\nunder-\ngo-\ning\ngeo-\nlogical\nsurveillance.\nlayers melting\none into another.\n\ni remember this.\nthe sad thing is,\n\ni\ncouldn't have done any better. i\ncould trace a line from New\nYork to Pennsylvania but\nit wouldn't mean any-\nthing. mud pies from\nPennsylvania to\nNorth Carolina\nto New Jersey.\n\ntwo women\nscreech-\ning out-\nside\n\nan\napartment\ndoor.\n\ncops shining\nflashlights into\na basement window. and\ni traded his sentiment for\nmy excuse, but you can't opt out.\n\nbecause\n\nit all comes around in the end. he sang\n\nin the shower. he said love isn't\nenough, and you know, he was right.\n\ni\nhad a sister once. i don't think i ever\nhad a brother. there was one more, but\nshe told me i was a burden to live\nwith. i had reached\nthe end.\n\ni\nthought about doing it in the woods, but\ni couldn't give away my cat. i still\nhave the bookmarks on my old\nphone, accidentally filed\nunder 'things\nto do.'\n\ni\ncould draw a line from New York to Oregon,\nbut there's no line back. i was pulled\nlike a thread through a needle, like\nwater curling down a drain. i re-\ncognize none of it now.\n\npictures of emptiness.\n\nthere's a terrain of being unwanted. it\ncarves out the back of your skull. my\nskull. there's meat clinging to the\nbone, thin shell of bone. you walk,\ni walked with that rounded spine,\ncarrying with me vertebra dis-\narticulated. recombined into\nthe low belly snake sliding\nunder doors, leaving the\nfamily undisturbed.\nmilk. white.\ntooth.\n\nless.\n\nsilent.\n\n'you're a burden to live with' she said. but\nthat was someone else.\n\ni\nheld onto the tightrope with both hands. i\nthought my phone was broken. my first\nweek. she didn't call. some thing broke\nin me. broke open. broke loose. live\nwire.  i held onto it with both\nhands. it didn't matter any-\nmore. it didn't matter\nthat i was unstable.\ni got on the bus.\ni went to work.\ni paid my bills.\n\nno one cared. no one needed to care.\n\ni\nfell free. snake skin. emptied out pickup\ntruck. industrious camouflage. people\nmake assumptions because they don't\ncare, because they don't have to\ncare. and i slid on by. i could\nsit on the curb and cry be-\ncause it didn't matter.\n\nthe illusion was good enough.\n\nit was the confirmation i couldn't face\nall those years ago, the confirmation\nthat i didn't matter to anyone. i\nfaced it. i don't know how i\nkept going but i did. and\nsomewhere beyond\nthat, in a landscape\nwith color and\nlight, i felt\neyes on\nme that\ndidn't\nlet\nme\n\ngo, that didn't let me fade into the\nmonochrome.\n\ni\nwas okay because they were okay. they,\nall but one, had a background they\nwere woven into but they still\nsaw me. my loose threads\ndidn't matter\n\nto them.\ni belonged.\n\nand that\none,\n\nwell.\n\nwe followed each other's threads, i think.\nso even when other friendships unravel-\ned, faded, cut short, we kept each\nother. the tranquil reflection\nbecame the deep and\ntranquil pool.\nthat's why\n\nnone of the rest of it matters.\n\ni swapped bad prose for bad poetry.\nbut so what? i'm whole. i laid\ndown all that weight. i rest\n\nhere. i thought it was a\nmechanical problem. i\nthought it was my\ndialog.\n\ni was wrong.\n\nit was the difference between having\nno strength and having no one\nbelieve in your strength.\n\nmy strength.\n\nbut i'm starting to believe. i can\nlook them in the eyes\n\nnow.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
July 2, 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
i thought it was a mechanical problem. i thought it…<\/p>\n
Continue Readinglive wire<\/span> <\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6,2],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-6","tag-poetry","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajaxkallistrate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}