I saw you walk out of the wall

the desire to be very grown up (april 22nd)

I never liked staying in hotels
with the family when I was a kid -
dad squeezed us all into one room
for as long as he could get away with,
and I didn't have any earmuffs
or earbuds or headphones
to drown everyone else out,
barely any space to sit down
and break out my nintendo 3ds
without worrying about anybody
looking over my shoulder (oh no,
they might find out I like mario kart,
but seriously, parents who can
and will snoop on you
and make little comments
about whatever you were doing
can make you very familiar
with where sight-lines are
and how much privacy you can get),
maybe I had the corner of a bathroom,
behind the couch and by the vent,
the outlet next to the nightstand,
and whoops, dad decided to switch over
to nickelodeon, guess I'm hiding
by the toilet for the next few hours.

I hated kids shows, the annoying jingles,
the basic and silly plotlines,
the loud and obnoxious voices,
all the tie-ins to sell plastic whatevers,
and worst of all the idea that someone,
my parents, my brothers,
and/or the imaginary crowd
who could somehow look through my eyes,
see and judge everything I do,
would think I was childish,
immature, goofy, stupid, etc.
for even hanging out near the TV.
I wanted so badly to be So Grown Up,
so I'd sit there by the toilet
raging at this stuff
that was so obviously Beneath Me,
trying to talk over it to drown it out,
popping out when mom and dad
switched over to the news or weather,
god the Indignity of being made
to at least hear SpongeBob
and have the theme song
get stuck in my head for the next ever
(on that note, someone told me once
that a song gets stuck in your head
when your brain can't/won't complete the melody,
and when I do, it usually goes away
or chills out a bit).

and god, I know the whole thing
could be a sensory nightmare,
I liked my alone time and some space,
but like, really? spongebob?
like as kid's shows go
it's one of the ones that's more likely
to slip in all kinds of jokes for adults
because they'll fly over the kids' heads
and adults can use a laugh too,
probably plenty of subtle references
I could've picked up on
and felt real clever about,
and either way my dad and younger brother
in particular were just having fun,
riffing off of stuff, laughing it up,
not giving a fuck what I thought,
what my imaginary audience thought,
I was policing myself over nothing,
nobody I cared about would've cared,
hell, probably would've been happy,
if I sat down in front of the TV
and watched along with them,
accepted how goofy the whole thing was
and laughed my ass off over it,
maybe it was actually childish of me
to sometimes literally cover my ears
and wait for someone to change the channel.

get yourself a partner by standing still forever (april 23rd)

I had to have been like twelve or something,
standing by the couch in the living room
watching whatever was on the TV,
and because I had a habit of using fancy words,
I called whatever was on the TV flamboyant,
and wow, mom hated that. not snapped at me
hated it, but told me not to use that word again,
wouldn't explain why to me, just that I shouldn't,
and I spent the next little while rolling it around
in my head like yeah show-off, extravagant,
real full of themselves, maybe she hates pride,
or uhhhh flame, flames, flaming, that's all
pretty normal, not sure why she's freaking out.

I mean, I knew gay people existed,
generally understood what gay meant,
if only because my parents would single out
the occasional news personality or singer
and be like ah yes look at how normal
this gay person is, we wouldn't even know
this person was gay in the first place
if they hadn't brought it up,
that's the kind of gay we're comfortable with,
but I wasn't sure what the difference was
between the gays they did and didn't like,
maybe something about lipstick?
I wasn't even familiar with the stereotypes,
like, forget the bees and the bees,
or the birds and the birds,
my parents didn't even really bother
going into the birds and the bees with me,
and god, I think I'd have a whole other kind
of trauma if my parents had ever decided
to explain sex and sexuality to me,
between mom's whole women are catty bitches
who only ever tear each other down thing,
and dad's whole even glancing at soy
is going to drain all your testosterone
from your body and you'll die thing,
but instead I guess they figured
I'd either go through sex ed in school (no)
or uhhh just figure it out when you finally
get yourself a girlfriend, not our problem.

so I was a bit lost on this queer thing
(among so many other things),
like sure, sounds a bit weird, but
if they're happy doing, whatever they're doing,
really none of my business,
I'll probably just wait around
and get myself a girlfriend, have kids,
I mean, I'm not super stoked about that,
but, y'know, there's my parents,
and tons of couples like them,
that's clearly just The Way Things Are,
statistically it'd be unlikely if I was different,
I'll just find someone in college
and we'll look at each other and go
wow you're pretty okay, and that's love.

c'mon I'm a little guy, it's also my birthday, I'm a little birthday boy (april 24th)

one time my parents tried to tell me
it wasn't so bad I cried all the time,
I was just like john mccain, apparently,
not that I ever saw him cry,
also he was war veteran/long time POW
and then a congressman, a job
so unrewarding everyone these days
is deciding to get the fuck out of dodge,
so uh, a bit of apples and oranges here,
and I was starting to sour on him
because, yeah, he was one of the most upstanding,
most willing to vote for good policy republicans,
but still signing off on awful shit
hurting my friends' abilities
to live the lives they wanted to
and love the people they wanted to,
and hey, I think this whole party
might not actually give a shit
about personal responsibility or whatever,
look at all these serial abusers
and nepo baby cranks clinging on to power
and closing the pearly gates on everyone else.

anyways, pretty sure my parents
weren't huge fans of me crying,
maybe they didn't want me beating myself up
over how much I was crying, if only
because that might've made me spiral
and be impossible to get to stop,
like, their way of handling me
was they'd force me to cry when they could,
when I was arguing with them and/or freaking out
and struggling to make words, looking away,
trying to hold myself together
so I could push back against them,
and they'd snap at me and say my name
until I started breaking down, covering my face,
sobbing, wheezing my way through words
while they told me to calm down,
stop panicking so much, nudged me
towards whatever they wanted me to say,
that I needed to go and make a list,
that I was getting too emotional,
that it really wasn't a big deal,
and they were my parents, they were
basically my world to me, I couldn't just
say no to them, disagree with them,
even if I thought the whole thing
was some pretty humiliating bullshit,
maybe there was something wrong with me,
maybe I just needed to put on a face,
hell, my dad was kind of big on that,
like wow none of you complained
about that big long hike we just did,
about this new thing you kind of sucked at,
(and here's all the reasons you sucked at it,
just in case you didn't hear me tell you already),
yeah, he definitely thought crying
was weak bullshit his kids
should've grown out of already,
and mom was at least willing to go along with him,
and hey, they got what they wanted,
I just stopped responding to tons of stuff,
just really let it all wash over me,
was real quiet and bummed out
the whole last year of high school,
didn't have the time to cry in college,
these days it's a once in a few weeks
wow where did that come from kind of deal,
that mask's got a death grip on my face
to the point I'm not sure I can pull it off,
is there even anything underneath it?

fear of death i (april 25th)

it's, a little concerning looking back
through a bunch of my old notebooks
and seeing how much I was, fantasizing?
can you fantasize about a bad thing?
death, I was getting fixated on dying.
not just me dying, mind you -
I'd kill off some characters here and there
to underscore just how Real things were getting,
loved to toss a bit of tragedy in there,
was fascinated by the idea of someone dying
thinking it's for a reason,
lying to themselves it's for a reason,
finding out it's pointless at the last second,
or having whatever they're fighting for
fall apart the moment after they die,
nothing like some dramatic irony!! -
but nah, it was me dying a lot of the time,
I was real obsessed with the idea
of dying young, sometimes suicide
and sometimes by getting so emotional
I'd get a heart attack and die or something,
like I read this one novel
where this super annoying character
nobody liked ended up dying
because she got so mad over something
she had an aneurysm, something in her brain
burst and killed her. I can't remember
if she was actually abusive
or it was the old timey version
of boomer haha I hate my wife comics,
but either way it stuck with me,
and whenever I got heart palpitations
from running around a bunch
or putting up with spring/summer allergies,
or wanted to scream so loud and hard
I might dislocate my jaw in the process,
part of me figured this is it,
this is the end, what bright light
that burns in me so cruelly snuffed out
by the whims of fate and my overwhelming emotions,
who will tend the flowers of my heart
after I've left this mortal plane,
etc. etc. I'm being a bit flippant here,
but I don't know, I think death freaks me out
way more than it used to, like man,
I don't think younger me ever thought about how
one day I'm going to stop existing
and I won't even notice because
there's not going to be a me to notice,
what the fuck do I do about that?

and other times it was suicide, yeah.
less wanting to die and more wanting
to get my brain to shut up for a second.
I've got some little card hidden away
under a pile of papers and books
that younger me's probably wanted me
to read by now, or someone else to read
if I die before then (obviously I didn't
actually say die, not sure I said anything,
might've just be a when you...you know),
and honestly, nah, I don't want to read it,
it sounds corny as all hell,
an ooooh you have so much to live for,
like yeah, dumbass, I know that,
I've always known that, that's never been
my problem, my problem was,
sometimes still is, being brave enough
to put with myself and wait for tomorrow,
a lot of things settle out by then.

fear of death ii (april 26th)

a few times I'd spend hours
reading famous last words -
there's a whole list on wikipedia
and another one on tvtropes,
lot of overlap between them,
but I'd go through everything anyway -
just lose myself in the process,
let the hum of my laptop's fans
and the light through the blinds
and mom chopping vegetables downstairs
and knowing I'd have to drive back
to my apartment in an hour or so
all fade away, brain fogging,
eyes narrowing and getting sore
picking up on all the little
ironies and references and even jokes,
people not knowing what'd just happened to them,
people making snippy little comments,
people barely making sense anymore,
people mocking the concept of last words,
people right before going missing,
people right before getting killed,
and yeah, it'd all freak me out,
like god, dying, the most important thing
so many people, myself included,
will do in their lifetimes,
and how they grapple with not existing
and the world carrying on without them.
I'd get in the car, drive down
the 20 mph speed limit neighborhood streets,
probably piss off the drivers behind me
while I was struggling to hug a roundabout
and waiting forever to turn out to the road
leading to the interstate, all the while
gripping the wheel tight, almost crying,
gritting my teeth, sucking in breaths,
convinced I was about to (give or take
a few days/weeks) die,
about to get T-boned or have a heart attack
or get into some kind of lab accident,
and what would be my last words?
would anyone even hear them?
what's the last thing they'd hear?
and really a lot of those
famous last words didn't happen,
people made up shit after the fact
or those weren't really last words,
they made too much sense to be last words,
turns out when the brain's shutting down
and the body's falling to pieces,
people have a habit of saying whatever,
those frayed nerves and wrecked vocal chords
working together to scream out
whatever they have left in them,
so how do I keep myself from
saying something cringy while I'm dying,
get myself some cool last words,
or even a citizen kane rosebud situation,
something Profound and a little cryptic,
"& etc.," "the comedy is finished,"
"said everything I wanted to,"
and while I'd be thinking through all that
I'd be hauling ass down the interstate,
I wouldn't die and I'd
go right back to normal the next day.

and at this point I'm tired
of worrying about something like that!
I'm never going to do everything
I wanted to do, I'll always
regret something or another,
just like everyone else, and
no last words are going to make up for it,
and not like most people's get recorded,
I never knew and I'll never know
the last thing my grandpa said,
and of the many things I'm losing sleep over,
that's not really one of them.

fear of death iii (april 27th)

I dream about dying all the time.
not really in ways that make sense,
because, y'know, these are dreams.
there was this one I still remember
(and I forget most of mine quick)
where me and this group of people
all crammed ourselves into a jeep
and ditched a couple other people
because we needed to get out of there ASAP
(we could all, like, shapeshift
into dogs and back, and the government
was hunting us for, I don't know,
standard nefarious government reasons),
and obviously the car broke down
at a small bridge over a creek
and we all started running
in random directions, I turned into
some kind of doberman/pinscher
and bolted under the bridge,
down pipes, into the sewer system,
drowning in the water rushing around me
until I woke up panting, staring up
at the ceiling for a minute or two
before going back to sleep because
whoops, I've got work in the morning.
and another time I dreamed
I was in some penthouse
with the wind howling all around me,
making the building sway back and forth,
throwing my couches and tables around,
and I was running around for no reason,
couldn't grab anything, wouldn't leave,
I guess I couldn't bring myself to?
got thrown off myself at some point
and woke up before I hit the ground.

and just in general, my brain loves
coming up with these nightmare scenarios.
ooooh there's a zombie outbreak,
a tornado heading for your place,
everything's flooding now,
you're getting stalked by someone,
your family got possessed by something
and now you have to cure or kill them,
like christ, I can't read that much
into any single dream, they're not
elaborate metaphors for my life,
they're my brain getting some rest
and doing what it wants in the meantime,
but it's weird I keep having dreams
like these, right? where I keep
running away until I wake up,
running towards the thing so it kills me
and I wake up, could easily be my brain
trying to make sense of the bigger,
real-world problems I've got to deal with,
god man, these days I'm worried
about how all my friends are holding up,
worried about them keeping their jobs,
worried about them walking down the street,
worried watching the country I knew
fall apart department by department,
law by law, who even knows
what things'll look like a year from now,
and at this point maybe I do have
a couple targets painted at my back,
maybe those walls are closing in,
what a time to be alive!
and maybe I'm so numb to it all
and/or putting it away so often,
have to keep doing my job
and keep on seeing friends/family
and cleaning up my apartment
that my dreams are where
my brain's dropping in all those emotions
and letting me scream for a bit.

fear of death iv (april 28th)

(I'm the narrator, and this happened a few years ago)

Spoiler

hey mom uh how's it going,
oh yeah? nice n- sorry,
go ahead, oh, me? uh,
I'm freaking out right now,
Iiiii don't really know
how to say this, but
I went over to the cafeteria
and the staff at the front
told me something about
the dude flipping out,
I don't know what happened,
one of the staff said he said
he was going to kill someone
and/or himself, maybe something to do
with someone he has a crush on,
but she's dating someone else? whatever,
I don't know if he did anything,
I don't *think* he'd stab anyone
with a knife or a fork,
but dude wasn't thinking straight,
and either way the staff
called an ambulance,
it went around the back,
picked him up,
I hope he wanted to go,
and Iiiii don't know where he is,
I don't know, I don't know.
I think he's at a hospital,
not sure which hospital,
he's not answering my texts,
I think he's fine,
he's probably fine,
I sure hope he's fine,
I don't know what to do mom,
going to the student center
right now to see if I can
get in touch with anybody
who might know where they took him,
yeah, maybe he'll answer you
or the place will call you,
god why now, what happened,
dude's been having issues
and melting down a few times
but didn't think it'd get worse,
he better be alright,
okay almost there, do you
want me to join you and see him?
no? are you sure? I just
I don't know if I can
handle doing classes right now,
I didn't eat anything,
kind of losing my mind
right now too, fine, okay, yeah,
if you've got this, I can deal,
let me know if you're heading
my way, okay, love you too mom,
bye.

I saw you walk out of the wall (april 30th)

normally when I wrap these things up,
I like to do these huge-ass poems
where I dig deep into my doubts
and fears and insecurities
but turn it all around at the end
by being a bit more hopeful,
yeah, I'm doing better as a person,
I'm happier with myself,
I've got so much room and time
to grow into who I want to be, etc.
usually with some extended metaphor
about reaching towards the sky
like a tree or a train up a mountain,
really hammer home the Process
between me and the next forever,
and how it's all Worth It.
this time around? I don't know,
I'm just not doing great in general.
meds and therapy and exercising
and stretching and dieting
and figuring out my philosophy and politics
and I'm still seeing and hearing things
I really shouldn't be, at work I see people
walking out of the wall around me,
I make people out of boxes and shadows,
I hear people whisper my name across the room,
imagine I'm about to get yelled at
for forgetting or misplacing something,
at home I imagine someone's spying on me
through the little gaps in my apartment's blinds,
imagine an audience in my head
or through cameras someone snuck into my place
seeing everything I say and do,
I'm still an obsessive little weirdo
struggling to let go of the idea
everyone secretly hates me,
knows all the things about me
I never wanted them to see,
are just being polite to tolerate me,
are about to screw me over
handing off their work to me
or ratting me out to someone,
making up a me in their heads
to get mad at, dance for them,
I'm much better at shutting my mouth
and not picking weird fights
and recognizing odds are
everybody's chill with me,
but my brain doesn't want to let go
of it's very specific fears
and awful coping mechanisms
that easily, you know?
constantly staring at myself in the mirror
to make sure I don't look Weird,
fretting over every thing I say
and correcting myself constantly
to make sure I don't say anything Weird,
keeping track of the stuff
other people are messing up
just in case I need some ammo
to fire against them, look at me,
I'm over here just Doing My Best,
look at how Normal I'm being,
they're the ones really fucking it up,
believe me.

and christ, it really doesn't help
that america's on fire behind me.
we really elected this furiously stupid,
senile old man tanking the economy
because he's more horny for tariffs
than he is for a functional democracy,
like god, he's not physically or mentally fit
to hold office per the 25th amendment,
nevermind the 14th says anyone who attempts a coup
isn't eligible for public office,
so I refuse to even think of him
as the legitimate president of the united states,
but here we are anyway, led by a dude
who has no idea what's going on,
can't string words together,
thinks the dead are speaking to him,
can't remember who canada's PM is,
is getting paraded around by a group
of sycophants, over-the-top ass-kissers
tearing apart public healthcare,
public education, public scientific research,
just public anything, anything
a government is reasonably expected to do
to look after its citizens,
who cares about clean food and water,
not dying from a preventable disease,
roads that don't have potholes in them,
mail that actually gets to you on time,
the doctor not costing an arm and a leg,
kids getting educations and pushing
the boundaries of the arts and sciences,
the president's staff genuinely seem to want to
pocket all that money for themselves
and rule their little fiefdoms,
petty lords lording over america's corpse,
and here I am in the crosshairs
of people convinced my thyroid problems
prove I must be of inferior genetic stock
and should be culled with the other weak and infirm
to pave the way for the ubermenschen;
people who want me to repent or be cast
into the lake of fire for all eternity
for daring to be queer and an atheist;
people who hate my degree because
that's a sign I can actually do my job
and find out whatever those kiss-asses
have been breaking behind my back.
as paranoid a person as I can be in general,
I've got a few reasons to be worried!!

like fuck, the government arrested
a sitting judge on made-up bullshit charges,
is kidnapping people and selling them
off to el salvadorean slave prisons
without anything like a fair trial,
is starting to make registries of people
using their social security info,
voting history, labor activity,
whatever else they can scrape together
from literal centuries of records
getting pillaged and fed into machines
to target and threaten whoever,
there's a dictator-king at our door
and we all know he's peddling an autocracy
and nobody wants to say anything,
wants to put themselves at risk,
so we're all dying alone rather than
taking the chance to fight together,
live together, and I don't know how
I'm supposed to begin to deal with that,
I mean, I have to find ways to fight,
and find people I can fight alongside,
but god, really, the world as I knew it
is dying in front of me, and it's
driving me up a wall when the people around me
don't seem to recognize it, my dad
talking about how we'll vote some of them out in 2026
and do some impeaching and removing
to take care of the rest of them,
and sure, if we can vote in 2026,
if the government can or is willing
to send ballots out everywhere,
to accept the ballots that come in,
to not toss them aside and stop pretending
this is a democracy anymore, sure!

at least there's tomorrow, I guess?
I generally know what tomorrow
is going to look like, what I'll do
and what I have some free time for,
it can go sideways in a ton of ways,
so I'd better have plans and friends
I can lean on if that comes up,
and I obviously need to do long-term planning,
I can't wing my way through life,
I'm trying to move apartments
and maybe switch up jobs here,
but for the most part, tomorrow,
and then the next day, and the next day,
I can make that make sense to me,
keep myself going, see what happens,
me and the next forever
one step at a time.