Yaoharu Grocer / Give or Take
(September 2024)
published by Do Not Submit

Porn Bot Retweets My Philosophy
(November 2024)
published by Do Not Submit

I emerged with my father’s strange eyes, mid-range jumper, and his tendency to wander. His teeth are crooked, mine are not. I often find myself at a wooden table on a cold day as one of two people who want to talk but don’t know what to say. “Did you catch that Sixers rookie last night?” Usually it is more polite to stay silent. I have a hole inside of me that I want to fill with the words I imagine to be caught in your throat. Our love for dirty leather causes me spiritual hunger so I eat mujadara for now but do not fry the onions myself.

Sister dreamt that fascism came quickly. I was bleeding, she didn’t know from where. No one could be bothered to worry but her. This happened once while I was painfully awake and busting open my chin on the concrete while big brothers continued their baseball game. Sister called for help. I was too young then to know about fascism or divorce. Not everyone has someone to always pick them up when they fall, let alone someone who prepares for war in their dreams. God looks at me that night and thinks I am so alone but I am so full of blood.

Porn bot retweets my philosophy four thin books I am 69 pages into each lay next to me while I sleep clutching the empty air and my pulsating killing-machine of a ████ that pumps out dead egg after dead egg while I sleep alone in contorted positions divorce is near my wife doesn’t look at me in the eyes anymore in fact she never did and we were never married we just used to play basketball on different teams in different courts for different schools I just used to follow her home from work in a fake mustache and ski goggles but either way now she’s leaving me. Some of the music you listen to lies to you about how everything is suffering or love is light but I have never let a song lie to me because I know that two things can be true at once like I can be dancing to my ████ ████ song and I can be listening to our ████ ████ song while we do the drive but I can be happy we are both home even if it’s because of the reason the song got made. You wouldn’t have come home for thanksgiving either way but the music would have and your mom will still make 5 servings worth of turkey and she will force them down my gullet and then oil up my fingertips and my face and my meaty calves (I have been biking alone in the basement because my body is filled with ████ ████ ████ █ ███ ███ █ ████ █ ███ ████ fishing wishing you would come back ████ ████ ████ █ ███ █ ███ █ ███ ██ ██ your ghost threw my painting of you face down into the wet brown shitpaint as a final act of self destruction ████ ████ ████ ████ █ ███ ████ ████ yin and yang form a perfect Yummy Yummy circle) and then she will stick me in the oven three hundred seventy five degrees it will feel sooooo delicious for me to get a good crisp on and be eaten by my hungry extended family.

Mom, dad? There are baby bluebirds that carry me through underground tungles to where I am from to where I am going. Divorced mom, divorced dad? I can’t believe I’m just like you! All I did was love her it’s not my fault I got all kicked around in the musty bunker. I am a little guy. I’ve always been the baby it’s not my fault I didn’t love her quite right. How do you write a birthday card that says I’m sorry for not talking to you about our dead friend for two months but I thought you might get a kick out of this british children’s police propaganda book and also I haven’t decided whether or not to ████ ████ ████? Mom says I do my best and if he brings his friends Anger or Meanness to the table I can build a brick wall to protect my dear tender self “with all our support”. That would be easy and simple see Anger and meanness build a wall see anger build a wall build another one once you get to four you have built yourself a house now the anger flies above you build a roof it tungles below you build a floor it gets bored of torturing you you build a door you step outside and smell the grass that has grown taller than you while you were hiding and you try to remember why you built the walls in the first place. Then Meanness comes bumping down the road on a seven-horse drawn carriage and boom! You have an addition to your house! This must be how mansions get made!

We are twenty years older and our wars are mostly in our heads for now. Sister helps me still. Trains are sacred and so is my body and they are not to be used to serve the agenda of weeny newyork pussyboys. I want to not feel things but I do. I feel fully and soberly. I don’t know how it still feels like the first day we met every time I see you. I have an inkling of an idea that you will grab my heart out of my chest and juice it like an orange. Sister will still be there to help me.

I hadn’t thought about how I looked in many many days so when he told me you were staring I tried to see myself through your eyes but I couldn’t see anything particularly worth yearning for just someone who was curious about fire and wondering how to make everyone around them feel equally loved. So I relocate the hedge, I transform the house. On Sunday mornings I find serenity in late morning nightmares because I prefer to start my day right, whatever the cost. They always told me divorce is a game of life and death, just like Go and pickup basketball.

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Peas and Beef (Snippet 1, Bloody Vomit)
(October 2024)

When did you start drinking? How did you stop? Do you still cheat on your girlfriends? The answers are as follows: six, bloody vomit, and not applicable (celibate). Boy is seriously building his own house in Long Island (by seriously I mean he isn’t joking). He dreams about kids and a woman to love and I can’t help but giggle before I remember he’s not the narcissistic_drunk I used to know anymore. Together, we remember things we had both forgotten–like him showing up to my house in Seattle madly in love with a friend of my friend (she snuck down the stairs of her parents’ house to have sex with him every night)–or things one of us had forgotten–like him stumbling into my college dorm room, time and time again, while I was sleeping naked. I was usually the remembering one between the two of us, and he was usually the apologizing one. I have been acquainted with addiction long enough to not need those apologies. But the more I remember, the more he apologizes. It goes on like this for a while until I have no memories left and there is only our futures staring back at me. I never know how gentle to be. I’m practicing walking on my tippy toes less, but I’m not sure if that is the thing to practice around someone who is still in bandages.

Boy lasted three days at his dad’s house, back in a new inpatient program. He hadn’t responded to any of the 12 texts, 5 calls, or 2 voice memos I left him. Too busy bursting at the seams, stuffing himself full of flimsy lies and brain bleeds. I had already forgiven him for everything.

Boy is raw inside and everything is fucked up. I understand but I don’t really because I haven’t felt that way in a long time but I nod because I don’t want to say out loud that I am craving the comfort of the chaos I just escaped and I wish he could pass it on to me. That’s my problem, always wishing and hoping and begging and bitching and moaning for people to pass their suffering on to me. As if I’m stronger. With no real words to hold on to I am knocking off work early and worrying less about the repercussions, spending hours looking out the window with my legs up the wall, wandering the perfect streets waiting for someone to offer me a new path, especially if it ends in a dark alley.

Peas and Beef
(October 2024)
published by Do Not Submit

Porn Bot Retweets My Philosophy
(November 2024)
published by Do Not Submit

Dust in an Oyster Shell (November 2025)
Published by Blue Boy Space

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