Nest

From the moment I read you I could write the world. I can't place the how or why, but when it's your mind on the end ingesting mine the waters run stiller, calmer, and still more, the boiling rapids' boil abates, becoming almost cool enough to touch, which is the perfect temperature.

For you I have no defenses to let down. They never went up.

Time slows, the thought factory eases production, or my focus improves on account of the intensity of our propensity. I don't know.

Or there is no fear, which is the definition of home.

Or I just get. I get.

And getting begets being gotten. Maybe that's why. That's why it's okay for me to write about this...

Writers are never truly without at least a tether or two lashing him or her to the dead tree we flee when we open our wings. Sometimes we soar, far away, around and up until our faces frost and the world descends, becoming the silent jewel we always suspected. Up. Over. Above. So high the air isn't thick enough to rumble and the curve of the Earth bleeds blue into purple into the rich infinite black above, pierced by pinpoint stars poking through the construction paper of time. The tether stretches into a string of electrons. It is not a leash but a beacon back.

Then there are quick jaunts. Able sweeps to kiss the clouds, over the leafless canopy and its grasping pointed fingers reaching skyward like a million bolts of petrified lightning, a garden of tendrils blurring under the applause of beating feathers, for the sheer thrill of it, or to snatch a meal or investigate a glint in the distance, short but good, practicing the tendons and joints that make it happen, fulfilling the need, basic as breathing. Warm when done. Not warn out. Nourished. A little snot from the excitement.

Sometimes we flap and flap and can find no lift, can achieve no purchase upon the air, and with aching hearts we must set down to the nest, re-arrange some sticks, scoop shit off the sides, rest, recoup, look around at the stillness of the forest in which we live, each tree a statue to hope, until the compulsion calls again. It will.

And sometimes we fall out, and fall far, past the cracked withered branches, their patient postures passing as we tumble by, the careen coming to rest with a head-separating snap of the single thin, long unbreakable strap around our neck, a strap tied by a sailor. There we dangle. Unmoving. Eyes slowly losing their glisten, dust obeying a little less with each feeble gust of the nostril, the bark of the tree scuffing softly when the wind sways our carcass. A spider eyes a crevice and draws up plans. A fleet of gnats inspects the odor and decides better. A jay steals a tuft. It's his now, and why not. All but gone. Lifeless. Less life.

This is where I am. Low. Way down. I've been here awhile, rotting on a rotating world. Despite my best intentions, I've conspired against me, not meaning to, but through a series of deliberate accidents that I now know were all groans in one long run-on sentence. A march of ampersands. I've become numb to hope, and the usual old desires so pitched and fevered they're now background noises I couldn't begin to decipher.

A demon snuck up and has all his limbs firmly wrapped around me. I opened my mouth and welcomed his presence and I invite his talons deeper with every drink I take.

I can't write the word, even though I've thought it for years. It's one with ugly synonyms and uglier assumptions. You know them. Everybody knows them. Along comes stigma, shame and a language of regret that escapes through the gaps of gritted teeth. Truths, judgments and cliches, all, each a puncture wound on the penetrable pit of my soul, draining in drips the sap I'm surprised hasn't run out.

I know the right choices. I know the right steps, what's expected, what's logical, what's proper, what will work. But I don't often make them, more not than often, in fact. In fact, mostly not. And often.

Even now I'm trying to fold words into fun shapes, to hide behind my cleverness. The only safety I've ever known is the shield a smile forms, a smile not my own. Mine is a lie. Made of sand.

Issues only grow when you run and I run to numbness, because numbness works. It's instant relief. It's an answer to the problem of feeling too much. Chemistry and stress dance daily in my mind and body. They are loud and uncoordinated, knowing no fatigue. They tap and stomp within my ribs and gut and spine. What used to offer fun became relief and what offered relief is now the opposite. Now I need relief from the numbness. A curse. A nightmare. A thick demon on my back with hot wet breathe. It's the only issue that matters because it's fertilizer for all the others.

You know of the others. Maybe? I don't remember how much it ever came up. You know I've had a more than a life's full. Have baggage, will travel.

Now I'm here and LA is kind, full of life, light and glorious potential, but my circumstances are not. My job was a way out but it's become a cell, preventing me from pursuing dreams and happiness because of late hours, the same exact hours when that pursuit is possible. I'm trapped. Stressed. So I run. To that fucking familiar fizz.

To another cell, one with thicker walls, walls made of fog, walls I can't feel or see but which block all horizons. Nonetheless they split my forehead open when I stumble into them, split it open from the inside out, right down the forehead, where I keep my skull and my head full of stains. The gray matters.

I'd pity me if I cared enough. I've quit before. A month here. Two months there. The shame fades. Health returns. Shirts fit. Money saved. But tripping hazards offer their foot and inevitably I take it. An early one was when she tried to kill herself. Another was her coma. That wasn't long ago. The one after was friends I never said bye to. Often the hazard is just exhaustion, or boredom, or habit. Each stumble is worse. Each time the torch dims. This time it's finally gone out.

Dark. Cold. I call out and there is no response.

Fog doesn't echo.

Lonely. So lonely I sleep in the center of the bed.

Lonely I can do. I count it a skill.

Isolation. That's the true torture. It's far worse. It's exile. No community. No friends. Nothing worth rushing for. Nothing worth going home to. No home, besides. No hurry to hurry and none of that lovely worry people call love. Nothing.

Just the groggy grind of daily existence. Eying the spiders back. Daring them. Waiting for the breathe to stop.

Help is there but I won't ask for it. I haven't asked for it.

I refuse no more. I'm asking this time. Help. It has a human shape. People are good. Warm. They're waiting for me. Because someone waited for them. Isolation is a choice I choose to no longer make. It's that or die, early and alone.

My nest is above, neglected, full of shit and wind. It needs me as much as I need it. That strap I'm hanging from isn't a noose. It's the only thing keeping me alive. It's how I'm going to climb back up and fly again.

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written through the steam of evaporating tears, on a phone, in a bed, while the world slept