11.20.01 - 9:23

i'm off today and i don't know exactly how and i don't know really what i mean by that. i would turn this energy into tears if 1) you weren't sitting right here in front of me or 2) if i had anything to cry about. sometimes i just don't understand. i guess it makes sense when you're 'manic depressive' that sometimes you're depressive and sometimes you're manic but i don't know. i can't handle this right now. depression is weight and something slow and dark and mania is something shapeless and fast running underneath my skin and making me feel crazy.

we used to turn sad into poetry, remember. it was like the weight of the world and love and pain and sorrow and all of those big clich�-ish things would press the poetry out of me but now i'm just floating here and it's all inside me and around me and i can't find the words, the feeling, the sense of it, i can't get my hands on anything real.

we're running out of time here and time is running through our hands and i can't feel it anymore, i can't feel you anymore, i can't feel the smoke in my lungs or the sun on my back or the hot hot coffee down the back of my throat. you told me you would love to drink it all away but that's just not an option it just can't be done and so instead i sit here and wonder. i can't remember if it's with me now or if it's gone or if it ever was at all. there is so much i don't know, so much you don't know, so much more that we don't know and i'm losing it in the mad buzz of espresso and oranges and this pen is screaming across my paper. tell me, is it time yet, is it time yet, i feel it running through my arm, into my fingers and i feel like i could know it if only my pen could move a little bit faster than my hand my mind my voice and there are things that can be known without being known but i just want to make something real right now, anything.

i used to understand a few things. maybe not the things that will be or the things that are but at least the things that had been but now even that is just vibrating loud between my ears. i can't hear you talking to me i can't see your mouth moving and i'm so so tired and i'm done with this, done.

you asked me something like, have the tears gone with the poetry and i suppose it was a decent question and maybe you're right, gone the way of poetry and summertime and the sun except here the sun comes and goes and comes and stays and disappears and we can't be certain about anything, anywhere, really. you label all your tomorrows and all your yesterdays and we would be in accordance with each other but the problem is we think about yesterday and tomorrow is today and we're all just fucked up.

do you think i'm pretentious? my eyes are burning and my fingers are burning and everything, every part of my body burning with something and sarah's sitting in the hall wearing a blue fleece and mittens and a hat with earflaps because it's so cold? is it cold in here? what the hell is going on, what am i feeling, we're going to flamenco today, you were (and are) too young, the night doesn't turn completely black, i left a scar on your back two years ago, we drank something blue in my dorm room, you named your cat and we named our turtle, she got a phone call in class and he wanted to play soccer, there's always something purple in the room, you're reading about saunas in finland, he passed out on the bathroom rug last christmas, you flew in from palo alto and forgot to say hi, manufacturing jet engines is hard work and there are many problems that need to be troubleshot (is that a word, is that the past tense) on the assembly room floor so we'll leave you to do your job now.

i'm not ready. you were right about that much.

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