The water falling from the shower head and slapping against the tub makes this ringing sound, a white noise that maybe I confuse with a ringing sound. It sounds familiar but it also drowns it out, the familiar.

It's a piercing ring that I confuse for crickets on winter nights. When the snow muffles everything and the lamp posts make movie sets of the street corners. There's that dull soft patter of snow flailing wildly on frigid gusts before it smacks into the concrete.

Even on those nights when you can hear ghosts whispering under airy moonlight. It is interrupted by the shrieking moan of a small evil attempting to burrow its way out of my ears. It's the buzz of electricity underneath the midnight intersection. It's just what I hear now.

It's the price for hearing too much, for living impulsively with a drunken foot to the floor of a car I didn't own. That angry stinging buzz cuts my ear drums and bleeds alarm clock ****. I could scrape a chalkboard with the sharpness of that sound. That sound...the price for the best things I ever heard.

The lines from my favorite movies blaring heroically through erupting speakers. Windows down, drowning the rest of the world in lyrics shouted so loud they engraved themselves on the inside of my skull. I think I'd pay the price again, and let the sound swell around me. I can't refuse the feeling of goosebumps from the way passion embraces me, the way it licks away fear and leaves you engrossed in a feeling you could only know if it screamed itself into your heart.

So maybe I'll never know silence. That's fine. That blistering high pitched hum in my head is the reminder of the moments I was taken away. Fired from a cannon into bliss. Living so loud

I never had to hear myself think.

Taste the sun with your sweat today.
And as each ray clamors upon your despondent soul, allow your body to take in air.

Remember that the language you lost is as much the sweat on your skin as it is the soul inside you.

No te olvidas de las palabras de tus padres.

Recuérdate que tus memorias son flores en tu árbol.

As those soft black petals patter onto the dirt at your roots, you realize that good or bad, they dissolve into the soil and come back to you again.  

Si quieres, juntate con todo el muerto que no conoces.

En esta tierra tuya, no puedes correr sin llegar aquí otra vez.

Because you can't run away from yourself. Because your legs are stumps, rooted toes embedded in the present. But your body bends with the wind and your leaves grow brown.

Here, everything becomes an extension of you, cada hoja que cae, cada pétalo *****,
The sweat in the sun, the stomach you hate.

The memories that remind you why.

Son sólo extensiones de tu cuerpo, de ti mismo.

I used to believe the way I felt was
it.

There was nothing more to me.
I was cracking and the world around me fell away, before I learned how to travel,
I was lost.

My mind was fragmented and skipping through eternity. Some days I'd wake up a new age. Reliving days I didn't even remember.

For longer than I'd like to admit,
I believed these were dreams.

That my brain was throwing me from nightmare to nightmare,
Just trying to wake me up.

I only fell deeper though,
deeper into the faded moments from the past.

Once I learned,
once I realized these were
parts
of me.

I found myself...not lost...but

wandering

from one beautiful daydream to the next.
My world's were no longer stories and fantasy lands. They became my past, I used my pen to tear open holes in time, to relive the things I'd rather forget.

I felt strong.

The demons that haunted those placid corridors in my brain,
they didn't have power.

The fear I felt was real,
Living in it was easier when you knew you could leave. So I traveled from dream to memory, polluting my timeline with my anachronistic presence.

It wasn't long before writing felt like nothing and the only thing that mattered were the spaces in between this reality and the past.

Poems were the maps I drew.
Each an outline of the steps I should take when I open a rift into my memories again.

At some point though,
I could see those ghosts in my timeline.

I spent so much energy in other realities,
they began to bleed into mine. Just like I was
intruding
On things that were,

They were now existing in places that are.

The only real way to be rid of them was
to stop all together.

To force reality to put it's pieces back by forgetting.
So I killed the old me and threw him back into my notebook.

I sealed that gateway with fire and

stopped opening doorways to demons.

They still creep in sometimes though.
I imagine that's
the problem with interdimensional travel.

We've been in constant distraction for a while. I keep feeling it, the rolling wave of forgetting. I think it's necessary though,

A way to skip over the days that feel like drowning in thunder.

and I know I'm not the only one that has felt this weight...that moment when you get lost in your joy for a few minutes before snapping back to the thought,

Before the light from outside catches your eye through

a crack in the blinds.

We all feel it differently though, maybe the blinds are open. Maybe the window is letting the breeze in. The kids are confined to the front yard.

Or maybe there's no light

just a gentle reminder from under the covers that time is passing
and hope is
not really
here.

I think we experience it differently but it's still the same

ping.

Our natural alarm sounding softly,
waking us up and letting us know we are,
all of us are…

not really
there.

I imagine when Jesus comes back he's going to
Invite us all to a gathering

"Bring your Bibles!!"

And some might bring snacks and some might
give up vices

And we will stand with him in some great courtyard he has God build

In a different country,
That feels like a football stadium…
Or a Colosseum.

He will tell us to put the books in a pile.

He will light a cigarette after everyone is settled and quiet

"Sweet Me, that's good"

And the match he uses to light it will be
tossed lovingly onto the Bible pile

And we will hear the ghosts of old Kings sing songs of freedom as the smoke carries them out into space.

No one will understand but our mouths will move and shape harmonies that crest over the sunset horizon

Jesus uses his cigarette like a baton, conducting a chorus to the dead white men undeserving of our hymns.

But they did his work.

So our lips lull them into God's hands

We didn't notice but the pile is burning in time with the cigarette. All the world's Bibles,

Except for one locked in the safe of a librarian who was skeptical that Jesus really returned.

He sits in front of a tv waiting for an explosion, miles away from the smolder, yet his lips move too.

He cries because he doesn't know why he sings.

We cry because we do.

The cigarette burns out and Jesus awkardly apologizes. He's not really sorry though.

After all it's our fault, were the ones who believed him.