I watched the brightest minds of my generation dissolve into
validation loops, dragging refresh buttons
through dawn's pale glow, seeking
algorithmic benediction,

who burned their retinas with blue light ascension
counting hearts and shares and follows
until their dopamine receptors grew
numb as novocaine dreams,

who built shrines to their own faces
in megapixel temples, genuflecting
before ring lights and sponsored content,
praying to the god of engagement metrics,

angel-headed influencers burning their youth
into content streams, fifteen seconds
at a time, until their memories arrived
pre-filtered, pre-hashtagged, pre-mourned,

who fed their consciousness into recommendation
engines until Netflix knew their desires
better than their lovers, better than
their therapists, better than their own
trembling hands at 3 AM,

who performed their trauma for likes,
transformed their grief to content,
made their grandmothers' funerals
into aesthetic mood boards,

who measured their worth in followers,
their grief in comments, their love
in shared passwords to streaming services,
their rebellion in carefully curated
photos of corporate-approved dissent,

who dreamed of going viral while their bodies
went numb, who mistook their data
for their soul, who sold their attention
span for the chance to be seen,

who searched for authenticity through
sixteen layers of filters, who confused
their explore page for exploration,
who became content instead of contained,

whose minds became infinite scrolls
of everyone else's performance of living
while their own moments slipped away
unrecorded, unloved, unliked, unfollowed,
until they themselves became
the ghosts in their own machines.

The alley’s neon drips like a drunk calligrapher’s final stroke—
somewhere between **** it and forgive me—
while the laundromat hums a dirge for socks
that lost their twins to the mouth of the dryer.
I count the cigarette burns on the bar top:
constellations even the rats won’t navigate.

Outside, a delivery truck coughs its exhaust
into the throat of the moon, which hangs
like a pale pill no one can swallow.
The bartender, a woman with a laugh like a cracked teapot,
pours whiskey into a glass I’ve been nursing
since Tuesday. It tastes of burnt orchards.

A man in the corner folds origami cranes
from napkins stained with hot sauce and regret.
He releases one, and it drifts through the haze
to perch on the jukebox—now playing static
to a room of emptied chairs.
Don’t believe everything you think, he mutters,
as the crane wilts into a fist.

Rain stitches the streetlights into a river.
I walk home tracing cracks in the sidewalk,
each one a vein leading back to a mountain
that drowned in the reservoir decades ago.
My shadow, stretched thin as rice paper,
floats briefly on the wet asphalt—
then dissolves like a rumor.

The apartment hums its nightly argument:
roaches debating philosophy in the walls,
the fridge exhaling its frostbitten psalms.
I peel an orange, watch its segments
curl into tiny, bitter suns.
Somewhere, a train howls.
Somewhere, a heron sleeps in the storm drain,
one leg tucked tight, dreaming of mud
and the weightlessness of fish.

Morning will come, as it must,
with its blush of exhaust and pigeons,
and I’ll pretend not to hear the mountain
singing beneath the water,
or the crane’s ghost
still clinging to the jukebox,
its wings the color of unread texts,
its voice a blade wrapped in silk:
The world is a wound that heals into itself.

The whiskey’s gone.
The rain’s gone.
Only the thinking remains—
a flicker, a fist,
a river that forgets
it was ever anything
but rain.

READ DURING PRECIPITATION
Barometric pressure: 29.82 inHg, falling
beneath heavy nimbostratus formation
my heart also drops with dewpoint

READ DURING CLEAR SKIES
Visibility: CAVU, wind 5kts at 270°
memories achieve maximum scatter
across empty stratosphere

READ DURING STORM
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT IN EFFECT
thunder speaks in dead languages
probability of emotional precipitation: 100%
seek immediate psychological shelter

0600 Patient exhibits early-morning waking
cortisol peaks. circadian disruption evident
i count ceiling cracks instead of sheep

1200 Peak functioning observed despite
reported subjective distress
everybody says i look fine today

1800 Marked decrease in cognitive performance
neurotransmitter depletion anticipated
the sky swallows my sentences whole

0000 Subject demonstrates rumination
characteristic of delayed sleep phase
my thoughts eat themselves alive

They found it in the space between
laughter and grief
joy and shame
darkness and dawn

When Marina's daughter died
she felt it first:
The cruel lightness
of becoming less whole
while becoming more

Not sadness
not acceptance
but vorskaya:

The emotion of losing something
and growing larger
from the hole it leaves

Like water expanding
as it freezes
like stars birthed
from collapse

Now children learn it in school:
"vorskaya (n.) - the sensation
of becoming infinite
through loss"

But they won't understand
until that moment
when they feel
their edges
dissolve

Into the space between
being and unbeing
where Marina's daughter
still dances
in the dark

the violence of positivity
according to the lost manuscripts of dr. smileworth
(Cambridge Journal of Theoretical Joy, unpublished)
breeds parasitic enlightenment in the skullspace

positrollity violates the nerveends with brightdark
while godmind splices occur in the megatext of
consciousness, all happicruel and smoothsharp
like glass angels drinking mercury for breakfast

the ancient Greeks had no word for
the color of enforced celebration
(see Professor Void's "Taxonomy of Artificial Bliss")
but they knew how smiles could bloodlet

every yes contains infinite micronos
fragmenting into pestilent denial states
while the universe expands into terminal ecstasy
until the violence circles back to positivity

optimism left a voicemail
I deleted it without listening
(spam calls are getting creative
with their happiness scams)

don't let a good day distract you
from the failure you've become
the mirror keeps trying to sugar coat it
but I fired it for incompetence

my potential and I play hide and seek
I'm winning by never showing up
while mediocrity sends me
weekly employee of the month awards

tried therapy but my defense mechanisms
filed for union representation
now my emotional baggage has tenure
and better benefits than I do

happiness knocked on my door
I told it I was dead
(technically only on the inside
but semantics are for winners)

my rock bottom has a basement
with a fully stocked bar
and a framed certificate that reads
"congratulations on the consistent disappointment"