finally started the novel he told me to write 3 years ago that i never wrote because i was too busy being depressed and wasting my potential over him which he would’ve never wanted. for maza, for you, sincerely liv tyler and lacey chabert’s love child

*pre:

right now, we’re floating in space, and i can’t think of anything. no that’s a lie, i conjugate things in negative too much. we’re floating in space, and i can think of everything, our bodies are pulling us like taffy in a loop-de-loop like kansas tornadoes and like cotton candy makers and wheels spinning across invisible pavement.

but i wonder if it is pavement? eventually there must be pavement. that makes sense, right? when you’re falling, eventually, you’ll hit the ground, right? that’s life. that’s reality. i say these things to you so much. and you look at me with that face. you don’t have to say anything. your slightly open mouth is reality. your lip biting is reality. your hands, so i hold on to them and pretend we’re padlocked together and nothing could ever break our hands from one another because you’re all i know right now. you’re all that’s real. i’m so scared of what reality will be when you’re not here. what is any of this, without your hands?

and now, we’re just freestyling in nothing, an out of control merry-go-round accident machine malfunction explosion fwoosh. i’m dead and i’m still waiting to gag on cold metal splitting bone. reality. reality, right? suddenly the hard seering pain seems so appealing. i turn my head to look at you and it feels slow motion executed too quickly, snapped neck swung sideways like a dog desperately shaking off it’s fleas, i know your eyes are on the other side of this so i keep pushing for seconds and hours to turn against gravity and look at you.

except your hands, i don’t know where they went. i thought they were there a minute ago, in mine. i saw them. i swear, they were warm like beds. i lay my palms in them and you held on so tightly that i’m sure you weren’t part of the decision making process in this ‘letting go’ thing. letting go, did you let go? did you free your hands from me? did i hold on too tight? was our velocity not enough? my weight was so feeble i couldn’t manage to hold you down from being ****** into the void?

my brain is still trying to put the calculations together. when did you let go? where did you go? i try to imagine you spinning besides me still but everything is empty. we have no momentum. the darkness is arid, quiet. i feel like a shell. i wish there was a shore for me to break against. i want to call your name but i know it’ll be crushed out of my mouth if i try to speak, so i clamp my teeth together and grab my body, and spin, spin, spin. alone. i can’t cry. the tears would creep into my eyelashes and float into the sky. is there any sky? is there anything at all?

i keep denying. i argue with the world, stiff bodied and silent. everything seems like so much for one person to take on. i’m not good at remembering i am being, i am a being. as in i am being right here, right now. everything. nothing. where did your hands go? reality: the wind whapping the screen windows, hissing in the drain pipe. reality. cold, i say. too cold, my body says. cold like a brain freeze. no, it’s not too cold, i insist again. it’s crackly and comes in bursts of shivering down your spine. that’s what it is. yes. just a slight shivering. no, my mind says, chilling. and i tell myself, it would be the wrong thing to do, to embrace that darkness, right? right? and no one will answer me.

i try to scream and my lungs are filled with the yawning roiling nothing, like salt water washing into my mouth. i choke on the feeling and remember telling you that story about sounding like a strangled chicken when i try to roll my r’s in spanish class. you laugh somewhere and i scream again. it feels good, choking. choking yourself to…nothing. there’s so much everything pent up in that sound forcing itself out of my windpipes. and the earth does not rumble beneath; the silence says you belong to me. humming it over and over, pulling. you belong to nothing. you belong with nothing you belong as nothing. i can’t fathom this kind of anti-gravity. i thought we had everything. was i wrong? i don’t feel like everything, right now. i don’t feel anything.

so, i ask the darkness, this is it? the echo is swallowed. i can’t even hear my own voice. is this it? is this everything? i clamp onto my upper arms, squeezing the muscles tense. keep spinning. keep spinning. don’t speak or it will swallow you. keep spinning. there is no meaning. i don’t know why you let go. does it matter now? spinning. real. what is that? spinning.