#unmoored
The day I die,
the sycamores will finally loosen
their silver undersides
and stop rehearsing storms for my benefit.
The pond behind the hill
will unlatch its green enamel lid,
releasing every drowned reflection
it has hoarded for decades.
I imagine the afternoon
as a conservatory of pale glass,
sunlight decanting itself
across marble balustrades,
each beam a quiet custodian
sweeping dust from forgotten corners.
All my life,
I have carried a house inside my ribs.
Its corridors were crowded with clocks,
their brass mouths muttering
of overdue tomorrows.
Its windows collected weather.
Its cellar fermented grief
into dark vintages.
The day I die,
I will leave the keys upon the table.
The hinges may continue singing.
The rafters may remember my name.
Yet I will have stepped beyond
the architecture of wanting.
No more bargaining with dawn.
No more stitching together
the frayed hem of another difficult season.
I will become something simpler.
Perhaps a petal relinquished to a river.
Perhaps the last lantern
extinguished after a festival,
its smoke ascending
through the indigo vestibule of evening.
The moon will not mourn me.
She will merely polish
her pearl-white countenance
and continue drifting
through orchards of cloud.
The earth will carry on
with its exquisite occupations:
thrushes threading music
through the hedgerows,
rain annotating stone,
foxgloves lifting their violet chalices
toward the attentive sky.
And for the first time,
I will ask nothing of it.
Not mercy.
Not permanence.
Not explanation.
Only stillness.
Only the immaculate quiet
found beneath every wave,
beneath every root,
beneath every name we are given.
The day I die
may be the day I am happiest,
not because death is a kingdom,
nor because sorrow has triumphed,
but because every burden
will finally slip its moorings,
and I will drift,
light as thistledown,
through a silence so vast
it can no longer distinguish
between ending
and peace.
1d ago
Jun 2, 2026 at 8:51 PM UTC
Sometimes it feels like my mind liquefies
and drifts somewhere unmoored.
The room begins to pearl at the edges.
Wallpaper sweats into watercolor blooms,
the ceiling lamp hemorrhages amber pollen,
and every object acquires the viscosity
of something remembered underwater.
I sit very still
while the evening dilates around me.
The radiator clicks like wet arthropod limbs.
A glass of juice ferments beside the bed,
its surface lacquered with the faint metallic scent
of pennies pressed into the tongue.
Outside, rainwater sluices through the gutter system
with the sound of silk unraveling from a throat.
My body becomes increasingly theoretical.
Hands first.
Then the jaw.
Then the entire architecture of my name.
I feel myself dissolving by teaspoons
into the upholstery of the hour.
Thoughts stretch into translucent filament,
gelatinous and luminous,
like deep sea organisms surfacing too abruptly
through pressure they were never designed to survive.
The mirror across from me
cannot retain my reflection consistently.
It blurs.
Reconstitutes.
Blurs again.
Sometimes I think consciousness resembles
a fruit left too long in summer heat.
The skin intact.
The interior quietly collapsing into nectar.
Music leaks through the wall
in muffled fibrillations,
basslines thick as petroleum.
The sound enters me slowly,
fills the ventricles with black syrup,
turns memory into a liquid medium
through which old grief drifts half-awake.
There are moments
where I can no longer distinguish exhaustion
from transcendence.
The carpet ripples softly beneath my feet.
Streetlights smear themselves across the windowpane
like gold cosmetic powder dissolved in milk.
Everything appears touchable
yet impossibly remote,
as if the world has been sealed behind aquarium glass
and I am observing it from the ocean floor.
Even language begins melting at the corners.
Sentences lose skeletal integrity.
Vowels elongate into pale ribbons.
Meaning slips its vertebrae
and slides soundlessly into the dark.
Still, there is something strangely exquisite
about becoming unfastened from oneself.
To feel the psyche soften.
To feel identity loosen like wet ribbon from a gift box.
To become briefly indistinct,
mercurial,
mouthless,
adrift beneath the narcotic fluorescence
of another sleepless dawn.
6d ago
May 29, 2026 at 3:29 PM UTC
Soft lullabies seep through the walls,
warped—distant—like voices underwater.
Fingers brush glassy skin,
but I can’t tell if they belong to me.
The air hums with a name I almost remember,
whispering in a language I used to know.
Something drips—tick, tick, tick—
but the clock’s hands are missing.
I step forward—
or maybe backward—
or maybe I don’t move at all.
My reflection flickers, too slow for the mirror,
folding inward like wet paper.
The room breathes.
The walls bend like candle wax.
A dove flutters behind my ribs,
but I can’t tell if it’s real.
Someone is calling.
Their voice sifts through my fingers like sand.
I open my mouth—
but the words fall straight through.
Everything is quiet.
Everything is slipping.
Everything is—
Feb 24, 2025
Feb 24, 2025 at 12:11 AM UTC