journal excerpts #4
may 5th: surrounded by trees, carved with drawings of yourself, and the word "‘missing” scrawled underneath them. except in the drawings, you are young, but not the young you used to be. a different version of you, young. one not plagued by the plights of puberty that plagued you. skin bright and eyes shiny, reflected even in the tree bark.
may 7th: the government built a maximum security prison up the field, 50 years ago. fresh and gleaming titanium bars making up the fence. it disappears into the fog on cloudy days, and one day it disappeared and never returned, alongside everyone in it. the morning you first noticed it was gone, the sky was clear and glimmering. by the evening, everyone else had forgotten it was ever there.
may 9th: your high school teacher once told you a story of the night he was camping deep in the forest, underneath a sharp red moon. he spent hours trying to sleep and finally, when he began to doze off, an electric screech woke him. he found he could no longer see, his vision blurred and hazy, like his eyes were submerged in smog. he clutched his pocket knife to his chest, and pretended to sleep until eventually sleep came for him. morning light blew through the clouds, and once again, he could see.
may 12th: walking into the bar you only go to on wednesdays on a friday. noticing everything has shifted just slightly, just enough to feel foreign to you. as if you had never been there. a place you have never been and should never be again. the bartenders thin-faced, yellowed, the whites of their eyes pulled up, almost erasing their irises. stoic, as they ask for your drink, the one they have made a thousand times before. they don’t know you, only that you came from somewhere they didn’t know existed.
may 15th: a bruise appearing down the length of your leg. spreading right and left, like oil in a pan. skin turning purple, an electric blue. when you graze it with the pads of your fingers, the blue recoils away from you. shivering as it runs down your calves. it grows as weeks pass, turning your bone and blood and muscle purple. in the shower, your leg cowers from you, convulsing in the hot water.
may 18th: surgery in the dark; the new innovation. surgeons who claim to be able to see in the dark, comforted by the silent black of the operating room. they say their minds are clearer, more attuned to the scalpel in their hand. you leave your house early in the morning, before the sun has. imagining the blade gliding through your abdomen, into the muscle below. the stars peering out from above you.
may 20th: out in the backyard, the fire pit erupts in flames, all on its own. it started doing this last summer, and one of us used to have to stay awake during the night, to watch it. we could never find a way to squash the fire, not until it decided it was done burning. your brother once killed the flame seven times in one night, and every time it would burst alive again, bright and wide-eyed. some evenings the flame would climb up so high to the sky, just to the limit of terror we could not bear, and it would descend back into the pit again, and blow itself out.
may 21st: sores on your eyes you have to lift and fold your eyelids to see. a symptom of an allergy you never used to have, to dust or cloud matter or the sun. feeling your eyelids crawling out of your skin and into the back of the socket of your eye. in unison, pushing your eyelid inch by inch, out of place.
may 23rd: toppling hallways of hundreds of apartments built on top of each other. a building made in silence. your sister moved in a year ago, only a month after it was built. she walks to her office during the early morning, and when she returns at night, the ceiling is distended and warped. forming a tunnel, twisted and shallow. some days it vibrates and beats like a heart. others, it bleeds and wails. on fridays, it turns sharp, hot to the touch.