Ghosts

"I'm not going to kill you . . . but you'll wish you were dead."

Patrick (Haunt Me As I Roam)

In my dream you had killed yourself because your friend had killed himself – and had wanted to do so for a long time – but he didn't want to die alone, and so you offered to step up and die by his side.

That sucked, because I really needed you, but I understood. 

- September 27, 2022

Erin (In Retrospect)

I was driving around Inglewood in a stolen Dodge Ram pickup truck and somehow stumbled across the apartment you were living in. I hung out and walked around outside for a while. In the front yard was a shipping container suspended in the air via forklift. On the bottom of the shipping container the phrase "No me, no myself" was scrawled in black spray paint. 

I was getting ready to take a picture of the graffiti when one of your neighbors came down the stairs. Her name was Florence – early 40's, Italian. I felt awkward, loitering around your apartment with a camera in my hands, but she thought I was cute despite my disheveled appearance and sat down with me in the downstairs carport / parking garage that doubled as a lounge, makeshift couches and wet bar included.

After a while Florence left to visit her daughter across the street. Her daughter lived in a small trailer in the front driveway of her friend's house; the roof of the trailer had been painted to look like a Nintendo Game Boy from the sky. After introducing myself and hanging out for a bit I walked back across the street.

Your shades were drawn, where before they had been open. Someone was inside your apartment. Was it you?

Hours passed. The sun sank and the moon rose and still I struggled to muster up enough courage to knock on your door. Sometime around midnight Aiden joined me downstairs, pulling up a chair out front and whispering along with the creatures of the night.

I walked to the back of the complex, steeling myself for the moment to come. In the backyard were scraps of paper with obscure indie-rock lyrics scribbled on them – your handiwork, I assumed. One that I remember was written on the back of a Dixie paper plate nailed to a stake hammered into the ground. It said "Big Ugly Mouth," a reference to Henry Rollins.

I was still pacing back and forth in the backyard of your Inglewood apartment complex, hands clasped behind my back, brow furrowed, head lowered, lost in thought. Eventually I woke up, awash in nostalgia for everything that was and everything that could have been: the phone calls and the zines, the care packages and the schemes, the conversations and the stickers that never happened. 

Our early lives were an immense struggle, Erin. I hope life has gotten better for you in the convening years, as it has for me. 

                                                * * * 

We first started talking during my freshman year of college. My parents had just divorced, the childhood home I grew up in had been sold and I was living in a very nice neighborhood in San Pedro near the Pacific Ocean. The longing was immense. Living near the ocean always made me sad, glassy-eyed and thoughtful. 

Something about your rough-and-tumble lifestyle complimented my dour and depressive sensibilities, so I decided to take a shot in the dark and reach out to you from 3,000 miles away. The ensuing online and telephone conversations were some of the best I have ever had –funny, carefree, intelligent, desperate, nihilistic, no pressure. 

Eventually we began shipping care packages to one another, from New York to California. At the time we were both heavily immersed in the underground sticker scenes in our respective cities and were therefore familiar with sticker trading across state lines. It was also quite easy to procure free shipping labels from the United States Postal Service.

The doodles, the drawings, the zines, the stickers, the literature, the poetry, the music and the pictures that passed from your hands to mine and vice versa . . . 

I wanted a piece of you, Erin, to help me understand you better, and you gave it to me with aplomb. To this day I remain grateful for our correspondence. In my darkest moments it helped remind me of the places that were not where I was, and of the people and the places that remained to be seen, if I could only survive the moment at hand.

Thank you, Erin. I don't know if I ever told you that.

How long has it been since last we spoke? Some months back I found a care package from you dated February 2012, as well as the care package I had compiled in reply, for when you finally got settled on the East Coast after graduating from university. Our communication petered out sometime between then and now for reasons unknown, and finding those two artifacts from the past, as heartfelt as they were at their conception, made me sad, having become nothing more than wreckage from the past in a box in my garage. 

For weeks after I walked around in a daze, lost in thought: "Sentiment is a weight that tries its best, day and night, to chain me to the past." I had not felt that kind of aimless wandering in a very long time and had all but forgotten what living with that kind of weight felt like. 

I do not miss the reoccurring ache of regret and the distinct feeling –real or imagined – of missing out on love and life as the world passes me by. I have a purpose now and there is a lot of work that needs to be done before I can die. No time for depression or regret or nostalgia for a future never realized. "Regret is an ugly and destructive luxury and it must be avoided at all costs," Henry Rollins writes in Black Coffee Blues, and I agree with him.

It doesn't mean I don't think of you from time to time, Erin. Feel free to reach out if you ever feel the desire: (310) 780-7550. I am out here working my bones to ash, restless in anticipation of the things that will one day be mine.

All you get is this one life, right here. Make it count . . . I miss you.

"In my mind I'm digging a hole.

It may be a grave."

"I am death imitating life."

Apocrypha

In my dream I punched you over and over until your brain dribbled out of your ears.

I had warned you beforehand: "You've said enough this morning. I really don't care to hear anything else you have to say. Now back off before I break every bone in your body."

You kept screaming all the same.

The first punch dropped you to your hands and knees. From there I kicked you to the floor, straddled your chest and delivered methodical and well-placed blows to your face, over and over, until I felt every bone shatter beneath my knuckles.

Once the task at hand was completed, I got up and walked away, leaving you bleeding and disfigured on the floor. 

Is this how you felt all those times you delivered bodily harm against me as a child? I wondered. Did you feel powerful, holding my life in your hands? Did you enjoy issuing thinly-veiled threats of impending violence? Did you cherish the beatings that followed? 

Partaking in the exhilaration and power derived from imposing pain upon another, and the intoxicating desire to deliver destruction – the same as was delivered to you as a child – over and over again . . . 

"The only human will is to succumb to one greater."

I love you. I forgive you. I finally understand.

Αδαμαντία

The way you looked into my eyes while you were apologizing, and immediately stopped talking and stepped away - you could see that I was sizing you up, calculating how much strength it would take to break you with my bare hands.

I must have been burning white hot because you picked right up on it, and it stopped you cold.

Kandice (The Failed Attempts)

The entire graduating class decided to throw a climate change protest / party to celebrate.

From the back row I could see you as you left the stage, shaking hands with all the boys who had lined up to ask you out on a date.

"Your protest sign is awesome. Maybe we could grab a cup of fair-trade coffee and discuss the virtuous imperatives of smashing the state and defending Mother Earth sometime."

You were unfailingly courteous in humoring their advances, politely listening until the last potential suitor had made his pitch before respectfully declining and dismissing yourself with a smile. 

You were always so good at that, hedging without offending.

I ran into my mother as I was leaving the rally. She was happy for you. 

As for myself . . . it had been so long since I had thought about you that it felt odd to be doing so. 

                                                * * * 

In hindsight, we were never a great fit – you were the intellectual cheerleader (the social parasite) and I was the nihilistic punk-rocker (the social pariah.) 

I don't know how or why we thought that dynamic would work. 

                                                * * * 

I identified the problem about a month into our two-year-long relationship: your ease with others – and my complete lack thereof –made me feel as if we were in constant competition with one another. It also made me feel as though I didn't deserve to be in a relationship with you, because I always fell short when interacting with your family and friends.

The deep-seated feelings of inadequacy I've buried for all these years return to me as I write this down. It's been such a long time . . . 

Truth be told, I really did want to kill myself. I was young and emotionally naïve and didn't know how to effectively process failed expectations – my own, yours and those of our family and friends. I could just never get over the social isolation that came with watching you initiate a conversation with strangers out of thin air. You made friends everywhere you went and made the process look so damn easy. 

"Just put yourself out there," you once told me by way of explanation. "Sooner or later, someone will accept you for who you are." 

You couldn't see the mountains behind my eyes, which deepened the wound between us that much more.

                                                * * * 

During our relationship I suffered from a myriad of mental and emotional issues – up to and including self-harm and thoughts of suicide – that I was unwilling to burden you with, which is why I kept to myself most of the time. I know you suffered from the same issues, but you also had a much broader support system than I did, what with your extended family and vast network of close friends.

Keeping quiet was the only way I knew how to deal with those issues. I know how stupid that sounds in hindsight. You cared about me and wanted to help me . . . I just didn't want to become a burden and by shutting down emotionally I allowed that apprehension to divide us.

Sometimes I wish I could relive moments with you, to make them better than before. I know I would make for a better boyfriend today.

Kandice, wherever you are . . . I hope you know how sorry I am.

Kandice (In Retrospect)

Truth be told, I really did want to kill myself. I was young and emotionally naïve and did not know how to effectively process failed expectations – my own, yours and those of our family and friends. 

Sometimes I wish I could relive moments with you, to make them better than before. I know I would make for a better boyfriend today.

– March 12, 2022

You know you're on to something good when the whole of human creation is conspiring against you.

"Think of it this way: I stopped at breaking your nose. 

You should be grateful."

West Texas

I am grateful in spite of all things. 

Thank you for teaching me how.

Universe

"Kiss my ass, Universe. You can't keep me down."

Summer

"Life is no longer meaningless, 

but I am still God's joke.

But there's no hard feelings."

"I'll be honest with you: I've been waiting 12 years for a night as dark and cold as this one to wrap my arms around you and keep you warm."

The Iron

The Iron is the only thing helping me dig myself out of this hole. 

Physical destruction is a small price to pay for escaping mental, emotional and existential death.

No matter what we did or could have done, she never stood a chance.

That's why I'm angry. 

The injustice and cruelty of creation.

Inhabit the Wound

I need time to heal, I need time to mend and I don't have it. 

I am a walking open wound.

I don't know how people do this for 80 years.

Avery Finn (Memorial)

I want to find the nearest brick wall and punch it over and over until I break every bone in my hand.

This is a level of rage that even I myself am unfamiliar with. 

And now I have to learn to live without you.

Forgive me.