by say

Here’s an exodus of my repressed memories

Disclaimer: I was lacking the other person in my first attempt at this so here’s an annoying one… I hate it when people talk about love. It’s private, and publicizing beyond a point [mention] always seems phony and boastful. I hope publicizing this [as ambiguously as possible] makes it phony so I can hate it and forget about it, and frustrate the frustrating assignment, encouraging people to harbor wrath towards inanimate concepts

We are sitting on the sofa and my mother is in the kitchen doing dishes, even though it is my father’s chore. I feel that there is no private place in the world, and simultaneously everything is okay because he tastes like fake happiness and I know I will love him forever. I smell his skin and it is freshly baked bread and duck ponds and grassy knolls. Then he turns the light off and I am suddenly angry. I often become terribly angry… I chain a raging disgust for the world to my ankles. I could easily be free of it but I like it, in a weird way. I wonder why I like things that I dislike. Perhaps it is because I would hate myself otherwise

The phone stops buzzing and there is my favorite song, somehow created by someone younger than me. I muse at how I don’t understand this and squeeze my eyes shut because I know he doesn’t love me. He feels above me somehow, genius, though he suffers from severe mental poverty in some areas. I was concerned, and he has nothing intelligent to say. I am relieved

A year or so ago I listen to his ridiculously good music. It drifts around like he can’t pay attention, even though I know that is a cop out. He does it on purpose and it works. He is surrounded and I make a heart with my fingers. He turns his face away, embarrassed

Half a year ago he decides we can be friends. He says we should hang out and forgets to call me, and when I bring it up he asks me for my number again, his phone deleted it. I wonder if he somehow missed the fact that I have a brain in my head

Shortly afterwards we are lying on the carpet discussing extreme scientific theory. Everything is absolutely perfect for about seven hours. Then my mother calls frantically and I resent her for being the loving, committed individual that she sometimes is not [I miss it then.] I am really hungry but I don’t want to leave the carpet and so my hunger grows. I have adored the pain of hunger since then and associate it with him directly

I try not to seek him out too often because I am sad. He is there sometimes when I go searching for him. One time I look at his face and notice that he is sickeningly attractive, and I balk and make up an excuse to run off. I wanted him to be my secret, someone that only I could appreciate. He should be in class and I should care, but I don’t. I hold him close and he smells bitter, awful. I bury my face in his neck

He is addicted to inanimate whatevers. I constantly worry and he tells me that I’m stressing him out unnecessarily by worrying about nothing

I do awful things sometimes, with the realization and that pause while I am doing them. No moment is too fast for me. I always am fully guilty. My atrocities are pre-approved

There was such a moment. On a day when I hate myself I call him in the wee hours of the morning. I thank Zeus that he keeps a ridiculous sleep schedule, and he ends up destroying more things than I do. I tell him we should have sex in the middle of the road. He picks up this pole and smashes this ornamental tree. Then he breaks it on the telephone pole. He makes me take a whack and I hurt my finger really badly. I do not say anything. It is purple the next day

I wear his shoes and they make my feet look beautiful/bad. Bad as in capable of rancor. I turn my toes in and look at the orange night sky, D.C.’s air pollution reflecting its light pollution. He puts his arm around my waist and tells me I’ve grown on him, and I feel ill, one of the swimming masses to him. I envy more his friends

This person will haunt me forever

When we say goodbye there is nothing. I did not want to see him at all. I smell him and my chest twists into a painful knot. He is brief and I feel unfulfilled, as I walk away I pull a leaf off the tree above me and stick it in my ponytail like a stereotypical American Indian. It is thick and smooth and dark green, and it strikes me that I am this way and would be hard to digest. My dad is putting away the groceries, which is my mom’s chore. I feel as though I owe him a profound apology. He backs down my street.