go beyond the limits of.
Sometimes I imagine myself breathing life into ideas I muster up, and they miserably claw at my skull, unable to break free. Why would they? They have no means by which to escape. So they mold themselves into words and force me to sit down and lay them out. We’re prisoners to one another. They loom over me and stalk my thoughts like wolves circling prey. I write them down so they can attack someone else, and that’s the only way they leave me be. The good ones are parasitic and the bad ones fizzle away. I try to make them digestible, make them human. So I model words after my own image and likeness, like God does us. Except I don’t believe we actually look anything like God. We’re undoubtedly just some text He shows friends and classmates. He posts us on an Instagram account or publications. We’re little narrative pieces He crafts in bed when the silence is too loud. Nights move slowly there. And it makes perfect sense that He should. After all, God would be a writer. Everything is a story. Everything is only ever a story. Everything is a story and every story is loss.
die.
We lost Chai in June. Josiah named her, and we lost him a few months before that. She ran out the front door and underneath a car chasing some dog across the street. I didn’t see it, but my mom did. Her shriek expelled the whole block from their houses. I ran out in nothing but my underwear. Chai lay motionless on the street, staring through me. When I picked her up, her neck snapped backwards in my hands. A few hours later I dug her grave and lowered her into the ground, reading Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” for her eulogy. Another dog was sleeping in her bed the week after. I hope that isn’t how the Writer in the sky mourns us when we’re gone, by drowning sorrow with replacement.
happen; be done or said.
The month after, I nearly drowned in Rockaway Beach. My mom had told me not to go into the water that morning; I hadn’t even brought a towel. The lifeguard left at sunset, but my friends stayed to swim. All things considered, their pleas for my joining them were met with very little resistance. I took off my clothes and lunged into the murk after them. Low tide swept us out in secrecy. We hadn’t even realized we couldn’t make it back until someone started crying for help. Then panic spread to the rest of us like a cancer. I desperately thrashed my arms and legs toward the shore. But all I did was negate the tides. Swimming in place, water bludgeoning my throat and nostrils, I tried to touch the ocean floor to see if I was making progress, and gave up only when I realized I couldn’t even see it. Drowning is so quiet; it gives you time to think. Ultimately, I made peace with dying. And as I closed my eyes, ready to meet my Writer and my dog, the tides spit us back to shore like chewed gum.
a rejection of dismissal.
I never know why writing is so important to me. My parents tell me it’s amazing that I have something I’m so passionate about. They, in their religious zeal, assure me it’s a gift. And who am I to say otherwise? I wouldn’t know. All I know is that I don’t have a choice. It’s an intoxicating power, that of creation. It’s the most and least human thing there is. But that’s hardly an answer to family and interviewers, that I’m an addict to my craft. So for now, I just tell them I love stories. Everything is a story, I say. Everything is only ever a story. I contemplate telling them that I have stories I haven’t published and pieces I haven’t started that carve into the back of my mind with knives and never stop screaming. That ideas wash over me like low tide, and I can’t swim to shore. I thrash. And I thrash. But it’s dark, and drowning is so much nicer than they say. Nights move too quickly here anyway. I’ll have to go to sleep soon. And I’ll have to start them tomorrow, or at least some day. But for now, I’ll leave them here.