THREADCOUNT

True Form

I’m still waiting for mine: to shed the skin of my face and reveal a pulsing brain with electricity for optic nerves, to become green beast with horns and a snake for an arm, fly with one wing—theme music and a six-foot sword. I will don new white robes in a white room: endless. Kids will lose their shit when they see me for the first time. I’ll be the version featured in all the best fan art. I will be final armor, glowing hands, golden skin, space leviathan powered by seven emeralds. Third eye, tattoo-like markings on arm, second evolution of starter. Super Badass so you must announce my name when you see me. Behold my true form and despair! Until then, I am Mario sans red mushroom: tiny, shape confined by pixels, just one accident away from death.

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I’ll never be able to throw Love out the window  

after Rimbaud

but shit, I’ve tried. What they don’t tell you is Love is like a boomerang, like a bur—those things you find deep in the fur of your dog’s tail after he was running through the bushes: sticky, stabby, useful for reproduction. Love comes standard with defenestration repellant—option for spoiler on the back. There are 14 years worth of pictures in which I’m not smiling. Since, I’ve tried to shred my abstract into concrete bits. I have a fascination with jackhammers. Twice I plunged my hand into 5 inches of cement slabs—each time, at least 1 inch didn’t break but neither did my hand. I’ll take it. Someone I love once hit me in the forehead with a golf club. I protect my whatever-it-is-that’s-left after the scarring. Fuck windows; I keep them up and pump the A/C. In the winter I wear a catcher’s mitt that I can’t use because I’m afraid of baseballs. My subconscious—fuck my subconscious—tries to lose things on purpose, things like the safe memories, like myself, like the window’s glass: things that will cling and always shatter.