Britney

7” SHALLOW CUT
NO SAW SPUN

I see this on the walk to the store near my house and it touches a deeper part of me. Words on the street are the only foreign objects I’ve been allowing to get under my epidermis. In Tompkins I wrote, “THE INTRODUCTION OF A NEW HEAD SEVERS ITSELF,” even though I knew it would be washed away. The erasure is part of the comfort.

I find a copy of The Fountainhead and a pen on the way home. Everything I find on the sidewalk means something to me but I don’t always know what it is at first. On my birthday I found a broken “LEADER” pin and kept it next to my favorite lamp until I lost it somewhere in my room. I haven’t finished a book in a while that truly touched me, maybe except for Women by Chloe Caldwell and the entire time I read that I felt like I was relating in all the wrong ways.

I reach my house but I am not even close to where I need to be. I keep temporarily fooling myself into thinking that I am on the verge of attaining what I want, or even worse, into thinking that I know what I want. I hypnotize myself with baseless projections and the assurance that I can do it, but I don’t actually move towards any of it. I focus on ridiculous, empty parts of my life that will never have a positive impact on me: a false relationship, my terrifying inability to do anything important on time, my basket of dependencies, et cetera.

I hate to say it, but I’m a perpetual screw-up. I won’t say it’ll get better until it does. ♦