He broke up with me on a Sunday, the night before I read A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I absorbed Shakespeare like a flower in red dye, and Epictetus like a prescription pill—the one to give me the shallowness of love and the other to warn me of its danger. Classes had always been an escape, but now everything was muddled, mushed together, and grey. The only time my thoughts settled was when I climbed the mountain. It was still winter, so in my snow boots and thrift store jacket, I’d walk up the small ravine carved by a spring creek. I’d discover frozen water caught mid-jump off rocks, or sit on the rope swing and read, or track deer prints through the short, ancient piñon trees dotting the mountainside. Though there were signs of other people, I never felt so alone as when I was in the mountains, and powerful, as if my feet were discovering something new with every step. One became the perfect number. And then I met Leon. Spring came the way it always does—unexpectedly and a
A Confused Adult ft. Descartes by Porsheee, literature
Literature
A Confused Adult ft. Descartes
You see, it was easier before Bodies were seen, not Heard. It was easier when our Stick limbs and small Hands were faeries, when Dreams were more real than Reality, when we could be Dragon trainers and princesses and witches and To be something meant to be something In our heads. It was easier before bodies Were, at all, really, Before we grew taller and Wider and out and around and Before our bodies were Seen, not A placeholder for A mind. It was easier when being a mind Meant being an imagination; It was easier when we didn’t have to Read books just to feel Like ourselves Again which really meant To be no one at all Because deep down isn’t that Who we all are? It was easier before Strangers made us Afraid of our own bodies, Reminded us that We are our skin. It was easier before Middle school jokes and Prods and late bloomers and It was easier before Everything was about Being. Seen. It was easier when being a mind Was being at all. But we live in the after. And so we
Tick. Tick. Tick.
June stared at the alarm clock. She didn’t know where it came from, how it got there. All she knew was that it looked almost exactly like her father’s old one, with a yellowed face and bold, old style numbering.
It sat on the shelf in the antique shop, and while a thin layer of dust coated everything else, it looked newly cleaned. It seemed out of place in general, she thought, still staring. It was the only mechanical thing in the shop; there were mostly just carvings and furniture.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Maybe it was the owner’s alarm clock, and for some reason they