noe-bixby

I used to swim with the fish. I used to dive into coral reefs, sink into ecosystems of impassioned colors and complications, just to uncover rusted pieces of myself. I dove too deep sometimes, submerging my few and only certainties into a cold suspending darkness of somber and shameful truth. I was deep once. I drowned. I prefer to keep my feet buried safely in the shore now. my heart and the ocean have been at my back while I decide whether sand or surf feels better in my lungs. I've asphyxiated in both.

what flows from me flows right by you. i reek of repetition. repeated sounds repeated words repeated meanings. you see, i have this belief that if i say the exact right thing in the exact right way you'll feel it. if i pull the trigger enough times, go through enough ammunition, i'll hit my target. someday, one of my word bullets will strike you like you've stricken me.

I swallowed stones for a girl once, tethered a daughter to my arm, raised her with my own hands, and pulsed so much blood through the wire it became a vein. Eventually I fell, slammed to the floor, like a marionette savagely thrown against a wall. My guts were full, of sediment and my stomach swelled too much. I breathed dust and ants, swallowed as much as I was able, and tried to get up with my daughter in tow. Clumsily falling back over, with bruised hands and forced, rough, breathing, I felt tension from the other side. The line pulled taut and hard and dragged me from its end across so many splintering boards I

Something broke. A hard CRACK while sitting in a soft chair. No pain registered. The absence of it is like watching explosions in space. You follow the curve of your skull. You remember how skulls are formed like tectonic plates. Your head wants to be a planet, volcanic, living, in change. You continue to your left shoulder, the one with all the problems. But today, it has nothing to say. Your rib cage moves like oceanic waves, expecting a storm that hasn't come. You stand up, homo erectus, you consider your legs, homo sapiens, nothing feels wrong, homo stabilis. But you can break more than your body.