i say things like, “i don’t trust people” or “i like people better from a distance” as if i’m okay with that, as if i could develop as a person if i actually believed and practiced everything i said. but the opposite holds true more often than not, which does tend to be a little frustrating, because even though i know those feelings are there, i am naturally inclined to trust, to find the little things to like about a person, to give the benefit of the doubt.

and as much as i secretly try to keep people out in a half-assed attempt at self-preservation, they always find a way to say or do something that softens me.

(i am annoyed by this as you can imagine.)

stupid as it sounds, i find myself feeling mildly resentful when anyone new unwittingly plants new memories where ones already exist, as if i should say, “excuse me, but you don’t belong here.”

i get jealous and sentimentally overprotective of the weirdest things.

sometimes i wish songs were like books, an object you can hold. the songs that stir in me a kind of light, a kind of floating happiness, are frequently the ones that are frustrating to listen to, like you’re a dying star inhaling the solar system and you can’t die just yet so this infinite universe is stuck inside of you with no way out. and sometimes i feel like shaking the music right out of them. i want them to tumble out, tear out the chords from the memories they evoke from the heartstrings they touch from the spine it sends shivers to. i want to feel the loss of something i ruined and reassemble it the way i want it so it appears untouched again.

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i remember the flushed moon on your shoulder, descending, caving to crescent like you were erasing silver flesh off the sky with the dark fabric of your shirt, soaked in sweat and alcohol and traces of diamond dust that your cells inhaled and released, these chemicals like strong currents at high tide, when i finally stopped looking for you.

i had a dream where my pet tamagotchi bunny decided to run away, and my phone was alerting me to its escape. so i go into this pixelated world that isn’t so pixelated when you’re in it, all spring yellows and bubblegum pink and mint greens, leaves shivering on white-silver trunks, and i avoid the forest and stay on this curving path, and i finally see my brown rabbit in a nest under a tree. i slow down and walk past it to an elderly man who’s picking out eggs from his own rabbit’s nest, and it’s a caramel egg. it’s all candy. so i turn back to my animal and gather all its candy eggs, hoping it laid a caramel apple as i… wake up.

last night, i slept in hour intervals, and for every time i slept, i remembered a different dream. this happens a lot, i’ve discovered, when i’m overwhelmed with emotions. it’s like every feeling i have that i can’t explain into words unfold in these visual sequences when i sleep. and they’re always like this, like i inhaled a bunch of sprinkles and a bag of crazy cats before bedtime.

it’s that disconnected feeling that prompts me into a state of intense organization, as if the act of sorting and piling and rearranging might displace that numbness, where the rest of me—the bones, veins, blood, cells, and brain, synapses, chemicals can settle back into place. disjointed, like you can take a person apart and solve them whole again, finding the various ways you can collapse and reassemble.

and it’s always spaces and things that aren’t my own. i start with haphazardly tossed items like junk or regular mail, picking at one lodged underneath a crumpled sweater, and then i work on folding clothes, searching for a missing sock that’s hiding tangled cables under the bed, and i’m unraveling wires until a random pin falls onto my lap, so i put that in its own pile with the other miscellaneous objects that aren’t mine to deal with, and suddenly everything is clean, in stacks, put away, forgotten.

i’m trying really hard because at the end of the day, none of it should really matter. but i don’t like being taken by surprise, i like things that are concrete, things i can touch, things my mind can wrap itself around. it’s like falling and zero gravity catching you when all you want to feel is the impact of a hard surface.

i like to pretend i understand other people, but i don’t. they’re as complex as the state of my own room because i’m too busy, too preoccupied trying to fix theirs.

artificially and chemically infused.

it’s a sad affair.