Alive at the End of the World

In America, a gathering of people is called target practice or a funeral, depending on who lives long enough to define the terms.

I grieve the men I mistook for one another and the mistakes I mistook for men.

I wish I knew a woman who was both the light and every shadow the light pierces.

Alone and night-neoned, I write read drink drug grieve and all America keeps teaching me is that there are so many ways to die in America which, frankly, is qwhite confusing because this country killed you a decade ago and I’m still writing reading drinking drugging grieving binging binging blacking out in the cozy, claustrophobic home I’ve made out of how very, very much I miss you and the sky keeps throwing down consequences and corrections and histories and nations, I mean, come on, who can blame me for not wanting to go back outside?

The end of the world was mistaken for just another midday massacre in America.

I'm most dangerous when I'm hungry. I'm most hungry when I'm hurting. Seems like I'm always hurting.

A few months and many deaths ago, I asked someone "how are you doing" and felt, in the way her eye fell, how I had failed her before I had even reached the end of my question. I've hurt many people but it's the unintended wounds I claim now as children.

I don't watch the video but I can feel it playing on a loop in a room miles away from where he keeps dying behind my eyes. All I have left are tiny twitches, small choices. "Please," I beg alone in the box of my dark, "I don't want to hurt that way today. I already hurt that way yesterday. Please don't kill him again.

We dialed the newly dead but they wouldn't answer. We texted, begging us to call them back, but the newly dead don't know how to read. In America, a gathering of people is called target practice or a funeral, depending on who lives long enough to define the terms.