I like the way that the air smells after the rain; cool and crisp like the skin on your mother's hands as she folded sheets over the line, stopping to breathe in the beginnings of fresh linen and success. I like writing in first-person, and I like to remind you of my mortality as many times as possible, saying “I am just a character, I am just a character” (I am Holden Caulfield, I am Holden Caulfield.) I like speaking of the things I enjoy, and I like saying “like” and “me,” “myself,” and “I” and stitching run-on sentences together without punctuation because (I am my own damn God) I can create a world for myself here in these words, one without anguish and, more importantly, one without you – a world where I can swallow the spaces between those inky-black limbs, fold in on myself in small doses, slowly fall to silence.

I thought I saw your face in a gas-station mirror and I shut my eyes tightly against memory because I cannot live within a memory, and I cannot live within you. I speak a hundred-thousand hurried words to the other end of the telephone, listening to a voice come through that isn't mine saying, “Calm down. Just calm down, it's alright,” which reminds me that I need to breathe to keep moving, and that I need to keep moving to make it home again.

(“Okay – everyone, we're about to do the tone change. Okay, everyone set? ACTION!”)

I dreamed last night that I finally caught up with time, and I reached inside his chest with grubby, childlike hands – pulled until the gears worked loose; swallowed them one by one, perfect synchrony, languid and routine as clockwork. And I twisted his fragile arms; maneuvered them like puppets, saying “Slow down. Speed up,” until he began to cry at the violation, but I laughed – I laughed and said “I am the end and the beginning” and realizing that he had no power, he crumbled under the weight of true mortality, repeating “I am Holden Caulfield, I am Holden Caulfield” over the airwaves and highways of his head until he truly believed it (and isn't that the most disgusting form of flattery?)

I think of telegrams each night as I lay in bed; picture dark shapes spelling out july is ending. stop. we lie (like brothers on a hotel bed) too often and it will. stop. we fade away together. stop. winter is coming. stop. fragments like the ones that live in my head – pieces of a puzzle you do with your grandmother at Christmas (she always had the patience for it, I never did) as you tell her in your infinite naiveté, “I have mastered time; brought about lightness and darkness – I am my own creator” as she reminds you that GOD, FATE, MORTALITY are the masters of this universe. They are the creator spirits. They are the bread, and even the wine. They are the life itself; and all of this time I spent thinking that I was my own god, that you were my own god, that I could create worlds was shattered because (I AM THE DESTROYER) I am the gear being consumed, I am the arm being twisted, I am the character and this is the stage and all of the memories I've been trying to crawl inside mean nothing to the person I have become since setting out (oh the shire, the beautiful shire) and I am angry in ways a creator never could be, I have been injured, and have been lost to darkness, and I have struggled for control and god, how did I even get here?

I called you “creator.” I called you by name, and you called me by “Eve” (you never could get it right) and I spent so much time hurting myself; being the sheets over the line, battered by the wind, that I cannot construct worlds for myself anymore. I am not “creator” (I AM THE DESTROYER) and the world here; the one that I could never quite conquer or recreate is the beautiful one – because it is real and fleeting and maybe I'd rather be a character on my own stage as opposed to this one; with a sсript and a purpose clear to me, but I would open a thousand doors, and I would suffer a thousand pains just to feel.

"And on her forehead, a name was written...a mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the Earth. And they threw dust on their heads, and were crying out, weeping and mourning; saying, "Woe, woe, the great city!" For in one hour, she has been laid waste."
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