I’ve Been Running Away from My Life My Whole Life

I'm not supposed to want
For things to be better.
That must be a selfish thing to want
Because wanting things is selfish.
I learned this a long time ago and so I became addicted to wanting things.
Those things came in many forms and usually had less to do with the money that a thing could cost and more to do with the way that thing would fill a hole in me.

“Why are there so many holes in you?” ***

See when I was a kid I used to go over to a friend's house. She was older. She started cutting holes in me. This happened for several years.

I did a seance with the girl whose mouth hurt my mouth. Her mom was upset about it so she got me fired from my job. Telling the story that way makes it sound like those things happened quickly. They did not.

Some seances keep going because at a certain point you're always talking to a dead person.
All you need to do is live a while. The more you do that, the more that death becomes this
Ongoing singular event that both holds you to the floor and beats you while also becoming a kind of elevator music.
It happens. We move forward. You're supposed to.
Because you're going to die one day too and so why not live now?

A present is presented:
You're there now. I'm not there now.
By writing this down it has become the past.
It has become a way of containing the past.
By pressing record I am saying this has already happened.
In this way you kill the moment.
In this way you make the moment into an offering to another moment.
You stick it in its mouth and you feed it.
An impact crater is not always easy to measure
But you can sure bet that a hungry stomach can be heard from across a room.

I close my eyes in the archive
And try to imagine every piece of history leaving me
Alone with a colour, maybe green
And not even the feeling,
Another dream that I've let go,
But when I wake up its only that I'm in this body and this body is an archive and the archive is unraveling and there won't be anyone to sort it out for me.

Every word is a sentence.
Some are paragraphs and treatises and some don't even mean
What you think they mean
Because we say them easily like we know what other people will think of when they hear it
Not realizing that every word inside each person is a story
That they're telling to themselves.
That's I guess why I gravitate towards this idea of words and sentences because
It’s the gesture of wanting to connect with another
To say “grief” or “love”
And have a person understand and react accordingly
But how can you react accordingly when words like this
Can't have any real pins in them?
Lots of people would argue that you could
And some would like to say that I complicate these things
But words like this cannot contain the very real way in which our lives infect them
And we each walk with them in our own ways
And say them in the moments that make sense to us
But we will also run into many moments where they are being said to us and they do not fit
Or we do not understand.

I'm trying to understand.
I want to meet you where the words are at.

I’ve been thinking about the way that the sky seems to break when I look up.
Is there a good word for a cloud that doesn’t look like anything
Or is that what a cloud like that is for?
To remind me that not everything can be made into something.
Not everything can be described.

What am I to do with this feeling?
Cut some hair, put it in a cloth
Draw a diagram of how to get to where I lost myself.
Nobody needs me, that's not even why I'm here.
When all that's left is some hair in a cloth
And a diagram to where I lost myself
Do I really think anyone will understand a single thing I lived my life for?

*** “Why are there so many holes in you?
Protecting myself looks like putting a bag on my head and breathing deep.
Why does everything dark come out of me when I try to sing?
Hi, how are you?
Hi, how are you?
I’ve been trying to reach you.
I’ve been trying to reach you.
I’ve been shouting your name to the stars.
That’s where you are, I guess, I don’t know.
I don’t know where we go.
I shouldn’t need.
I shouldn’t need and need and need needlessly.
Oh god, I don’t know if this is worth unraveling
But I’m speaking into the microphone again
And the sky is threatening to rain.
A sweater I find in a box –
Soaking, threadbare, discarded.
Worn out on me.
And if I think about the colours too long, I’ll feel sick
With a wanting that will never be satisfied.
Leave the lights on.
Leave the lights on.
I need to see the way that I can move from this part of the room
To be closer to you.
I shouldn’t be closer to you.
I shouldn’t be closer to you.
Why are there so many holes in you?
Why are there so many holes in you?
I’m trying to talk to you.
I’m trying to talk to you.
I just want to explain it.
I just want to explain it.
Where does this need to explain it come from?
Why are there so many holes in you?
I want to meet you where the words are at.
Why are there so many holes in you?
I just don’t know.
I just don’t know how I’m supposed to choose a word.
How I’m supposed to choose a word
If I’ve been running away from my life my whole life.
What am I to do, what am I to do, what am I to do.
I’ve been running away from my life my whole life.
I’ve been running away from my life my whole life, it’s true.
I need to stop running.
I need to stop running.
I need to look at it for what it really is.”