poetic prose composition, 2024
i.
The worst part is the darkened house on the corner. The worst part is the moon behind clouds (oh, it’s full tonight). It’s six pm and the kids have all left; going to sleep, doing their homework, tucked away. Build a 300 square foot attachment onto your home to house the cage you will die in one day. Then put a television in there. Sit and meditate, listen to the peals of wind rip through the slats of your white plastic fence and wonder if you’re safe here. It’s not the tornadoes that will kill you, it's the monoculture. Raise a family – actually why stop there? Raise two families, or three! In different towns strewn across the Rust Belt. Tell them all you work in pharmaceutical sales.
Every Halloween, your neighbors drag a creaking metal fire pit to their driveway and sit during trick-or-treat. Every Halloween, you spook the local kids by hiding in the bushes.
Stand out front this year and wait for your greatest fears to come spook you.
ii.
The problem is there are no signs for three-quarters of a mile; the moon is still full but the stars can’t guide you now. If you want to feel lost and alone you should move to Utah. If you want to feel lost and alone you should move to Iowa. If you want to feel lost and alone you should move to North Carolina with no plans of ever showing your face in this town again. I am certain someone will wonder what happened to you, someday. I heard a story of a girl who finished high school in a small town. People are more casual than you’d think but that doesn’t make them not-beautiful. It’s worse when that mansion on the hill is pristine; I mean to say, don’t clean this week and see what happens. The problem is that neat edges don’t give you anything to share when you go away. Hi! My name is, and I love.
Then again, being a teenage girl has this sticky aura all around it – it will stick forever if you’re not careful. All of a sudden you look over your shoulder and you’re back where you started: ︎Ghost town-Nowhere-Can’t come back.
You know teenage girls shouldn’t be storytellers. This is the only warning I can give.
Surrender your alms before she comes out to snatch you too.
iii.
You make me fucking sick. Driving around at night.
Euphoric recall is described as a psychological phenomenon where people tend to remember past events in a more positive light than they actually were. These empty lots don’t belong to me, I must go now. And as for you, the last of the sunlight is setting on your block and I would recommend you get inside before darkness falls. My spine has frozen over and I’m watching you run through the motions. Autumn is a season for the dying dead. November a curse. You and I both know the moon is the only part worth writing for.
We decay! Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean. Father, daughter, soccer practice, community center, catholic church, gas station, double wide boulevards… and the swans on the bank by the lake near the bend.
Aspirational space: it was all around me.
I feel terror at the back of my throat.