It was like reading advertisements to understand what it was that we were afraid of and what it was that we were afraid of disclosing about what we were afraid of. The thing about desiring something is becoming frustrated with how little it affords in the way of eliminating frustration. As though we couldn’t convince even our own utmost selves that there was something stable to be trusted, something that did not shift if a light was shown on it.

it was like diagnosing a basic soul sickness in the language of physical maladies when what is most despoiled is neither diseased nor curable. The thing about us now is how important and seemingly virtuous it is to own up to being unimportant and lacking in virtue. Call me a walking and talking stress injury or a living breathing fatigue syndrome, but don’t you for a minute call me inauthentic, is how the message tacitly seems to come across. As though being intentional at being bad at life is a gold star to pin to the back cover of a self-help journal pilfered from a thrift store on Broadway.

It was like reading the lines of palms to ascertain when the brain and the heart and the involuntary metabolic processes would run flat. The thing about staying spiked and steady is how at some point wanting to stay spiked and steady in a sustainable way is not enough. As though we tried but failed to give rhetoric the chance to shore up the yawning maw that fundamentals analysis could not close, that cloistered perfidy would persist in sundering again.

It was like a warm amniotic calm and had nothing to do with sex or birth or dialectic closure. The thing about granting introspection a reprieve and just diving under the wave before it breaks over you is you are less likely to be borne back toward shore and then sucked out uncomprehending to where touching down is no longer an option. As though just finding a thousand pictures that might mean one word is the hidden path leading back to the wound, however indirectly, always exposed in one way or the other in the pale light of a harvest moon.