i am the passenger
i ride and i ride
i ride through the city’s backsides
i see the stars come out of the sky
I just got a ride home from the gym from a 40-ish year old five foot tall white woman that I’ve never talked to before tonight.
She offered as she saw me leaving. I live literally across the street. Maybe a 5-10 minute walk.
I asked her why she wanted to give me a ride and she said “Because with what’s going on out there I don’t think it’s safe for you to talk alone in the dark.”
I’m a black male in my late 20s who is six feet 8 inches tall and is roughly 400 lbs. I’m a literal giant.
And she feared for my safety because of what she’s seen on the news all week.
Think about that shit.
“June, July, August. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go.”
— Mary Oliver, from Devotions: The Selected Poems; “August,” (edited)
β¦Iβve been so close to an endurable solitude, here, as soon as the βworldβ shows its nose, I felt nowhere near so well.
To the person I will be when the depression
isn’t quite so heavy, please tell me you remember
the way the stars in
middle-of-nowhere New Mexico
left you sobbing. Remember
all the beautiful moments that
softened the heartbreak.
Remember that you have kissed
more best friends than you haven’t.
Remember how safe you felt with them.
Maybe now, you don’t feel like you have to
give everyone your body to be worthy of their time,
but please remember the weight
of sharing a bed when you are at
your loneliest. Remember how these people
carry parts of you that you were afraid
to carry for yourself. I hope whoever
is warming your bed, now,
is as gentle with you
as they were.
For the day when I have it all figured out:
I don’t want to know the ending.
As tempting as it would be
to reach forward into the future and ask
if I ever find a time when I am okay,
I don’t need to know all of the answers.
My story is unwinding like a spool of thread.
I lost track of where I started–
left it back somewhere in the minotaur maze
that my life became after the depression.
If I chase my life all the way to the end of the thread
I will be left with nothing. And I don’t know
how much I believe in palm reading,
but I’ve got a long life-line–
broken with uneven heartache but
still going.
A psychic once told me that
I had seen death
three times.
If only she knew how often death
made an appearance in my bathroom mirror,
how I greet him as casually as an estranged neighbor.
If only she knew how I learned
to turn him away.
Dear person I will be when I am not
this–
I’m coming.
Save a seat
for me.
It is awful to want to go away and to want to go nowhere.
Neil Hilborn, “This is Not the End of the World”
I’ve been hearing that the world is ending.
I’ve heard it so much these days i can either completely ignore it or never leave my house again,
that is if I actually left my house for things that don’t directly enable me to keep my house,
see
I’ve been thinking about driving nowhere.
I’ve been thinking about becoming a box inside a locked room inside a dark house at the dark end of the street.
I want to go away until i’m gone
it takes so much less energy to not exist than it does to exist and get burned.
I’ve been burned so much i’m not me anymore, I’m a stupid puppet version of me
I’ve got strings that lead to nowhere,
nothing is pulling on me
I wish someone would drag my hand out of hiding and sign my name on a dotted line
There are days that I cannot find the sun even though its right outside my goddamn window.
when getting out of bed feels like the key in the doomsday machine,
so on those days this is what I tell myself:
Whatever you’re feeling right now there is a mathematical certainty that someone else is feeling that exact thing.
This is not to say you’re not special
this is to say thank god you aren’t special
I have kissed no one good night
I have launched myself from tall places and hoped no one would catch me.
I have ended relationships because suddenly I was also exposed
Isolation is not safety, it is death.
If no one knows you’re alive, you aren’t.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around to hear it, it does make a sound but then that sound is gone.
I’m not saying you will find the meaning of life in other people,
Im saying other people are the life to which you provide the meaning,
see we’re wrong when we say
I think therefore I am.
The more we say it the more it sounds like
I think therefore I will be.
You cannot think yourself into a full table
You cannot think and make walls and a roof appear around you
I have thought
and thought myself into corners made of words and nightmares
and what has it gotten me,
but more thoughts.
a currency that only buys more currency,
so please
if you want to continue existing
do something
learn to make clouds using only your breath
build a house even if every wall leans to the left
love it anyway
just like a season
just like a child
love how you hate yourself sometimes because goddamn at least there’s still something to hate
I know how easy it is to think and keep thinking until you’re the last person left on earth
until the entire world becomes no larger than the space between your bed and the light switch
but
I hear the world is ending soon.
when we go, and we’re all going to go
I will be part of it.
Everyday Thoughts On Everyday Things by Rachel Denti
“Series of illustrations for a zine inspired on thoughts that come to my mind, most of the times out of nowhere or for no particular reason, on a daily basis.”
Rachel Denti is a graphic designer originally from Brazil, but currently residing in Den Haag, Netherlands. She is focused on graphic design, illustration, painting and drawing.
“I’m a wretch. But I love, love.”
— Jack Kerouac, from “Little Motel: Satori In Paris,” published c. 1966
