Are you still listening for it?
The incessant splashing against the glass on a dark afternoon
Whilst inside you bake bread and mend holes in old loved clothes,
Warm cat on your lap,
Later you meet your warm lover in your bed.
Do you still listen for the beginnings of the shower before you know for sure it's even in the air?
You check your weather app eight times a day
And never wear open toed shoes if there's ever a cloud above you.
Are you still packing an umbrella into your little bags?
You know it never rains when you have it. Why does it never rain when you have it?
You start to believe that maybe you are magic and so you always carry an umbrella and now it is shining.
But why are you still waiting for it to pour?
To make up for the burden of protection?
To make the effort all mean something?
Can you still smell the storm before it arrives?
Does your blood still run in tune with the currents of the air? Do the hairs on your arms stand up when it is coming?
Are you bracing yourself or do you still love it?
The excitement of the electricity and wetness and risk all around you with each loud flash.
Don't leave the house lest it strike you down
Because if it were to happen to anyone, it would be you.
Does your heart still sink when you open the curtains and see the gloom?
Even though the sun was shining on your worst days because the sun always shines on your worst days and pathetic fallacy isn't real.
You're not living on a flood plane.
All the trees are waving,
In that, all the trees sound like waves in the wind.
The rhythm of this water is in the leaves all shuddering their bodies against one another
And it is not raining.
There are so many weathers and it is not raining
Though it will come again and the shuddering trees will be thankful for it.
It will spill down their green palms and spiny fingers,
Caress their planted bodies on its way to the earth
And they will be filled with all of its life.
You remark that you are waterproof, fireproof, bombproofed like a spooky horse
You drink three litres of water a day lest your body shuts down
and you don't know how it feels to have your feet in the grass whilst the rain falls on your skin.
It flows around your house through the pipes and the gutters and you sit inside and listen with some degree of anticipation
Or confirmation or validation or something something that you knew this would happen,
That you knew it was to be expected to come again
But the house you have built channels the water away from you
And the bricks are still standing
And you're inside where you have all of your things
And all of your loves
And the anticipation of the downpour never made it stop.
Related Recs
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She says there’s a tornado watch, and I shrug it off as I turn another page to my book. I just want to be reminded of what used to be real for a while before I join her to bed. I have 90 minutes before the dreams take me back for what I owe them.
In the meantime, I’m with Ultra and Andy. I’m back in a place where the shitty instant movies meant something, not because they inherently meant something, but because a soup can was empty enough for the public to carry. Carry it they would, with enough means to make Ultra regret her own full stomach. The cans she had Andy sign could’ve funded her retirement, but the Factory was hungry. I’ve yet to create my food art that gets people interested in my shit movies.
The wind starts growling against the windows in a way I haven’t heard in the decade I’ve lived here. The rain sounds sideways. I wake her from the bathroom as the wind has caught me on a break, and the living room is more window than wall. We’ve taken to sleeping on an air mattress in the living room floor by the windows. It was lovely under the tree in December, but now there’s no hiding why.
It feels too real for a moment. I ask her to double check the radar. She says it’s fine, and she goes back to sleep. She already has me put on rain sounds with another apartment view on the TV nightly, though I don’t think either of us would have heard a difference had I turned it off now. Andy believed we would prefer the simulation. I‘m afraid he may be right. I’m afraid because I can’t control the one with a remote. Yes, that’s usually true, but for the moment I’m more afraid of the one outside my actual window that has no remote. Pontificating about simulacra or not, I’m afraid.
As the storm starts to calm, the red light hitting my blinds from the LEDs is flashing. A fire truck is outside my window. Are these red lights more real, more meaningful? Do they make my fear more meaningful? The fire truck leaves (me).
My 90 minutes have become 3 hours. My debt is greater. I can’t hide, and I’m afraid. It’s time to pay. I’ll simulate another violent death, wake up, and feel a little less convinced I’m about to be killed again since we’re in the living room. The lights help me see less of what isn’t there. I can see the front door bar intact with my own eyes. I’m safe enough to die in my sleep again. Good morning.
Feb 16, 2025
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I find myself lingering, in front of the sun drenched window feeling my body glow gold in the languid warmth, under the sweet shade of a magnolia flower - encumbered by its beauty - in the shower for just a bit too long, pittering pattering weaving in and out thoughts that circle and circle endlessly until they scatter away like the little drops jumping off of my arms in a free fall. I don't leave until the water has its fill of me.
There's a clock inside, or not a clock, a phrase or phase that sets the motion of each act. I try to hold every moment as long as possible or it slips away. why is life so fleeting? The more I do the less there is.
Less flyaway cast shadows that peer off of my body, the obstruction basking in a heated glow. Less time for my thoughts to finish their race and half jog back exhausted but satisfied. Satisfied. Am i satisfied?
Apr 16, 2024
The sharp scent of rain tumbles clumsily in as you tease window-hinges wider with the pads of your fingers. A siren trails close behind, uninvited, sears your eardrums, dies off down the block.
Your neighbors are arguing again. Laundry, loans, lack of commitment… like yesterday, like the day before.
You think it would be suffocating to wrap yourself up in someone else’s sheets.
It’s five o’clock. Leaning against the sill and flicking the radio dial with one recently manicured nail, you tune into the local news. Roaring wall of static, then calm conversation between two anchors bubbling up through an old set of Panasonic loudspeakers.
You are feeling incomplete today, like yesterday, like the day before.
Rigatoni boils in the kitchen. You check the leftmost cabinet and find strawberry jam, unopened. You check the cupboard and look over a tub of tahini, a collection of canned soup, and a stack of pie tins. You check the counter, behind the cutlery. Finally, you check the fridge, ducking down to see only your own brown-eyed reflection in one last — now empty — jar of Prego. Your shoulders dip.
You slip on white sneakers, not-so-white-as-they-once-were. Why did you try to paint the front door? It is peeling now, ugly like a fledgling losing young feathers. Flecks of buttery yellow dapple paisley carpeting.
The great outdoors wait for you at the bottom of a cramped stairwell with twin light fixtures, both broken.
A sky like an old sweater is draped above Brooklyn, ready to wring itself out again at any moment.
Once around the block, rubber soles brushing damp cement, you walk briskly. At first you fling yourself against the humidity, then become self-conscious and adopt a slower pace as you near the corner store.
Two dollars, sixty cents. Like last week, like the week before.
You and I, we are looking down at our phones and stumble into each other, halfway home.
It is no one’s fault.
You recognize me from somewhere, you say, and feel like a bad person for lying. You have never seen me before in your life. I ask for your number.
That night you eat too quickly, knowing you’ll wish you’d saved some leftovers.
I come over once, then again.
We go out for dinner at tacky restaurants, where art deco posters from the nineteen-thirties have pinned themselves up in scattered flocks across worn-out drywall and the menu is printed with strange font on laminated placemats. The appetizer sample photos are unnerving; the bruschetta cowers like a scared animal awash in excessive camera flash. I make a joke about it, and you laugh.
We order dishes to share. The food is always better than I expected, but not quite as good as you wanted it to be.
You don’t mind.
We talk for hours.
We agree, ballpoint pens are better.
I hold you, and the ten p.m. bus pulls you out of my arms and through the dusky streets, past crowds and utility poles.
I hold you, and we rhyme our steps. Burgundy is around us in the leaves and in the dirt. You wear a coat I gave you.
I hold you, and we swat flies out on your porch. The days are getting shorter.
I hold you, and we watch blu-ray CDs you found on sale. Soft light from the flatscreen plays across your face as you fall asleep. I keep the movie on a little longer.
I hold you. In December, we bring a blanket to Long Island and listen to the sound of snow falling on the dunes.
You call in sick for work too often.
I hold you, and you know my callouses well.
We share the same sheets; we are wrapped up in each other.
I hold you, and kiss your hair.
You smell like candied oranges.
The afternoons eat away at one another. Dishes pile like uneven layer-cakes in your kitchen sink, crested with suds.
You say you feel uninspired.
Now we argue about laundry, and the sounds of your unhappy apartment are heard through half-open windows.
You shout, eyebrows furrowed like the pages of a book. A white plate soars from the grip of a trembling hand, misses an upturned chin, and interrupts us with its shattering.
This time, it’s different.
Sleep escapes us ‘til the sun is already planted on the easternmost rooftop.
I hurt you the way I learned to, and stay awhile, but don’t know why I stay.
We sink into sweet, heavy things: the saxophone in “Charcoal Baby”, shared creamsicles on hot Saturday evenings.
I see you less and less, and remember less and less of you.
Will I see you next week?
Yes, if you text me.
You forget,
just like we’d both hoped.
Sep 17, 2024
Top Recs from @caskeyc
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1. Don't set an alarm and wake up naturally. Snooze for however long you want to, it's okay
2. Have breakfast. For me it's toast. Have it with butter/jam/honey and a lot of water and coffee and juice.
3. Listen to an album in full and do some puzzles until it ends. I like to stick a record on and do the nyt games (connections, then wordle, then the mini, then I'm ready for a crossword)
4. Shower and use all your best stuff. Smell great. Make your hair feel soft.
5. Wear an outfit you don't get to wear that often. I tend to wear the same thing over and over at work so I wear something a bit more fun and less practical.
6. Go outside. I live near a road with secondhand shops that are great browsing but quite tempting on a budget. To beat the temptation just look in the windows and then walk round the streets or to a green space if it's a nice day. Walk as fast or as slow as you like. Try and spot cats that might let you stroke them. See how each place you go smells different. Walk down streets that you've not been down before just because.
7. Come home and decide how much energy you have. If you have energy do an activity (I would write, play an instrument, do some art, read, play a game) if you don't then watch something from your watchlist. Saturdays feel like a good day to watch something new.
8. Cook yourself a meal. Start before you're hungry and spend ages on it. Use every pot. Listen to music. Sing whilst you wash the dishes.
9. Play! Video games, board games, internet games, card games, phone games, rearrange your plushies, embrace your inner child. Play with ideas, experiment with felt tip pens, write a limerick. Get silly with it.
10. Talk to your friends. Invite them over, call somebody up, text that person back you didn't have time to. I like to spend a good day off by myself then have a great time talking to people after I've recharged.
11. Have so much fun getting to do whatever you want you fall asleep at whatever time. Monday - Friday is about appeasing your body clock, Saturdays are for filthy pleasures like falling asleep at 3am because you were too busy flirting or reading or watching videos.
Apr 16, 2024
Re: my last rec I'm kinda realizing reading this might have changed my life actually
Apr 16, 2024