Finished April 2017
Published 6 March 2018
I crave—with every fiber of my veins, my head, my heart (if I have one), for something inexplicable. I mask this desire so well, let the daylight pilfer it and the nighttime relieve it, and I laugh at it before amiable faces and wretch at it before pristine, sun-slanted surfaces. White walls, shaded windowpanes, dead computer screens. The skin of my own palm serves as a reminder. It is all a reminder of that desire.
Does it have a word? I could conjure up a few from my memory that could prod at its earnest meaning; Weltschmerz. Revolution. Existentialism. Freedom. I yearn to become wholly selfless yet detached; in harmony yet in rebellion. My thoughts rifle back through the years, the moments, that second of euphoria and melancholia, when I woke up one morning and decided, yes—I am the savior. Yes—I will save the world. Yes—I will follow my dreams, and yes—to life. Yes to pain. Yes to angst. Yes to uncertainty, to the unknown. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes to whatever strikes me in the gut of flesh and feeling, so long as I am in the right.
That right is what I crave.
What label do you slap over the fractured dream? I realize I have been realizing my realization since the moment my eyes were shot with light. The moment I parted my tiny lips and drank in the wind of plasticine breaths and soothing hums and decay. I was coaxed into belief since the moment I was born. I was fed, caressed and believed in. I knew it then. I know it now. I know. I know. I know.
My dear German brother. He has slaughtered a landscape—each pair of eyes, a miracle. A flower. A dream. A belief. He uprooted the beauty in blood and toxin and bourgeois murmurings. My dream—über alles! Your dream—es tut mir leid, mein Freund! No matter how many illusions my brother had destroyed, he remains my brother. He remains yours. And his. And hers. No matter how many dusks I spend lamenting my salt-streaked ambitions, my gratification will always fall short, and the word ‘life’ becomes equidistant to that of the Annex. Ende, ende, ende gut, alles, alles, alles gut.
Revolution. No word is as beautiful, or as unforgiving. Let us yank out the sternums of those who die smiling, teeth glittering, pillows overflowing with sweaty banknotes—and we rise! Crimson and jet are the pigments of every soul-surging rebellion. Blood-murals of the alleyway, cheeks sizzling as your thoughts dance to what the future months hold. Black like oblivion, the universe spinning out of orbit, out of mind, black like change. I cannot see into the night, still, I know it welcomes me with justness. There are no shadows in an overcast realm. Lift me higher above those clouds, and, by God, I’ll believe it. Belief, and change, and blindness, and love. Blood does not have to spill for a timid voice to be heard by—all.
“The world sadness that rises into the soul…” I feel it when my eyelids crack at the shriek of routine. I feel it when words drool from my gums like paste. I feel it when I sit there, my thighs slackening over rusty bolts and million-year disposables. I feel it when I move my gaze from my hands, so clean, to the wall, so clean, to the glass—so clean. Beyond the window, I’d feel fine. Within cinderblocks, I am currently confined, complaints and resolutions my pardons to you, you, and you. My aspiration lies in a soil-crusted palm somewhere, with splintered lips fanned out in laugher, and snowflakes cutting up Third World boulevards.
What can I say? Education is key. If not Messiah today, then television it shall be. I’ll persist in spurting melancholy, and disregard how my lungs tremble the longer I stare. It is true—walls are my excuse for neglecting those suffering. Soul-sadness, indeed. Indeed.
Freedom.
When I look through the glass and up at the forever, violet-tinged night, chills rake my soul, and I am left begging silently for something invisible. Feeling like I am somewhere I should not be, silver threads pulling me forward into the dark warmth of summer nights and winter trees. Night is when I feel powerful, because it is the only time I—and everyone—are free.
My body, I will lament.
But a revolutionary, I shall be.