Ugh. Or maybe not. (Who do we perform for!?) Mediocrity is so depressing.

Stop fucking around. This is it: yours. When were you ever mistaken until now? (But this is just the framework, fancied up.)

It's when shoving through the ocean during winter sounds like a good idea that you know you might be getting somewhere, but charging through the rain with a pit bull gets you noticed. It's when you fill your head with the most cunning self-deprecation imaginable for to disappear the irrational smile that still stays. It's how the things you do have to have never been done exactly before so that you can disregard anyone else's silly glance. It's sitting in a computer lab at 2am with your hood pulled over your face to keep your grin your own, and you know your eyes would show at least that they're holding something back.

But this isn't good enough yet. We've gotta make it into something, maybe magnificently important.

He's walking. Where's he walking to? He's in the forest. Is he with somebody? Alone? Of course he's alone. And he's barefoot. His shoes are in his backpack and his feet hurt, but he's glad of it...

The stones that had settled into dents on the bottom of his feet keep others from their intended invasion. Not that the pain differentiates this for him, he who would have felt either sentence sufficient. Presently, he mumbles to himself.

“It's not true, you know, don't pretend you don't! You know what's real, no matter how much you think you should forget...” He won't let his feet bleed. “Poetry's not good enough this time. There needs to be something more than words, but you have to bear it there beyond them. Just don't forget the taste in your mouth right now.”

I want to pinpoint this. I want to describe everything; it's all very important, if only because it's not that at all. But it's all here: the wrong necklace; the insistent smile; the unlived memory of sex; the smell of polluted sea on skin; the split-ends in honeyed hues; the disregarded fingertips; the dampness. What are we to do with all of it?

“Who else knows what it's like, not to be waited for?” He needs to eat something but he has no desire to subdue his body's complaints. It seems to him obscene, or at least inconsiderate, pausing to satisfy such things: it doesn't matter where he's going—what right has he to stop?

How can it be untrue, and still this real? [This is what you want at all times? Something better than what you have? Keep talking yourself down, love. Solitude is not a disease. If you could watch yourself from afar, you would find yourself suddenly proud. Don't forget that this is so.]