In the summer of 2012 (after I finished my first book of poems) I began a project called Your Life: 26 Questions for 13 Portraits of People I Don’t Know from the Internet. I wrote 26 questions. One for each letter of the alphabet. Posted them on the internet. And asked strangers to send me their answers.
Being alone, willingly cut off from other human beings, seems so desirable. In a forest with mountains that look like parts of the moon. Because the moon fell down some day. It has a sweet smell. Stonesugar. Maybe I was too young, my skin too healthy, for loneliness, _aloneness_, to crawl up and get inside. I lived in my dreams and thought I had found my own kind of happiness. But you'd guess; all the dreams were about people. About love. About sex. Why didn't you ask how often I hate love? Because, oh, it is many times. Since it's real. My parents died from sickness being barely 50. One after the other. Boom. I could keep up dreaming for a while. Then I couldn't. My skin was old and wide open. I found love outside of my rainy brain at the same time that I found heavy Xanax addiction. I like when you mention Xanax. Even though the moon should be back in its place, it's not. Stonesugar. We were magic and then we became a collage of aloneness. My addiction to the soft white is my solitude and it's eating everything. We have to be with people, especially with the ones closest to us as well as strangers. But we rarely are people. I think rain is closer to death than endless snow, even though Selby would disagree. Maybe. I am afraid. Not of death, not in a normal way. I'm just scared of dying all the time. And now I have nothing left but the way to the rehab facility, which is more like a moldy Walmart for people without insurance. You get Covid everytime for free. I don't want to go. My imaginary cabin in the woods has brought me here. Again. I don't want to go. Would I return? Yes. Always. To someone. Not a place.
Being alone, willingly cut off from other human beings, seems so desirable. In a forest with mountains that look like parts of the moon. Because the moon fell down some day. It has a sweet smell. Stonesugar. Maybe I was too young, my skin too healthy, for loneliness, _aloneness_, to crawl up and get inside. I lived in my dreams and thought I had found my own kind of happiness. But you'd guess; all the dreams were about people. About love. About sex. Why didn't you ask how often I hate love? Because, oh, it is many times. Since it's real. My parents died from sickness being barely 50. One after the other. Boom. I could keep up dreaming for a while. Then I couldn't. My skin was old and wide open. I found love outside of my rainy brain at the same time that I found heavy Xanax addiction. I like when you mention Xanax. Even though the moon should be back in its place, it's not. Stonesugar. We were magic and then we became a collage of aloneness. My addiction to the soft white is my solitude and it's eating everything. We have to be with people, especially with the ones closest to us as well as strangers. But we rarely are people. I think rain is closer to death than endless snow, even though Selby would disagree. Maybe. I am afraid. Not of death, not in a normal way. I'm just scared of dying all the time. And now I have nothing left but the way to the rehab facility, which is more like a moldy Walmart for people without insurance. You get Covid everytime for free. I don't want to go. My imaginary cabin in the woods has brought me here. Again. I don't want to go. Would I return? Yes. Always. To someone. Not a place.