done:doing / things / stoppage time

___nocturne.

all day i've worried.
measured myself in bathroom mirrors:
__waistline and grade point average,
reputation and shades of dark under my eyes.
__it bothers me that i respect my exhaustion so much.

i'm under every bed,
whimpering and scribbling ideas for personal statements:
__ways to hide the shadows of self-unactualised me,
unsure what it would mean to fail at this one.
__or succeed. i can't find any meaning in it, beyond: do.


___*___*___*

___Oct-Nov-Dec.

i've given up trying to understand years. time used to mean something. maybe somewhere it still does, not here. ___i've stopped understanding myself. for one thing, i can't tell the difference between what i'm doing and what's being done to me. i see sun, i lay in it. someone suggests a book and the title stays with me, i read it. no idea why. i wake up, i walk. i walk. 50 minutes each way. every day. i hate waiting for the bus one morning it must have been pleasant and i took off walking. never stopped. ___sitting, waiting for my coffee she hands me her number. this has never happened to me before. i call it, no idea why. i can't think why i would. but then, i can't think why i wouldn't. seven days later she's half-naked on my couch. i'm kissing her chest and smelling her neck, but the whole time i'm thinking who did this? did you do this? do i? do we? how did this thing happen, i wasn't driving. (what is done, and what is doing - gone).

- q-dear, are you alright?
- ... [i can never say 'no'. silence or a grunt of some form is code for 'no', but then i surprise myself:] no.
- ... [now she's speechless, i never say no] what's happening, what's going on?
___what can i tell her? i fall asleep drunk more often than not, i'm maxing out on every pill in my cabinet, my gums bleed all day i can taste myself rotting, all day i chew gum to hide the taste and smell, and to distract people from noticing my decay, it's noisy in my head i can't tell sunday from thursday my internet stopped working weeks ago i can't remember if i have friends or not  i just move - i have a pattern of movement i just repeat it.
- i don't know. nothing. i'm worried. i missed the cambridge deadline.

that was before. it's better now. 

all night there are footsteps outside. it used to scare me. now i know: possums. bush-turkeys. lizards. snakes. bats. they're so loud - when i first moved here i was keeping a wooden post besides my bed to attack the marauders running laps in my backyard all night. sometimes now they comfort me...

it's 3am. i've been working on this since 8am. i took the day off work to finish it. i've been hopped up on speed and green-tea for weeks i can't feel my tongue and i've been chewing the same piece of gum since after lunch. the windows are all still open and a paper-thin moth knocks itself against a lighbulb. i ignore it. then five. then twenty. my entire ceiling, my desk, my lamp is quivering with them. i only notice because i tap my laptop screen to move one aside. i look up, and smile, and keep working. i pick up a paper, put it back down. pick up another bundle, shuffle through, find what i'm looking for, throw them all back. all the while the moths flutter about. now their wings occasionally become detached when they pick the wrong stack of paper to land on. i'm usually saddened when i kill something. but this seems... different. i feel like they are being absorbed into a dreamscape. they are part of a magic sequence and are entombed in it. in a year, it's the first time i've ever seen them, so i figure they are a distinct feature, part of the quality, of this particular, unique moment.  i keep working. when i look up again - at 3:47am - there are no moths left. not on the ceiling, not on the table. no where. i don't understand where they came from, or where they went. or how. (what is done, what is doing). i just move, i keep moving. to the couch. where i read the newest draft.

december is always the heaviest month. i hide from everything. avoid people. avoid my liquor cabinet. avoid thinking, no thinking. move. just the pattern, just the steps. wake. walk. work. walk. gym. walk. sleep.

___in a way, this is it. i didn't know it was, or would be, but it is. when i started, i thought, well, if it doesn't work out this year, we'll try again next year. but actually, we won't. either i'm good enough, or i'm not. either it happens, or it doesn't. i've done all i can to prepare. my 5-year plan has run its course. now i write my statements, and i hide my blemishes, and i sing my songs, and


___*___*___*

i don't know what to write about anymore. i know that i miss writing. i used to need to do this. it used to remind me who i was, and who i wasn't. it was a way of looking at things, and seeing adventure and erotica and tragedy and romance in little tuesdays and dented afternoons. now it's just haze. a unified mass of what else could it be? a self-fulfilled proposition that takes me for granted in its design. my days just are. they are a fact, a truth. but they don't really mean anything to me anymore. they just go. like a river. i float. i paddle. i don't know why - instinct? habit? i don't know. but i just proceed through it. edging on. 
___and it's noisy. and sometimes it goes from thursday morning to sunday night and i don't know what happened. how. whether it was something i said or did, or whether it just happened to me. whether it requires any input from me at all. whether i'm a passenger or not. who are you? why are we undressing? are you doing this? i thought you were numbers on a piece of paper, how did you come to be here?

she leaves.

i walk to my bed.

and start shaking my sheets to find her detached wings.