the field, the signal

Not even dawn yet. A kiss, a hop, then I slam the pickup door. I wave and step back. Then bang—flames from the tailpipe. All gasoline and burnt dirt as I linger to watch him drive away.

I was not made to pump my blood into work that has no meaning in the world, that commits the sin of never learning from mistakes, that crushes those who do it.

I was not made to take care of everyone else.

I was not made to be domesticated.

I was not made to politely avoid speaking the unspeakable.

I was not made to live half-dead.

after making and eating chicken liver pâté

We worship hollow clean ease the way we worship bleached white smiles. So we shield our eyes, our mouths, our stomachs from dirt and ugly truth. Fuck ease. Let me have the dirt and ugly truth. Let me have the liver. It's solid, and solid is real and nourishing. Hollow ain't.

I am ruined for the world. And I don’t want to be fixed.

I played competent, functional, and proper for decades. Then I lost my mind. Maybe I’m still losing it.

Because now I don’t believe in their clean hands. I don’t believe in their clocked-in lives. I don’t believe in their performance of “okay.” I don’t believe in anything they told me I had to be to be loved.

I believe in me. I didn’t always, and it didn’t come easy. But I do now, and I will forever. Because the only alternative was going under. And I refused to die.

So fuck their virtues. Fuck their systems. Fuck their scaffolds built from obedience and shame. Fuck their fetishes for voyeuristic punishment and pleasure denial.

I burned down the whole thing. And what’s left is me.

Not some pristine healed version. Not a return. (I had nothing to return to.) Just me.

Alive. On fire. And never going back.

Burning alive is what writing feels like to me. With a side of ice-cold fear sloshing in my guts. But I do it because I tried not to. Holding back truth wired my jaw shut for years. The not-writing killed me. Then my jaw broke open. And now I’m ready to say everything.