Not Saying Much of Anything: 3/12/2026

Maybe I should shut up and seal my mouth shut when I give up. Running through photographs having lost the maps charting when seconds before, volcanoes erupt my destiny. Is it to destroy the world, the one shining pearl? Which I found in a clam back in the deep when and where I swam, never coming up for air.

Maybe I am doomed to repeat this chase of running my feet over, tracing my fingers over, land I’ve been all over. Maybe I am deeply infatuated or torturing myself into a life I can’t fully be a part of. I think it might be dying being stuck with just me. So you’d think I’d have this, or parts of the world, in mind by now. But I’m never committed. Nothing here is committed to memory. I don’t know how long my body has scraped itself against the rough surface of the ground, how many times it’s been in these places I’ve found. There’s scars and skin peeling for miles as the eye can see, same as the roads that have been abandoned. I’m in pain. There’s no one here to hear any cry that may come from me. It’s been a long while now. And there may no longer be any scream left in me. 

Pain for me isn’t so much a hurt but a discomfort. Like a literal itch or mental irritation of having to listen to “advice” that’s really more of an echo. Now I think I wouldn’t mind forcing any words that weren’t my own into my ears and mind.

The oceans are all dried up now. Only roughness remains in minerals and rocks and the like left behind. Rocks are everywhere. Sometimes, I throw myself against them with intent. Like now, for instance. The blood trickles out, slowed and separated by the hair–grass growing on my arms, similar to the dividing mountain ranges off in the distance.

I hike. A trail of red is the only thing that will ever follow me as I drag this body to the top of a trail to admire this painting of a landscape from a different angle. Like all other species, regular  birds have long since abandoned their post of hiding in trees and inhabiting the skies, but I sometimes hear the sound of flapping wings somewhere in the distance, up overhead. I used to think it was something I invented, the desperate attempt of a decaying mind to hold onto whatever was left. Lately, however, my eyes have been giving me the same trouble. I worry my body has somehow grown too old despite it being physically impossible.