To the Moon, Darkly
Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.—Montaigne
See the moonlight break through the frosted glass of the window.
Open the left hand: three bars dissolving in the clammy palm. Cold forehead. Pee straight down. Chipping on your roommate’s shit stains graffitied on the porcelain. It pools and bursts out your ballooned foreskin, sprays out like a bending hose with full pressure.
Tilt the head back: a Rorschach test skies with mold lay on the ceiling. Chew the bars. It coats the bottom of your mouth, tastes like nothing and at the same time you taste the halogen lights and foam panels from the ceiling of any local pharmacy. Fuck, I forgot ‘bout that
Peel the skin back, shake the dick, dry its mouth with toilet paper. Run the shower curtain back: the grey crust band that circles the tub ain’t as grimy as you are. Own that.
Didn’t flush. Urine will turn to melted gelatin by the time you come back to it, chartreuse yellow.
No looking in mirror. The chill breeze that comes through the crack in the window is the right type of cold to drift off. Walk out and Guario’s still stuck on the window.
There’s someone there. I can see him. He’s up on the tree. Looking. He’s fucking looking over here, sato, Guario said, sweating bullets through a chinois. He hasn’t slept in three days.
Bro, I swear to God. Go to fucking sleep already. I gotta wake up in an hour motherfucker, Charlie shouts from his room.
Tell him to chill, at least he won’t get murked working.
Turn to Guario. Now that’s entertaining. Walk to the window, take a peek: the same shit as everyday. Houses don’t move, people do, there’s nobody there. Look at the mango tree. Still a mango tree. Tell Guario he’ll get more ice. He just has to keep watch.
His pupils turn to black suns and the hands of happiness prick his lips and stretch them into a smile.
Grab another forty. Turn the music up. Fuck the neighbors. Fuck Charlie.
Oi. Guario. Peep, you said.
Show him the Draco with the Mickey on. Now that’s real. He’s fixed on the tree. Seventy-five hollow points in the mouse ear.
Oiled earlier. The Draco. Remember to wipe it off before you hand it. Wipe it now.
Charlie exploded out of his room and into the bathroom. You pigs, can’t even flush the damned toilet, he said.
Man, only reason you still haven’t put hands on him by now it’s cos his brother’s your boy. He’s up in The Fridge doing twenty.
Keep your head on the cartoons: seventy five still sleeping in the mouse ear.
You’re parched, the forty’s good but the bars are kicking in and the taste of everything else is unmatched.
Open the fridge: leftover ‘za, grab a slice. Pour pop. Fold the slice and bite, the cold cheese and the earthy savoriness of the Maitake meld with the caramelized onions, all the juices in your mouth as you chomp—take a swig—ahhh, so good. Is that what mercury tastes like? Take another swig. Refreshing. Eyes get heavy with confidence. Balls must be the size of two planets. Fix on the clock in the stove. It’s two hours forward. Happens every time there’s an outage. There’s one at least every other day. Lean on the counter and take another bite, it just gets better. Barbiturates are real flavor enhancers, you don’t need MSG.
Let Guario tweak. Knock on the bathroom door, tell Charlie to hurry the fuck up.
Don’t wait, go in your room. It knows. It’s hard and you didn’t even have to think about shit. Stop looking a that vein bulge, just give in to the friction. Spit on it.
Raaaaaa.
Listen to the Draco roar.
Raaaaaaaa! the gun detonates again.
Tuck a spoon in your waist. Get out your room and—Charlie’s lying there: right wrist half blown off, tethered by a small thread of flesh and skin; holes in him like those 2000s commercial rap videos that seemed filmed inside a cheese grater. Two holes, millimeters apart broke in his ribs, three fingers from those three holes lined like a constellation on his chest and it spread its distant planets in flurry of five holes scattered on his stomach and arm and his paint splashed like Basquiat, was Merlot dark, but not sweet.
Take a step back. See his left arm peppered up to the clavicle.
Smell the burnt meat, burnt hair, it’s a mix of raw pork and beef, aged beef. Carries a lingering burnt bitterness that is now clinging off your tongue—stop fucking mouth breathing.
Count each entry.
See his eyes? Yeah, just like his brother’s. They have the same deadness in the eyes now. Isn’t it beautiful that they can finally have something to share? Even in the distance of matter and ether.
The boy is now a moon with all its craters, orbiting an Earth too far gone to meet, but close enough to exert its gravitational force. To influence.
Step in scene. Direct yourself.
Look at the window to your right—Guario’s gone. Front door’s open.
Charlie’s dead.
Grab the cake and get the fuck out of here.
The cake’s gone.
Neighbors are looking in from out on the sidewalk. Listen to the sirens. Fuck
Legs turn to cement cylinders, no motivation to move anyway.
Sirens draw near.
Ok, run out the back and jump the fence into the neighbors yard.
Not far from where you are the Draco’s roar echoes.
Listen to the cops fire back.
You wiped it off before your slice.
You don’t live in that apartment.
You were supposed to give Charlie the dough for his brother’s commissary.
Feel how relief gets sucked back into a vacuum.
Feel those planets below. Run to the chaos, check if Guario had the cake.
One cop’s body lies half its neck shot off. Good aim, considering Guario’s state.
Him, on the other hand, got one through his eye and several in the chest. To his right, your left—a backpack.
They won’t shoot. Grab the backpack and run. Get close first, keep walking.
Sir you need to step away, says one of the cops.
Ignore the piggy. Keep walking. He can’t shoot. They won’t.
Sir. Stop now, in the name of the law! says one cop.
Raise your hands and drop on your knees, says another.
Now! a third cop says.
Whatever time it is, notice—birds chirp. Horny motherfuckers. You’re horny too. What’s with the bacon parade? Something’s bothering in your waist, reach for it.
One.
Two, three, four, five—ten detonations go off.
Body drops, eyes open, chin to asphalt shutting the jaw close, cutting the tongue off.
Look at the backpack.
Look at the tongue.
Feel yourself spill out red and feel your eyes go soft—and in the fractals of the glaring lights you see hands and white shirts with jeans and you see pleated skirts and girls and muscle cars and that guy named Franco Gallardo, weird guy—he liked backstroking in the community pool naked wearing only a rooster helmet on reciting Don Quixote in Spanish—he’s fully clothed but not wearing his helmet.
Does that mean anything?
Think.
You’ve always thought about the incongruence between body and thought.
How everything outside in the world affects your world inside. How little your inside world makes any impact outside.
It’s not something you’ve figured out. Wonder how there’s not a word for an inverse mirror.
You look in a mirror that doesn’t show you what really is outside, how you really look like, it shows what you see and what you see nobody else can.
Dissonance of the flesh and spirit.
Remember mom dropping you off to school.
Never happened, yet that’s what you remember, that and your father deep in her guts.
Touching her naked body sitting on the edge of the bed as you looked from the opened door.
They wore masks. It wasn’t Halloween, and you aren’t alive. You never were, breathing didn’t mean anything.
So what’s the difference?
Think.
Remember.
Let the inchoate solitude rise with your soul off the ground as the humid steam lifts with it from out your sebaceous corpse.
Open your right hand: one spoon and three bullets dissolving on the palm of your hand. Warm forehead. Shit on the floor, but there’s no gravity so all the mud rides up, it smears all of your back and it tangles in your hair. It cakes on the ceiling—like an Italian fresco but with shit. And did it matter it was so? Not to you. Look at the moon below your feet; blinking tiles. Look at the craters.
They bleed.
Open the curtain with your left hand and crawl inside your foreskin. Balloon inside it and burst out the hose and into space. Pass through the murky rings of Saturn’s tub, ride the porcelain wave and run along its edge like a nose over rails of white dust that’s been smuggled inside some man’s rectum. Smell where he’s coming from. Breathe it in. Look to your right, doors are windows but windows are not doors. A child looks out the doors where the windows are supposed to be but weren’t and the child isn’t a child either, you know that. He said: Why is daddy trying to crawl inside you mommy?
Dry your tears. Reach for the child—he explodes.
His bits scatter on the walls of the light cube you peed in blood.
Each piece falls to the ground. Each piece of reality crumbles in pixels.
Cubes falling one by one by three by seven by twenty one, you’re zero.
What’s that?
Numbing your legs as it crawls up. Why can’t you move your toes? Why do they feel so close? Spread them!
They’re webbed. Covered in slime, all of the body. Covered.
I fucking swear there’s somebody there. He’s looking over here. Motherfucker’s up in the tree, said Guario.
Ignore the tree.
Reach for the moon.
Open your eyes. That’s you in the mirror, open the cabinet and—don’t take your meds, close the cabinet. Catch a grin in the reflection.
Lift the seat up, pull your cock out from the seam of the briefs, feel the slow trickle drool out. Flex your asshole and push the stream harder. There you go.
Damn, what a man.
There’s a knock in the front door. Probably Guario.
Go to the door, open it—Yo’, you got glass? he said in lieu of good morning.
Bro, you’re on your bullshit this early? Fuck out of here, said Charlie, stepping out of his room.
His door open lets you see there’s a woman on his bed. Karina.
Dude, tuck that shit in. Karina’s here.
Look down: your cocks out. You have a semi.
Look up, smile, tell him you’ll visit his brother later this week. Turn to Guario and tell him you don’t have any left, but invite him in. Make some breakfast. Enjoy your time with them.
Then you can crawl back inside your foreskin and balloon out into the bleeding moon that shines its silver light on the waters of our subconscious as it pushes and pulls the waves of abulia. Say goodbye to mono no aware.
Farewell akrasia.
Jesus.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥