1.
I was reading the novel Gemini when I realized I’m not a novelist. A novelist has to be like God, seeing the story from above. But I’m just an animal, seeking out prey. I was crying about how I’m crazy when I realized I’m done with sex. It was sometimes euphoric, when I was able to stay in the wilderness. But this is an alien world, and we never consider what happens to aliens when they get old and sick and dead. It's alienating to an animal when you inject poison into their frown and they no longer have the strength to mirror their lover’s frown. The truth is I just don’t want to worry about it. It’s exhausting, like being a mother of twins made from the same zygote, two pairs of expectant eyes competing for attention, and maybe it’s nice how you sometimes can’t tell the difference between them, but maybe it’s also hell. I’m talking about sex. Sex is the opposite of being a novelist, and I would rather live between them. Other people’s children make me happy. I like to tell them what life is like on imaginary planets. If I want to marvel at something that reminds me of myself, if I want to be horrified by it, I can write a poem. It won’t feel any pain.
2.
My roommate is in the psych ward, getting different medication. After that she will not want to die. There’s no outdoor space in the psych ward. But there is a nightly menu from which to select the next day’s meals. There is horticultural therapy, where you get to bring a sad plant back to life. There’s an old lady who claims to work at the United Nations. Someone is always crazier than you, and just imagine someone designed all of us. That person is crazier than everyone combined. I’m not saying that person exists. I’m not saying gut health came before sanity. Maybe they arrived together. Maybe friendship matters more than meditation. When you meditate you have to hold yourself up, when you pray you rely on the ground. When you have a friend you just have to live.
3.
My ex-lover got baby-trapped by his wife before he could leave her. Now he loves his baby and is afraid to speak his truth. He should have known better than to come inside her when she promised it was safe, but I can’t blame him. I can’t write a single line of poetry unless I empty my mind of the following line. I don’t want to write about you anymore. How much you suffer and how much you made me suffer. I thought our story was incredible, even the terrible parts. I wanted to tell everyone. I wanted the telling to be an act of magic, freeing us. But I have only ever witnessed magic as a result of a double-blind experiment. And even when it seems like the subjects have received the drugs, sometimes it’s just that placebos last a long time. Placebos are my favorite drug. In the end, it’s all a placebo. As soon as I announced my celibacy I got a nice big pimple, like a spiritual test. Unfortunately not wanting anything from anyone doesn’t solve the problem of existing in a society where you have to have a job and at that job you have to look like you shower. More extreme measures have to be taken if you want to escape all that. Usually it involves a strict religious order and total renunciation, but then your only companions are people who want to have sex with God.
4.
My ex-lover is refusing to let go of the idea that I’m a novelist. In my novel I wrote about his wife, how she forced him to post pictures of her online. She doesn’t like sex, at least not with him, but she does like to seem in love. If I was a novelist, I should’ve written a section from her perspective; I should’ve made her dream of being dead and feeling the whole tapestry of human emotion for the first time, only to return to her waking life of anger and fear. But I only wanted to copy and paste text messages between my ex-lover and I; I only wanted to recreate my own anger and fear. Today, when the rainstorm was hitting its climax, I was walking to the kitchen and a surge of urine or some other fluid burst out of me, soaking my underwear. I chose to view this as a positive omen regarding my abandonment of sex and novel-writing; I chose to view it as poetry. Still, I’ve been strengthening my pelvic floor since then, reading a novel on the couch. I painted my nails. I want to have sex with everything, by never having it at all. I want to be a perfect pervert.
5.
Three days after my wave of understanding regarding my destiny, I’m biking in the dark and it feels like something is strangling me. Suddenly I can’t tell if you’re the sociopath and everything your wife did to you was justified in the wake of your psychic violence. And then I’m not sure if it’s me, if I’m the evil one, I’m grasping at clues, I’m trying to make it make sense, I’m so filled with hate. I hate that she and I have both been turned into monsters by the acts of a professional liar. I used to think that heartbreak was enlightenment, but now I see it’s much simpler than that. Hate is love. Anger is a more powerful source of energy than heartbreak could ever be. I need you to be evil, I need to stay mad, because I know what’s underneath it and I don’t want to see.
6.
The more likely truth is you didn't know what you were doing. You were just following your heart. “I don't think it's a crime to love,” you said, to justify past cheating, because you didn't know love is hate. It's hate for the humans who starve and beg. Instead of feeding them we replace them with more humans. It’s like giving up on the sick plants in your garden and burying new seeds as if the sickness won't spread to them too. Maybe love won't always be hate. But now it is.
