Bastard
It is in silence - with alcohol, if you like - that the heart itself is heard.
You can take a baseball bat to a picture frame until all you end up with are shards; you can burn everything of physical memory until all you end up with is smoke; you can erase a line on the wall where his height would have reached until all you end up with is a spotless wall; you can go abuse a punching bag until all you end up with are bruises; you can even exhaust an entire day with your best friend who wrenched a sob from your throat rawer than you ever thought it capable, by saying, "He doesn't see who you are." Just a sob. This loss is too big for crying, for swinging bats, for burning things, for wiping walls, for punching shit, for words - of which you had so many - and of which he had more, before he had none.
You can pick up every single sliver of glass one by one and momentarily marvel at how people in the movies are idiots for always drawing blood while doing this. You can end up burning into your memory how that last torn scrap takes to fire by having no flame, just a red circle getting smaller until it looked like a white dwarf before winking out of being. You can take solvent and rub that wall until it returns to being itself from being a three-dimensional reference for how he will occupy space near you. You can punch that bag and truly realize that you cannot cry out of anger, and that all you will take home with you are skinned elbows, purple fists and knees, and you can - again, momentarily - wonder at how quaint an aubergine spot is on parts of the human body, but not, say, on an actual aubergine. You will, of course, wonder why you're even thinking of aubergines at a time like this, and you and your best friend might even talk about aubergines and succulents and anime and how Baguio is so full of annoying people during festival season. For, again, this loss is too big for words, so you might as well talk about aubergines, because the day is long, and you still have to think about where to grab a taxicab because of all the goddamned people.
Bearing nothing physical except your physiological aubergines, you still have to go home. Home, the floor of which you swept before leaving to go do errands, full of the sand that all glass is. Home, with a sink you scrubbed clean also before leaving, having served as a fire pit. Home, with that wall rendered once again unblemished, again before leaving, by your bare fingers. Home, where that frame, rendered empty by your baseball bat, now is. Home, where your heart, rendered empty by something far more powerful than a baseball bat, still is. And it is in silence - with alcohol, if you like - that the heart itself is heard. Not the hell that happened to it, but just the heart, beating.
It cannot but beat - otherwise, it won't be a heart. It is the most intimate sign of time, for man, for its beat keeps a time, which is a lifetime. Your heart keeps beating, even when it is broken - sorry, that it is beating is precisely why it can be broken, and broken again, and broken again. It is only death that truly breaks a heart. It is time that breaks the hearts of those the dead leave behind - time, not death, because they themselves did not die; they have memory instead. They themselves have heartbeats, and therefore time, and therefore heartbreaks. Some part of you knows this, that's why you can sweep floors and scrub sinks and think about aubergines and drag your ass home.
Home, where you can only burn so much, and obliterate only so much, create only so much noise, speak and write only so many words. If only your heart can be truly rendered empty. If only your heart stops its merciless keeping of time. If only your heart stops being a heart. If only your heart stopped. But it can't be stopped by any other living being - only death will do that. That is the heart's most terrifying greatness - it will beat, and does beat. That beat, that time, is the reason why you can be thrown away by another heart that keeps its own time. That beat, that time, is why you can break, and break things, and keep breaking things, until there might literally be nothing in your house to break. You can even break the goddamned house and your heart will still beat - that is why, after all, you can break your house. You can turn your entire self into an aubergine and your heart will still beat. It will beat, and you will run out of things to break sooner than your heart runs out of beats. You will have burned everything you can. You will have said everything you can. Your heart will beat. It cannot but be itself. That is its function.
It will still beat, and it is in the silence, even when that silence is what follows after an atomic bomb, or a planet exploding, that that beat will be heard.
That is how it keeps time. It remembers. So you can take a baseball bat to picture frames, and burn shit, and punch shit, and talk shit, but even when you don't, you will always remember. Maybe not the same ways, maybe not the same things, but that's beside the point: the heart will remember, because it cannot but keep time, and it is most heard when there is nothing but time. This is too big for anything now, yes, but the heart ultimately doesn't care about size: it can't. It just has to beat. And it will. You hear it most when there are no words. You hear it most when there is nothing except itself. That is how the heart is a tyrant, uncaring even of itself, keeping memory while needing no words. It remembers being fed so much beauty and then having been rendered absolutely worthless, and it beats.
It beats in silence, always, eventually. There is alcohol, if you like.
for AJK, you --
You can take a baseball bat to a picture frame until all you end up with are shards; you can burn everything of physical memory until all you end up with is smoke; you can erase a line on the wall where his height would have reached until all you end up with is a spotless wall; you can go abuse a punching bag until all you end up with are bruises; you can even exhaust an entire day with your best friend who wrenched a sob from your throat rawer than you ever thought it capable, by saying, "He doesn't see who you are." Just a sob. This loss is too big for crying, for swinging bats, for burning things, for wiping walls, for punching shit, for words - of which you had so many - and of which he had more, before he had none.
You can pick up every single sliver of glass one by one and momentarily marvel at how people in the movies are idiots for always drawing blood while doing this. You can end up burning into your memory how that last torn scrap takes to fire by having no flame, just a red circle getting smaller until it looked like a white dwarf before winking out of being. You can take solvent and rub that wall until it returns to being itself from being a three-dimensional reference for how he will occupy space near you. You can punch that bag and truly realize that you cannot cry out of anger, and that all you will take home with you are skinned elbows, purple fists and knees, and you can - again, momentarily - wonder at how quaint an aubergine spot is on parts of the human body, but not, say, on an actual aubergine. You will, of course, wonder why you're even thinking of aubergines at a time like this, and you and your best friend might even talk about aubergines and succulents and anime and how Baguio is so full of annoying people during festival season. For, again, this loss is too big for words, so you might as well talk about aubergines, because the day is long, and you still have to think about where to grab a taxicab because of all the goddamned people.
Bearing nothing physical except your physiological aubergines, you still have to go home. Home, the floor of which you swept before leaving to go do errands, full of the sand that all glass is. Home, with a sink you scrubbed clean also before leaving, having served as a fire pit. Home, with that wall rendered once again unblemished, again before leaving, by your bare fingers. Home, where that frame, rendered empty by your baseball bat, now is. Home, where your heart, rendered empty by something far more powerful than a baseball bat, still is. And it is in silence - with alcohol, if you like - that the heart itself is heard. Not the hell that happened to it, but just the heart, beating.
It cannot but beat - otherwise, it won't be a heart. It is the most intimate sign of time, for man, for its beat keeps a time, which is a lifetime. Your heart keeps beating, even when it is broken - sorry, that it is beating is precisely why it can be broken, and broken again, and broken again. It is only death that truly breaks a heart. It is time that breaks the hearts of those the dead leave behind - time, not death, because they themselves did not die; they have memory instead. They themselves have heartbeats, and therefore time, and therefore heartbreaks. Some part of you knows this, that's why you can sweep floors and scrub sinks and think about aubergines and drag your ass home.
Home, where you can only burn so much, and obliterate only so much, create only so much noise, speak and write only so many words. If only your heart can be truly rendered empty. If only your heart stops its merciless keeping of time. If only your heart stops being a heart. If only your heart stopped. But it can't be stopped by any other living being - only death will do that. That is the heart's most terrifying greatness - it will beat, and does beat. That beat, that time, is the reason why you can be thrown away by another heart that keeps its own time. That beat, that time, is why you can break, and break things, and keep breaking things, until there might literally be nothing in your house to break. You can even break the goddamned house and your heart will still beat - that is why, after all, you can break your house. You can turn your entire self into an aubergine and your heart will still beat. It will beat, and you will run out of things to break sooner than your heart runs out of beats. You will have burned everything you can. You will have said everything you can. Your heart will beat. It cannot but be itself. That is its function.
It will still beat, and it is in the silence, even when that silence is what follows after an atomic bomb, or a planet exploding, that that beat will be heard.
That is how it keeps time. It remembers. So you can take a baseball bat to picture frames, and burn shit, and punch shit, and talk shit, but even when you don't, you will always remember. Maybe not the same ways, maybe not the same things, but that's beside the point: the heart will remember, because it cannot but keep time, and it is most heard when there is nothing but time. This is too big for anything now, yes, but the heart ultimately doesn't care about size: it can't. It just has to beat. And it will. You hear it most when there are no words. You hear it most when there is nothing except itself. That is how the heart is a tyrant, uncaring even of itself, keeping memory while needing no words. It remembers being fed so much beauty and then having been rendered absolutely worthless, and it beats.
It beats in silence, always, eventually. There is alcohol, if you like.
for AJK, you --
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