the 19th

Lying in the tunnel with some blue chalk in my pocket. I wanna write something but I can't figure out what.

I wanna write something really loud.

I'm angry but excited and I need to get out. Really I just want to fly, so I ride.
I wanna wrench me open and pull out the things scratching and scrambling to stay in my brain.
It's making me go insane because it feels so real.

There's a fight going on in the logic side of my mind.

It's not hurting me, but noises are shaking, scrambling my head.
Shoving and punching and pushing and twisting. The yells and the punches. The screams from the crowd. There's blood spitting through the air. Red coughing from their mouthes. My brain is getting battered. Like thirty something seventeen year old boys are all beating each other till we're soft. Thirty something copies of me having a boxing match in the top of my head. We're all mad and we're fighting for something. But the adrenaline's buzzing in the humid air between our flying fists like we're all gonna wake up in the morning and laugh about it.
Like we're all great heroes for fighting ourselves.
I always wanted to be a hero.

Still. We continue flipping each other over the line. Taking things too far and not really knowing why. Glass is breaking and somewhere a ceiling fan is throbbing. The yelling never stops. Someone must have just used the chair.

But still, we're all roped in.

Outside my head, I lie down in the bike tunnel. I'm wondering when the fighters are gonna break their way through my skull. Maybe they'd beat me up from the outside too.

Memory of her: I chase after her on my bike. It seems like we were the only people in Utah again as we sweat in the star stenciled night. She taught me really how to ride. I'm going fast, but somehow she was always going faster. I liked to stay behind and watch her calves, which might be weird. But, she yells something to me and I yell that I can't hear her. She yells again. "Scream!"
I'm flying.
We plunge into the long bike tunnel and we did scream. Not just yelling, we scream like the entire world's in the tunnel, here to clap for us and cheer for us and tell us we'll last forever. Yellow lights flashing passed us. Flickering through the spokes of our bicycles. I know she could feel it too. We both laugh and scream for the crowd. Her loud laugh echoed in the tunnel forever and I feel like I can still hear it now. Bouncing all over the yellow light. That's the night I said I'd spend the rest of my life trying to keep up with her.


They're tearing their way out now. Yeah if they'll beat me up from the outside too, I won't stop them.
Because maybe that'll make me stop thinking again. and I don't think I should be thinking about her this much.

The upstairs in my head is either a bar fight or a boxing match.

No, maybe it's a baseball game.