Kankakee, 2016

Then there was Kankakee—that year of enervating visions—and the posse of teenage courtiers whose dizzying luck was doomed by a pair of “ragged claws.” Fragile, as the wounded world, and openly melancholic. Yes, we had cinematic aspirations but the poisons were rapturous, draining our inner eye imagery, leaving only reverberations and badly drawn lines out of critical focal acuity. We only saw defendant palindromes swirling in the airy miasmas—penumbral and schoolmistress gray.

We never saw iridescent finches again. The world resolved as a dartboard roach living in pastina. We embodied the prosaic. The oneiric forever drained away.

We were forever wounded and relegated to lifespans of haunting memories without the ability to express ourselves precisely. We lived forever outside of the letterbox, mired in circles of confusion and extraneous silver halide crystals. Perception became a useless digital cortex.

We are now contortionists lacking flexibility—amoral tank flankers and lyric flunkies. We die with each simple fade to black.

This is a tragic feeling we live with. We expire as hopeless eyepieces suffocating in Vaseline stains.

We cleave the wings of our dreams.

What I’m Reading:

“I think the name you get given at birth should be seen as a temporary tag, and it goes with the families and the social groups and the expectations of what we’re supposed to belong to; if that tag doesn’t fit what you imagine you wish to become, it should be discarded.”

— Genesis P-Orridge / Nonbinary: A Memoir