There is a wire cord holding my wrist and plugged into my ears.\u00a0 I hear nothing.\u00a0 The computer screen in front of me begs me not to do my work.\u00a0 I am three days behind and it is 4:26.\u00a0 There is no time to do it now.\u00a0 So I make my way to the bathroom after deciding to waste my time for the twenty-sixth time today.\u00a0 I ask the cord to let go.\u00a0 She complies reluctantly.\u00a0 There is a caterpillar on my left eyebrow inching its way to my ear to ask me, once again, why I can’t be selfish.\u00a0 “I’m not sure.” I reply.\u00a0 The caterpillar swells in my right ear and I can no longer hear my own thoughts.\u00a0 “I have gout,” the caterpillar replies.\u00a0 I come back to my computer and the cord returns to my wrist, gripping tighter because I’ve forgotten to plug in my ears.<\/p>\n
The girl beside me speaks but all I hear is the boy who cried rape and a metaphor of cookies and sheep.\u00a0 I’ve been told I only hear what I want to hear.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 I just misheard.\u00a0 She spoke of sexual assault and how it never stopped.\u00a0 Chocolate runs from her mouth and I rush to lick it up.\u00a0 I wish to speak so freely.\u00a0 The chocolate is so sweet and saturated and it burns my throat like molasses until it spills over and out from the ducts of my eyes.\u00a0 I have been penetrated and re-solidified in sweet chocolate.<\/p>\n
Gilded, one might say.\u00a0 That’s what I have been living in, they say, and I agree.\u00a0 From the air, all I see is gold, but it is dirty and diseased below the surface.\u00a0 A pile of rotting horses have been stacked on my heart.\u00a0 My heart sinks.\u00a0 He is not meant to hold that weight.\u00a0 My first love dove down my throat to save what survived of my heart.\u00a0 He rebuilt what was lost, but he took half to where he lives in England.\u00a0 “Count my toes again,” I say.\u00a0 He tries to teach me how to do it myself and I only remember how for a day or two.<\/p>\n
Three things.\u00a0 I have three things in the skin pocket sewed into my back:\u00a0 a phone, a candy bar, and the absence of a chain I can’t find because my roommate cleaned again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a wire cord holding my wrist and plugged into my ears.\u00a0 I hear nothing.\u00a0 The computer screen in front of me begs me not to do my work.\u00a0 I am three days behind and it is 4:26.\u00a0 There is no time to do it now.\u00a0 So I make my way to the bathroom … Continue reading “Fifth Block.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3299,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298\/revisions\/3299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}