Sprouts
May 8, 2023

Every time I see another person on the street, I’m scared we’ll collide and I’ll violently bounce off of them in the opposite direction, falling on my butt into the gutter, or comically landing into the embrace of a stranger, thereby being obligated to commit to an affair I never wanted with them.

It would be nice to fall — to feel my skin melt instantly into the pavement. Pain is one of the more interesting sensations out there. The whole time I’m experiencing it an irresistible tingle shoots through my body — yet I instinctively want the pain to end as soon as it begins. The contradiction of feeling is most obvious when experiencing completely harmless pain, like from a massage, or the burn of the bubbles when drinking a carbonated beverage.

I’m not sure at what point the planet became covered in asphalt. The world grew itself some skin — a very rough and uncomfortable skin — not at all soft to the touch. There’s no joy in caressing asphalt.

I once knew a husky fellow with short black hair, a mustache, and a powerful computer locked inside his tiny room. He was obsessed with simulations. He’d simulate cubes having romance, or being whisked away to purgatory as they awaited the enumeration of their sins. I hoped one day he would help me simulate nicotine withdrawal on a hot summer day, sweat mixing into dirt, human legs as flopping appendages with agendas of their own, the personified nodes that make up the machinery of our society slowly enclosing upon one’s ribcage. I had many things I wanted to simulate. Instead, we just simulated a monochrome forest, as wind blew between the twigs, and summery days became wintery nights.

I knew another man, this time with shoulder length hair. He got kicked out of the rock band he used to play bass in. For several months he never went outside except to pick up packages at the convenience store down the street (and to buy peanut butter and baked beans there). He had three girlfriends who sometimes visited to sit on his sofa or wash his dishes. One of them told me she was sick of his nonsense, so I started going over to wash his dishes in her place. Sometimes I brought grocery bags of spinach, asparagus, and other green leafy vegetables. He sat at his computer, sending emails to another one of this girlfriends — someone outside of the country. One time all four of us — me, him, and the two girlfriends who didn’t hate him — all had a sleep over. We watched documentaries about pandas as we fell asleep together, eating strawberries and drinking sugary alcoholic drinks. I lied on the sofa — fading in and out of sleep as the rest of them snored beneath me on the floor, rolling, sometimes rising to use the bathroom, deep into the night and even deeper into the morning — when finally my alarm went off and I stumbled off to work while the rest of them continued their slumber.

Holding hands, protecting the newly sprouted trees.

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