the white cut out of the camera where the heart should be, sby (jan 2025)
THE WHITE CUT OUT OF THE CAMERA WHERE A HEART SHOULD BE
sby, jan 2025
I’ll admit when I said
I’m not cut out for love
I thought it a ward for the fact.
I don’t feel feathers like other people,
I’m not made like you.
When I think about love
I can’t help but bookmark the end of it,
the inevitable reason that
I am doll and you are person.
My pieces came factory made in the image
of anyone else,
but without the clean middle bits.
I’ll keep on saying it.
Love should not
be wasted on me;
like a photo of a mirror,
I contain a thoughtful but fruitless omission.
MAYBE i do fucking deserve to have a publicly broadcasted CNN mental breakdown • i mean a total fucking classic traditional meltdown on national television • call MSNBC call fox news i dont care someone get me on the air i want all of america to see me rip out all my hair and open my rib cage bone by bone the cartilage coming apart easily and • let the black shriveled up heart in my chest pathetically flop out like a tired sigh under my breath that i wouldnt elaborate on if i was even prompted to and my lungs will pop from my fucking screaming and my throat will be red and raw and bloody and • they'll recap it on NPR the next morning for all five people that still listen to AM radio on their commute and the BBC and the international circuit will have a field day with the clips.
“american girl possessed on live prime time last night! great ratings honestly!”
and it wont even matter who i am or what i feel because i’ll be american girl possessed on prime time 10/9 central ben shapiro or joe rogan or some other dipshit will make a point about the libs or something on their podcast and they'll make a tiktok audio that trends for three days from my dying breath and people will hit not interested and maybe it won't really do shit to change the algorithm feeding feeding feeding • and • they'll paint me over with a millenial gray paint they got from the home depot or lowe's.
ill be in the damn morgue so who even cares really because im dead so what do i have a say in it all and all that will be left of me are the people who i wasn't brave enough talk to because its my problem that i have problems apparently and
they'll know all about the quote unquote real version of american girl from the nightly news and • what will be left of me is the she was so young and tears and whatnot not to put too fine a point on it but i won't even have the terrible terrible burden of wanting to know what they have to say anymore.
...when I grow up, I want to be endless stars, reaching into infinity... mirrors refracting in on themselves... endless labyrinth of narcissistic supernovas...
I think, sometimes, I already have
that labyrinthine quality to my step.
O, treasure the misaligned patella of things,
and its gait, that ruinous gait, like
the sun nooning, the shifting mirages, where (
I am five or seven or even nine, but likely seven
) the room is getting crowded with oases
I will avoid anyhow.
Any one of these an outstretched hand,
any one wrath, indignation, trouble, a band of evil angels...
text: Stop Overthinking! Recognize that not deciding is a decision: tempting life to feel... endlessly delaying. Recognize that some decisions may not feel good: expect to give regardless of what you write. Accept that risk is unavoidable: obviously taking it closer to nothing. Know that every decision involves loss and compromise: Loss is an inevitable part of making. By choosing, you're choosing to want. Acknowledge what you had to give up. Resist reversing decisions out of doubt: You make and then feel. Want to stay the course.
* Managing Editor: Edward Ahern * * Associate Editor: Alison McBain * * Special Features Editor: Matthew P.S. Salinas * *
Very honored to be included in this issue of Fairfield Scribes' micro Fiction section! Go check out my piece "A Cold Tap on the Canvas" and the other amazing work by all the other writers in this issue!!
Text: I am not a person or at least I still/shake with the anticipation of becoming one./Even I sweat like you. Once/for judgement, twice for sin.//I have written this story a hundred times/but not found an ending I can live with;/half baked conclusions; rotting core of grief, of losing self;/solipsistic grief; mirror grief;/finding my way home in the dark,/finding my way to an unfamiliar home,/in the dark,/finding
text: the more hours i spend surrendering myself to a nihilic idealist version of paradise -- that nothing matters -- the more i drown i drown i drown i drown... i grab the raft and my nails break and even back on the shore i mourn that. i was never taught how to mourn so i make do with my popsicle stick version of grief and card through the stages without feeling, without catharsis. the waves roll on their backs expectantly, like mouths, tongues. a seagull steals my sandwich, and i turn ravenous with losing.
Page 1 (text): I am an amalgamation of every me that has ever existed, stretching into the infinite and unknowable expanse; to throw out any piece of that past that hates and loves me would be to disrespect my
Page 2 (text): forbears, the fruits of their labor, their soft, weekend hands, their tears, their silence, their horrible, all-encompassing sentimentality. The piece of my heart responsible for the regurgitation of both blood and memory overflows with the joy of a drowning moth, flying to the pool light. To die, to clean, to keep all my memories
Page 3 (text): in the ribcage I call my closet, like a somewhat functioning card catalog of life. A thin layer of dust like a veneer of sacredness... What use is a beautiful museum of past lives— a series of statues standing tall in a decadent colosseum, spiraling down, out of view, to an original
Page 4&5 (image): A floor plan of my childhood bedroom. Marked is my bed, side table, closet, dresser, bookshelf, windows and light switches. Most of the room is empty space. Titled, fig. 1. my childhood bedroom.
Page 6 (text): that has been distorted and forgotten— what use to those who did not live them? I could talk about the Ship of Theseus, but I'm not quite sure it applies here. My legs and arms and eyes are still largely the same, each part different cells, still whole. My body
Page 7 (text): does not get rid of the memory, cannot get rid of the memory. It etches itself into every inch of my skin, deeper than vein and muscle, into the bone marrow. What use is that? (end text) The eye from the cover is drawn as a small, inline symbol at the end of the text. The rest of the page is blank space.
Page 8 (image): Titled, fig. 2. what is left. A diagram with the text all in different positions of what is left of my childhood bedroom, marking stairs, floor 1 and 2, my parents' bedroom, and the foyer.
i am reminder. i am sore spots. i am the ghost of a little girl who everyone sees but we're not supposed to talk about. i live my life small and you reap the benefits of not knowing. i am protecting you, really, no really, protecting you by holding this knife up my crotch. there is a monster in my lower belly where all the evil in the world sleeps and i try to keep it inside of me by crossing my legs and whispering.
MORE ART ABOUT BEING RAPED AS A KID (sby, july 2024)
Text: i feel plucked/and quiet./i feel torn apart/like limbs or the/soft pieces of my heart. tender/for the eating and/taking apart./a flower grows on the windowsill/and dies.
untitled ars poetica, image from NASA/JPL-Caltech/Dan Goods, "First TV Image of Mars (Hand Colored)", poem by sby
[Text: Thinking I could exorcise the heavy core of it, I sat down to write a poem on the topic. I do not know how many words I have left to write around it. The only way out is through. Could I, given the grace, go into the mirror maze and find the other side? As it stands, I am in one of many dead ends, passionately disrobing my own reflection.]
being an afterthought: an erasure poem of a caterpillar that eats tortoise shells by deyrup, deyrup, eisner and eisner (linked here) (original text under the cut), sby march 2024
[Text: Being An Afterthought
Realizing that plight of an oddity such as this little moth
calling attention to existence worth knowing
Does not
Does not
ultimately prove applicable]
[Text: On Being Endangered: An Afterthought
Realizing that a species is imperiled has broad connotations,
given that it tells us something about the plight of nature itself. It
reminds us of the need to implement conservation measures and to
protect the region of which the species is a part. But aside from the
broader picture, species have intrinsic worth and are deserving of
preservation. Surely an oddity such as C. vicinella cannot simply be
allowed to vanish.
We should speak up on behalf of this little moth, not only because
by so doing we would bolster conservation efforts now underway in
Florida, but because we would be calling attention to the existence
of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing.
But is quaintness all that can be said on behalf of this moth? Does
this insect not have hidden value beyond its overt appeal? Does not
its silk and glue add, potentially, to its worth? Could these products
not be unique in ways that could ultimately prove applicable?]
excerpt originally seen in a post by @great-and-small! linked here
dawn yes crying gold, a golden shovel after lisa marie basile (sby, feb 2024)
[Text: Put it as such — have mourning for the end of a night. Waste the moon away, try to discard of all the connotation of song. A person (or – or! – a girl) with telling or telling without such terrible, ruinous ambition, with such and such, with graveside rumination.
Do not grieve what I learned first and last in lesson. I could/should learn to be an am from the broken skin of nails obsessive.
On the break of morning sun, I find that darkness-unholding, that light-which-can-contain; ah, but in truth find nothing. no, yes, well, no, but yes, maybe yes, find nothing in the endless song’s replay.
Well… I confess/don’t think I ever will be “am.” In the shower at the break of morning sun, blood drips down my face and I wash the blood away. Oh and long to finally turn off the replay.
Key of contents: The running water; the second wind; the keeping (close to my chest) the who that I; then finally, there is no am. Believe what grief you please. Or don’t. I have not yet gone where chariots go.]
izzy806
2087
ellievsbear
areudirty
prguitarman
snowghoul