“Postmodern Brain”

Fiction. Based on a True Existential Crisis.

by Athena

“Writing poetry allowed me to commit suicide on paper” – kweisi gharreau

This journal entry is inspired by true events. Some of the characters, names, businesses, incidents, and certain locations and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Here we are now, encaged by looming pastel cubicles coming towards a center

because everything has a point and purpose – either exiting or existing.

We are alone; though, are we ever truly alone – You and I?

Solitude seems impossible in this permanent meta-world

with moments insides moments layering life.

I’m sure there is a who and what invading your thoughts

where you fight invisible battles unbeknownst to me.

Pretending to be present, as you read these words

made of letters birthed from who knows where and when.

Who said this is what a ‘Z’ looks and sounds like anyway,

only rarely to be used.

Your arms around my waist hooking me in,

as if I were a fish who’d fly away.

Don’t worry, I’ll hold the umbrella with one hand,

the other on top of yours, upon tightly stretched skin.

My fingers fitting succinctly into your familiar knuckle grooves.

We are too heavy to be lifted by such wind.

I’ll never let go of this moment;

This lingering limbo with Q-tip seahorses in a plastic ocean

and robot bees pollinating pollution with no solution,

while a narcissistic orange builds a wall from xenophobes.

All this nonsense at once because time doesn’t make much sense here,

But what a time to be alive.

This is not yours. That is not mine.

Can you not see, the only borders are perforated around our minds.

Because we all crumble together

Or remain frozen in Rome.

I’ve never before felt nothing

and everything all in one breath.

I’ll never let go of you, or the umbrella,

even though there is no rain;

but if there were, I wouldn’t mind.

We each go by the singular ‘they,’ ‘their,’ and ‘them’

breaking binaries and deconstructing social constructs.

Haven’t you ever been driving and a car cuts you off?

“They’re driving like a maniac!” you might say.

I wonder what is the difference really.

They were only running late,

yet we’ll never understand their motive

because we don’t know them.

Eventually, the walls will fall, though if we hear again,

“they is plural and you each are only one,” we may explode

and show our multiple pieces. But that is okay,

because the big bang has always been something I’ve wanted to witness;

that, and the aurora borealis.

There is something enticing about nothing,

like the silence of winter.

Are we alone now?

There’s a strange cimmerian silence ringing in my ear,

singing yes, finally.

Are the repetitive pastel walls keeping us in or the world out?

I can’t remember.

I suppose it is not too difficult to knock them down,

if that is what we desire.

I don’t want to only stay afloat in stagnate grey waters forever.

We are not damned.

So let us walk upon the water instead on our forever endeavor;

swimming is far too strenuous.

Though it is not raining, remember?

We have everywhere to go, but we are now here – nowhere.

Let us go towards the steel towers

standing as relics in sky

and show them what electricity truly feels like.

This will be a shock.

It is only when that vastness mirrors the ground, that there is trouble

because fear is empty except when turned upside-down.

If you and I stay on this same secret frequency,

we will be safe from assimilation.

Our eyes are the satellites sending messages to our brains,

which in turn hold the infinity of the universe.

So let us walk as one, our steps in unison,

through these mechanical towers

and under our umbrella we will ignore the invisible

and silent radio waves on our way to the ocean

water-falling off the edge of the world.

Once there, we may finally be alone

and try to wrap our warped brains around

how Postmodernism is a meta-narrative

like all the rest that came before.

Eventually, we will think no more

and try our hardest to purely exist existentially,

exiting society.