There Are Great Big Flies in the Sky, They Won’t Stop Telling Me to Burn, Dominique Shatkin

THERE ARE GREAT BIG FLIES IN THE SKY, THEY WON’T STOP TELLING ME TO BURN

Dominique Shatkin

Alarm starts playing 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton at 11am. Keep hitting snooze until your phone gives up. Siri thinks you’re a sluggish little bitch. Wake up to Jess calling at 4:30. Reach over and pop an Adderall before you press answer. She asks how you are. You say you can’t feel anything. You’re exhausted. You tell her about the panic attack you had last night. She asks you to recall what was going through your head at the time. You don’t remember. Use your last brain cells, Dominique. Think.

There are bugs everywhere. Hundreds of them. Where the fuck did they come from? You want them gone, but you have to turn around as your mom starts swatting them. Stop caring so much. Do they even have a conscience? Do they see visions? Mom leaves. Pick up the vacuum. Vacuum dies. The bugs are still alive. You are somewhere in between. You can’t breathe. Your eyes start shaking. Your body is trying to kill itself. Undress. Sit on the floor naked. Smoke a cigarette. Breathe. There you go. Grab your favorite purple sweatpants and the baggy t-shirt with “Hardrock Amsterdam” on it. Where’s the shirt? No seriously. Where the fuck is it? It always sits in the same spot, unwashed for weeks reeking of BO.

Anthology 7 314

Rip apart every inch of your room. Of every room in the house. Mom tells you to stop going through the kitchen cabinet, it wouldn’t be there. It’s gone. You lost it. The same way you lost him. Remember he called you and said “tell me how stupid I am” when he lost the keychain you gave him? Well now it’s your turn. Tell him you lost the shirt he gave you. What does this mean? He lost the keychain and I lost the shirt. What does it mean? Get a hold of yourself, you’re spiraling. It’s a shirt. Stop applying meaning to objects that are too light to carry so much weight. Stop lying to yourself. You only wear it because you’re desperate enough to cling to something that has touched his skin. He touched you, but that was a while ago and skin sheds. The shirt is gone. He is gone. There are bugs everywhere. You try to tidy up around the seemingly endless sea of black specs, but face it. You are not in control. This is not in your hands, nothing is. Slap your skin thinking you feel them crawling all over you. Caress your stinging flesh to pretend that you are capable of loving yourself the way he once did.

This body does not feel safe. You don’t want to be here. You don’t want to remember how this feels. Suppress, suppress, suppress. Do what you do best.

You tell her that you think you blacked out from the stress. Maybe you should end the session for today. Talk to you Friday, Jess.

315 Tripod