The Smoothest Stones in My Collection

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow With hands that never shook and a smile that never faltered, I packed my bags,  ignored all instincts,  and set my eyes both eastward.  A new beginning awaited me; there was a dream I had to follow. And I chased that dream, with blind eyes to the little town of Sleepy Hollow. “The Hollow isn’t safe!” My father howled at my deaf ears, “The Hollow is ungodly!” mother wailed, awash with tears. “Haven’t you heard the stories of the man without a head?” “Haven’t you heard that life in the hollow revolves around the dead?” When I arrived I was alarmed by the odd ways of the town, And appalled by  whispers of an equestrian wraith that rides when the sun goes down . I was curious so I wandered, and I broke the town’s one rule, I went out in the woods at night to falsify this ghoul. Ignorantly, I commenced, and I did not listen to them, I carried no worries and I failed to be wary, oh what a fool I am. Now tucked behind a tree I watch my breath clo...

Nobody - Mitski Sometimes I am the only one who can hear me, I queue Nobody by Mitski and I convince myself  that I am the only person that I will ever be able to trust. The air is cold and my jacket is thin, but I go outside anyway, because I need to be somewhere else, when I cannot be someone else. To wipe my own tears,  lean on my shoulder,  to offer myself a sip of water. I sit on concrete stairs looking down at all of the places that I wish I would take me to. I want to leave. I want to stay here. I am frozen. I am static. I am alone. I look down at a patch of grass where I would like to lay out a checkered blanket and sit under the sky. Hugging myself, sharing warmth with myself, singing myself to sleep: Nobody, Nobody, Nobody I am the negative space in a self-portrait, completing a simple composition, holding my face in both hands. Who can I talk to when I cannot hear anything? This song plays over and over in my ears, so loud that there is absolutely nothing else....

God, with a capital g .  The big man upstairs.  The one who spoke through Muhammad,  who established the covenant with the Children of Israel,  who embodies the holy trinity.  People today are afraid to talk about God.  They whisper about him,  they hand out pocket-sized copies of the Old Testament and politely ask you to make a dollar donation for their weekly collection,  but they don’t talk about him.  At least, they don’t say anything worth listening to.  For the most part they just regurgitate the words that were spoon-fed to them by an eager Sunday-School teacher.  God.  The one whose controversiality now is the driving factor behind countless wars and acts of violence,  simply due to the prophet’s tendency to claim victim. I grew up Catholic-ish,  a strange denomination of Christianity that allows you all the benefits of catholic eucharist for a quarter of the work.  You get baptized,  just to get yo...