The First Time I Saw Your Stupid Face, A Journal Entry by Emily Ryan

The crumpled up flyers from band that played the night before, along with the broken notes of a shitty garage band dragging it’s way down the halls and through the walls. Empty beer cans scatter across the floor as the stale stench of weed and cigarettes linger from the ashtrays stockpiled with roaches, who were once soldiers in the dope war against our brains, until the cocaine launched a nuke on it’s way into the battle.

Waking up every morning to this life doesn’t sound like heaven, especially to most people who stagger across this earth mindlessly, not even thinking about why fuck are they here, but to me, it is a comfort that I call home. You can almost taste the nostalgia seeping into the fresh printed memories, even though the time has yet to pass, but you know this comfort doesn’t ever announce it’s departure, so hold on tight, until your fingernails are ripped out as you hold on for dear life, kicking and screaming in the name of your youth as your soul begins to feel the withdraw. Moments like this won’t last long, but moments like this are the ones that you’ll look back and notice a sour taste in the back of your mind because you know that this was your time, and now it’s almost gone. You begin to grieve for the loss of time that will never come by again. That’s the beauty of it though, it wouldn’t be so great if it was going to last forever.

The music playing in the background sounds like an old 80’s punk band, with some young confused kid pouring out love songs that were generated in the pit of his stomach where angst and rebellion found it’s voice. We just look at each other. Silence between us is all there is, but in this moment, this very limited, yet defining moment, that is all that is needed. The look in our eyes as we begin to drown into the oceans of each other’s souls produces more dopamine than anyone could ever imagine shooting up into the bloodstream. It pumps faster and harder than the human heart and it feels so good that the human mind will never be able to come up with any words to describe it. Even if you could describe it, this inner explosion of knowing that you might have been created just to live and suffer and work and laugh and cry and think and feel and question all just so we could feel only moment of nothing except true bliss and understanding. At the same time, our souls, our inner beings, the pin in the grenade, for the first time, does not feel empty and alone, but at peace, even if it’s only for just the amount of time it take you to exhale your last breath. To give these moments a name, or to describe in words would only cheapen your existence. The second that you think you know anything at all is exactly when you learn that you don’t know jack shit, and at that point, the moment is already gone.

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You Don’t Escape Black Holes, A Poem by Emily Ryan

I wanted to dive into the depths of your soul and never come back.

So, I did.

As I dove headfirst, deeper and deeper,

your blood taste of metal as I flow through your veins,

being pumped into your black hole of a heart that you said was whole.

The memory has faded now.

I taste rust rather than metal.

I wish it bothered me more,

But because of you,

my heart is now a black hole too.

EmilyRyan

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