Woof, I’ve been working my ass off in April. I saw a sign in the subway that said “1. I have something to say. 2. I know what happens next. 3. Nothing is going to stand in my way.” It was trying to teach little kids how to be writers. There’s another one with the same graphic design but it says “Take turns. Keep spying.” I didn’t pay as much attention to the context on that one, maybe it was for Social Studies? I know the schools have been closed off and on for a while. Have you ever thought about how close the word atlas is to the words at last? I have, but I can only make this claim as of like one moment ago. Do you remember the thing I wrote where it says: There isn’t time to spend musing on what the poets meant / They’re dead, and you must– / Run! Do you remember? It was in one of the Tiny Letters. It doesn’t say “They’re dead, and you must run.” It’s never said that. Information is like that sometimes. Sometimes you remember it differently. Sometimes you didn’t read closely. There were a lot of line breaks and stuff in it too, just to make the lines end with certain letters, I think, but that’s not relevant. To this. That had to do with magnets. Anyway, now I’m reading that post again, and I’m asking why she had tiles. It did say that, and it still does. Now I’m wondering what it was that interrupted them. Also, they must what? And I’m trying to remember which local college it was near, where I found those concrete letters dumped in the woods. Was it Haverford? Is there such a place? What was I doing there? I’ve been working way too much this month.

I found a pendant on the sidewalk while I was walking to the subway to go to a gig one evening. It’s a round silver locket with a tree carved into the lid of it with cutouts all the way through, so like if you put something scented into the locket, you would be able to smell it, so you could put some dried lavender or something, for a little portable aromatherapy when you need it. I put it on the same chain with my two hearts. It’s pretty heavy but I only wear that chain on windy days anyway. This is where I claim I got the locket. You don’t know though, I mean someone could have given it to me. I could have bought it with money I never said I had. Someone could have left it over at my house last time they were there. There’s a flea market down the street today, maybe later I’ll claim that’s where I got it. You simply don’t know. It’s no reflection on you. It doesn’t tarnish what we have.

Maybe we’re back in business, but I doubt it. I guess I have to take my blog posts over to the library and print them and staple them together and mail them out to you through the postal service, or whatever is left of it after it’s been De-Joyed. They’re trying to keep us apart, you do know that, right? The internet is not a big truck, it’s a series of tubes, it’s magnets, I’m not saying it’s aliens, but. The upside is, if you’re reading in real time, you get to wait for each sentence to be posted one at a time. A photo will pop up and you’ll hit Refresh Refresh Refresh Refresh waiting for the caption. But the caption might be a lie. I thought the secret was that if you had previewed your post then you couldn’t get it to post live, but now I think the issue was that the post needs a title so that it can have an address. But I digress.

I’m writing a story about a kid who runs away from their family at the fair. There’s a lot of French fries in it and other food. Hot chocolate and such, as you would expect. After the fairway closes the food stalls serve a last half hour of styrofoam cups and paper baskets. As everyone makes their way to their cars, where their jackets are. The night has cooled. I’m not too sure how to handle narrative progression though, as you might can tell from the wrestling required just to make this post.

What if I retype it again from scratch?

God didn’t feel like typing it up. I know how the fuck God must have felt.

So it says they find her/it with Not Going Home written on its shirt. I know the shirt, it has the neck cut out of it. It was a Blue Medium. It has a graphic from a local organization for girls. In the story, it was just a white t-shirt but then in Black Sharpie it ends up saying — scrawled — Not Going Home. I don’t know why. I don’t think anyone meant anything by it. (There’s some truth in everything everyone says…. Sshhhh please for once and for all, stop saying that.) You know what I mean, it was just an artifact that later got misinterpreted. (As they all do. That’s not even a misinterpretation, that’s literally the way artifacts are read. Ssshhhhh please.) I mean the writing referred to something mundane, but then it ended up meaning more than that. I just forget exactly how it happened. Like, you know how if you’re sorting things and you might have piles labeled – literally labeled, with sheets of paper taped to something – Keep, Toss, Sell, Donate, etc.? So it was for some reason like that, they ended up with a t-shirt with the words Not Going Home written on it. But she somehow ends up wearing it. It will make more sense when the story is all written, I promise. And honest, I would wait until then to post it, ‘cept uh, you know how WordPress is.

A key protects its scratch with an exact jag. There would have been something about the keys to the truck, because that’s where her jacket was. Does she have it? Can you see if she has it on? So if she took it with her, then she must have known. Or so you suppose. But maybe she was just cold earlier than anyone else was, or maybe she thinks ahead, maybe she worries. Maybe it’s like a security blanket. What if I type it again from scratch? A key protects its scratch with an exact jag. A coin is worn. Yeah, she does wear a coin, on a necklace, a nickel with a hole through it. What’s special about it? A buffalo? A rare stamp? A deformity? And how would she know? (Dummy, a coin is worn. What, so it’s really old?)

A guest the other day asked me if I was an art historian. He wasn’t fucking around, he was tying to find out. I told him I was just a person, I wasn’t sure what to call it, but I mean, I was friendly about it. An art historian isn’t really a good guess, although it was, under the circumstances. But in general, I would more likely be a detective. Like, I would run a lost and found database of things you’ve heard of.

Predictive text poems are satisfying to write but sometimes they also turn out well. I have a video on YouTube where I read some of them. I liked the collection, I’ll try to find it and link it later. I feel like it might have been last June 23rd, I’m not sure. I think I was going to pull it together and call it the June 23rd Generation, if that turns out to be the date when it was generated. Anyway, I notice Cupid was trying to figure out predictive text in January 2020. That seems pretty late. Ghosts don’t always know what year it is. I’m just saying.

The leaves on the tree across the street started twinkling earlier this month and now they’re nearly full and pale green. I turned forty-three on the seventeenth. It was one of the three days this month that I took off work. I watched some reality TV on YouTube – cheeky British mini-documentaries about people hunting for antique treasures in their long-forgotten storage units. On the same day, my mom and sister were clearing out a storage unit that my dad had. They ended up finding a treasure that was an exact object I had once said I wanted. Neither of them could remember having seen it there before. So that was neat. Mom is sending it to me. I have to go to a gig. I’m going to wear the copper bells, not the tree locket with the two hearts, because it is not windy and because recently my step has been light enough that I frighten fellow pedestrians when I pass, so I thought, help them out with a little jingle of foreshadowing. A spin of the ol’ At Last Of Tomorrow gives us number thirty-five, the Historian. I’ll post it here without comment.