SmokeLong Quarterly

content warning: sexual violence

 

listen honey gentle be gentle there will be time enough for us I promise I promise there is no need to rush no need to ask the planet to slow or halt for us there is time still I want to take

 

if the score says slow that means slower than you think that means let an inhale drop silent into your stomach like an elevator and then hold then hold and then wait yet another pulse it means wait so long you forget where your thoughts started like how in your dreams you can’t ever quite remember how we got here what path of rose thorns and hair guided us down to the beach

 

when the light is just right one morning you try to take a picture of me in your bedroom and tell me to untense stop and say no really let it all release you tell me to go with the flow and I become a winter river a flood roaring underneath a sheet of ice

 

I can’t stop writing slow movements like it always feels like leaving a note too quickly is a moving-on I haven’t earned like there’s something each harmony is trying to tell me that it hasn’t said yet like I haven’t listened hard enough for a lesson that will be gone forever if I let it go now

 

grave is an instruction that’s supposed to mean solemn as much as slow but heaviness is relative I’ve learned weight means nothing really gravity has no meaning without knowing the breadth of the body you’re pulled to the body that’s holding you down who’s pressing your wrists into the dirt

 

I had a dream where all our words were trapped in a snowglobe tumbling to the ground I had a vision of unstoppable rains approaching in slow-motion I saw a movie replaying every single wish I couldn’t stop thinking about like a ghost trying to get it right trying not to fuck it up this time trying to be granted passage to heaven I listened to a ten-dollar psychic on 10th street who told me if I kept it all to myself this time surely it would go different

 

I type adrenaline slow into a search engine I type trauma time dilation into a search engine I type rush and retype chemical rush endorphins I type threat stimuli evolution god particle I type do these hormone pills reduce my reaction time when I’m in danger I type illusion basic reality the world around us I type quantum blowback exit wound avalanche flightpath free fall hairline fracture intrusive heart calcification speed sternum yearning snap judgment influx flood blood stream white cell predecessor protector swerve screaming guard wall and I forget I was supposed to be looking for answers

 

you turn over in bed and press the bone dead center of my chest say you remember your heart is here rather than on the left right and I forget why you needed to let me know

 

even if you confess to everything when there’s no body there’s no case

 

in my mind still there is a car crashing on the highway and its motion is slow in my mind there is someone holding my chest in something that looks like softness from the outside there is a hairpin turn a bloody ask for penance in flesh there is a flightpath a talon a pack hunt and it is all slow and in my mind there is another man following me on the street and I know what he’s probably about to do and in my mind another man has a secret camera in his bedroom he won’t tell me about and I know what he’s probably about to do and in my mind another man asks if anyone knows where I am and I know what he’s probably about to do and in my mind I don’t ask him to stop because I know what will probably happen if I do anyway and in my mind there’s a chorus of willow-tears and old mirrors and ceramic angels shattering on the sidewalk there’s an unbroken timeline of our luck there are just two wishes left now there’s a garbled translation of what it means to want death then life then just slowness there’s the steadying thought that I could still take it all back if no one heard the words the fear that speaking slow won’t allow the truth to skip over the audience’s heads there’s the idea that most people only listen to the music in pop songs so really you can admit whatever you want and no one will be any the wiser you can say it’s no big deal and it’s no big deal and in my mind if the notes are pretty enough any story can sound sweet and if you slow everything down enough to know where electrons are in space there will be no more velocity no more music no more time only gut steel nylon cedar lung horsehair string waveform skin friction ghost tone blue note perfect cold end to all particle motion the odd feeling for all the tearing in my surface that somehow somehow in the chill-death of the universe at the end of everything you’d still be there still be patient waiting for me to exit the stage door at the end of the show just needing to know I’ll get there safe just waiting to drive me home

 

gregorian chants would usually include an extra note on the end of each line just a heads-up so your eye wouldn’t betray your throat on your next breath just so you wouldn’t forget where you were

 

darling you were not what this song was about

 

you were not what this song was about I swear but it’s just right when you told me my horoscope today all the world just made perfect sense and for once I’m telling you

 

every god damn word came true