my headphones don’t work and my room smells like rust

I haven’t slept.

These last few years, or months, I’ve begun associating this particular feeling, this heaviness you can’t blink away, with the smell of rust, a smile like knives, and the scent of rain. 

I know why this is—I’ve listened to episode 74 so many times I’ve lost count, so many times I can recite most of it back, Fatigue. Coffee—although I don’t drink it myself—and the sound of the wind. 

And that’s another thing, the wind—the wind, and how it goes on blowing, and it doesn’t stop—a wind-tossed thing, here on a roof under the stars I can’t see in the middle of the city. That’s another thing, the wind, and how it goes on blowing till the rusty beams creak, the promise of a fall so great nobody will know what to do about it. 

You don’t do much of anything, when you haven’t slept in a while. Sometimes, somewhere between all those bursts of energy, sometimes you just sit there and your brain doesn’t work and you’re staring at whatever it is you’re staring at and nothing ever happens. You’re playing Among Us with your friends—it’s 2020 and everyone’s playing Among Us with their friends—and you’re looking at your screen and you know you have to get to Admin and swipe your card, you know you do because it says so right there in your tasks list, and you know you should say something in chat, or do something, anything. You know you should talk to somebody; you know you should stop…whatever it is you’re doing. You know you should stop typing this and go work on your assignments, all seven of them, and you know you should go to sleep. You know you do. 

(I haven’t slept—and I don’t know how long it’s been. I’ve never been good with time, minutes bleeding into hours, sunrise only an afterthought. I never know what time it is.) 

I heard about a poet recently, a man who wrote about everything that happened to him. This man, I see in my mind’s eye, sitting at a desk, holding a grey notebook in his grey hands, scribbling in it—frantically, desperately. His hands move quickly and the words form quicker, and he writes about everything. 

And I’m thinking of another man now, not a real one this time, but a man I saw somewhere in a burning forest once, sitting in his cave while the world around him burned, wind chimes tinkling in the ember-filled breeze. He sat at an old desk peering out of his cave, hands shaking as he kept on writing. His wall was plastered with everything he had written, but he went on writing; he was terrified (“Scared shitless,” I’d said when I saw what he’d written). World’s Best Dad, the poster on the wall announced, the smiles on it all faded now. 
And now I’m thinking of myself. Of me, trying to write—trying, always trying—not everything, not like these two men, grey and red (and red and grey), but blue, like the ink that I haven’t touched in years. And I’m thinking, and I’m not-writing, and I’m listening—there’s a song playing softly through my headphones, and it’s called I Exist I Exist I Exist.
“So shut your mouth,” it tells me. “Because these words will speak themselves.” 

And the tap in front of me breaks, and all the water rushes out; there’s water everywhere but I don’t stop it, can’t; it’s so hard to keep track of things when it gets like this, there’s just too much—too many ideas, too many words, and I wish it would stop. 

Or at least slow down, because this is much too fast, I could never keep up, and I wish it would stop now because it’ll be gone, I’ll forget, I don’t know how to remember. Sand through my fingers, water through my fingers, going going gone. And I want it to stop, to slow down, I want to cry, because I’m doing the dishes and the tap won’t close, I can’t reach out and get my phone and type this out fast enough, it’ll be gone, I want to cry. 

And I do cry, because so much of it is gone, there was so much more—and where does it come from anyway? Why does this happen, who creates these words? I can feel them forming, in my head, but I’m not sure if they’re mine (they can’t be). 

I dream, sometimes; poetry in my dreams, amazing, beautiful, wonderful things, things I couldn’t have ever—get this—dreamed of, and who puts them there? It can’t be me, it’s never me—forest fires and grey hands, it’s always them. Not me. 

The tap still won’t close. I’m not done with the dishes, but I think I’ll stop for now. I think I’ll go to sleep. I pick up my phone again, and I turn the music off. 


(Art: Rust and Blue, 1953, by Mark Rothko)

Lots of references here; first, the “episode 74” I talk about here is my favourite episode, Fatigue of the horror podcast The Magnus Archives. The poet who wrote everything is Christopher Isherwood, and the second man, with the forest fire and all that, is the character Ned Goodwin, from Firewatch.

I Exist I Exist I Exist is a real song by Flatsound; and I really was listening to it while doing the dishes, when this happened.
As I described eloquently to my friend, “it's like reactor meltdown but in my brain”.