"Vestibule," "Obscura," and "Irresponsibility"

Vestibule

I know I will not commit suicide
            because the world all wants me to die and
                        I hate the world more than it could
                                    ever make me suffer
 
Since I am alone in this room now
            I know that there are insects here
                        in my peripheral like some
                                    echoes of my movement
                        among the piles of exoskeleton
 
I cannot see the page in front of me at 4am because
            my body keeps smoldering
                        where the joints of my wrists
                                    and fingers
                        wear themselves open
 
I will commit suicide
            because
                        I can't imagine growing old
            in that my presence should become more
                        obscene and intolerable
            each year until this course will run me
                        against the trajectory of machines
 
In having decided to be killed
            I become a collaborator
 
I might only drink alcohol now to eradicate myself
 
I usually smoke in my reflection while I smoke
            and the time of night crawls around me
                        it's insignificant to sleep
            three hours because inconvenience and
                        crumbling
            are only my usual dimensions
 
I'm never angry enough to exist
 
I'm never worth my weight in flesh
 
My earliest continuity began when I was
            twenty three and now I'm twenty six
 
I don't know how to talk to you anymore
I keep getting locked in my room until it gets
            filled with smoke and then I
                        focus on dying until
            I can't think well and
                        the book falls out of my hands
            so I scratch around the dark to sleep
 
I'm looking for a way out
 
I know that's faulty so I'm looking for a
            different way out
 
I wasn't born to survive and I know that
            I wasn't born
                        I only washed up onto this shore
 
I don't know where anyone is anymore
 
I'm trying to make sense with dissociation because
            the literal is only stale air
 
I know exactly how it feels to kill someone
            because I already lived through this
                        life in my dreams
 
The worst of it is that I know who I am

 


 

Obscura

Something good exists
And I don't know where I am
Still
 
Swimming in the motion
Falling sick against the wind
And something real exists
I can feel nothing with my hands
 
I can cut nothing into pieces
Thinking about being alive
The earth is warm if I can touch it
And concrete spreads across the world
 
My hands are filled with eggshell
My head is full of sand
I can't remember waking up today
I can't be comfortable getting attached to life
 
Which side of the air is this?
 
I can reach out my hand into night
I can throw bottles against the world
Until they speak to me
 
Breaking little bodies against the surface
Echo-locative distress
My hurt is a signal out from being
Wandering
 
I wanted to go wander in the night forever
I wanted to die
I don't know how you find the desire
To wake as yourself in the morning
It doesn't connect
 
I touch my fingers to the surface of water
I press and press against
I can smell the good air exists, still
The flash of your eyes in the dark

 


 

Irresponsibility

I feel inclined to
Clean up my blood off the floor
When I've been cut
Or beaten
And I want to apologize
To everyone
For making them see
The insides fallen everywhere
I let the smell reach them
The raw, metallic air of my
Irresponsibility
Knowing
I should have put it away
I should have made you laugh instead
And kept the blood in
Until you can't see me
I'm sorry to be hurt in public
I know that it makes you uncertain
Seeing me injured
So I'd rather abstract myself
To be disassembled later
Elsewhere
To walk and smoke a cigarette
To somewhere I'm nothing
To cry and to break along my frail lines
That I see in destruction
And smoke another walking
To let me cry
Hidden
To fall apart in private
Walking
Under the world
I shouldn't involve you
To make you uncomfortable
Watching me fall

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Rats Alice Trujillo

Rats Alice Trujillo (her / it) lives in Seattle and writes. She makes lots of zines and has five books of collected writing. These include two books of poetry (Insurrectionary Auto-Vivisection, Body Apocalypse Manifesto), two novellas (Check Engine Light, Vermin), and one hybrid collection (Two People Going to the Bottom of a River). She helps to edit and assemble a literary / arts compilation zine called INFERNO. Rats Alice is a member of the Left Bank Books Collective and most of her writing and arts are available through their store or website.