God—
I’m insane again.
Enough to think
that my body of work
can survive.
My mania?
Too bright for daylight.
Too volatile for public transit.
On purpose:
“Look,
my own private
topography of chaos.”
I live here.
Only me.
My apartment.
Not fit for a wife.
Not fit for a family.
Just me,
with a typewriter heart.
So I write.
Gasoline on my tongue.
These cursed little confessions,
lines branded with shame.
Fingers turn,
into pickaxes,
digging for diamonds
in the rubble of my head.
Setting words on fire,
keeping the flame alive.
Branding me,
for all eternity.
A huge fear.
A small hope.
Enough.
I should move.
I don’t.
So I write and write,
write and write.
The clutter.
My mind racing,
faster than I can take notes.
Hands trying to keep up,
hands doing their damndest.
Bare.
Exposed.
Afraid.
Indecent.
Naked.
Vulnerable.
Shivering.
The price:
Being seen,
or being ignored.
Both equally devastating.
I ruin myself
on purpose.
I thought I’d make it.
Turns out the spotlight was meant
for somebody else.
So I want to torch it all—
the notebooks,
the drafts,
reams and reams of rambling.
Start again
as smoke.
In the furnace
of self-immolation.
The fear is enormous:
that once the smoke clears,
there’s nothing left to love,
nothing left that anyone could want to hold.
The hope is small, almost invisible:
that maybe the scorched thing that remains
is still worth something.
My body of work.
Worth seeing.
Worth keeping.
The terror of finality:
Turning knives inside me,
as a proof.
I exist.
Eemu Julius 