Words by Vivian Simon SC ’28

Graphic by Genevieve O’Marah SC ’28

I’ve been here not even a week. It’s all slipping away. I forget what to do 

When this happens constantly, all the time, around the clock, my heart is thumping. 

I can’t stop it but I can’t show it and I can only relieve it by making it louder. 

Sex is loud. I always want to ask girls if we could try to have silent sex 

Inevitably I have something to say about the state of it all around halfway through. 

I’ve learned that people don’t like to have quiet sex because then they’re left to think 

It’s all messy and intimate. Sex is so sticky. I don’t hate sex really, I just hate lack. I need to smell nice and look good and have friends and not remember being at the table, shaking and shaking.

There are no more truths. If anything is only as real as I feel it, which isn’t 

necessarily what you’re saying but maybe that’s what it is: where’s the truth? Where 

Do I shake my hand and sign? I’m trying very hard here but everything is 

keeping me awake. I’m terrified. I have no more control. I love you very much but I miss home. I want you to be home. I want to be home and you. I want you and I want to be gone away into home and I want to ask if you understand. But I don’t, so there you go. I never bet on myself and I rely too much on futurisms. I need you, home. 

The lights outside will never go out, but that’s because we pay good money for that safety. You’ll never shut the shades and I’ll always stay. I loved that photo for so long and I never looked at it, and then I saw it and I thought it was too simple, said nothing, lacked clouds. I wanted to crawl under the desk and come out when it was safe. I gave myself these burns. I knew it was coming and I wanted to see it. I wanted to see everything but I burned too close. Now they’re just bumps, really ugly. I used to know

If, for a minute, I could go back to when you started to get angry, if I could go back and say no when you said you had concrete evidence. First: to say no to kissing, which was my own fault, and deeply happy, I was deeply happy, and when I think about that morning, or night, or hours in between, and I could live in that White joy. I say white because It’s how I picture the big bang. I picture me floating there in the bright flash, and her soft skin, and I want to tell him I love him so much. I always love the wrong people because I think they will love me the right way. I do not want to want. I want to be happy with what it all is. But I’m sitting on a roof and I have often thought of breaking my knees off of it. Ito in hand, just climbing out. I wish there wasn’t gravel. Whenever something is the way it is, like humans sweating or sex being loud or rocks or a headache, I always imagine what life would be like without those and how we would have no idea. And then immediately I begin to wonder what we don’t have now. I miss everyone who is not. I do not want to attend Calculus, or get in or out of bed, or eat potatoes for breakfast again. 

I want to be in the ocean and I want another white Joy. It has been three years and I still miss you. I still miss everyone who is not. I think I am permanently ruined from things that may have never even happened. And yet, because this is being typed, none of it is permanent. I could very well go back and delete that and nobody would ever know except some Big Internet Back Door that can access Absolutely Everything. But nobody would ever care to, because why bother? Much bigger things are constantly at play. I wonder who the next famous person to die will be. Perhaps Madonna. If I could for one second get rid of everything and begin again and be, I have no idea where to start. I would probably start by not being me. And then I would get a lot of cool jeans and work very hard starting from age three and then I would move up through the world effortlessly and gracefully and with complete conviction that I am who I am and. If I could change another thing, I would get rid of all the ugly colors. I would deck the world out in Ralph Lauren who is actually Jewish. I would sit down and know I am not a terrible mess. I would go buy a massage for my temples. I might actually go back to my eighth birthday and read War of the Worlds. 

Last year when I got very cold my therapist told me to get a scarf. So me and mom went and got corduroys. Like that bear from that department store. If I could do it all again, I wouldn’t. I would be a bear and eat salmon. But unfortunately I am left with all that I have, so I thankfully must continue to worry and nag and whine and eat food and drink cheap white wine because actually, I like it very much. When I wanted to go into a very dark room but we have the most energy output so the lamp is always on. I love you so much I want to cry all the time