Recently, I watched both Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 as well as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. It should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to movie reviews (or has actually seen them) that one of these films is great and the other is, to be kind, disappointing.

I miss the stars. I miss the darkness. I miss the cold, the stillness, the peace. I miss the air on my skin, and my breath thick in the breeze. The peace in the isolation, the serenity lost in the night. I miss their brightness, their clarity and reach. I miss standing, alone in the dark, just staring at the sky, forgetting all the things I need to forget. Just letting go, feeling the world, the same way now as it has always been.

I don’t have a lot of memories of the time before I was five. I remember lying on the floor in, I think, the living room, having just found what appeared to be some sort of gelatinous excreta, presumably from the cat. This was the first time I had ever encountered such a thing, and I found it to be bewildering, like finding a jellyfish on the beach. I remember falling down the stairs to the basement once.

I had a pretty average childhood for the most part. Went to public schools, didn’t move around too much. Had a decent number of friends, but wasn’t super popular. It was all just pretty average.

However, there were some things that occurred that were not average at all. In fact, they were pretty fucked up. Now, everybody’s got their crazy stories about weird shit that happened once upon a time, but most of them don’t have anything to do with something so quaint as a spiral notebook.

I often tell people that I don’t eat raisins because I had a bad experience, but I don’t always tell them what that experience was. In fact, sometimes merely telling people of my experience makes them not eat raisins as well. But what horrible thing happened to make me stop eating such a seemingly harmless food?

Did you know? All the world’s a river, I and others, the rocks and refuse, The masses the flow and ebb, and you? You’re the glisten, the shine, the glow, the glinting refraction, the bouncing reflection, the whole world turned upside-down in an endless azure splotched with wisps of vapor and verisimilitude. Did you hear? All my mind’s a fire, Distaste and derision the cracks and pops, Discord and doubt the hiss and the flare, and you?

Sometimes it’s her hair, or her eyes, or lips. Sometimes it’s the way she tilts her head when she talks. Sometimes it’s her breasts, or her ass. Sometimes it’s the way she walks when she knows you’re watching. Sometimes it’s hearing her speak your name. Sometimes it’s her long legs, or her creamy skin. Sometimes it’s the words she uses when she talks, or those ideas that nobody else ever has.

There is a place, far from here, where the wind whispers rhymes hewn from the words of God. Where the rocks gleam with the spit of man, massed piles of granite and obsidian rejects, strewn about like marbles from the sky. A place where all the birds are stripped bare of feathers and limbs and crawl through the grass like beaked-worms. The trees all bleed milky dew with a scent of berries mixed with old blood, attracting insects that stick and die, wings twitching in the wind.

Stan’s the man from Pakistan,

Devised a plan to get with Anne

Involving flans, lambs, and highly polished jars of jam.

As I said once to the rotting dead of past, What stories are told by lips of mold at last? Battles and defeat, a wanton retreat, a stabbing cuirass? Said He to I, “No, I died, so simple and crass.” A love forlorn? A heart a torn perhaps? Suicide pact? “Nay” said Him, to my chagrin, “I haven’t such tact.” Then please, tell me, just how it be, your body’s cold?

There once was this babe who was teething The sound hurt my head like a beating So I yanked them all out He gave quite a shout And now he’s all quiet and bleeding

Things of stone will crumble when, We do not know why we built them.