oh my sweet carolina

in this between, some ancient and misunderstood
architecture has the murky iridescent look
of an oil spill or a new jersey welfare line - your name is
too clean. there, where metal and rebar are part of the geography,
you are whiter somehow than you are red, and you make days
longer. some old stories have lost their meaning since we came,
and we don’t know the history of this place any more than our own,
but i haven’t turned to bird watching yet.

***

it isn't so much that i don't like mandu, as it is that it represents something ghastly to me. there's home, and all the comforts associated with familiarity, and then there's the mundane. mandu is mundane. they should call it mundane-du. that's all i have to say about that.

korea has invested me with this constant need to make things up. not like lying so much as propelling. it's just that boring. i'm tired all the time for no reason. i think of things i'd like to do, or things i think i ought to do, but then i just go to bed instead. maybe i have lyme disease. maybe i am actually an extraterrestrial being not meant to live in this environment. more likely, i'm just really lazy and in almost desperate need of a kick in the ass. i should start doing meth maybe.

today would have been... three years? he is... inspiring ellipses, apparently. there is this blue and gray striped shirt with a blue collar. actually, the gray might've been white at one time, but this thing is so threadbare now, stitching coming out, holes in the armpits, and so forth. but i can smell this shirt. it's absurd. why am i writing about this. the point is, smells will stay with you for your whole life. i don't know how the brain does this. and boys are really smelly. so sometimes there is just no shaking them.

sometimes you think you have someone's number, i mean you really get what they're about, and actually you're just pigeonholing them because you've had a few disasters and paranoia strikes deep. so i think he's probably dangerous and one of those people who plays the misunderstood victim with more walls to break down than could possibly be worth it when in actuality he just enjoys his freedom a little too much and wants it guilt-free or nothing, but... those are just words that don't stand up next to what he actually is at four in the morning when we're finally alone. i've said enough about that, too.

if i could just lie down in the parking lot of the manor at 2 AM and watch the stars revolve. if i could just walk down to riverside and sit between the rows of little gray tombstones and talk to the soldiers. if i could just have one slice of the sheer delight and a pint of white rascal in the theater at apbc. or light up with the girls on dogwood. or lie on the sand at north fork left fork and talk about that time. if i could just go home for a moment. i'd come right back.