We join here and keep the cavity closed tight, safe from prying eyes and nails and interests. But, truth be told, I contemplated releasing the connection today. Letting the separation happen. Schism the chasm. Stretch the cartilage until he could no longer hang on.
Reduce him, become more of me. Over the last couple of months, I have come to rely on his guidance completely, and at the final accounting, I'm not sure that I'm better off. He's directed me to some shallow, forgettable experiences and a life that I don't recognize. One cannot live on fantasy alone.
And art is fantasy. It is the twisted reflection of my reality, filtered and flustered and run amok.
"Obsucrious" was released to a whimper. Disappointing to the point that I give it away now, more often than asking people to pay for it. A select few of my friends have actually taken time to experience it, far fewer than I expected from a social network that I blew up as big as I could, through cultivating international friendships and artistic connections. In the end, there is much silence. A phone that doesn't ring for weeks. A calendar now dominated more by professional activities than social.
Is this regression, or the sternum slowly separating, ready to spill the darkness from the whole within?
I choose not to think about it, the growing darkness. I get fat. Cut my hair to become someone I've never been: sleek and successful. I focus my energies on righting my life, compromising the direction to no one. I learn to like distant paths and silent nights. I let the darkness take over for a while, grow out a beard and stalk the shadows of the world.
Perhaps the sternum isn't separating, but eclipsing, refusing into something different.
Something altered. But the same.
I feel like I will break apart in the britlling of the coming cold. The cartilage cannot keep this together. It feels weaker and less destined for cohesion. Yet, there is odd strength and fearlessness, a surrender to madness.
If this is the way it has to be, then so be it. I will fight to keep it together.
Regardless of circumstance, turbulence or weather.