I, I, I.

If I am human, and I am composed by constellations of molecules and atoms, comprised by protons, neutrons, electrons, connected by chemical bonds—what should I make of the distance between you and I, the contrast between dark and light, the imaginary borders that comfort the ego, the I, the I, the I.

I have been and not been, filtered in and out of daylight, characterized by the performance of rippling skin and gaunt flesh, validated by construct, undone by construct, eyes peeled backwards in search of secrets that cannot pierce the earth in the same way it can the mind.

I write in circles just as the abused lion who has spent its life locked in a cage, put on incessant display, resorts to follow its own footsteps. To bend to the will of infinity, imprisoned by repetition, unable to complain, unaware of the sheer extent of its pain. If that lion should be greeted by the dry air of the savanna, it will still tell itself it can only follow the path of anguish that has come to hold it closer than bones.

You leave your apartment in the city, take the same route on the subway, pay the same fare, wince at the dwindling figure in your bank account. You dream of dreaming but even that has become tedious and tired. You can’t see the stars, but the lights on the skyscrapers remind you of what you could become, if only.

Clock in, clock out. Scroll. Look up from the phone, look down. Scroll. Images pass through your eyes, I, I, I. You are helpless but here you are God. You are omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. You are in control. Your eyes have treaded lands your feet will never touch; it sees warmth your skin is scared to know. Transient, but woefully immortal, if only for this moment. If only for the mark you etch into oblivion, words never written on pages but reserved for anonymous posts. There are not people here but code, faces abstracted, compared, reorganized, displayed, rejected, frayed in the edges of your brain; you look in the mirror but you do not see yourself. Childhood is beaten and washed on the shore, the glow of youth paled by wretched, wretched disillusion.

Nothing exists without affirmation, without consciousness pressed upon consciousness, flesh intertwined with flesh. You cannot be without I. I cannot be without You. Yet, still, the window of our souls beg to be poured into, told what it is, told what it can be. Silence is drained out of the ear, forced from the cicadas, closed fist around the frogs to croak. Take in the words of all of the you’s who avoid each other’s eyes in the streets, step over bodies on the sidewalks, ignore the suffering not drawn from your own. You are nothing; I am nothing. Our skeletons will kiss the earth and be devoured by it, graves upturned, reworked—erections of empires upon the ashes of yesterday. It will all be different you say, an echo impressed upon time and spiraling in those fingertips that have forgotten creation begets creation. There are voices ruminating, not of your mind, but from media online, the I that has misconstrued itself, the you that cannot shed its disguise. I, I, I.