Caving

The cave did not greet 3 until 3 had shrilled at the cave about being forgotten even after all those greetings from here and there. The cave laughed Still that fucking impulse control problem, "I wonder how long it would take for you to keep your silence and reprimand me. I was planning on doing it at 11:59. I have not forgotten nor will I ever forget."

3 grumbled, "I want to stay 22..."

22 was when 3 fell in love, now five years older.

Then 3 sighed, "...I'll call you later."

The cave shook its head, You will forget and 3 forgot to call.

Now--- on 5--- 4 thanks the cave for remembering its number. The cave asks if this number were any different from the numbers of before. 4 says nothing much has changed because "You are still here."

The cave sighs And there goes the cursed blessing.

And so this is when 4 really talks to the cave, its despised birthday and the first day of another year, the perfect time to commit suicide.

Sometimes, 4 says, I think that it's all a hopeless case.

The cave says, "And sometimes it's amor fati."

More like ball and chain, 4 says, But the amor bit works as well.

The cave says, "It would not make sense if you were not alive, you know. It just won't."

The cave contemplates on what has become of them--- the Queens and Kings of Hell--- apart by necessity and still very much buried in each other's ghosts. Are they nothing but left corpses of lions and tigers baiting one another? What is the number one hopeless case? There are other hopeless cases? Yes, of course, even Hell has tiers and gradations of crap.

You and love in one day, 4 says, Makes me feel like there's a 50-foot drop somewhere near.

The cave smiles, "You fell a long a time ago and you're still falling. And you've been dying the past six. Want to feel alive again?"

Hah. Nice try! 4 says.

The cave laughs, "There goes an exclamation mark! You'll be fine," and says goodbye.

The cave is comforted by being friendless in a meal, to hear that voice that has been silenced by the noise, choked and gurgling. Like last night, it sees how far it has fallen unto the exasperating muck of the growing pains of the younger. While it craves ruminations on factoids about the brain for the brain, this symbiotic parasitism. The crave sees the cracks in all these romanticized illusions and rationalizations. And all these yarns binding screws together become frayed by this grinding, what is called living.

Today, a ray of sunshine is home and sleeps, exhausted by crossing timezones unto this reality:

The cave hears that Nikki Coseteng says that people have stopped thinking and people have stopped teaching people to think. To think is not a skill: it is a competency. And the young have become incompetent. Pay 50 000- 100 000 a year to learn how think.

The cave wakes up from a dream a minute before the alarm clock rings. In the dream, the ray of sunshine says, "I wrote a poem for you...From all of you..."

The cave is trapped by the clock and it has been trying to smash the bundy. It chews slowly, sips, and linger over the haze of the past days--- this daze--- a constant wonder: What runs it? What keeps it going and from going over? Ten minutes and it is time to rise--- from this black fairy skirt only worn thrice.

The cave is a womb waiting to bleed. Yesterday, it had absorbed a thinned womb's sadness--- losing a child at four months, left alone, scooping her baby out from the toilet bowl and wrapped in her favorite shirt, frozen inside the freezer, taken out and cradled for baby will get cold, is cold, thinking if baby could be returned to the womb, warmth and warmed, burned after, not buried, and now haunted, still healing. All this form love, the once-future, who had dragged her hair and battered her...

The cave attracts the wounded. They hope it could heal them. It screams from their pain seeking, burrowing, and finding warmth inside it. The cave is heavy from what it wants to vomit. Now it bleeds, there is so much blood, gushing them all out of it.