My cure for heartbreak is a research spiral. This one lasted a week and was about siphonophores.
Then the understanding that I've set three alarms
and I'm still the kind of person who needs three alarms.
My doctor says my cholesterol is fine for someone my age.
This means my cholesterol is not fine.
I said: thank you. I meant: I know.
Three miles down, past the last depth where anything was supposed to survive,
there's a creature that is not one creature.
A colonial string of mouths, each one a clone of the one before,
hauling itself through the absolute dark
and shooting a rope of luminous blue cum into the nothing.
No parliament. No argument.
Just the chain and more chain.
It reproduces by making copies of itself
the way a bad thought does -
each new piece already dying
before it understands it's alive.
My last boyfriend had a laugh that came from somewhere genuine.
He farted once in a restaurant and looked around the room
at the faces of strangers
and said: those are my people now.
I thought I would love him forever.
I think that about everyone.
The universe is 13.8 billion years old.
It spent most of that time not making anything.
Then hydrogen. Then more hydrogen.
Then, eventually, and seemingly without planning,
a man standing at a counter at seven in the morning
eating pretzels over the sink
because he keeps forgetting to buy groceries
And it's been four days.
On the 38 bus a woman sleeps against the window.
Her mouth is open.
She is breathing the air that came from Caesar's lungs,
from the lungs of everyone who closed for good,
still cycling through all of us
without announcing itself.
Because matter doesn't die. It just stops being you.
In the deep the colonial string keeps going.
No brain to doubt itself with.
It makes a copy, which makes a copy, which makes a copy -
a chain of identical ones threading through the dark,
not alive the way we're alive
but not not alive either.
There is no death in there. There is also no Christmas.
A man I was in love with in Stockton
could cry at Pixar movies and bench press two-forty
and quote Borges from memory, sometimes in that order.
He had a back I couldn't stop putting my hands on.
He told me once he thought about death every day before breakfast.
I said: me too.
He said: that's not normal.
I said: oh. yeah, I know.
We were good together. We were not good for each other.
I still have the Borges.
Here is what I know:
the blue animal is still going.
The chain is longer than when I started writing this.
Every copy it makes will make a copy.
None of them will know they were ever something else.
Tonight I'll eat something over the sink.
I'll text someone a thing I mean and then add a period
so it doesn't look like I mean it that much.
I'll watch something stupid until I fall asleep with the light on,
which my last boyfriend said was like sleeping next to a lighthouse.
I said: that's romantic.
He said: no, it isn't.
My heart is a wet mechanic.
It has been running this same route for twenty-nine years
without once asking to stop.
One day it will stop.
The paramedic will be tired.
The form will take longer than expected.
There will be something in my pocket -
a receipt, a note I meant to throw away -
and none of it will mean anything
and all of it will mean everything
and the colonial string will still be going,
making more of itself in the dark,
shooting its cold blue cum into the dark
like it knows something we don't.
Poetry by Antonio
Read 9 times
Written on 2026-07-20 at 19:08
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The String
The alarm. Then the other alarm.Then the understanding that I've set three alarms
and I'm still the kind of person who needs three alarms.
My doctor says my cholesterol is fine for someone my age.
This means my cholesterol is not fine.
I said: thank you. I meant: I know.
Three miles down, past the last depth where anything was supposed to survive,
there's a creature that is not one creature.
A colonial string of mouths, each one a clone of the one before,
hauling itself through the absolute dark
and shooting a rope of luminous blue cum into the nothing.
No parliament. No argument.
Just the chain and more chain.
It reproduces by making copies of itself
the way a bad thought does -
each new piece already dying
before it understands it's alive.
My last boyfriend had a laugh that came from somewhere genuine.
He farted once in a restaurant and looked around the room
at the faces of strangers
and said: those are my people now.
I thought I would love him forever.
I think that about everyone.
The universe is 13.8 billion years old.
It spent most of that time not making anything.
Then hydrogen. Then more hydrogen.
Then, eventually, and seemingly without planning,
a man standing at a counter at seven in the morning
eating pretzels over the sink
because he keeps forgetting to buy groceries
And it's been four days.
On the 38 bus a woman sleeps against the window.
Her mouth is open.
She is breathing the air that came from Caesar's lungs,
from the lungs of everyone who closed for good,
still cycling through all of us
without announcing itself.
Because matter doesn't die. It just stops being you.
In the deep the colonial string keeps going.
No brain to doubt itself with.
It makes a copy, which makes a copy, which makes a copy -
a chain of identical ones threading through the dark,
not alive the way we're alive
but not not alive either.
There is no death in there. There is also no Christmas.
A man I was in love with in Stockton
could cry at Pixar movies and bench press two-forty
and quote Borges from memory, sometimes in that order.
He had a back I couldn't stop putting my hands on.
He told me once he thought about death every day before breakfast.
I said: me too.
He said: that's not normal.
I said: oh. yeah, I know.
We were good together. We were not good for each other.
I still have the Borges.
Here is what I know:
the blue animal is still going.
The chain is longer than when I started writing this.
Every copy it makes will make a copy.
None of them will know they were ever something else.
Tonight I'll eat something over the sink.
I'll text someone a thing I mean and then add a period
so it doesn't look like I mean it that much.
I'll watch something stupid until I fall asleep with the light on,
which my last boyfriend said was like sleeping next to a lighthouse.
I said: that's romantic.
He said: no, it isn't.
My heart is a wet mechanic.
It has been running this same route for twenty-nine years
without once asking to stop.
One day it will stop.
The paramedic will be tired.
The form will take longer than expected.
There will be something in my pocket -
a receipt, a note I meant to throw away -
and none of it will mean anything
and all of it will mean everything
and the colonial string will still be going,
making more of itself in the dark,
shooting its cold blue cum into the dark
like it knows something we don't.
Poetry by Antonio
Read 9 times
Written on 2026-07-20 at 19:08
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text
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