(T)here

I won’t pretend to know what the shark is thinking. I just know it can’t keep its eye off me. I am full of vague memories and lost smells. I visit places I will never again exist. I touch metal leaves and the dog goes crazy.

orange carpet grows a place on the stairs

singing warm candles and incense

such light and something like love

over my shoulder and behind my eyes

The phone is ringing. The doorbell is ringing. My ears are ringing. Outside there is a tree to climb. I know every foothold. I find robin eggs. I know not to touch them. There’s nothing I need here. I keep coming back anyway.

I don’t remember any of the stories that were read to me. If only I could always be so selective, but that would be cheating. Better to embrace the whole mythology: spiders and spray paint and shingles; unanswered prayers and overflowing ashtrays. Laughing. Shouting. Sanctuary. Prison.

the sad whispers and secret photographs

curling like burning hair, thin and sacred

plastic womb pantyhose

dancing, melting

my left hand still holds this

I can not hear the hum of the transmission towers, but they are near. Sentinels of suburbia, heralds of the sprawl. Whose side will they take when the war comes this way?

I stood in all of these spots. The land doesn’t remember. I made no claims I can defend. I never thought to ask about who was there before. And I imagined no one would come after. I believed it all mattered.

Red light.

Green light.

Ready or not.

You’re it.

So selfish. A million petty ghosts. I gave them shape and form and power before I understood what I was doing. No take backs! Midas-touching fool’s gold I can’t unload, hoarding every glittering moment. These cement shoes aren’t practical. Someone left the garage door open. And the phone is still ringing.

Presents find a way inside despite the lack of  a fireplace and chimney. There is so much I want that I will never get. There is so little I actually need.

Listen. Imagine. Change channels. Watch the visiting sunlight. Savor this taste of eternity, remember how it soured. Take that with me and be thankful when everything ends.

and the bacon grease experiments

the lonely action figures

breathing like toilet paper

all lit up and laughing

This here is a placeholder for sentiment. An explanation that became an excuse. A story in which everything is lost in the telling.

I want to keep all the days and nights that matter so much more, the ones that feel like me, that know who I am. There will come a time when no one will remind me, no one will want to, and no one will be able to anyway. There will come a time when I may lose what I’ve earned, thrown back into that circumstance. But such a hell is finite and not inevitable.

If you want to get lost, don’t look back. Don’t leave breadcrumbs. Let well-worn paths become overgrown. Do not visit. Forget the landmarks. Throw away the map.

A seed in the soil, roots in the dirt. Transplanting may not be easy, but it’s necessary when the land is fallow. Now I will the sunlight and the rain. I do not wish to be burned or to drown, but better either than buried alive.

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About Jerry White Jr. 

Jerry is a filmmaker, musician, writer. He began making films as a teenager through home movies and public access television in Metro Detroit, later studied at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and has continued to move across film, writing, music, and collaborative creative communities.

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About TANGENTS

TANGENTS is a new recurring literary section for flash fiction, short prose, and fragments that move outside fixed categories, published by STRATUM. It is a dedicated space for compressed narratives, strange turns, and writing that sits ambiguously between fiction, memory, humor, unease, and dream logic.

Edited By Yuyang Hu