Sojourned After Life

I think of very little,

so little that when I sleep,

I am in a room with a dove, a fire, a rose, a cigarette, a heart, a star, a bright red apple.

The most classic array of objects that ever existed.

I famously can’t interact with them.

It is ugly.

I think I sleep for long periods of time.

It is my full-time job.

I would like to dream of Kate or walking.

December in the Stupid Room

We spend a buried evening

watching all the music videos we grew up on.

My favorites are about dancing and partying in the city and

a love that has to be tied to technology.

But it is more than that.

Love that’s an explosion with no casualties.

A bomb made out of an Xbox in the Mojave Desert.

The Mojave Desert is in the city.

You can not be boring.

Feel the music videos in my chest now too.

You liked ones about girls getting revenge, with slanted voices.

Stuff about poison.

We’ve Already Invented History

Owen and Sean turned their phone displays to black and white because studies show that makes you use it less. I tried to do the same, but when I had my videocall therapy it felt like talking to a memory and I got all creeped out. Talking felt so old. What problems of mine have been around before? All of them. I remember hearing when I was younger that if you dream in black and white, you’re a psychopath. I would shake before sleeping, thinking of rainbow sherbert, hoping that the colors would stay with me. A great problem of mine is acting like I have no control over what I do.

Soon enough, most of my friends' phones are in black and white. All the photos of people talking at the bar are put into a black hole. Ripping the life from the laughter. I start to feel special. Like I am the only one with a heart, an ol’ aching heart left. I want to take my phone with me into the forest and take pictures. I can do that now because I don’t have a job anymore. I can do a lot of things, if I put my mind to it, if I get rid of this brain fog and sinus infection that I keep tempting to stay, taking a random old amoxicillin every couple of days. I can’t imagine killing something forever. It’s all a weed I let grow.

Nicholas Wilder Forman is a writer from Los Angeles. Their work has been published in Hobart, Soft Union, Charm School Magazine, Expat Press, Maudlin House, and more.