Extrema

Testing for extrema sucks. At least we got an A- on that quiz.
KEPT AN A- IN CALC. One happy moment in a sea of pain.

Just kidding. Maybe a couple more than one happy moment.
In the past week, I've managed to fall asleep during class four days in a row, lose a toenail, eat more ice cream than I thought existed in my immediate threshold, and run 38 miles.

Today, on the edge between September and October, also feels like the edge among three different lives. Physical, social, academic elements of everything are starting to trip me up. I feel naturally but uncomfortably unstable. It's like a triangle... if you change one point, the entire center of mass will change and I'll cry hard. Or I could stop being a sandbag. I could stop building on eroding glass and continental shelves and live on the rock of Jesus. So many things have changed in the past month... so many priorities, so many people, but I think that's all just one crazy revolution in my mind. What's going on.

Equinox

It's such a blessing to be able to share the last day of (the Gregorian calendar) summer, running the rain through, actually, multiple forests, quite literally frolicking in meadows full of flowers-- coincidentally, standing at the intersection of two paths, one that's less traveled than the other. Absurdly, continuing to run faster as it gets colder and farther from home, where the graffiti beneath the train tracks becomes unfamiliar and the sight of buildings equates to civilization, compared to where we stood, wondering, how much yolo is buried inside the magnificent human body.

I beleaf.

Dry.

605 am, 20 minutes late, my raw cotton tshirt brushes roughly against my skin. Breakfast crumbs crunch down my throat, relentlessly grating the arid plains of my esophagus, all the while trailing a thick, tired saliva in the roof of my tongue. The skin peels off my scratched cheeks and tickles the threaded scar that never healed through my chin. My front tooth is plastic and I forgot to wash the conditioner out of my hair.

When the tide of guilt and humiliation crawl up my bruised and bloody toes, I notice the purple scabs and bruises pulsing in an eerily poisonous rhythm. The reddening keloid at my poptilial fossa (knee pit, for lack of any other accurate name) emulates a slaves infected back, minus ninety percent, but still repulsive and irritatingly pressing with blood that was never needed. My second toe might as well be declared an avulsion fracture. The hatred rushes through my arteries and my fingers involuntarily grab at my imperfections.

The 36 24 36 rule is an impossibility for my people, but my natural lenses make a plank of my torso. I miss the visible planes in my elbows and knees and the weak coldness shooting through my airy lungs. My calves sink and I carry my legs rather than having them confidently hold my tight spine in a pseudo casual slouch. My skin overrides the most beautiful mists. I itch. I punch the walls and grab my pants, white and pink cuticle less finger nails pressing fiercely in sync with my cracked knuckles.

I am restless, afraid, disgusted, until I pound in the rain, from speckles to strokes of the flashing clouds tears. The thunder emits a low moan of caged power, and God sends the might of his creation flooding through the air. I am blinded, weighted, miming the trees in my powerlessness to pity myself. I am humiliated and humbled, overwhelmed by even the symbolic presence of the great I am. In my dissatisfaction, my mind spins a 180 for the thousandth time. Humility is not beating myself, but lifting everything else upwards.