The Hymn of Rachmaninov

Lest the stench of burnt tobacco wafts into the rooms yond, I sit on my desire and hold in my piss.

There really isn’t much a thought in simply sitting, for it’s when I roam, that thoughts flash into my mind – it is some novelist, I think, I can’t recall who precisely, who said she thinks in “slow flashes.”

Alone the pressing procrastination of work adamant, and dawn imminent. It is 4:48 and the sky is that tinge of white blue so wan it fills the onlooker with a loving melancholy, an aching of the heart one hopes wouldn’t cease – yet it is wrenching, it tears at the soul and strains the material body. A cold, scorching feeling.

I wonder what awaits me. Likely scolding. But why do I deserve it? Already my own vessel guilts me, aware of every crevice: the choking in my throat and the snot. What more can I do but say “Yes.”

Yes, I understand my failures, I’ll do better next time. Yet right now it is the past, and I am capable of the act of “doing better.”

I must piss.

So run along, little rabbit.

A piece must be more than an indulgent documentation of one’s doing. And yet inside me a big hollow sleeps. Nothing comes out. You walk in and become that black bottle standing.

You know, my name floats in space somewhere, it’s nothing I am proud of, but it is something… although it’s deceptively my name.

There is no narrative to follow. This piece is over. I hope I could convey my utter hopelessness.

In a sense the short-lived – I’ve noticed, a pet phrase of mine – nature is reflective of my reality.

My name is