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“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
― Robert Frost
Tommy has always been a poet.
Since he was twelve, tucked into the corner of his classroom, of his bedroom, of the rooftop he sits on with the wind rustling through his hair in some attempt of half-hearted approval by the empty air.
Tommy has been a writer of… everything, really. The lines of concrete pressed up against the soles of his shoes, the lamplights that look a little like stars when it’s through the rain-stained windows, and sleep weighs heavy on his eyelids.
He remembers the first time that Tubbo had seen one of his poems. A small thing, titled-
Memories of a carcass.
It wasn’t Tommy’s best work, neither his favourite nor with any particular rhyme or rhythm; written in a haze, with his spine arched against the divots in his bedroom door like it’ll stop the noise from downstairs.
Techno had sat across from him, knees pressed to Tommy’s, swore quietly; there is more than these four walls.
Everything is a poem in the eyes of homesick, Tommy knows; he sees them in every crack of brick and laughter across a room, every corner of the carpet tilted up because Techno likes to shove his feet under the edge;
Everything that is loved remains, swears the littlest bones in his pinkie, twitching. All this love remains.
And yet.
Tommy stares down at the ink staining his fingertips; like he could write a poem about this, too- and wonders where everything went wrong.
The grass tickling his ankles, cold with dew; there are no stars in the sky, because the clouds have weighed down on Tommy and he cannot tell if they are only over his eyes or it’s this stubborn, perpetual fog.
The lights behind him illuminate the blades of grass, casting a sickly yellow glow onto what should’ve been green grass; under the streetlights, they all look the same, anyway.
Tommy wonders, a little belatedly like a car’s airbag before a crash, if his heart’s beating has skipped a step, too calm for his trembling fingers.
He stares down at his palms. They are not pretty; nothing about them are. Callouses sit at the tips of his fingers, his knuckles are red against pale skin. They tremble like a lone penguin in the tundra, and ache when he squeezes them into fists, nails finding crescent divots.
Tommy presses them into his eyes. ”I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;” Sylvia Plath said, laying her words between sheets of paper-thin dreams like a promise and a guillotine all in one. ”I lift my eyes and all is born again.”
There is the sound of footprints approaching. Tommy moves his hands, blinks the pain out of his eyes.
It’s quiet, as Techno settles onto the curb beside him. Black boots nearly knocking into Tommy’s ratty red converse, like the eons do not yawn between them, lazy and hungry.
“You okay?”
Techno asks; it’s light, well-meaning. Tommy can’t help but laugh.
This too, he wants to say; almost crying. This too, is a story to tell.
“I don’t know, Techno,” Tommy says, because he cannot fit the words he wants to say into the space between the roof of his mouth and tongue. “What- what am I supposed to even do?”
Techno looks up, toward the sky; Tommy looks at him.
“I never went nationals,” Techno says like it’ll explain everything. Maybe it does; like the matching callouses that sit awkwardly when they press their hands together could explain this gap of connection. “I was good enough for it.”
Why not? Tommy doesn’t ask, and Techno hears it anyway.
“I couldn’t fight anymore.” Techno looks down at his hands, an echo and mirror of Tommy. “Fencing became- nothing. It hurts every time I put on my helmet.” He sighs, quietly. “Just… couldn’t do it, anymore.”
Tommy stares, blinks slowly. Most of his poems have never received titles to their words, unawarded, half unrecognized. He thinks faintly of Techno’s room, unadorned with precious metals like it used to be.
There are no photos, on the walls.
And how I wish it would bury me.
Tommy sets his eyes on the dirt beneath the grass. This sand, in my lungs, under my fingernails;
Techno knocks his shoulder into Tommy’s. Bury me, like the ink on my skin isn’t evidence enough to convict me of murder-
Tommy, staring down at his page, creased where his fingers pressed into it, like skin. You killed yourself,
The silence, deafening before him. But it is only the artist, and the art.
Stepping up to the mic. The sacrificial lamb and executioner, he doesn’t dare utter past this reality of the notebook worn to nothing between his thumb and pinkie, share a hand in guiding the knife to its throat.
The footsteps slam against the wood of the stage, the linoleum of the floor, concrete of the sidewalk;
I am the art I make, it whispers, against the slam of his soles, I destroy, I despite, I become.
Tommy looks down at the notebook still clenched between his palms, trembling, trembling. The words are jagged, scratched in desperately, he cannot breathe, cannot write, cannot think.
“I hate art,” he whispers, echoing the words, the sentiment but not the meaning. Hate like the moon hates the tide, like the dirt hates the rocks, like the stars hate the light.
But I was handed a full house, and an empty page,
He inhales, shaky, unsteady, impossible. and a myriad of graphite.
“They said,” Techno begins again, quietly. “That I looked like I owned the ocean.”
Tommy stares, inexplicably. Like I am the art, finishes the marrow in his bones. Only, after seventeen years of staring at the sea.
Tommy’s hands are shaking; the notebook clatters down.
This too, he wonders, hysterically, could be a poem.
“Me,” he murmurs, quietly.
The crickets fill the silence.
And how I wish it would bury me.
This sand, in my lungs, under my fingernails;
Bury me, like the ink on my skin isn’t evidence enough to
Convict me of murder-
You killed yourself,
But it is only the artist and the art.
The sacrificial lamb and executioner share a hand in guiding the knife to its throat,
I am the art I make, I destroy, I despise, I become.
I hate art,
But I was handed a full house, and an empty page
And a myriad of graphite.
I looked like I owned the ocean- Like I am the art-
only, after seventeen years of staring at the sea-
(me.)