rivers of existential angst if my hands weren't bleeding and bruised, i'd hold on a bit longer. i'm too tired to lie, i'm too tired to sleep. i'll just sit and stare, too exhausted even to blink. to consider blinking. just sit and look at nothing. the air, particles, atoms, quarks. flying in front of my face. i see it all, and i see nothing. too tired to register to think to notice. if i sit still enough, so still my lungs and heart no longer move, so still my blood is frozen, i hear the universe. but i won't listen. it's just too loud and constant. i'd wish for sleep, but i'm too tired to wish. to hope. there is nothing. and everything. all at once. spinning fast and faster around and around and around. spinning and dancing. and spinning. particles, atoms. flashing before my eyes. flashing IN my eyes. maybe all i see is my eyes. greenish grey, brown. like the world, like my face and hair and clothes and the building. the wall i'm staring at isn't really there. the pen and paper are on the floor, not there. the words don't exist that i need to write down. there are no expressions for what i'd express, if i could. all i feel is the cardboard box i'm leaning against. all i smell. and spraypaint. silver and red and black and blue. small chips are stuck to my face. too much makeup melts my skin to anything rub-off-able. and i really don't feel or smell or notice any of it. i just know somewhere in my head, that it's there. or maybe in someone else's mind. maybe that's where i am right now. on the other side of the room, watching me leaning there against that painted cardboard box, with silver and blue particles stuck to mmy face, looking stale and unresponsive. looking unalive. maybe i'm dead...? the noise of the universe won't answer for sure. the head i'm sitting in doesn't care. or maybe is terrified. how do any of us know that this whole thing isn't just a dream? or an afterlife? maybe we are all just imagining everything else. and this is all a setup, there is no true interaction. just imagination. nobody is really reading this. I. just I. uncapitalized, i. am not really typing. does anything at all exist, anywhere, ever? what is... ? what? is? WHAT. maybe i'm dead. and this is heaven or hell or purgatory, or something entirely different. maybe i was never really alive in the first place. sitting in a canoe, trying to paddle through the muck, in a river of existential angst. nothing really is. what is.