i want superimposition

i said, I WANT SUPERIMPOSITION

Jul 08, 2026

i don’t want to write from the place i wish i was; i will write from where i am.

i am anxious and pissed off about an underwhelming response to a vulnerable series of texts i sent. i am remembering the parts the word ‘disappointment’ is made from. i have placed someone in too high an office and now will remove them. i have pasted aspirations. i am obsessed with fantasy and my obsession prevents me from seeing things as they are.

i sit in the shower and have false conversations with people about things that the people don’t even know i think. there are false conversations and a false relationship meter. when the real person intermittently pokes their head up and out through the gauzy veil of fantasy—oh, hello, there is your little head—i interact with the real using information collected from the false. in that way i am always a little confusing and cannot actually touch anything. i know this about matter, that my wrists and the table aren’t actually touching—there is an atom’s width of nothing that stops them from merging into one another, from becoming a tablewrist or a wristtable—oh, my fantasy of nothing! my fantasy of atoms!

maybe the fantasy is helpful. maybe the fantasy is benevolent. if i didn’t afford myself this level of distance from the other then maybe i would be susceptible to great danger. maybe i’m not yet ready to tolerate the level of closeness i think i want. maybe without my distance i would be subsumed—the lover is a sponge and i am water. maybe i would get addicted to the sexuality of this, the delirious pleasurepain, of getting sponged up by a lover and wrung out again, sponged up, wrung out.

so the fantasy is productive—fine—then i won’t hate myself for it. the fantasizing provides protective distance, because i can’t yet take the thing where my nose is up against your nose and they are squishing and i am trying to decide which of your eyes to look into, and my hands are flat against your hands, and it is like looking into a mirror without a mirror, every flat plane that could accept a second body’s flat plane is planed over, we are superimposed—

i want superimposition. i want superimposition.

i am closer to this than i think. i am further from this than i think. i am far from this in the realms i think i’m close in and close in the realms i think i’m far in. when i was a shy and squirrelly teenager i performed two potential pieces for my speech and debate coaches. one of them was a poem that i felt i performed beautifully, easily, confidently—the other was a monologue from the perspective of a mother. i felt ignorant and uncomfortable inside the monologue. performing it felt like wearing a too-small glove. when it was time for feedback the coaches agreed—one of them was okay and the other one was bad to the point of concern. the monologue was okay. the poem, apparently, had been so showstoppingly bad that they didn’t even need to convene first; its badness was in the air.

why can’t i ever understand what’s happening? why can everyone else see on top of me something i can’t see?

this is how it feels: i am inside a glass box. on every plane of the glass box there is a pigeon decal positioned at about two-thirds height, just above or on my head. people look at me and say: oh my goodness, there is a pigeon on your head. i startle, confused—i feel nothing—i crouch and brush my head—nothing. i say, no, there’s no pigeon. people say, yes there is; i’m looking right at it.

i feel stupid today, not smart. just then i imagined myself in the future reading the thing i’m writing now and thinking: of course you’re smart. sometimes i think i’m writing very badly and then when i encounter the writing later i realize i’d actually been writing very well. so i can take my judgement on the matter as totally null and go on writing anyway.

i am in love! sure. why not? why can’t i be? i don’t want to interrogate it anymore. when people say the word ‘limerance’ to me it lands like someone talking at the cinema. shush! i am watching the movie. oh, i don’t care anymore. if i think i’m in love then i am; i’m happy to be proven wrong at a later date. and so, hooray, i’m in love! then the mind goes: well—should you be in love? has this person given enough to justify the fact of your love? get ready—it doesn’t matter! i go on being in love. even if i laid out all the evidence, even if i fished every stone from the stream and placed them all in perfect and comprehensible lines, and the lines spelled out NO!—does anything happen to my love? no, love, the perfect circle, there it is, logic and reason do nothing but feather it. then i think: this person would be shocked to find out i’m in love with them. do i know that? no. then i think: this person would be put off by my intensity. do i know that? no. in fact the opposite might be true. the fruitless activity of my mind. i am addicted to thinking.

hours ago i got a text that disappointed me. within an hour i ran this gamut:

look at phone—oh—feeling of bag deflating, feeling of small shape getting smaller and smaller, a shape getting small and then wilting
sit on bed—feeling of a dream of being naked at school—feeling of when you reach too hard and the muscle separates and tears
continue to sit on bed—i will not reply, i decide, i will not reply for a long time. maybe days, maybe many days
sit at desk—write about it, womp womp womp, angry angry angry
then finally—without trying, without calling out for it—curiosity! my god, this relief, this big white sun, a reflex i trained for moments just like this—the clouds of hurt break and there it is—what was he feeling?—i could just ask
i ask—there is a revealing back and forth—he makes me laugh again—