Chia likes to think about (link-reveal: "love.")[(show: ?1)] |1)[Chia believes they are the most unlovable thing. Sometimes they dig through their skin (past the white scarring/red keratosis––there is no lovely metaphor for things sometimes) to find something purer, something close to holy. Chia likes (link-reveal: "useless things.")[(show: ?2)] |2)[Single-purpose websites, residue left by stickers, noise, redundancy, verbosity, and (link-reveal:"sometimes")[(show: ?3)] even themselves. |3)[Chia likes long things. Dopesmoker, tape loops (the longer, the better), Masakatsu Takagi’s Marginalia, The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You, the time it takes to feel a (link-reveal:"pulse")[(show: ?4)]. |4)[The amount of heartbeats we have in a lifetime is over 3 billion. You read that quote a hundred times on Reddit over the past decade and now it sounds foolish to put in a poem. Especially a poem about dying. Some other comments you've read happen to make you think very little of your life. Everything is special and wonderful and then suddenly not. Chia likes (link-reveal:"incremental games")[(show: ?5)]. |5)[Clicking a number and watching it go higher and higher, and (link-reveal:"subversion")[(show: ?6)], too. (Without 'subversion' your interest in games is perfunctory. Without 'subversion' someone else might try to tell you what you like.) |6)[This type of subversion would mean something like a 'decremental game', which in itself is not a very enticing or interesting concept. How can you restrict or slow a heartbeat until it's (link-reveal:"nearly nothing?")[(show: ?7)] That might be an interesting decremental game. That sounds a little like (link-reveal:"killing")[. But how can you bear to remove anything from this world if it doesn't want it of its own accord, the way you explain it to yourself. Also don't like true crime podcasts, sorry]. |7)[Chia likes the sound a body makes when it (link-reveal:"falls")[(show: ?8)] from a tree. |8)[Wondering what compelled the body to bring it up to the tree itself, how to tie it there, what website tells you how to tie it there––except the warning about how after buying the rope, there's usually nowhere else (link-reveal:"to go")[(show: ?9)]. |9)[Chia writes in their diary, they have been doing this for over a decade. "Realized I like celebrations, (link-reveal:"actually...")[(show: ?10)] |10)[But I haven't celebrated my birthday in a long, (link-reveal:"long time")[(show: ?11)]." |11)[This is supposed to be sad. This is supposed to be something you celebrate. This is something you should be more excited about since you say you don't see yourself past (link-reveal:"22")[(show: ?12)]. *nervous laughter* This is something we can laugh about together, right? Let's recall. |12)[First it was (link-reveal: "13.")[ (Who even thinks these things at 13 but you? Wait, wrong thought. Many people do at 13. But the sooner it doesn't go away the more you are (link-reveal: "lying to yourself.)")[ (Don't forget that even in the dying parts, you're quite (link-reveal: "unspecial.")[ Something, something, you won't even be the most fuckable person in the hospice. This is supposed to be hilarious!]) Then 15, then 16, then 17, then 17.5, then 17.9, then 18, then 18, (link-reveal: "then 18, ")[(link-reveal: "then 18, ")[(link-reveal: "then 18, ")[(link-reveal: "then 18, ")[(link-reveal: "then 18,")[(show: ?13)]]]]]|13)[ then 19, then 20, then 21, then 21. There's too much to count and things missing in the gaps (link-reveal:"there.")[ Like, everyone who knows you today knows that the number of 21s is a gross understatement.] It's no fun when you know where you want to go and (link-reveal:"everybody knows it.")[(show: ?14)] |14)[Every year Chia makes a list of things they never got to do. Feel known, feel beloved, tell the people you love that you love them deeply, let the white scars heal, go to the doctor for the keratosis, try shrooms, hear that you are (link-reveal:"worth something")[(show: ?15)]. |15)[Chia likes thanking everybody but themselves. Chia thinks that the growing list each year means something is going wrong. But even somebody telling you that you are loved by them does not mean that you are lovely, which must be akin to the feelings one has (link-reveal:"when writing")[(show: ?16)] these terrible lists. |16)[Looking at your body in the mirror, listening to music without feeling the terrible sense of dread, replying to (link-reveal: "texts")[(show: ?17)] (link-reveal: "properly")[ (make sure to say that it's better late than never, do you know when it's too late to...)]. |17)[Chia likes to do irrational and reckless things even if they know they (link-reveal:"are wrong.")[ Sometimes you wonder how much of your life has been dictated by a disease you declared yourself to have at 13, whether breaking the act will reveal something true––or whether this is the new reality you've fastened yourself in.] Recently they (link-reveal:"learned")[ (not just literally learned, they've heard this word many times before – but don't you experience things without ever knowing its meaning until late?) ] of the word 'rationalizion' and can't tell whether they're doing too much or too little of it, whether they're healing or not, whether they want to (link-reveal: "feel something")[(show: ?18)] or not. |18)[So the bad part here is when you (link-reveal: "start to")[(show: ?19)] feel something and realize that it isn't enough, and that nothing might ever (link-reveal:"be enough.")[ It's alright, maybe the list could just be more 'robust'. Just be careful not to make it too wordy or flowery. Flowery things are bad. ] |19)[I'm not sure if I'm supposed to tell people they love them anymore, because when you do it there's never (link-reveal:"any reciprocation")[, at least in the form that you want. There are people who do things just to be a loved thing, maybe you should go try it]. While life was never about reciprocation, though it might be nice to have some (link-reveal:"reciprocation.")[(show: ?20)] |20)[You like useless things after all. (link-reveal:"Unnecessary things.")[ Reciprocation can be there, or you can be desperate.] You can add 'reciprocation' to the list, in the form of many things: someone else reaching for your hand first, someone (link-reveal:"willingly")[(show: ?21)] crawling into your arms, someone who asks if they can stop by (link-reveal:"your home.")[ (Chia also likes the idea of building a home, but has gone back and forth on whether they want to have kids for a few years now. Right now it's no, maybe, why would a thing like you be capable of bringing life into a world like this?)] |21)[Chia likes the idea of sharing a dream, the thought that the default state of the world is the pitch black darkness, crying when they hear words in their native language, throwing themselves at anything (link-reveal:"close to it.")[(show: ?22)] |22)[Chia fucking hates guys who play the NYT crossword, spending holidays with people (because they are always alone), and anything else to do with a variable that (link-reveal:"they cannot control.")[(show: ?23)] Variables that they can control are (link-reveal:"always nice.")[ Perhaps less comfortable is the idea that everything permanent they have in the world is something they had to bring into it themselves. For the most part. (link-reveal:"You love something enough to see it exist.")[ But everything in this world is far from insufficient, it's you––the insufficient thing. ]] |23)[Chia likes to (link-reveal:"collect things")[ (because one time, when they were younger, or many times rather, they would open the door to their room after school and not wonder if the things they made would still be there)], cook, save specific songs they want to do to dance with someone, but they have never danced with someone they loved. (link-reveal: "That list")[(show: ?24)] should be added to the list, (link-reveal:"too.")[ Seeing a waterfall, a roadtrip with their friends, spending a day at the beach without hurting themselves, walk into the ocean without shaking, walk into the ocean without drowning, (link-reveal:"quit smoking.")[ I don't think these 'lists' are working, no matter how you word them or rephrase them. I check them off and I still go back to the feeling. Maybe we should (link-reveal:"abolish lists")[. I see too much of myself in them and want to erase the whole thing. If the poet were in love, all this would be far less interesting, (link-reveal:"don't you think?")[ Sometimes we need people who spend their entire lives searching so that the better people can go off living.] ]]] Likes what the world looks without (link-reveal:"them")[. The beauty of being non-binary is the ambiguity of 'them', but you can guess that the (link-reveal:"sacred mundane")[(show: ?25)] is a bit more valuable to the world than...] |25)[Doesn't understand the problem about knowing what (link-reveal:"kind of love")[(show: ?27)] you desire and asking for it, even if people tend to be annoying about it (link-reveal:"on the internet.")[ But I'd be annoying too if I saw something I wanted so close to me, yet so far away. Maybe I need an easy way into heaven. My body is so broken. Please (link-reveal:"let me make you proud.")[(show: ?26)] [Let me put away the rope, pour a drink while I get myself some water, dislodge the sharp things from the keratosis, think about what else can be done to a body besides testing its limits.]]] |27)[Chia likes it when someone has the courage to tell them that they don't love them, that they don't think they are capable of being loved. This gives them the chance to be a lovely thing. But not every lovely thing is an object capable of (link-reveal:"receiving love.")[We'll keep thinking about this in subject-object terms: the tree, the lover, Chia, so it's easier to detach. "They didn't love them back" is easier to hear than (link-reveal:"\"I don't love you.\"")[But it seems these days you're hearing this from everyone. Or it's all you ever hear. And all you ever know about it. Chia likes to think about love, because they don't think they can be the subject who receives it or does it. To love a thing after all, is to stop climbing. ]]] |24)[Chia likes to dance in their room alone on Valentine's Day, think about wanting and how they get almost everything they want if it doesn't have to do with another human being, and to climb trees.]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] |26)[I remember trees.]