Tao Lin

Spring Break

it's the sunniest day ever and i'm going around thinking about my story collection

my eight stories about twenty-five to thirty or fifty depressed people

thinking about how none of those made-up people feel exactly like i do

they are all happier and not like me, not like i am right now

and what will i do about this, i'm thinking, how can i live with this

and i wait around for my writing professor

who will help me publish this book, who will tell me i'm self-indulgent

who i will agree with and then feel sort of hollow and good

but who doesn't show up

so i call you

the only girl in the world that i like

and you cancel on me, and you ask me

if i want you to call me over spring break

from your home

and i say if you want to

and you say you will then

and of course, maybe, you won't

and i go to the strand, buy three of the most depressing books i can find

which i know i'll never finish because they won't be depressing enough

and so i buy a six-dollar fruit tart and eat it walking around

and it feels like i'm walking on water

and i am amazed that i am not below and inside the concrete, drowning

on the train i sit and shut my eyes

i am in the middle of some stupid world and where my brain is

instead a huge, wet heart

and where my organs are instead hearts

and my bones are all hearts too

and no heart anywhere in the world is beating but just wet and humming and enormous

and i walk home

it is three p.m. and bright outside

and i know that my day is over

i lie on my bed and i wait for your phone call

the only person in the world that i like

my favorite person

not god but just a person

and i know you can't save me, you didn't create the universe in seven days

you're just another person who isn't in love with me

but maybe you can do something, still, i guess, and i want to murder you

and myself

and i get up and shut my door and shut the blinds and turn off every light

turn off the fan, everything

pull the covers over my face, pretend it's night

and try to view my life as ironic and humorous

try to view it in a wry and detached way

but i can't, and instead i try my hardest to cry

but that doesn't happen either, so i just lie very still

and listen for your phone call, because now i'm thinking that maybe

you canceled on me by accident

maybe you are accidentally really in love with me

maybe the devil intervened and said you'd die

if you didn't cancel, we'd both die if you didn't cancel

or something

and i am lying very still and thinking all this and time keeps going

and i know that i must fall asleep for twenty hours

can't wake up around nine p.m. rested and hungry and thinking of you

must sleep straight into tomorrow

and this is what i'm thinking

i'm thinking, please, just let me go to sleep

thinking, please, and i am listening

very closely for your phone call

and i am going a little insane

and after a long time, finally, i am insane, i am crying a little

the tiniest of cries, something miniscule and not even real

just some water behind the eyes, some salt

in the brain

not crying actually, but something else

something strange and new

a small piece of my heart, letting go

into the blood

about a hundred thousand pieces of my heart, into the blood

the whole thing, going places

Tao Lin is the author of a novel, EEEEE EEE EEEE, and a story-collection, BED, that were published simultaneously in May, 2007 by Melville House Publishing. Tao's blog is READER OF DEPRESSING BOOKS. He has two small books of fiction and poetry on BEAR PARADE, and lives in Brooklyn.