unlearn

I've been trapped in a slow cooker for the past two and a half years. But am I really trapped? Or am I actually free to marinate, enhancing my eventual flavor for when the taste buds finally show up at the door?

I might be constantly cold and roasting in my own ruins at the same time. There is a pleasant balance to be found in there, I think. A perverted pleasant balance, but a balance nonetheless.

A large chunk of my life has been spent in school. That chunk was tied together with string, keeping my stuffing inside. Nothing is terribly rare about this background. In fact, it's just another traditional flavor and color added to life, like milestone birthdays and baptisms.

Now my challenge is to avoid evaporation. How do I retain what I gained for nearly three decades? It has become impossible for me to have hope in the possibility of overcoming the impossible.

I want to lay down my pens and plans and books and potential and just become. I want to become whatever I would have become without the string, without the low temperature learning. I want to unlearn. I want to dispose and start empty and whole. I want to look at a tree and see it as a thing struggling to reach the sky, no matter how twisted the branches.

I don't want it to have a name. I don't want it to be claimed.