Ouroboros

*Note: Sensitive themes include profanity.

Trigger Warnings include: Unstable relationship with parent & abuse mention, dissociative reality & deep loneliness.

I open the door and see my mother. “What the fuck are you doing here? I thought I buried you.”

“Nice to see you too,” she greets as she pushes past me, walking her filthy dogs happily into my home. I feel the safety I’ve spent years building die out like a muted flame.

It’s hot outside. Much too hot for the month of March. It’s summer & we were not prepared.

The leaves of my garden wilt as she sets up camp on my couch. I thought I abandoned this shitty reality when I was sixteen and I stomped the life out of this poor excuse for a fucking human being. ‘The personification of the stain of a moldy, old couch potato,’ I tell people.

Immediately her dogs, blonde & shedding like an old dilapidated, beetle-eaten carpet hop onto my couch, panting in the heat as the ceiling fan twirls slowly like a ballerina in a music box. A marionette dangled & blowing in the wind. I feel the same.

“I’ll ask again,” I warn in a low tone, showing grace. “Why are you here?”

“I needed a place to stay,” she says, voice like a child.

“I buried you. You couldn’t stay in the ground?”

She laughs at me. The same laugh that haunts my childhood memories, the laugh of a professional manipulative monster. The one that has fooled everyone she meets but me. I’m not so fucking stupid or naive. They didn’t have the privilege of living with her toxic emotionally abusive projections & general neglect & avoidance like I did. No, the kids were always third, and her dogs were always first.

“It got hot, Jenny.”

My name is not Jenny.

I stay silent, biting my tongue like it’s a dish served by a world-renowned chef, convincing myself the blood tastes good.

“I needed a place to stay.”

“And you thought here was the best choice?” I raise.

She chortles again, at the audacity of my question. There is no breeze in the living room. “Where else was I supposed to go?”

I lose it. “Anywhere the fuck else, Leslie! You could’ve stayed in that fucking hole where I buried you! You could’ve crawled out and got a fucking job! You should’ve kept your mother’s fucking house like I warned you! Anywhere but here! I’m not your fucking mother!!”

She snorts, appalled. I want to fucking kill her. Again. The dogs whimper like a laugh and the smaller one, a shiba inu-faced mut barks at me. I bark back & win. They both cower into my mother’s arms. Her real children. The disobedient brats I never was.

“Don’t bark at my dog,” Leslie warns. She has no threat to back her. She has no teeth, no wit. Just meat. It should’ve sloshed off with the aid of bugs & maggots by now. But I suppose I can’t be so lucky when it comes to Leslie.

“Get out of my house,” I growl, head low, back arched, like a real dog ready to lunge.

She looks at me, her eyes flitting back & forth between mine. She’s never been good at games, and she has spent her whole life relying on the endless sympathy of others. I have none left to give to her. Not enough to let her stay.

“Okay,” she says small, like she’s about to cry. I blink, almost believing her.

She retrieves her belongings. I was expecting a fight. I’m surprised there was none. She sighs sadly as she ushers her dogs out of my house, leaving a wake of blonde fur I have to clean up. It will get into every nook & cranny & I will be cleaning it for weeks. A month later, when I find a single hair, I will feel like I plucked it from under my skin & shiver at the memory.

She walks herself to my door, I follow closely at her heels, not falling for any bullshit she may pull. The light is dim just before it opens to the summer spring. She says with an expression I’m not sure is fake, “Just remember you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”

“I never missed you.”

She bows her head like a good submissive bitch & leaves me alone.

I’m shaken by the events that have just transpired, but a quick blink & a glance at the clock reminds me that I have no time to dwell because I will be late for work.

I make a steady sweep of the house, locking every door & window in a paranoid attempt to keep her, and any memory of her selfish appearance, out of my head.

I almost cry at the mess she made of my floor. I don’t have the time to clean it all, but I make the effort to get rid of some of the hair, I dispose of it outside. I hope the wind blows it far the hell away from me. I notice stains on the couch cushions from where she had been sat. I will throw out the couch & buy a new one when I get home. I don’t care that I can’t afford it. I’d rather watch it burn.

I say goodbye to the house, golden daylight illuminating what efforts I have made of the kitchen. It may be the only room in the house that still gleams when the light hits it.

At work I’m merrily greeted by my coworkers. I love these men, and I love my job… I do. Still, I cannot let go of this hardened sadness in my heart. I hear the echo of water dripping into the recesses of a dark pit in my chest. A well of loneliness and despair I have accumulated & protected & been protected by over the years. I pretend I don’t notice as I go about my duties onboard the ship.

My crew & I laugh & make jokes like we’re still twelve. The day moves fast. The sun, which had peaked high in the sky at the beginning of my shift, now descends towards the cliffs beyond the beach I am so fortunate to know.

I love my job. I love the men I work with. I still look longingly at the sea and I wish with my heart & soul I could just leave. That I can take our amazing 20th century sailing ship & sail her properly, anywhere we want to go. But these men are here for an hourly wage. These men are here to educate kids on history through immersive field trips. These men are not here for adventure. But she is not a dockside attraction. She is not a safe ship harbored. She isn’t supposed to be.

“Hey, Renald!” Chummy, a favorite crewmate of mine greets me at the end of our shift.

Chummy isn’t the best ‘ship-name’ the crew has come up with, but it’s appropriate, and we all have one.

I try to hide the longing in my features, tightening them into a pleasant & sincere-enough smile.

“What’s up, Chummy?” I reply, chipper & excited, the youngest of my crewmates.

“You doin’ okay there?”

I’ve been caught, like a fish in a great net, somewhere else I wish to be.

I lie to both of us, “Yeah, I’m doin’ good! Just lookin’ out in wonder like I always do.” I sell it with a smile.

“Alright…” he doesn’t buy. I don’t either.

“Well, I’ll see ya tomorrow, Renald!”

“See ya tomorrow, Chummy!”

I’m alone. I breathe with the waves. I do look out in wonder. I wonder why I can’t move. I wonder why I’m stuck. I wonder why I can’t feel any more gratitude than I do. I wonder why I’m not happy. I wonder… I wonder what other places are like, and I wonder how I would be if I ever got to visit them.

The sun passes the cliffs and trails slowly into the sea. The sky turns orange, then pink with blue & purple cotton candy clouds. I want to love it here. I don’t. I don’t think I can.

I say goodnight to the corner of sea I get to see everyday I’m at work, and I shut the door to the balcony. I descend the building stairs and I go for a walk.

The evenings down here never get dark. There’s too much light pollution to ever see more than 30 stars at the most. I feel so isolated & boxed in. There’s no real grass to touch, no moss to feel in between my toes. Only concrete where worms die & snails are crushed. I see them dried out like discarded rubberbands, and the faint glossy glow of snail trails across pavement. I’m not lying when I say I haven’t seen snails crossing my path in years. It’s lonely without the bugs. I never knew that before, but it is.

I lose my mind in thought. I’ve wandered far, and I don’t recognize my surroundings. I don’t want to. But then I do. I look down & I know the ground. I know the ground very well. It’s the same as it is everywhere else I’ve been. I think it will be the same everywhere else I’ll ever be. That fills me with a profound feeling of dissociative fear.

I remember the hot summer days & the hot summer nights I spent in Florida. The air was like mud & my house was full. I could only afford to rent my bed, the rest was shared territory between me & strangers. It was a lot, but it felt better than the home I left in California.

I remember there was a park maybe a block behind my house. There were no actual sidewalks to get to it, but there was asphalt, and that was close enough. The lizards hid under the black rivers like tunnels of caves made just for them. It made me twinge in discomfort to see them scurry in & crawl out. A sort of trypophobia I hadn’t realized before.

I mostly crossed through the park, but there was one night I missed my friend. I called her and we talked for ages in the short span of a few hours. I must’ve walked the perimeter at least five times - that I was paying attention to count. I stepped on fruity seeds the trees had littered & small twigs & leaves with bare feet, avoiding the spots of dog or human shit someone forgot or didn’t bother to clean up.

It was nice to be so far away from everything I knew. I watched iguanas scurry up trees like squirrels while birds I knew flew over my head. The trees’ roots drank the water from the air, not needing to find it deep below the surface of earth my feet were lucky enough to touch. Beyond the buzzing grass harboring a swarm of black flies.

I miss those nights. I remember how lonely I was then, as I am now. Maybe a little less so… in one reality.

I remember the hot nights of walking along the promenade of the Port of LA. I remember the cold too, but a little less so.

I remember the frequent nights I would walk home from the warehouse of Building G, sometimes drunk, sometimes sad, sometimes skipping, sometimes plotting the death of a particular office worker! (No harm would ever come to them.) The stars were no more in number than they are here now, but I always look up, and I always looked up then too.

The concrete is always the same. The stars are always few. The adventure is always shortlived. And the loneliness always follows.

In every wonderful night, I feel the same deep longing for something new, something better than this. Even when I had it all, even though I have it all, I cannot be satiated. What is wrong with me?

As I walk on, I feel the path slowly curve under my feet, subtle, like the curve of the Earth. I’m reminded of that one “discoverer” who realized the Earth was round based off the way ships sail under the horizon.

I recount the follies that follow me at every turn, every new plateau. I thought I buried my mother. I guess it’s true the dead don’t stay buried. I thought I would love working on the ship that stole my heart. I lived in the Port of LA, saddened that we didn’t explore past Catalina Island. I moved to Florida to earn deckhand passage on a sailing yacht to take me far away & I was beaten back & shipped out on a train to the hole in California. Maybe that’s why Leslie is haunting me. We are in the same hole.

I feel the pavement move as everything else has fallen away. I walk on in darkness. The violet, star speckled sky hangs overhead in a dream.

I keep walking, and I know I keep running. I’m always too short & my distance too long. I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to rot in the same house I killed my mother. I don’t want to sink into the ocean. I don’t know where to go, or how to get off this disneyland-track. Every ship I’ve been on so far has one route & always comes back to the same port. Do I keep this path my feet are so stubbornly stuck to? Am I really impaled or just aimless?

I look down in focus and I see the pavement I walk on is moving in the same direction I head in. It is rocky & scaled. It slithers beneath my feet in a way & I recognize an old friend I hardly knew the name of. I must ask my friend a question, the same one I am asking myself, and asking myself, and asking myself. Pleading.

“Ouroboros. How do I stop eating myself?”

19.37

Mar. 20, 2026

🌑 New Moon