SACRIFICE DENIES ALL POWER

Pt1. Collab Prelude (The Saint Speaks)

PRELUDE (thank you

Zani D

)

"Oracle in Training" (The black moleskin has bite marks on the top right corner)

Sarah. (A three of swords tarot sticker on the front.)

Please god no. (A sticker covers the back in bold black and white. I FUCK TO CUM-)

How did I not see this before. (NOT TO CONCEIVE)

This isn't happening and it isn't real. (The first six pages are sketches, drawings in pencil)

"Oracle in Training" (One messages cratched black on every image)

Please don't be real. (What the fuck am I doing here?)

You've known them four fucking years. (“Everyone is such uncultured trash”)

This can't be new information. (“I am a broken machine” drunken scawl, cheap pen)

You had to have known. (“I am a broken toy.” Speed of her drunken pen dragged obvious,)

"Oracle in Training" (“I am a pretty prop for a show with no meaning.” Dumb bitch.)

When you can't trust your brain to remember what you ate for breakfast you sure as fuck can't trust it to remember every social media token. (“I wish I could watch the world end with people who aren’t here.”)

But this. (“I always meant to be kind. I always tried to do my best.”)

I would have remembered. (“No one answers the calls. But all the NPCs say, ‘reach out-)

It's the Oracle. (If you need help’”)

You can't not remember. (“But none of them are real, and none of them are magical.”)

Why the FUCK can't I remember. (“Everyone who’s magical can see that it’s not okay.”)

"Oracle in Training" (“They know it’s disorganized and dying, and in reality they will-)

did I fuck up (No, you didn’t. “make it worse.”)

was I too quiet (No, you weren’t. “What is magical? Is magical just my slang for toxic?”)

I'm always too loud but I'm never loud enough. (“Hazardouse to those around me. STOP.”)

When I went back to work after eight years of isolation they worried because my voice was broken glass for the first three months. (“Just say what you mean to say.”)

I lied and said I had allergies but it was laryngitis from vocal chords readjusting to regular speech. (“Why on earth do we have to keep doing this?”)

I listen, that's what I do. (“I try to live to make other people happy because I can do that sometimes, but it’s hard to always live in the service of others.”)

I talk so people will talk and then I listen. (“I never feel relief. I always feel like I’m running. Either to escape the pain of my life or to improve someone else’s”)

Did I stop listening? (“I’m only losing more as time goes on. On my chest I have tattooed nothing lost.”)

"Oracle in Training" (“I want to burn my diplomas. I want to scar my flesh. I want to breathe smoke.”)

This paper is trembling between my fingers as I speak to one of four who knows it exists.

Do I show him? (“There’s nothing left to salvage.”)

What's the fucking point. (“Float. You do not lose the ability to float.” Next to a happy jellyfish. “It is always inside of you.”)

To tell him I stopped listening? (“I try to melt my brain with drugs and alcohol because if I can’t physically kill myself maybe I can psychologically, but I’m still me.”)

To self serve and center myself in an unholy tragedy I have no right being party to? (“4/19/20 You are pitiful and weak.”)

But I am. (“Maybe I shouldn’t have given up, maybe I’m a quitter. I’m weak. Once I was persistent. I’m not sure when I broke. I lost faith in everything and everyone around me.”)

I am here, now, then, always, in that moment, with that paper, trembling because it doesn't belong to me anymore. (“I wish I were all the things I once thought I was”)

What fucking good does this do anyone now? (“I hate who you are now” a sober hand “I hate everything you’ve become. No. You’ve always been this.”)

Why the fuck does it exist at all? (“This is what everyone who left you learned eventually. That under whatever fun or generous or beautiful façade you present. You are a deeply miserable person.”)

I don't cater to self loathing but I hate myself when I think of that paper. (“Self interested. Empty. Not creative.”)

"Oracle in Training" (“Bereft of individuality or kindness. You are shit among common shit.”)

Now he's trapped in a polaroid of the mausoleum he keeps intact for you because he promised you'd always have a place to go. (“I don’t know if the world will ever find a place for me. I don’t know if I will ever find my place in the world.” Unsure brush pen, across a two page spread.)

The walls are coming down around him in every way imaginable and he cannot leave because he promised you'd always have a place to go. (“Life can be better than this. So why can’t I get it?”)

Your hair is on his altar and that paper I can't fathom is probably sitting nearby he hasn't packed either yet because he promised you'd always have a place to go. (“I’m sorry you have to get wet walking under the raincloud to get near me.” Under a sketch of a cat, in green ink.)

Now there's nowhere to run and you're not here and they still can't let release from knowing with every goddamn ounce of certainty in their bones that YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE A PLACE TO GO. (“You spoiled fucking breat, you’ve become everything you hated.”)

You still have a place to go Sarah. (“I don’t even think I did anything wrong. That’s the wost part. I feel like I did the right things.”)

Please let them go. (“Everyone I love is a burden and I resent them.”)

"Oracle in Training" (“I’ve let everyone I’ve ever loved down and now they keep me away. I’m an accident. I’m empty. I’m not even lonely.”)

Sarah I'm so fucking sorry I failed you. (“When I die and my life flashes before my eyes, I can say I’ve had some regrets, yes, but I lived it to the fullest extent. I have’nt denied myself anything, and that, I am proud of.” A two page spread, a heart drawn under it)

You saw me and gave me strength and I returned in kind but I still fell victim to the radiance you never asked for. (“I may just leave. I have to get away from here. I don’t know if the demons are in my head or in my house. Most likely both. Curses carry in many forms.”)

I put you on a pedestal while you begged for humanity. (“I know it’s somehow my fault though… Or some cosmic accident woven into me that I could not change.”)

And now still looking to you for utility instead of letting you rest in peace because I don't know how to help them the way you do and have I even learned a goddamn thing from this? (“I have no idea who I am. I’m so lost, and I don’t trust anyone enough to follow them.”)

There's never going to be another Sarah shaped peg for the hole in their lives. (“How is anyone able to feel surprise?”)

I love you so much and I'll never forgive myself for letting you down. (“I couldn’t possibly build a new life. I’m too busy mourning the lives I should have had !!!” 2 page spread, drunken blue sharpie)

"Oracle in Training" (“I don’t miss any of you.” Last line of her suicide note. My archives.)

I'm letting her down now too even though I promised not to. (“Omg. We're doing it... squeeee.”)

She will read this and learn talking to her is traumatic and that's so fucking unfair but I don't know how else to tell her. (“So, you'll come stay with me in miami. And make sure you watch me die. ”)

She's radiant too and cannot see it. (“study my brain when I die.”)

She never had another half for her brain. (“uhm... yaquis? we could invite steph?” The last time we were all together in one place.)

No one gave her a chance and I promised I would. (“gotta get starbucks or something before you go.” The last time you saw her.)

I'm breaking that promise and I'm breaking myself and I'm breaking her. (“I didn't... I just wanted to someone to be there, digitally, while I fade into the dark.”)

"Oracle in Training" (“Sorry if I die. Know I didn't even get fucked up tonight. I just am broken.”)

I'm looking to you for strength and that's even more unfair. (“The world is ending. Let me believe.”)

You're dead. (“I'm not sorry for hating myself. I'm sorry for dying so loudly.”)

But you are... everywhere. (“I love you.”)

Because it wasn't supposed to go down like that and the residue of your blood and glitter and grit will never be clean slated. (“my service is a great sacrifice, but I do what I must because I can.”)

"Oracle in Training" (“hat moment where your breathing slows and everything stops. The world is at peace. And your body jerks itself into life.”)

The hardest to learn was the least complicated. (“Nothing beats the adrenaline of dying...”)

(“Can I say something awful”)

(“Oh dude”)

The pain isn’t thinning.

Literal translation (Italian):
“Thin,” “slender,” “fine,” or “subtle.”

From the Latin subtilis, meaning:

• Fine or delicate (in texture or appearance)

• Sharp or refined (in mind or speech)

• Subtle or elusive (in perception)

Connoting:

• Sharpness of intellect

• Physical elegance or lightness

• Subtlety, elusiveness, or finesse

• A fine line between visibility and concealment

You’ve missed the dead lines, so many times.

URSA MAJOR

Thank you

Pablo Báez

Bullet train into a beer bottle's broken cosmic purple colored neck,

Painted heel to toe in ink and desire drowning in White Claw-

tender trunk, or stem, whichever, irrelevant if a seed flowers,

the tiger lilies painted on the trunk that never faded-

for it will wither after the slate's been bleached clean—not a speck

choking on crimson red dragon’s blood incense powder in mountainpiles burnt247365

[wywafm]

(kizzy ch

eese)

of black-yellow fingertips, trying to grab gown; fruits grown sour

practicing a personal strange fruit act

one final lapsed Catholic contrition

the terminal trust fall with a rope

around your neck

disappointing diamonds are grown in labs

right at the immaculate feet at the altar of The Saint. your/holy/bed/room/door

OUR

PATRON SAINT

OF JUNKIES

Ascension: 0 - 5.29; Declination: ♾️

from here I see the sun in a noose

I see SPACE &

embrace cold, with my warmth

and memories play, where we hug, as we cry dust, crystals ripping my tear ducts,

spouting blue rivers [wywafm] —spun in cotton candied grief—

| Stop staring at my figure hang spinning like a ballerina figurine,

| don't dissolve me as if sugar; if a star bucks—I'll take my coffee

| black as the gaze that's haunted this body for the sick kick.

|

down |

| paint bayberry goodbye; the color of berries will tell you

| if they'll make a good pie. anything inspired in bayberry's

| blue, baby, will sure enrapture and capture the departure

| of light from all your dead eyes as hover and flutter inside

| your mind’s eye

| periwinkle22

|

my

face of the earth

raped, gaped, and robbed of time to see

(minds) (cataleptic)

to the grave [wywnfm]

me see this pain that’s storming galaxies with it’s violating yowl

and so I ascend back the blue river [wywafm]

I finally see it escape myself like cherry chapstick shrugged

against pain’s lips left hollowed and the smell of sweetpeabodyspray.

mixed with shit

just smile, sounds trite but try. C

ON

M

L E T’ S PLANT A TREE AND I WILL ALWAYS BE

IN THE AIR YOU BREATHE

AND YOU KNOW THAT TRUE, EVERYTHING IS

INSIDE MY PARABOL

“we could have everything here, you know.

I could give you the world if I wanted, [wywafm]

on the whim that you desired it so.”

Whispered words t a s a t r l k digits rushing skin in a last goodbye

h t c t e I e

I will visit you on Saint’s Day

Supernova, you fed off whispered sucrose crystalized from dead tongue

KNOW I CLAW FROM THE OTHER SIDE BLACK BEAR ROAMING, ROARING

FROM THE SKIES

Where you will always find me

{when you were never fully mortal}

Slaughter a correspondence

Massacre a Poem

Deep breaths

The Saint needs IV fluids. She walks across the hospital and finds an awkward young sexless nurseboy. "Hey, I'll show you my tits if you give me two liters of IV fluids." What? What are ethics next to blood flowing to your groin? "I'll show you my tits for IV fluids." This awkward pause of measure. Imagine always being judged like you’re nothing but your beauty you hate. He nods his chin up and says okay. She lifts her shrugs the oversized white institutional hospital gown with the blue and yellow and pink tulip pattern from her shoulders to below her waist and shows him her breasts for three seconds. The sexless manchild flushes pink, his eyes left right left, did anyone see? Fuck. He works in a hospital. But The Saint’s perfection has been pulled back up around her shoulders, a bored half lidded glass stare. Get on with it. And he says deal.

The scene switches. Under harsh fluorescent lights that make everyone on earth but her look bad, The Saint is sitting in a closet, on a wire ;egged waiting room chair dragged into the cramped space, surrounded by nitrile gloves, piss pads, gauze, her perfect breasts, with a pole sat by her and an IV saline drip. The lights flicker and go out. Harpsichord music plays.

Golden brown, texture like sun
Lays me down, with my mind she runs
Throughout the night
No need to fight
Never a frown with golden brown

Every time just like the last
On her ship tied to the mast
To distant lands
Takes both my hands
Never a frown with golden brown

Coming in Part 2.

“I’ve died so many times for you and you’ve only died ONCE for me! ONCE!”

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