rain » vkook

prologue

people like to call the world a concrete jungle. they like to use that phrase to pass their judgments without directly saying them because they know they're all mistaken anyway. the phrase means nothing. it means that people have this ridiculous emptiness in their heads that escapes from their mouths in the form of a sigh, because they have no words to say but they have this inescapable need to hear their own voices.

they call their world fast-paced and innovative even as they invent new ways to waste their allotted time being unfaithful or destructive.

they say these things like they're accomplishments. like they're entitled to them, when their ancestors just sat around and watched the world transform through lenses made from the bottoms of beer mugs.

they make me sick.

the world is none of these things. the world is the same as it's always been, because who are we to say that we changed it? we are so self-centered; we think we are the creators of our own lives when we are only the destroyers; a child knocking over a tower of blocks. but the world is these things.

and i hate it.

it's loud and it's dirty and if rivers are veins and the earth's core is its heart, then it must be poisoned.

it's not that i want to die.

no, it's not that.

i tell that to my doctor, to my mom, to everyone, but they don't listen. because they only listen to themselves. they hear what they want to, and assurances that i am okay are not what they want to hear.

they want to hear that i am always one graceful step from the edge of a roof, that i am one shaking, grasping moment away from the bottle of pills.

they don't want to hear that i hate this world and i hate them. because they don't understand.

their ridiculous heads tilt, their meaningless trinkets jangling as thoughts of money roll around in their empty heads. spiders weave webs between their fingers and that's why i recoil from them; can't they see that they carry around coffins? their lips are loud and big as they struggle to form words to ask me questions that will get them the answers they want. i'm too busy trying to find their eyes beneath their transparent lids that i don't hear anyway.

we're both obstinately deaf; me and the people. me and the concrete jungle.

i wake up in the morning and ask it if it's satisfied. it doesn't answer, but i go on to have a conversation with it because silentsilence is more underwhelming than loudsilence.

"where is your welcome mat?" i ask it at ten in the morning. "where does everyone step to enter their lives? how dirty is it?"

and i go on and on until my voice is rightfully hoarse. i am just as incomprehensible to everyone else as the birds on a summer's morning.

and i am fine.

i am an artist, but not because i want to escape. no, i am an artist because everyone else is blind and i can see and i hate seeing them.

i paint the world as it should be; i paint it blurry and sharply detailed. i paint the people as they are; i paint them as abstract, dark, melting masses. and the people i paint buy these mirrors but exclaim over the texture of the paint on the canvas and i smile because they are stupid.

i am stupid, too.

my mind is a machine that has been wired wrong and my eyes don't see the correct reality. they see them all; the solid street and the ordinary people and the towering buildings. they see the blurring lines and the hazy faces and the wide-open sky that threatens to pin us all to the ground. but we take it for granted, and we're so assured of it's space between us that we're the ones pinning it to space; we are the reason the sky is so high and we are the reason the air separates.

so i paint and i draw at night and during the day i bend my limbs into the box behind my cash register. i fold them until they are the right size and i hope that my customers don't notice how my head balances on my neck like an over-inflated beach ball in the winter.

dear concrete jungle, are you as disgusted with your inhabitants as i am?

a/n: hello i feel like i never really talk in my notes anymore lmao

anyway so im back with vkook and im happy bc i havent written vkook in forever