trag·e·dy, noun

trag·e·dy, noun

1. an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe.
2. a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character.

Lately I have wondered about tragedy. The weight of it. The taste, the smell. Wondering about the ways we wear it. Casually like scars so faded we’ve forgotten their origin story. Sharp and white like screaming. Heavy like a gravity we never thought to question. What does tragedy eat for breakfast? How does it takes its coffee? Once you taste it does it haunt the corners of your mouth? There is a space between me and tragedy; it exists in a separate context. I do not wear it as a skin. I do not wrap my tongue around it every time I try to speak.

Is tragedy the presence of a thing or its absence? The moment of combustion, or the second the machine stops firing? Synapses so perfectly balanced lapsing into silence. Maybe it is both. A thing and the absence of a thing. What is the last story I will hear?

I love you or I’ll see you soon or Goddammit, traffic is terrible today.

What is the last story I will tell myself?

I’m sorry or This can’t be happening or Oh my god, oh. My god.

A friend sits across from me in the back booth of a cafe and says What do you believe in? People and words and stories.

A person wakes up and tells himself a story. He carries six firearms into a classroom and ends nine lives two and a half hours from where I sip black coffee. Tragedy. I believe in people.

Lucero Alcaraz, Treven Taylor Anspach, Rebecka Ann Carnes, Quinn Glen Cooper, Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, Lucas Eibel, Jason Dale Johnson, Lawrence Levine, Sarena Dawn Moore.

This tragedy tastes like cold coffee. Tastes like mouth gone dry, like the absence of a thing. I wonder what they ate for breakfast. Wonder about the last story they told themselves. I run their names over my tongue and they feel clumsy, unfamiliar. Does proximity directly impact the force? Does their tragedy resonate more fiercely because the shockwaves ripple through the same tectonic plates where I sleep, and eat, and live?

Lately I have been wondering about tragedy. How we eat/drink/fuck/fight/sweat our way through it. The blood and tears and vomit. The weight. The taste. This is an incomplete thought.

I am learning to play the guitar, my fingertips grown thick, trying to peel away from themselves. They harden so I can press harder into the pain; so I can produce a clearer sound. And maybe that’s what we’re all doing and maybe that’s what we’ve always done. Press into the pain until the distortion is erased. Press into the pain until it’s the only song we have memorized. Play it, over and over again. Make it more beautiful every time.

And then? We learn a new song. Keep our fingertips hardened with clumsy, honed with practice. Let tragedy be the baseline that thrums through our blood. I believe in people, and words, and stories. I believe in tragedy. I believe in pressing into the pain so we can create something more beautiful than our struggle.

-b