Skyler Keiter-Massefski

INTEREGGNUM/FRAGMENTS

If there were signs that cracks 
were forming, they were 
obscured in the cruelty 
of the impasse.

March 11, 2021. 15:09

@SkylerJay_: Hitting the 1-year of pandemic 
mark during the same week as several other 
trauma anniversaries is doing 
WILD things to my body.

How does one see 
a breaking point coming 
when time is stuck in a loop 
of the crisis ordinary?

March 11, 2021. 19:50

@haunted_sky: I’ve never dealt with
a trauma response like this before
and am honestly at a loss.

Assignments submitted hours
and then minutes before the deadline
(instead of the usual days).
Signing onto Zoom calls
without wearing lipstick.
Emails with scattered sentences
rambling on to nothingness.

March 12, 2021. 12:43.

Subject: Midterm Quiz

Hi Professor ___,

My midterm quiz is attached here.
Thanks,

Skyler

(Are these really signs
of impending collapse?)

March 12, 2021. 13:12.

@haunted_sky: I’m really not okay today.

That’s it.
That’s the tweet.

I work backwards from that fateful hour, 
piecing together the signs,
fragments of a life
on the brink of shattering.

March 12, 2021. 13:22

Launch Meeting – Zoom:

Epistemologies of the Pandemic

Alone, the ephemera
signal little more
than the banality of crisis.

Together, they tell the story
of a body desperately trying
to hold itself together
when the cracks have already
become too big.

The traces of my desperation
reveal themselves anew
in mundane relics.
Tweets, texts, and scribbled notes
are all that is left of the trail
that leads to the site
of my shattering.

The point is not that someone
should have seen,
that someone should
have intervened.

Only to illuminate the crisis
in everyday life
that occasionally erupts
in disaster.