Mausoleum
Kimberly Walters (@aRealLiveGhost)

All content written by Kimberly Walters (@aRealLiveGhost). Tweets (from 2012) chosen and arranged by Russel Swensen (@scribblymouse).

YOU ARE: SQUANDERING YOUR PRECIOUS FEW REMAINING MOMENTS. PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE

*in a low, horrid voice* k bye

I have many aspirations for example I would like to one day be locked in a sensory deprivation tank and forgotten about. then bury me alive.

the theme of my twitter is “can someone please hug me then bury me alive.”
the last person on earth invents billions of others just to stop being lonely. the idea that plants move towards sunlight will convince everyone for a long time that they are not actually writhing in very slow pain.

earth seconds don’t mean anything in space so who’s to say that when we kiss in a spaceship it lasts anything short of forever? I think I liked paris because it was confusing to navigate and covered in things that didn’t understand each other, just like me. the theme of my twitter is.

the theme of my twitter is.
how do you know your bones aren’t glowing

sext: I’m fucking crying. you’re impressed because you’ve only ever fucked humans. your body is a collection of beautifully complex systems and processes. are you really gonna use it to type something mean to a stranger? are you really going to use it to type something mean to a stranger. are you really going to—   ? asfsdaw

what happens is kissing and I think that might be the only important part
bury me alive.

if you really loved me you would step out of that circle of salt and stop chanting protection spells. if someone is making you angry picture them tearfully reading their diary to a really disinterested dog. if you are on a boat you are legally a sea monster bath toy. sext: it was absolutely useless. Thanks

the complete contents of my head: 1. robots 2. kisses 3. puppies 4. I’m sad 5. food

are you really going to use it.
hug me then
then

Weird Laws 2035 Edition: In all of North America it is illegal to be in love even though nobody’s been in love since 2009

*in a low, horrid voice* k bye

I am standing up in half a hug! come help me finish it. sext: let’s kiss even though the world isn’t ending or anything.
            WELCOME TO #THIS #LUSH #EARTH YOU’VE BEEN SELECTED TO
RECEIVE #CRIPPLING #MENTAL #ILLNESS

I’m pretty sure it was just me yelling “WHY DO ALIENS NEED WATER” while my teacher got more and more frustrated with me. guys that insist on using masculine pronouns for me because I have short hair and look boyish are probably such secure and happy individuals.

*in a low, horrid voice

missed connections - w4m - our organs were manufactured in the same vat and the cross-contamination caused a glitch that makes me like you.
            he felt bad about the way he treated me so he disappeared

*in a low, horrid voice* k bye.

the theme
how do you know your bones aren’t glowing
            girl shake it

missed connections - m4w - we were placed in adjacent containment cells. when you beg the guards for food I can see your fingertips

Then Bury Me Alive
Bury Me

if you get an infinite number of streetlights someday one will flicker the morse code for “I love you” and someday      one     will     mean     it,     too.     BURY     ME     THEN
BURY     ME     ALIVE

hug me then

girl shake it. shake that head. shake it like an etch a sketch and forget this ever happened. I’m sitting in my bed sobbing with laughter. I’m crying. kissing and punching are the same thing as the sentence “I want you to feel the same feelings as me” then bury me.

my first tweet ever (WARNING: sassy baby ghost)
then hug me
I said your name like it was a spell.

son, someday this will all be yours *gestures broadly to modest plot of land, own deteriorating body*

advice I would’ve laughed at a few months ago: kimmy if you want people to like you get on the internet and say weird shit about your fangs

WARNING: sassy baby ghost
bury me

FACTORY RECALL: YOUr

body is a collection of beautifully complex systems and processes. are you really gonna use it to type something mean to a stranger

if twitter were a house party we would be sitting on the porch playing with sparklers and trying to lure stray cats inside. can someone please drive me to a romantic spot that overlooks the whole city then drive away and leave me there with no supplies

The Theme IS
I wish I were real so we could taste blueberries together

once my dad locked his keys in his car so naturally he punched the window in with his bare fist
            next on Mythbusters: are you really still alive? do you … god there was so much blood, how … is this possible
… to say something mean?

Yes I’m That Intense All The Time   Haters Come At Me I’ll Just Roll Away With The Slow Flair Of a Tiny Faux-Vintage Tram

sext: they told me that this phone line isn’t hooked up to anything anymore but it feels like you’re still there. hello, maybe.
            the most sexual thing I’ve done in weeks was to dig out the pit of an avocado with my fingers

turns out
turns
turns out a live ghost is just a person
out

TURNS OUT

I think you and I are a good pair too. people like you because you make them happy and they like me because I make them sad
THEME IS

      shake it girl

SHAKE IT

I eroded into just the shape you like. I sat at the bottom of a river so my sharp edges would smooth away. will you hold me

shake shake shake

one benefit of being small is that I can wrangle sound waves and weave friendship bracelets out of them with my tiny, deft fingers. I don’t think this body is even mine anymore which is frustrating because now I don’t know if it would mind being tossed i

nto a river.
Girl

I’m an aggregate of crimes that only learned to walk and talk because it’s easier to do more crimes this way. I wish my body would pack a secret suitcase and call a cab in the night and leave me. when she was little my sister had an alter ego named Thing that I accidentally killed while we were playing airplane.

we watch a time lapse film of a coyote decomposing in the forest. I hold your hand. “I love you anyway,” I say. my niece was born this morning so how long until I can start teaching her how to be a witch

I just met you and this is crazy, but here’s my number. distract the guard, enter it into the system, and run the program to unlock me. it hurts

GIRL
shake it like

something mean

I love you but your body’s made of trash and so is mine
THE THEME IS

turns out a live ghost is just a person
THEME SHAKE ARE YOU REALLY GOING

TO SAY

my older sister likes to tell me that when she was a fetus she decorated our mom’s womb for me because she loves me

turns out—

a real live ghost
kimmy

.

forget this ever happened

---

Kimberly Walters’ Comments

why do I use twitter
I started using twitter in december. I was on medication that made it difficult for me to think straight or remember things, and twitter helped me organize my thoughts in manageable chunks. I would post sentences that got stuck in my head. after about a week of using twitter I discovered people were using it to write super short form jokes and poetry, and I’ve been hooked on it ever since. it was a great way to keep myself sharp through the fog of the medicine I was on, and the volume of original thoughts coming from people I follow was and still is astounding. twitter is so chaotic and stimulating because you don’t know what&#!46;s coming tweet by tweet. one could make you laugh out loud and the next could be a pocket sized punch in the heart. unless you’re only following superficial joke accounts, you’re directly confronting complexity when you follow people. I’ve made friends and fallen in love on twitter. it’s easy. we’re recognizing ourselves in each other every day.

what I thought of the arrangement process
russel was excellent through this process. since I didn’t have time to write the piece requested of me before I left the country for six weeks, he offered to curate and arrange my twitter feed for me so I could still be included in the issue. when he sent me the first draft I felt completely like I was standing in someone else’s body looking at myself. it was great, and so strange. I love the piece. russel did a fantastic job. some of the tweets he used were ones I had thought about for a while before writing them and some were written in thoughtless angry moments, but he made me cohesive. this was such an interesting project. I wrote all those things over a period of months, but russel made me happen all at once. I love it.


Russel Swensen’s Comments

Ellen originally contacted Kimmy but Kimmy was in Europe and too busy to choreograph her piece. I’d recommended Kimmy for the issue, REALLY wanted her there, asked if I could talk at her about coming to, well, an arrangement. I basically shouted “Dream Song #4” (or some variation of it) & said HEY you’re mega dark starling fucking talented and wouldn’t it be great if we could erase the distinction between talented on the internet and talented? Which is something I feel pretty strongly about. It’s an insipid, meaningless distinction. Kimmy’s freaking tidal. She obliterates the form: ocean to sand castle every time. And her work is so complete—each line dense and twined. She is a Fibonacci sequence in ghost form. Wld like to be super clear that I never felt “ahhhh I now get to play puppet master.” It was more like I CAN PLAY WITH KIMMY’S TOYS? THESE ARE THE BEST FUCKING TOYS. I was simply thrilled. One of my fave days as a writer. It was like the sun saying “ok, you can play with me.” It was like the battlefield where the moon says hey, come at me bro, come at me.

Re: process. IDEALLY Kimmy’s stuff should be featured as a slide show. Each tweet given at least thirty seconds. Which you just stare kind of mesmerized at until you feel like someone is REMEMBERING you. I mean slide show? Ideally this would be at a local drive in and believe me I would go.

Of course the v. strength of her work made it hard to sync. The tiny [complete] prose poem nature of her work made it a bit tough for this here troubled little soldier. I didn’t want to simply line up her best stuff (it’s all the best btw) and say, hey look at the spectral parade. She’s already doing just that. So I saw my role more as being like, a remix? Trying to make it a sexier dance hall hit. Trying too to key in on femme anger. So my version involved a lot of violent syntactical decisions as well as curating: broken phrasing, mutilated quotes, repetition that I hope threads its way through the piece as blue thread. In some it was like painting—palette provided. I invented nothing except well, look, if Kimmy is a lot of stars (and she is) then I thought “guess I get to make some constellations” and I *cracked my fingers.

Yo, I smiled like a knife opening.

P.S. After reading Kimmy’s thoughts (and Danielle’s) on twitter it made me realize something I’d forgotten. Which is that twitter for the people I love was almost always a way of Trying To Deal with a world that no longer made sense.

Bc I sort of identify with stuff both Kimmy & D are saying & realizing why it’s so important to me. Almost by default, there’s a weird connection with people that came together because the world was kind of breaking them apart.

And so all the collaborative stuff that goes on on twitter is kind of everyone trying to fix each other & knit back all the torn sutures & just kind of be nice.

I like to think of it like this.

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