there are a lot of things i'm afraid of and the list for those things changes all the time. what i'm most afraid of right now is that i'm unaware. unaware of my emotions. unaware of what's going on in the region of the heart. i feel like i should be feeling a lot of things. i feel like i should be going through a lot of things. but i've been fine and that scares me a little bit. i feel like i'm not aware of my emotions enough to be a writer.

holiday blues

What is that feeling, the one you get when you are home and driving and there is no music in the car so you turn on a radio station that you used to listen to in high school and the DJ puts on a song, a song that you used to listen to on repeat sophomore year of high school while you thought about a boy that you could slow-dance to the song with, what is that feeling called, when you remember all those feelings that you felt when you heard that song at one point in your life, but you just remember them, you don't feel them? What is that feeling called, when you wake up one morning in a house that is no longer your home, a house you spent the majority of your life in, but one that you don't feel like you belong to anymore? What is that feeling, when you realize that you don't actually belong anywhere? What is that feeling called when you realize that you've grown out of things that you weren't quite ready to grow out of, that time has passed and that a new year is coming and you might not be ready to let go of the one you're in now?

I feel lonely when I come home, lonely in my thoughts and my opinions. Maybe it's because the church is so prevalent when I'm home, it's like this presence in my house and I feel like I can't escape it. I feel like I'm struggling against who I used to be when I'm at home, like it's hard to forget who I once was and I kind of despise myself for it. I am who I am now but it's still difficult for me to swallow the fact that I rebuked my family once, that I left them, all in the pursuit of God. I turned my back on them because I felt there was a higher calling. And I come home, now, and I look at them, now, and I feel sorrow for what I did. I'm always feeling sorrow for things I did. And home is the one place where I can't escape from my past mistakes, where I can't bury things. Because They Know. Because my family Knows me. They Know me and they still Love me. And that, that is terrifying. But I'm going to have to try harder now. We're all going to have to try harder now. And that is a Good Thing.




(Growing up is hard.)

i got my wisdom teeth pulled out today.

here is my failed attempt at capturing the aftereffects of today's ordeal:

just two on one side of my mouth. my face is lopsided for the time being. and my dentist didn't put me to sleep. and he also did me the favor of letting me know that he had to dig and cut unusually deep because my tooth was so buried and therefore i would be in a lot more pain during the healing process. so for three hours i was sitting, wide awake and anxious that i would feel something, anything, any sort of pain, and i didn't, and because i didn't feel anything, i was panicking. what a weird feeling. and all i could think about the entire time was that line salinger uses in zooey's manuscript, the one he's reading over the bathtub, rick's part, when rick calls theresa a beautiful little moron. and how that is so similar to fitzgerald's phrase, when daisy is being dramatic about the birth of her daughter, when she says pretty little fool. and i was sitting there on the dentist chair for about three hours thinking of which one i liked better and why. and how i need to read more. and all that sort of thing.

And we can have it all but it wouldn't be enough.

I miss having something to believe in. I think I must have been kinder when there was a God to put my faith in. A naive kind, but kind nonetheless. I think I more readily believed in things, in people, and I was easily convinced, easily impressed. Maybe I was happier. Was I selfish? Is Christianity selfish? Maybe it is in the sense that you are not really thinking of others in an effort to understand them, but you are thinking of yourself versus everybody else in an effort to change them. I've always had that contention with Christianity, the problem with Christians trying to change everyone without attempting to understand anyone.

And I know I'm offended by it, when someone says I am not who I'm supposed to be. What does supposed to be even look like?

pt. ii

The streets are black. Neon in places. Moonlit pavement and hollow thuds of shoes, feet shuffling through more feet, of children and their tired parents, couples holding hands in line. His voice is mechanical. Something unclear, against the sounds of popping balloons and spraying water. His steps are heavy. I feel them. He stops. I follow. He lets go of my hand and we stand there for a still moment, and he's looking at me. I love you, he says. This and we are still standing, and I am looking at him. Sometimes I don't think he means it and I wonder if I do. I wonder if true love exists and if it does, is it supposed to be met halfway, is it supposed to be met at all. I wonder if it is supposed to be independent of what the other person is feeling. Do you think so, I ask him, and he says no. He says true love should be able to stand on its own, without the need for it to be met, mutual, remember Beethoven. And he grabs my hand. We're walking again, and faces pass us, but I am still wondering if true love exists, if it has legs to stand, or if it's just a dress some girls use to cover the scrapes on their knees. Am I one of them, I wonder. We walk to the car in silence and we undress each other in silence.

The night is electric. The hairs on his arms stand up. Like static. His hands are damp, cold like clams. I loosen my grip and the still air fills the space between our palms, fits mine like a pocket. He's kissing me real hard. Then our hands are pressing up against the glass and it's cold in parts. I feel it slip under my fingers. His grip presses my hand harder and I scrape new lines. He pushes himself in, further, and I pull him into me, closer. He gasps. I twist and our bodies form new shadows, new shapes under the moonlight. He follows my movements, pushing each time, and I suddenly feel understood. My head is pushing against the plastic, the car door, and his against the roof. he breathes out my name, a cry and a whisper. Our sounds fill the small space and our legs are hot, bent, my toes curled, and my body goes rigid under the motions of his hips. I'm almost there. The prickly beginnings of his beard scrape the soft flesh of my neck, just there below my ear. I'm almost there. My thoughts are frozen. A moment of clarity. His motions grow desperate, mine frenzied. The moment crescendoes with his cries and his hands gasp around my face, then shoulders, and back as he pushes himself further. And then I'm there. He's there. I feel my contractions and his, simultaneous. Then it's our bodies, collapsing into each other. Loose bodies, soft breaths, and the air is stale from our sweat. The air is still. And he's looking at me.

His body is heavy on mine but I still feel weightless. All urgency is gone but my breaths have already grown forceful. His face is lying still on my neck and our chests are resting together. Tell me I'm pretty, I say, and he lifts his head. My neck is cold. My chest is cold. Our bodies are still damp and the air clings to them like bedsheets would. He looks at me and lifts my head with both hands, lifts it closer to his, suspended, and he kisses me. You're pretty, he says, and he kisses my cheek. You're pretty, he repeats, and he kisses my forehead. You're pretty. My nose. You're pretty. My eye. You're pretty. My chin. You're pretty, he says. and he kisses me again, this time on the mouth, soft at first, real gentle, and then again, and again, each time getting harder, until the moment dwindles down and our eyes are both open. He's looking at me again. And I tell him then, this is a memory I'd like to keep.

annie dillard goes into this stint in pilgrim at tinker creek about how beautiful things occur in nature whether we're watching our not. it's like that old question about if the sound of a tree falling actually occurs if nobody is there to hear it... anyways, i just got home from saerom's house and i am sitting at my computer in the dark, checking my e-mail, and i hear my little dog candy saunter over to her little newspaper where she usually dumps her business, and the newspaper rustles a little as she positions herself on it. all sound suddenly stops, except for the clicking of my mouse, and then i hear a fart. it was a cute little spurt of a fart. and it was completely adorable. only from something as little as a dog with a button-sized nose could a sound like that elicit a huge smile rather than a disgusted face from the person witnessing that moment. also, sentence construction is really difficult at 1 in the morning.

the leavers dance

The wind rippled tiny stalks of grass and the moonlight shone real bright. I leaned in closer. She smelled like blown out candles and her skin felt soft, waxen, against my fingers. Her hair fell in circles around her shoulders. She was wearing it down. I could see the weight of her eyelids and that small smile, the one that ruined me every time, creeping upwards, and I kissed her. I laid down on the cement bench, my head resting in her lap, and her fingers were in my hair, soft strokes and gentle reminders that she loved me too. I closed my eyes. She began to hum. I've only known you for a month, I said. She didn't stop humming, but I could hear the smile beginning to take shape.

- I know, she said.
- I still can't believe it, I opened my eyes. Searched for hers.
- I think I've always known you though, she said, and she shifted to cross her legs.
- Do you believe in soulmates?
- Sometimes, she paused.
- I waited for her to complete her thought.
- Sometimes I think that, she paused again, I suppose I don't believe in them, no I really don't.
- Commitment and devotion are two different things, I said.
- I think that the idea behind soulmates is that there isn't much work involved, she began to fumble around in her purse, black leather, and she pulled out a box of camels, a small lighter.
- Matches drive me insane, I said.
- But maybe that's not true, she said, I just feel like any two people can end up together, like really end up together, and be able to make a life together, she took out a cigarette, handed me one, brought another to her mouth and cupped her small hand over the end as she lit it, a cherry red flame, smoke.
- But when the levels of devotion are uneven, I paused as she lit the cigarette in my mouth, dangling and then a bright glow.
- Then that relationship needs to end, she let the smoke fall from her lips, upwards, past her freckled nose, disperse in the cold night air.

I sat up. The hollow sound of drumbeats, rhythmic and scattered, echoed through the open door, and the dancers began filing out, one by one, drunken, happy, leaving behind a thick scent, dark with musk. Dead leaves, withered and skeletal, shuffled around their feet and I heard the music suddenly fade as the door to the livewire closed. The quiet was sudden, and I looked for her. Her cigarette was down to the filter, and she brought it up to her mouth anyway, sucked in without looking, and exhaled, frowning, dropped the butt and crushed the cherry beneath her stiletto. She pressed her hand into my leg, just above the knee, and she turned her head, looked at me real good, and smiled differently, bigger, more crooked, and she said I love you. I love you too, I said, and i put the dying cigarette out with one hand and felt for her hand with the other.

hi, hello

there are times when presence is all you need.

the trapeze act was hard to follow

And the world spun on its head the night we first touched, his fingers twirling against my knee, the music just beginning to sigh, watching him walk over the hill, pour coffee into a cup and smile, following the moon together with traces of white breath, dark air, and then our hands touched, and here we are, lying down with smiles on our eyes, and he draws closer, holds me tight, and suddenly every laugh and gesture make sense, and I love him in that moment, I love him tonight.

as the brass faded with the tinkering of a cowbell

The music is beautiful during the daytime, when he is holding me and I am breathing in his hair, traces of cigarettes and soap. I beat my fingers to the rhythm on his chest, patches of curly brown hair spread with every tap, thump, and he smiles. His fingers trace my temple and I tell him how much I love that, our eyes align and there are flecks around his pupils, honey, soft. I find myself caught in suspension in those moments, when the world hasn't fully caught up to us, to this. I can say anything in those moments and feel the milky air brush us so soft. I think I love you, I told him. I want to love you, he says. Is this what love is, I ask. And the moment is still suddenly divine, when we share this space separated only by lungs and rhythms of the heart, bodies tangled under quilted sheets, over a tiny bed. I wish there were an emotion to describe that moment, other than happiness, one that describes the shivers I get when his fingernails cross my bare back, the feeling I get when he breathes out my name, that moment where we float together, when we forget the sins of our past, the uncertainty of the future. There are times when I don't know what I want, but in that moment I am sure that he is it, and I find myself in that certainty, in that longing. He's mine, with those eyes, long hands and calloused fingertips, and when he is holding me it suddenly becomes natural to strip myself of everything I hold up for the rest of the world to scrutinize. I have dreams of this moment when I find clarity in the world, beautifully unexpected, unexpectedly beautiful, when I belong as one piece unbroken. I take my jewelry off in these dreams and undress my thighs, pick up a microphone and move to the noises of the world, dance to the sounds of furious streets, crying babes, and raucous laughter. I find myself amidst the confusion, losing only what was not necessary to hold onto from the beginning, and I hold him tighter.

honey hollows

It was a Saturday morning when I woke up to a note on his pillow, I’ll be right back, it read. I remember rolling over and smiling in his smells, back aching from the weight of my belly, hungry and still sleepy. He came through the door, a faded blue shirt, clean jeans, and baby’s breath. Did you bring me flowers, I asked him. He handed me a small arrangement of purples yellows with green stems and small white baby’s breath. I love you, he said. I love you too. I got up to drain a small vase and arranged the flowers, setting it on our windowsill, for light, I told him.

We walked through the town that day, his hand holding mine, occasionally reaching over to touch my belly, through streets with mismatching signs and past the park where the crazies slept. I stopped in front of a café and he asked me to wait outside, he came back holding two cups and kissed me. Rooibos. Did you sneak a taste of mine, I asked. He smiled, handed me a warm cup of herbal tea, and locked his warm hand in mine. We bought tomatoes that day, ripe ones from the farmer’s market, red yellow and plump, and large grey mushrooms, yellow onions already beginning to peel, a box of noodles, the cheapest ones we could find. We walked around the carts, tasting small sweet red strawberries, juices flowing down our fingers and we bit into one.

We made spaghetti that night. He cut through tomatoes and their red yellow juices flowed freely down the wooden cutting board to the sink. He sliced mushrooms into small thin as paper portions, diced the onions in uneven lengths, and cut through red yellow green bellpeppers, dropping them all into a large silver pot on our stove. I would make him close his eyes occasionally, stop what he was doing, pop a bellpepper in his mouth and make him guess the color. The water began to boil when he was done with the slicing and I dropped a handful of dry noodles into the pot. I blew on the small frosty bubbles and they disappeared, revealing yellow noodles and clear hot water.

when i think again,

She tucked her hands under the bend of her knees, lying still in a bed with sheets that still smelled like his sleep. You could be happy played on repeat, against the whir of the heater. It still hurt. The things that he had meant to take with him, the things that he had left behind with her, still stood stacked against the white wall, next to the suitcase she had meant to pack.

They left, drunken and happy, one by one, leaving behind half-empty bottles of bourbon, empty cans of diet coke, and a thick scent, dark with musk. Dead leaves, withered and skeletal, trickled through his open door and a faint howl resonated through deep brambles just beyond the hills. She leaned over a stack of half empty cups, shivering to reach a pack of reds. The paisley blanket covered what little she had left of her wasted body. And she sobbed. A thin darkness enveloped the wooden floor where she lay and the sound of leaves pounding through the open door drowned her cries.

He came, feet dragging across the room, and a shallow t-shirt stained in blue clung to his pale skin. He looked at her.

The air was cold the night she fucked someone else. The screeches of cats and tires against his moans and her cries. He touched her hair, cupped her breasts, and told her that she was special. That he liked her. She cried as she told him, “I have a boyfriend.” He asked her if the necklace she wore was special and she cried as she told him it was. He told her that he was going to kiss her now, and he did, his mouth met hers through her tears, silently sucking the noise out of her cries. She stayed still. She lay still as the shadows of his motions flickered against the walls. Her eyes were shut tight when he came, when he collapsed next to her and reached for her body.

She woke up the next day, cheeks still damp with sweat-mingled tears, and sat up with her back against his cold metal backboard. He had left and she gathered her things slowly, taking her time to dress, the khaki shaded bra, the shirt stamped with pictures of persimmons, and the faded jeans. She walked out.

is it ever enough?

I pack up the boxes, loading them one by one, and the world is blurry. What I had known once was now gone, and I am lost. I lifted an old shopping bag into the trunk and a red mug, once held Ceylon, his lips, dropped, shattered. I missed that moment, when something knocked it out of its position inside the bag and midair before it hit the ground. And I left the pieces there, on the side of the road, where I had once stood holding his hands, both of his in both of mine.

hey people looking out the window at the city below

We linked arms under the beginning progression of chords that we both knew well and bodies pressed into us, against the barriers, towards the gods on the wooden stage. Hollow sounds contrasted with the furious strumming, drums banging against the rhythm of the room. And suddenly the room caught up. Empty pint glasses rested on abandoned tables, heads bobbed, and the musicians strummed, sang, beat. I closed my eyes.

The music dimmed and so did the lights, leaving behind a musty scent of sweat, bodies, and people began to scatter. We went outside then, resting our heads and our backs against the wet patch of grass across the street from the tavern. Raising cigarettes to our faces and blowing streams of smoke into the air cold wet. The bruise on his chin smarted and he reached over. His hand, my knee, fingers crossed. I looked at him then, and tasted lager on his breath. I caught mine, and he kissed me. He stood up first, shirt damp and clinging from the grass, and I found his hand again. He walked with a hand in his black jeans pocket and told me that pretentiousness could be good.

Cars swung by and the lights blurred as I reached out the window of his car, leaned and smiled into the air. He turned up the sound and the rest was inaudible; the world was noisy in that moment.

and this is only just the beginning

It is within these pockets of time, ones of loss and gain, tragedy and joy, that we continue to breathe, without permission, without deliberation. And yet we continue to live, death after death, choice after choice. Our lives are wrapped around the will to survive, to keep breathing and existing despite the tragedies that are thrown our way. And each day offers a space for new changes, shifts in our lives that can forever affect the way we view the world, the people, the space around us.

We are thrust into a world full of change, in a vessel contained within a layer of flesh upon flesh. And it is this same layer that separates us from the others, the other souls that share the very air that keeps us alive within this pocket of time. And each of us is born with the innate desire for contact with others, seeking relationship after relationship, which in turn effects change after change.

separated by lungs

When I think there are these things: when it rains the women stay in the summer-house. About loving cells, the movement of cells, and the division of cells they hear the water beating on the tiles and streaming and then the general beating of circulation. You I think down the slopes of the roof. Fringes of rain surround about opening hands, and body, and feet. The summer-house, the water that runs down at its angles and shaking the skin that surrounds hands, body, and feet. Flows more strongly, it is as if springs hollow out. This is a shape, pebbles at the places where it reaches the ground. I’m sick. A shape of blood beating and cells dividing. At last light someone says it is like the sound of micturition, that she throwing my baby against plastic, but outside of this pace is shape. I feel transparent cannot wait any longer, and squat down. There is space between the hands. I try it again. Then some of them form a circle around her after the monster tore down the town left on the doorstep. There is space between the hands and space around the hands. Watch the labia expel the urine. In dull weather the women may shed hot tears, is this why smiling saying that in the sunshine there is space around the hands and spce in the room in our hands a rattle penetrates through closed windows? Someone arrives to visit we shake him shake him. there is space in the room that surrounds the shape of everyone’s vulva, used it to say that thanks to that nobody’s going to come in. and there is space, an uneven space, made by this pattern of bodies. The last splashes of sunlight in the sea I agree is a good place to shit. This space goes in and out of everyone’s bodies at the most luminous spot when, dazzled, they try to move away while I stayed in this morning. It was summer. Everyone with lungs breathes the space in and out as everyone is seized with vomiting. Then they begin to moan who did you think I would be. As everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands in and out, colliding with the floating decaying carcase of an ass, at times the swell the wind turning flags and banners into danger as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and they say that they shouted with all their might, in this fragmented city and the space around the hands in and out. I will wake up loving you and when I come home I will love you as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and reveal sticky shapeless gleaming lumps of indescribable colour the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the tickets for the movies for tomorrow night, I will buy you shedding many tears, complaining that no sea-breeze got up to drive away the smell, supporting under the arms and groins, How connected we are with everyone. It’s like genitals I want to show you all these tiny parts piles of orange oranges ochre pineapples mandarins walnuts green and pink mangos the space of everyone that has just been inside of everyone mixing inside of everyone with nitrogen and oxygen and water vapor but I’m public public public. Holes in my memory sticking my hands in my jeans jackets how lovely and how doomed this connection of everyone with lungs. Wasps coming and going settle on the bare arms of the young women selling the bread, must be saved wrapped protected from age because I am poor and how am I to dress my flesh if I’m not poor, each morning we wait in our bed listening for the parrots and their chattering. Beloveds, the huntresses have dark maroon hats, and dogs. The trees branch over our roof, over our bed, and so realize that when I speak about how can I protect me from rotting, Dominique Aron says that the bird is still flying, the hare still running, the boar the deer the fox the wart-hog still afoot. When I speak of the parrots I speak of all that we wake to this morning, I think writing is desire not a form of it. beloveds, yours skins is a boundary separating yous from the rest of the women watching its approach shouting to those within for the windows to be closed and the rifles kept behind the windows. I speak of the separations that define this world and the separations that define us, it’s feeling into space, tucked into language, slipped into time, opened, felt, even as we like to press our skins against one another in the night. Her face is bare the undersides of her arms are a rosy colour sometimes she begins to sing because someone set them free, someone set them free, and they fly from one place to another, of course of course. Yet being here somehow, open loudly, to remind us of our morning and we welcome this even, stuck on our backs in bed, wings flapping, the women say that of her song nothing is to be heard but a continuous O. that is why this song evokes for them, small books which they say are feminaries, diversions from the pieces of the three-legged stool. Beloveds, yours skins are of all colors, are soft and wrinkled, blotchy and reddish, full of blemish and smooth. The persimmons are mysterious; they never get soft and by the lakeside there is an echo. As they stand there with an open book our world is small, these are junipers with their lonely commentary, the shadows brooding over the lake shift and beginning to shiver because of the vibrations of the voice.

a tribute to gogol

The utter truth of the matter is that Kovalyov had given up hope of ever having his nose occupy the flattened space between his eyes as before. Kovalyov had indeed tried, he scoured the entire country, searching for a doctor who could repair this predicament! But the last doctor he visited, the scoundrel, had insisted on buying the nose from Kovalyov. How someone so lowly ranked as a doctor could ever afford to purchase anything from Kovalyov, let alone something as valuable as a Major’s nose, was completely beyond him.

When Kovalyov returned to his apartment the next evening, he resolved to stay in his room and die an old man. Surely he had funds to last him a few more years, he thought. Kovalyov had no intention of living past the next five years without his nose. What utter despair, he cried, and shut his doors tightly. “Ivan!” Kovalyov yelled. “You crook! Get me a tinderbox!” Ivan came running with Kovalyov’s old tinderbox, opening it for him as he came to a stop beside his bed. Kovalyov carefully placed his nose, still wrapped in the same paper that Ivan Yakovlevich had used, just inside the heart of the tinderbox. He placed it beside his bed and screamed at Ivan to get out before adding: “And if I ever catch your filthy hands on this box Ivan, I swear to God…” And Kovalyov never did finish his sentence.

without giving anything away

The woman stripped her body of the glittering white tunic. Blue black articles of clothing shed to the ground. She raised her glistening thigh against the firm trunk and sheared her long black hair cast them into the fire. The flames danced around her belly an undulating drum a powerful force a heave. She thurst her large arm into the air and red yellow orange light flickered across the flecks of her skin. She screamed. Against the image against the system for her body for her daughters. She scissored the remains of her hair and thrust a stick into the silver screen. Crimson red trickled down her chin.

She ran across the wooded steps across the white black tiles. She loosens her grip on the knife with no blade the knife with no handle and let go of the toilet let go of the image. She raised her thick fist and pumped her broad hips against the manicured fixtures, statuettes. She wildly thrashed against their resistance and gushed out onto the floor not before she stabbed one drawing magenta red over the black white tiles.

The woman undresses before a silver pond a black swan. She whittles the edge of a spear a young girl rubs lotion over her round belly. The woman pushes forward with hands on her hips and whispers a story about Maxine to the young girl the young girl across the pond. Maxine she says ate a fish stuffed with poison and lost her mind. Her pretty face shrunk as did her body to the size of a needle and she perished. It was then that everybody called her beautiful.

you'll shine like gold

i asked you for your hand
and you asked me to wait

but i did it because i knew i couldn’t

your voice still calls my name
at night
and i can’t erase what you’ve
already given me

how did i end up here
with my heart pressed up
against the wall
holding a bag of suicidal hope?

i destroyed what little
you had to offer
in hopes that you would
walk away with everything
that i had left to give

and the truth is that
i still love you

but i’m too afraid to atone
because you are so willing
to forgive

i create my own deaths
when my lives are just not worth living

and now it’s my turn to ask
can you wait?