grief sneaks up on me like a thief to a house or a cough caught in my chest tumbling into my throat. i choke on it and it scalds my esophagus. calm one moment and calamity the next, glittering wetness adorning my cheeks and sliding into my mouth. salt water, an ocean of it, swallowed back into that swirling lake between my ribs.
there are seventy photos in my phone of a sunset above a freeway seen through windshield glass. the motion tunnels me forward even when i have no idea where i am going. i see a mountaintop, an imposingly tall evergreen, the draping curtains of a willow tree. i eat dust so chalky my lungs are full of it and i can't spit around it. there is a thickness in the wind whipping through my hair, a pressure in the invisible hand forcing down my nose and my gaping mouth. the smell of tall yellow grass and cow manure and rain soaking into the earth punctures my nostrils.
i'm speeding in five different cars belonging to five different lifetimes and sitting beside me is my best friend morphing into my lover and morphing into a friend turned stranger. nobody knows my heart anymore but my high school best friend who knows everything about me is laughing so hard i can see her back molars, and her black hair is long again, and it hasn't been long for six long years because she's captain of her triathlon team.
the blurry smudge spinning across my window is a tree, a buck, a crow, a falcon, a plastic bag, a tire. a reaching with too many branching fingertips all pressing on the inside of my sternum, maybe they are playing me, an instrument to their song.
i am telling him again, again, how i said no and he said he would only do whatever i let him get away with. i am responding to an email about how a club member (really, in my club? i run this club-) joked about wanting to rape someone. and then i am so small walking home from school that i don't think a boy will ever like me in my entire life, my footsteps leaden with the weight of my backpack. wondering how a man's company might feel, because i'd been taught a man resided at the center of the universe with his bristling bumbling slobbery.
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maybe you will see beauty in asymmetry or maybe one day you will wake up and decide that you no longer want to be loved unequally. i find a special kind of cruelty in being told i love you too closely. after everything we shared in our fear of abandonment -- how could you? define your freedom and cut me out of the text; i refuse to pour into an overflowing glass. i will take the shape out of the vessel, flow like rainwater. how unfair that you beg me not to leave while asking me to loosen my adoration. the poeticism you once loved now marred by your fear. you may not know what you have asked: for me to alter my love of the world just to love you a little less fervently. and then you tell me never to change myself and the way i love. i don't know what to do with all of this, where to put it. you've left me uncomfortably aware of my intensity, with none of the appreciation of it. i can withdraw myself and my existing, compress into a lesser being. or i can continue as i am, unsettling both of us, seizmically unstable.
i would not love you any less if you were 10,000 miles away. i would not stop thinking of you if we stopped talking for a week, or a month. i would still see your hair in the sunlight and your eyes in the sky just as i see blood in the poppies in these California hillsides. i would not stop feeling the ghost of your fingers on my fingers on the strings of my guitar, just as i cannot stop feeling the tickling legs of the white moth which alighted on the palm of my hand. the moth never asks me how and why i love it so; but i think it knows. why else would it keep following me, even across state lines? the moth simply exists and by existing remains brilliant. the moth will live an entire lifetime guided by spectacularly tranquil things like breezes and stars. you are a part of this universal harmony and i love you as i love the white moth, as i love the trees and the sky. is that not enough for you?
achingly hollow and jealous of fragility. wolf who wishes to be lamb. sharpened claws which cannot sheathe, weapons i no longer need, teeth i cannot hide my salivating tongue between, teeth which craves the softness of flesh and the metallic tang of blood. curling toes and low swishing tail and ears bent back pressed to the side of my head. i smell fear on the air, do not know if my own or yours. i smell weakness, stand firm, every inch of ground i've ripped and chewed off for myself, every freedom a demand i made of my body and stole from those around me. what do you know of freedom little lamb? you curl, writhe, shiver. coat of snow. pathetic bleating. it's pathetic, it's disgusting, i'm contemptuous. soft so soft the softest pelt and flesh and smallest twitching nose you are the softest little creature i've ever met. soft like the den like the freshly fallen snow. despite myself. i am stepping towards you. your warmth hums in the air, i can feel the electricity sparking off your pelt. step closer, put my twitching nose to yours, feel your softness and your flesh and you are so so sweet. despite myself. raise my paw, which is so clawed and sharp, place one foot in front of the other, stalking closer, ears back, tail stiff and unmoving. despite myself. full round eyes and urgent need and softness so soft. despite myself. i lay my body down, curl it around yours. rest my muzzle on your back, smell the sweetness, bathe in it. despite myself. my tongue, it flicks between my teeth, licks you clean. your bleating soothes, quiets. my bigger body shielding your softness from this clawing whistling wind. my clawed paws a pillow for your soft, light head. my tongue between my teeth.
driven by a selfish sort of greed on a sunny afternoon, i count my wounds and add them up to my moral character. i tell you my suffering is sacred (though i don't believe that, not really) and weighs more than yours. i name the orange trees and blue skies "Healing," though i haven't brushed my teeth in a week. assign meaning to the flickering dance of a flaming candle on my desk. when the fire leaps tall and strong i picture the burn across my fingertips a thousand times (yet i never dare to touch it). so it goes, the weeks passing into months. i wake up with a sinking realization of who i am, returning to my flesh and telling myself i'm condemned to this because my body is holy. allowing my tangible reality to refamiliarize with my limbs and mind, as one might recall a rather disappointing mole in an oft-unseen place.
magical wonders can be found in the most mundane places, like the skittering little lizard i spotted on the trunk of a tree outside my home. the same, for the most heart-wrenching disappointments. a plastic-wrapped package of red envelopes and folded-in moon festival lanterns seem to grow knifelike points, to thrust between my ribs. this is no severe loss because these things were never mine to begin with. oh but how i would trade every memory of my birthdays (especially the sixteenth, that glorious horse-riding, hot animal breath and flesh and hair and sunset tainted by my mother's self-insistence and my tears) for one more minute jumping to catch red lanterns with my cousin. these days i see a father first, a man second, and an empty space third. these days i see an empty space, fill it with bubbling champagne, color it with grenadine.
the little mannerisms in which my friend's aunts laugh, slapping each other on the arm with hands clad in chunky silver rings. remind me of all the people i've lost long ago. this kohl-lined eye, this silvering black-grey hair, the curvature of this lip and the lines on this round moonlike face are as known to me as the back of my hand. when they tell stories they speak of the gods i was raised with. when they speak of death they are as visited by him as i, as knowing of him as i. in this practical, almost casual absolving of grief i can feel a tension in my throat release.
so i allow myself to choose between two feelings, hold this delicate balance between my hands and adopt my friend's generational wealth of stories and experiences into my own skin. how selfless of her to share with me on a sunny afternoon. we sit at tables graced by generations, wood chairs carved and graced by tradition (like my own grandparents' in china a lifetime ago), giving thanks. my friend's sister throws her head back to laugh and the sound bubbles out of her throat, buoyant in refreshing autumn air. she tells me welcome to this craziness, that the whole family is always this eccentric. she does not know their humor strikes me so deeply because it is mine too. my friend's mom tells me come back whenever in need of a warm place to stay, a home-cooked meal, or a laundry machine. she does not know these are the things i've been searching for my whole life.
red lines your face and washes through the contours of your browbone, the roundness of your cheeks. stoplights and taillights. i stare at you during these earthly pauses, when even soil and leaves don't breathe. hovering, withheld, tensioned. the lingering of a gaze, the reaching of a finger, the anticipation that befriends expectation. in a moment more you will feel it, the tracing path of my eyes across your lashes, the ridge of your nose; you'll turn and meet my eyes with your own. but for just this most sacred brevity of time, i can indulge in the presence of you unperceived. shielded by red, symbolic through mundane things, like traffic lights and the turnover leaves and kissing under bridges. like an underlying bleeding rage for all your eyes and mind have seen or conjured; for all your pearl-pallor skin has endured; for all the fiery heat your gold-woven threads of hair have bleached beneath.
eyes are a tunnel i fall into, and yours lie in the shadow beneath your brows. untouched by red light. at first a grey fog which, as skies are oft to after rain, softens into a shade of blue. i've meticulously color-matched this tone to paint samples at the hardware store, ever-changing and multifaceted. a maze of milky lines, nettles of green like summertime fern, and most of all flooding through my lungs an azure teal tide. stealing my breath and buoying my limbs. coercing me to swim. i read your eyes as scholars scrutinize ancient texts, with a fervorous obsession i can't rid myself. which might be soothed by the words lining your forehead and caught by your tongue. someday sometime they'll escape between your teeth, those words, passing between your cupid's bow lips. I'll feel a whispered breeze rushing through my ears, blue flooding my veins until i cough, choke, burn with the color. pulsing with heart-wrenching blueness.
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a meandering exploration through my many lives as i am the cracks in the pavement, the uke in the dojo, the puppet of the puppeteer, the bird with broken wings, the fallen telephone pole, and the spider in the home.
i hate to see the weakness in my armor. like the cracks running down cement pavement, gathering pools of rain. in the world of walking down a street, small green weeds plant themselves with unfounded determination and grow inside those cracks. pools of water nourish clovers underfoot. i fear my tears won't nourish me.
when i find things to be hard, i wonder why. how come i can't do this thing, which others do regularly and even find peace in? tell me, how do you do the laundry? i find it a thousand times easier to spar in the dojo against a bigger man, a million times easier to force my ambling limbs to push against the greater force of a hand shoving my jaw into the mat. easier to bite my lip and bruise my leg; easier to hurt, all over, sweet remainder of my flesh and bone.
you need me to tell you what i want, but i've never been asked to have an opinion before. i'm not indecisive; i'm undecidable, a puppet to the puppeteer who i've finally broken free of. unstrung and limp, made to please the masses. so goes the long-asked question: what is a puppet without its puppeteer?
i'll tell you. i'm a bird with broken wings, shambling through the streets. hopping on talons not made to bear the force of walking. i'm the fallen telephone pole, once useful now sizzling in potential, electrically lethal if someone walks into my force field.
i'm a spider in a home. a girl in her twenties will either drown me down the drain or home me in a terrarium. in either situation i am helpless against a much larger, more powerful entity. that, my dear, is the world. does a spider know he is a spider? no. he simply strings his web, unknowing as to why webbing seems so difficult.
i am your daughter first, and your son second, and thirdly you will never know the second. so i do my daughter's duty: to forget what i know and to hide myself.
how do i show you: the glint of the kitchen knife, which i was surely too far to see. the sharpness of the blade, the old varnish on the wooden handle peeling and yellowed by use. how you were chopping chicken for dinner, a docile and homely labor. one you commit, as though paying sweat for kindness and trading thoughtfulness for your harshness. you always told me you were hard on me because you loved me. but i was studying your effort with admiration, mom, drawn to the knife and its utility. how was i supposed to know that in your hands a tool could turn so quickly into a weapon?
your worn weathered brown hands, scarred with burns from the shitty chinese restaurants you would take any and all odd jobs at, from waitressing to cooking to washing up. i cried for them, for your coughs and your reddening joints the doctors called arthritis. i burned through my intestines and up my ribs, i swear i could set my throat on bitter fire as you halfheartedly threw your money at the joint relief cold gel sold over the counter at CVS. i saw everything, mom, even the things you thought you hid from me. how when the weather changed, your bones would drag you into the earth, as though into an early grave. how desperately you needed to sit in front of our space heater, the one you would buy when the seasons changed, just to return it when the sun warmed our city again. i hated what the world had done to you, mom. why won't you believe me when i say that? it's not your fault, mom. please, be better than what they showed you. be better than what they made you.
that afternoon the sunlight streamed in white through the blinds. there was no atmosphere to it, no dramatic golden flare. just the shrillness of your scream, the edge to your anger i could never unpack. the normalcy of our living room in comparison, the peace contained in the apartment walls. the piercing beadiness of your eyes when you looked at me, as though somehow you always knew i would be a son, as though you saw my father taunting you inside my skin. how your knuckles moved, the pull of tendons under your skin as your fingers flexed, gripping the knife. you pulled your arm back, holding it aloft, and i didn't believe you. didn't think you could do such a thing. even held midair, always glinting in my memory, your arm sinewy with muscle, even then i didn't think that knife which belonged so solely to you could ever leave your hand.
once, you let me browse your collection of old books. i don't know where you found them but i know you couldn't read most of them. there is a surrealist novel about a girl who is raped. her family puts her through electrotherapy, then gaslights her, telling her that her memories actually happened to her nonexistent dead older sister. she loses track of time, of her life and her memories. the girl grows up to fall in love with and marry her rapist, then discovers what her parents (and her fiance) had done. i was at that age where i thirsted to know everything and could consume color and memory merely through words, and so i learned how to hurt before my body ever grew into itself. i knew in my mind the touch of men's fingers and the push of men's penises in parts of my body i hardly understood. i knew, furthermore, the helplessness of being pinned down by an immovable weight. you only hurt me because you loved me so i hurt all over, touched by invisible hands, bitten and bruised as i slept. and i wept. there was another book, paperback with a blue cover. a large graphic of a thermometer filled to the top, and the words "ANGER MANAGEMENT."
i don't know if you meant to, guess i'll never find out. the knife fled from your fingertips with a life of its own, and i watched it arc across the air at me. i could not move, could not think, in that instant. the pit of my stomach tumbled out from under me, dropping between my shaking knees. i was suddenly cold, so cold all over as though jumping barefoot and naked into the pool in winter. frozen by fear, a fear i swore i would never allow to freeze me again. the knife landed with a thud on the carpeted floor, too far from me to be of any real danger. i knew in that moment you had no intention of stabbing me with it, had meant only to scare me. but the knife, from your hands, had been thrown. and i was frozen.
it was like that afternoon with the lemon, do you remember? the living room flooded a dim sort of yellow because our walls were painted beige. you were screaming and i was crying which made you scream louder for me to shut up. and then the lemon, god, why were you holding it? the yellowness of it, projecting all my joy. the irony of that, you staining my symbol with pain. the refreshing fruit after a hot summer's day which lent me breath, now taking it away. the lemon flew through the air at me (always, these objects turned projectiles with a life of their own and never assigned to you nor your hand). and i didn't know the moments between standing on the stairs, facing you, trying to talk - and laying on the floor, staring dazed at the white popcorn ceiling, wondering how i ended up there. i folded over like a wet napkin and then i was laying there and i could not breathe, could not even tell you that i could not breathe. just lay there flattened, a weight pressing on my sternum just below my breasts. a weight that would not leave, that i fought; i was pinned down by an immovable weight. you became me, became my dad, you who was my mother became the man you swore you were trying to protect me from. you who threw the lemon, you who threw the knife.
and still, mom, still i would not tell the police a word. why don't you believe me, my doglike loyalty? you tasted my love and spat it back at me like i was trying to poison you. mom, i tried to love you every day and even when i knew i would never love you again still i keep trying to love you. keep turning over the things you did to me like maybe i could cure you by knowing you. like maybe if i go to college and get a degree i'll find the right drugs to give you, or the right therapist you will trust and listen to. mom, i know what you did to me isn't new or original but i'm the author i'm reading, i'm a writer and a son and a queer. i'm injecting myself with testosterone every week and the needle glints like your knife. mom, i don't want you at my graduation like how i don't want you at my funeral. they'll call my name, and you won't recognize it on your tongue. you don't know how you've slowly caused it and you won't know how to understand or accept it, the death of a daughter.
it's all new to you. love. you spent a whole life wrestling with two ideas in opposition: of being unlovable and of finding true love, the kind you think we have. there, i said it: the kind you think we have. i'm sorry, i don't want it to hurt you (my uncertainty). like a snake in the grass, writhing and hissing- how can you love a forlorn thing like that? i'm sorry, because i still remember how it feels to fall in love for the very first time. sweeter than morning dew, and delusional. it feels like the entire world settling into place, or the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle: catastrophically immense, infinitesimally still. how much you will discover, how much you still don't know. like how much of the love you feel comes from you and will return to you. regardless of if it's me or someone else, you would still love like it's your first love and i would still feel sorry.
i'm a little sad for you. that you love someone so achingly alarmed and think they're perfect for you. i don't believe you (refuse to, even). and that disenchantment feeds into my worry for us. you do everything right and i fall pathetically short in every way you come up better. i've never loved someone who saw enough in me as i am before. i don't know how to tell you you're wrong, i'm not good for you. (you told me that's not my decision to make). there's a difference between knowing we only accept the love we think we deserve and learning to deserve more. i'm a kleptomaniac, i just take and take everything i see. there's no deserving when i've always kept the spare change. i do what i need to do, collect the pieces that belong to someone else and piece them together into a life for myself. the world in precise detail fills my small minded mannerisms, my adoration of freckled skin like on your arm or the apple's. you are the one who brings me the apples. the fruit is sweet and fills me with knowledge. the juice drips down my fingers like permission. i am not just the snake in the grass; i am the serpent.
they would not let us into heaven or they would spare us the whole kingdom. i do not know. i fear i've found heaven here on earth, in the lingering softness of your fingers through my hair and your arms around my waist. heaven in the seam of a tent like the gold-spun thread of your hair in the sun. heaven in the blackest sky filling every inch of my vision. in the beam of light that shot through, ending in a brilliant flare of blue-green. like your eyes. heaven found in the color of your eyes. i take it all, drinking it in like the thief i know myself to be, claiming the things i don't think i deserve. building a life out of fragments and never studying the whole. in this way i am able to keep running instead of spooking still, self-imposed blinders on the little appaloosa.
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for everything i meant to say that is unrelated to love but actually fully inspired by love. for everyone i passed.
6.29.23 // 1:13 am
and caught between the lines of being busy is the blank space void of craving what isn't there, filled with journal notes and scribbled statics equations that erase what was once there.
electricity and these calls are stupid fragile invasive capitalist forms of replacing human connection and i perish with every word
i swallow every picture i don't send every moment i can't share
fully convinced that dementia is a blessing so old people don't kill themselves from the utter weight and pain of knowledge because to wake up every day fully aware of all you have loved and lost must break you again and again and again.
fully convinced that in an ideal world, people affected by dementia wander away from their tribe and get picked off by predators, finding a merciful end and providing nutrition + fuel back into their habitat.
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8.18.23 // for sam who passed 6.21.23
farewell.
boy with the easy laugh tossed out through white teeth. boy with the fluffy curly hair like wind-strewn bird's nests. boy with the blue grey eyes where the sea meets the sky like he loves so dearly. to the artist's hands, the bartender's hands, strong and sure. to pow! finger guns and the fierce and the wild and the no such thing as too far or too fast. this world was not good enough to hold you contained.
rest easy.
forever somewhere is the long night. the sky is black and the stars are bright. we laugh together: you, your best friend, her boyfriend, their dog, my boyfriend, and i. lost in the jokes and the drinks, crashing my mario kart into hopeless ditches, i know from across the room that you are a good man from the way your eyes light up and your words pass across your tongue. like molten gold, like sunsets, you hold them and taste them and know their worth. your best friend, she tells me you might move down here, from canada to california. maybe we can see each other again; maybe we can do this again in the future. i give you the name of my favorite bartender youtube channel. it is the first and last time i meet you.
shine bright.
the bottle in your hands as you pour that night. tequila in ice. juiced lemon. shaken. i watch you make it just right. you can barely taste the alcohol. i will tell anyone who listens that it was the best drink i've ever had. i will wish when i see the news that i had a bottle to pour for you. i will mourn the loss of what could've been but is not. for now i just laugh, a happy haze descending on another simple, fun night.
you will be missed.
though i did not know you well, i still feel your loss intimately. you are an absence where once there was solid, immovable rock, an altercation in the familiar places. sometimes i still fail to resign imagination to reality. when i click on your instagram profile, i almost start to message you. i wish i'd done more, reached out, tried to know you before i would never be able to know you again. i hope you are at peace. i hope this, whatever this is, means something. i wanted to give you something so i write the words for you. i want you to know that it mattered, no matter how briefly. i hope you know how deeply you are loved and how beautiful your mark on the world is.
goodbye.
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8/19/23
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9.20.23 // inspired by reyn
I yearn to read what the poets write. They lend vocabulary to my emotions. The incessant cadence of melancholy, sitting alone in my mom's sublet apartment with my endless applications to scholarships, internships, fellowships... and my listlessness, begging to be seen and wanted and heard, begging for validation. I pray upon bone, surrounded by death in hopes that a new stage of metamorphosis and regrowth may raise new shoots out of the barren earth. A dusty layer of dread coats my skin and hangs in a cloud around me, choking the air in my throat with sinuous whisperings of doubt. I scrub my skin until my nails leave red marks in the shower, letting hot water sear away the grime, yet always there is more. An endless pouring of steam and ash, and the pale blue sky of summer passing me by.
an ode to the love which comes from me, for someone who could never have loved me in the same way. when i didn't know anything about love but i thought i did. when it hurt to care but i did.
10/3/23
you make me so happy that i cried last night. my heart fought against my ribcage like a trapped bird daring to take flight, and it beat itself stubbornly against my bonewire birdcage body until viscuous red blood spilled down the front of my chest. the last time i tripped and fell down the rabbit hole, wonderland mended my broken pieces and then spat my body rudely back up into the real world, leaving me alone and trembling, mended yet bruised once more. every time, every iteration, i tell myself i wont fall and do it anyways. dont love, dear heart, dont hope. they always leave me colder and more alone for the memory of warmth and company. nothing has ever made me feel so unhomed. yet here you are, daring to call me into flight again. we've made no promises but the words we've spoken hang loosely in the air like slow spinning stars, like morning dewdrops on cobweb, beautiful and lovely and luring me into a trap. you're dangerous, we say, you're a frat boy; joking or acknowledging i never know. you tell me im dangerous too, not knowing how badly ive needed to hear that, how madly i love you for saying it. because when im scared of being hurt, it is everything to find myself capable of hurting, too.
let's start a fire, a bonfire that reaches for the high domed sky with its searching fingers to put out the sparkling starlight. maybe ill stop burning alive thinking of you and finally start to die if i can breathe oxygen into flames, inhale smoke into my lungs. let's watch the stars and ill play guitar pretending the strings dont lunge for my fingertips in snappy, jealous bites, remembering every other person ive played a song for in joy and sorrow, happiness and grief. you have a lighter and it makes me think how we are so enamored with fire that we carry them in little pocket-sized cases, unafraid to burn, how we carry fire like a companion to talk to and play with on a rainy night, how we perform with fire and cast warmth with fire and cook with fire and light twin cigarettes with fire and stare into firefight entranced until every other detail of life is lost in the dancing flames. i think of you flicking the switch of a lighter, and i think of my spotify profile with the boy flicking the switch of a lighter, and i fall asleep to your voice in my head calling out "pyro" like im yours and only yours.
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1/11/23
ask me to things, and i say no. the way you respond i can tell you're annoyed. no i'm not going clubbing with the frat, no i'm not coming to smoke. bail on the weekends, claim i'm busy on the weekdays. (most of the time, though, i don't need to. you're always too busy for me anyways.) every time you mention the frat i feel like i'm facing an opponent and i run the other way, terrified. and why shouldn't i? those are not my people, and you, my boyfriend, prioritize them over me. i'm okay with that (swallow down bitterness with the truth of it, the way we talked it over fall quarter), but how dare you get annoyed at me for not joining your lifestyle or not hanging out with your frat? all the shit i put up with from you, because your choice your life, yet you offer me none of the same compassion. "i need to get you into drugs," you said. why?
pretend pretend pretend you do not hurt me. pretend pretend pretend, as you put your arms around me kiss me say "i'm sorry" as you come back, your friends giggling because you fake-kissed the delivery person. "i didn't do anything!" you say, still laughing. and you and your many boyfriends. "i'm homiesexual." "jorge finished me off." "i'm going to make out with max tonight." i laugh, but at a certain point, the jokes get repetitive and annoying. and you seem to have no problem making them after fucking me. you seem to think that being straight gives you a pass every time you make gay jokes. i love you i love you i love you, we are sacred, words like poison spilling out of your mouth. you are unbelievable. "i'm sorry." no you're not. "it's just funny." to who? i watch paris cuddle with her boyfriend and feel a twinge of jealousy at how they team up, how he listens to her, how she whispers in his ear. we never do that.
i've given up asking you to magic or steel bridge. given up asking you, staring across the room at brody, texting darryl more than i want to, feeling more myself around jason than you, trying not to stare at the blue-haired boy in my calc class. i try not to wonder at how other people make more space and time for me than you. i think about breaking up with you more often than i think about dating you. i hate myself for it, hate you more, wake up sweating from a dream about cheating on you just for the sake of hurting you the way i'm hurting. the guilt washes away more quickly than the lingering desire for someone else. the way you hurt me, unintentionally, and will never know you do because i will never tell you. because selflessly, i will never make you choose me over anything. i'm not a pushover. i have boundaries. but i live with the consequences, including your irritability and frustration. you inspire my anger.
we are fine on the surface. we have no issues, right? no arguments. "communicate. please." i don't want to. "it's irrational"... you forget yourself. tell me that again, walking home alone late at night because someone you trusted was too inebriated, left you in the corner, got handsy with some girl upstairs. tell me that again, with 9 inches removed from your height and at half your strength. you should know all too well how men can change faces. everyone knows their frat bros like family until one of them rapes a girl. "we don't do that shit" and "he would never do that" and "i know him, that's just not him" comes out the mouth of every goddamn boy i've met. you think you're so different? god, for the person you are, you can still be so naïve sometimes.
have fun, is all i can tell you. stay safe. because i want you to come home to me, at the end of the day. because i love you, so much so that it takes over my body like the blood washing through my veins. and i can never stay mad at you, as much as i want to. i can never let go of you, even when i dream about it. i put up with it all- "you're going to have to come to the frat house to visit me this quarter" and "i want to see you even if we're just studying together." i could be hanging out with someone else. i'd probably be having more fun, doing something i actually enjoy. instead, i see you on your schedule and not mine. i do what you want to and am out of ideas when you ask me what i want, because i already know you don't have the patience for lying still on the grass next to me, staring at the sunset. i would do that with someone else. maybe i will. maybe i already have.
the point is, i have no problem doing what i enjoy with other people and not trying to drag you into it. but your disappointment and irritation at me when i ask you to do the same hurts. i already try, babe, can't you see that? i went to the party. i'm coming to visit you at the frat house if you want. i would be down to hang out with the frat if it was nearby, say hi to them when you talk to them in the dining hall. why are you still so frustrated at me? why do you ask more from me? when i am already trying my best, why is it not enough? i never ask more from you.
last night i wrote about wanting to spend my birthday in privacy with you. i wrote about how much i miss you and love spending time with you. i wrote about the second time we met up, how i got butterflies looking up into your eyes. but in daylight, analyzing your reaction as i decline yet another invitation, i'm starting to feel like maybe i want to spend my birthday with someone else. darryl, or jason, or somebody. someone who has asked me to hang out on my time and enjoys it. someone who could lay in the grass and stare at the sunset with me. someone who dances on street corners when i do, touches glowing lights like me, interacts with my shadow and takes interest in what i do. yes, someone like darryl and not you.
i don't know yet. i feel at the precipice of some breakthrough, and i refuse to make it yet because i want to enjoy the idea of you, stunning and perfect, a little bit longer. i told you that the guys i hang out with aren't threats to you. and i mean it. i don't feel anything like what i feel for you around them. but sometimes, they are the only people i feel like i can be anything close to myself around. sometimes, they are my only escape from you.
-----
1/14/23
when we tumble we fall. like leaves, like lightning striking ground in angry messy petty thunderstorms. you called yourself a child of ares, then changed your mind and said you'd be a child of zeus. you could not see yourself in anger and warfare forever. i agreed. i did not think i could live a life with someone so full of rage and temper.
you claimed i'd be a child of aphrodite, because i love you so selflessly, and then changed your mind and said i was apollo's, for my multifaceted life, for my many interests, and most of all, for my poetry and healing. you know me so well, i said, and laughed in the rain. you slipped your hand into mine.
it is with long paragraphs texted in the middle of the night that you wound me so, and yet it is with still more, still longer paragraphs sent just before dawn that heal me so fully inside. we get mad at each other easily when we are insecure and uncertain. yet we always seem to explain ourselves and slowly, word by word, intention by careful intention, we undo the behaviors we once survived on. i can only hope that, as i give you compassion, you offer me the same. i can only hope we both offer the benefit of the doubt, as one must in a trusting relationship.
because i am sick and tired of "they left me on seen/read for [...]" and because i don't like hearing about people going on dates. is that okay? because i'd rather spend just one more night with you, with your body curled around mine, with my back crushed against the wall and your hands tucking blankets under my chin. when you leave me on seen i want to close my eyes and count to five, send a heart and then leave instagram off for three hours while i work. i want to check back and smile because you messaged even while you were busy. and i want you to check back and smile because i messaged even while i was busy. to smile because i remembered to text you back after i left you on seen after opening your message in class.
see how this is, this benefit of the doubt thing? when we suspect nothing, overthink nothing? it is how a healthy relationship should be. it is the hardest thing in the world.
when you joke about your friends giving you head i want to laugh. i never tell you to stop and i know i should because it does hurt, but i also never want you to stop. in a twisted way, i like how it stings.
when you joke about being okay without me, i wonder if there's an inkling of truth in that. but then, in a moment of vulnerability, you make it known to me how earthshattering a breakup would be. maybe it's the rarity of your authenticity, but when you text like that, i remember everything. from the first moonlight night to the sunlight streaming through your bedroom window across our naked bodies.
it's all going to be okay. child of zeus, as every storm serves a purpose, does every storm pass in time. child of apollo, share beauty with the world. maybe then, people will look around them with compassion in open hearts and shining eyes. for "poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for." and isn't it so poetic, so beautiful, so lovely? that two human beings, not demigods, stand hand in hand? two fragile mortals, blinking and breathing steam, look out into the pouring rain and see eternity together.
-----
3.7.23
if the universe can be infinite
will my love last long? can i hold you close?
we're spinning off the axis of my heart
you are gravity, i am space debris
if you lose me you might never love again
you said it like a cataclysmic end
so if time still flows, let it end my dear
i would sooner kill, if you disappear
lose my sense of self, let my dreams all die
there exists no me, only you & i
you don't want to ponder the thought
a life worth living can't be lived without
and when people ask how i found a lover
and when people say they're surprised by me
all i know is we were made to last
no fragility, no sparks gone too fast
we were forged from fire we were born from stars
if i step in front of a speeding car
if i take a drink, if i get too high
if i step in front of a speeding car
is mortality such a fragile thing?
could i live to say that i was saved by love?
you hold me up before i fall
a guardrail between me and the earth
your hand gripped tight, jacket on my back
your breath comes fast, you don't believe that
i
will
last
so i don't take the tumble and i don't survive
with you i'm fully living my life
so i stay on the sidewalk, i don't run too fast
and the stars above me start to laugh
i am human born and i am mortal true
i have a lighter in a shade of blue
i hold you tight, a secret woven through my veins
and if i start to bleed, let it not be in vain
-----
3.19.23
"i fell in love again. we were laying in the park at 1am. you lay my jacket on the grass. at one point u slapped my ass."
i still remember. these flashbacks. like how the night was dark and the trees began to spin and i could see the car lights sweeping past your face. and it was like i could do anything.
ok, 39. you're looking far from pure these days.
we're wild and beautiful and free. and i'm so deep in love. remember cuddling with you on your bed and watching movies and how you wake up and turn on your side to wrap an arm around me. i love falling asleep like that against you. so safe. so protected. so loved.
when you text i'm not obsessed, i'm just happy. i hate being awake when you're not. living without you hurts.
i hope i look back in months or years and feel nothing but bliss. see how our relationship has evolved and love you all the more fiercely. i hope we're together forever. cuz you're my whole life rn baby.
-----
3.20.23
oh how lovely to be dreaming of you~
if i could make a coffee or a tea with your essence in the brew, i'd drink it every moment every day. so i can always have a part of you.
it's 1:31 am. feels late when i don't have you. the night grows younger when you're here, time spinning backwards. the dawn breaks through, shattering my illusion. once i stayed up so late the sky started to lighten. terrible, how terrible, the things that happen when i'm alone. once i fell asleep against your body at 3:37 am. and in no time at all i blinked awake to sunshine, morning light, white walls and the blue of your eyes. how beautiful to be waking up next to you. how loved, when you only have eyes for me.
you deserve simple cliches and your favorite things. bouquets of roses (red and white), handwritten notes, chocolates and oreos. you deserve "i love you"s every day, "this reminded me of you"s, funny videos and dog memes and doodles. to be loved like you are everything. because you are everything to me.
i can't fall asleep. so i'll lay in bed staring at my wall in the darkness, thinking of you. my hands clutch the plush cat you gave me for my birthday. it's been exactly 2 months since you gave him to me. so i can feel you near, even when we are apart. nothing will ever be enough. but as the drowsiness creeps in, like betrayal, the cat keeps me tethered to the thought of you. as i sink, i fall. i hope it's you i fall into. i hope it's love.
i hope it's forever.
-----
3.31.23 / 4.2.23 / 4.3.23
fireball whiskey, hot cinnamon burn in the back of my throat. the light on the ceiling spins and blurs; vertigo. i close my eyes. my body moves on its own accord, floating, falling, carried. up stairs, my mind pitching in the dark as on a ship deck, every step a rocking motion, every rock pummeling against my pounding head.
there is love in the arms that carry me, in the hands that brush my thigh. love in the gentle kisses in my hair,
cold wash of raindrops.
cold white porcelain,
the creeping awareness of my body shaking against two arms that hold me tight. the wretchedness of the scene, me retching in some college dorm bathroom. the hundreds of students who came before me and the hundreds who have not yet arrived. there is calm in the sickness, understanding in the tremors, knowingness in the voice that tells me "you're going to be okay." there is love in the hand that passes me cups of water and wipes my face.
dazed, doze off. when it all stops, i fall deep down into unawareness, the abyss, the void. unknowing cocoons me in warm nothingness. conscience is raw sense: cold, sadness, fear, nausea. overcome by the tightening of arms around me, someone who draws me close. there is love in the strength of that hold, in the warmth of another body sharing the bed. love in a chest, a heartbeat against my ear. love, so full and overwhelming, drives away the hurt. in its place, a soothing peace. and how did i not realize? i've been happy all along.
-----
...the same |
i feel a little nauseous when i drink oj or sprite now
cuz of the phantom taste of mixed drinks in my mouth
i strap on some heeled boots and a pretty girl's little black dress
cling onto you cuz i know no one else, god, how am i in this mess?
your stupid friends my stupid hands on your stupid neck
pass out in bed get drunk forget i'm a nervous wreck
every party feels the same
blurry mess i don't know their name
and what if i never came?
would i still be your flame?
would you love me the same?
the same.
i wake up for my 8am, realize i'm in your arms
morning light, ocean eyes, and guitar from my alarm
i pull myself together just enough so i don't cry
you wake up just to say "i love you" & i hope that you don't lie
your stupid friends my stupid hands on your stupid neck
pass out in bed get drunk forget i'm a nervous wreck
every party feels the same
blurry mess i don't know their name
and what if i never came?
would i still be your flame?
would you love me the same?
the same.
if the frat was your lifeline
and i never called you mine
would you love me the same?
the same.
-----
4/8/23
your kisses linger, bandaids to the slights you left like papercuts against my skin. healing a wound takes time but you love me, hate me; "you're mine" is the taste on your tongue as you whisper in my ear, before you turn around to cuddle some guy. i pretend not to notice when you move close but don't really kiss him. why does the other guy always pull back first? there's a knife in your hand, and it hovers at my throat. a trail of microcuts across my neck, teeth in the hickeys you leave.
am i jealous? maybe. i don't know. i wish you showed me the affection you show them in public. i wish you touched my body less and hugged me more, medicine for the soul and warm soup and sunset dates over the nights i spend in your room in your frat's house, fucking you and staring out the window and wondering why it feels just a little bit like a cage. i wish you asked if i wanted a condom every time you fuck me instead of just telling me you're going to hit it raw. i wish you held me after it's over and kept calling me brave. i wish you looked at me more than you look at your phone after i come over, wish you told me when you have plans with friends so i can leave leave leave... gone with the wind like tree leaves, my love a fragrance you lose when you forget to spray it after a few days.
and i wish you held me every night the way you held me the night i threw up, or the nights that i cried in your arms. because baby i'm not addicted to the alcohol, or the high. i'm addicted to you. i'm addicted to the version of you that loves the fucked up versions of me.
i hate your shadow in front of me but i hated it more when i turned around and your shadow pulled further and further away as my feet brought me to some bathroom to cry. i hated your hand on my shoulder and i hated it more that you let go when all i wanted was for you to pull me closer. i hated "why don't you just go to class?" the same way i hated when my mom pulled over on the side of the road and told me to get out of her car and i walked away from you the same way i walked down the road towards the hills, praying in intervals that the wolves would and wouldn't eat me alive.
i don't want to love you like this when you drift further and further away. like a battery with a broken charger, i come back to you even though i can never have all of you, stay in your arms even as the voltage fizzles out and my circuits short and i lose my mind pretending like everything is okay.
-----
4/14/23
you said i'm not worth anything
so i walked right out your life
and it's funny how things have changed
smoking weed and getting high
i use your money for my escape
dance with my boyfriend at black diamond, start to laugh
cause i've become something you hate
and my inhibitions are the reasons i've had enough
you wanna know what i've been up to?
i let your calls ring till voicemail and delete them without playing,
run my hand up thighs, leave hickeys on my boyfriend, who
i love drinking with, so tell me my body's decaying
well no one's asking but i also got three tattoos
cloying sugar sweet
miss waitress all this time
unafraid to turn up the heat
well i'm no perfect daughter mime
and i used to listen to recordings when i felt like shit
so i could hear your voice yelling back at me
i thought that's what i deserved, you bitch
too bad i went and set myself free
i wanna say fuck you, fuck you, fuck you
your lies manipulating what i knew
your hands, your words, took all of my belongings
you should be in the trash instead of my things
this stupid ruse i can't maintain
and i refuse to feel your shame
if you wanna call me a fuckup, then know that i was yours
and no little kid raising themself ends up alright in the head
say what you want, it won't matter in the end,
just accept that you will lose.
fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
-----
sex. | last night, 4/30/23
endless, breathless cycle
warm tongue, long licks, like a
caramel ice cream, salty sweet
turn up the heat
there are generations of us
with tissue between teeth
your hands on my neck,
in my hair, pull me where
you want me to be
and you grow in my mouth, luridly
hit the back of my throat's aching,
you're shaking
with the art of me.
blanket thrown carelessly
over bare thighs, necessity
our hands trailing down
stomachs, up legs, don't drown
keep moving, hips grinding
your body, i'm riding
frenzied fevered action
you shudder, sigh, oh hon
you weren't ready for this one
feel you deep in me, throbbing
i build you, wreck you, robbing
you of wet warmth, on my bare cheeks,
like rain, tears, slide, drip. these weeks
of sin, no hell, no heaven
nobody coming
for us
but us.
-----
5/10/23
listening to this at 1 am realizing i don't like the person i've become
(gross by penelope scott)
like when did i start wearing a dress and going to parties and talking to girls about guys [again]? when did i start lowkey shit-talking my boyfriend to "blend in" with these other girls when i so unequivocally love him? why do i feel like i need to fake it all to make it work, when he said he'd accept me for who i am? why do i feel so particular about how i look again, why am i so insecure, why do i prefer to be inebriated over being sober?
the other day i tripped up in the grocery store and blacked out while ordering food and i hate myself for it and i hate how i resorted to acting like my mom in that moment. but i hate even more that afterwards my boyfriend started lecturing me before catching himself and stopping. i'm not his fucking kid.
i don't feel much like myself anymore, except when i'm not around my boyfriend. at steel bridge or magic & more or some other club maybe, some other person. luke says go get walk-in interview experience at fucking chick fil a. it almost sounds like a good idea. i'm terrified i'll freeze up again. i'm not myself these days.
when my boyfriend is frustrated or stressed or upset he carries tension like a strung bow between his shoulder blades and doesn't like to be touched. i am caught between him telling me to stay and my inert urge to be far from him. when he tells me he will never hit me i pretend "hit" is synonymous with "hurt," because it fucking hurts. he apologizes later and says he will try not to take it out on me in the future. his apology is the relief, a validation of my feelings. my internal monologue lately seems to enjoy beating me up over my "womanly sensitivity." i have never felt more terribly, wrongly Woman with a capital W than i do now.
how do you all live this life? to be a woman is a terrible burden.
i am trying to make this work, to bask in the sunshine that is my boyfriend on his good days, and he gets frustrated so rarely anyways. i love him so unconditionally that every obstacle is simply a problem to solve. and yet. some days i catch myself wondering, just what is the matter with me?
-----
because he can't give me away | 6/6/23
when he already left and she doesn't deserve to share in my happiness after everything she took from me, i am honored and grateful and joyous that you picked me when i was told no one else would ever tolerate me like they did.
because you say i'm smart when they say i'm dumb, and you call me cute unprompted when i look at you from your bed. because you bought me food when they said they're the only ones who will ever provide for me, and you offered to let me sleep over every day next year. because you called me yours and said one day you will take me away from everyone who wants to hurt me with such conviction that i believed you.
because of the taste, pink starburst on your tongue. because of the feeling, your hand rubbing my hip. because of the nightclub, spinning dancing drunk in your arms. because of a date in the park, when you showed me the turtles. because of the video you took of me laughing unabashedly as you chased me across the roller skate rink.
happiness, a drug so precious. i put my mouth on yours and breathe it in. and because i do, i do, i already do.
-----
6/26/23
i miss your presence in the room. i walked in and you pulled me close to kiss me, into your lap to claim me. i'm yours. beside you, i forget i don't know how to dance. so i wrap you inside my arms and sway and twirl and scream.
when i go to sleep i have nightmares, so i go to bed later and later every night with the cat plushie you gave me wrapped inside my arms. on the road today, i thought i'd get sad as we approached west valley and remember everything i'd lost. but all i could think of was everything i'd gained. you told me to keep busy so i'd forget, but i was learning to drive today and imagined you in the passenger seat. we would go somewhere far enough away to pretend we'd run away together. i imagined driving into these empty california hills with you and fucking on the hood underneath the stars. i hit the curb and almost laughed, or cried. i don't know.
you asked to call tomorrow instead of today and i said yea ofc, but i miss you so much and i can't explain in words how hard this is. i feel you slipping away from me the less you text, and i pretend not to notice. sometimes i sit here thinking, don't leave me. don't leave me don't leave me don't leave me. don't leave me like the hours, morning sun fading into midnight constellations. the time is so short.
i forgot to bring your red flannel back to san jose, so i cling to the bra you love the most and imagine your hands inside my shirt.
-----
7/17/23
-----
8/15/23
how do i tell you about the black wisp beast of my anger and pain and frustration? it starts with a mother. it starts with a touch. it starts with an invasion, of privacy. it is disrespect and ignorance and a lifetime of being the better person. it is the beatings until the day i snapped back, the scratching of nail-claws, the biting of teeth. it is silence in the voice of screaming sirens. it is succumbing to the emotions. it is a child's temper tantrum. it is trying to explain, not the action, but the intention. it's about the principle of it all.
oh, life is unfair, all right. life can be quite cruel. but it is your duty, isn't it, as a lover or a mother or a friend, to combat that with kindness. it is your duty as a human being to impose some justice, to show some affection, to care about each other and unite against a hostile world. at least, i would hope so. what else could these bonds possibly mean in an otherwise insignificant, brief flare of liveliness?
hate is a strong word. but lately i've found my black wisp beast to writhe and seethe, red-eyed, snorting with hatred. hate is a love betrayed so fully that it rots and decays and transforms. hatred is the reasonless rage and wrath and violent urges. i only use it for one person.
before, when i was younger, i envisioned sliding a knife down a throat. i imagined twisting it to dismember the tongue, to disfigure the esophagus, to mar beyond a shadow of a doubt the mouth of the woman who tortured me in my waking hours. i imagined a silver bullet and the sharp recoil of a pistol. i breathed smoke, for her to burn into nothing but ash. then, i came back to a frail body, a hacking cough, red-raw joints aching with disuse. i did not want to see but my eyes saw. i did not want to hear but my ears heard. i did not want to feel but my heart kept beating. and i felt sorrow. and i felt shame. and i felt fear.
the woman pokes hard fingers between carefully built bars. the black wisp beast raises cold eyes. sniffs the air. rears its ugly head.
now i lie beside that body and dream of a time when i will return to college. my escape. where the black wisp beast curls up to snore. where i will begin, almost against my own will, to unclench. the driving desire to uproot this place, to thieve and vandalize, to destroy that which has taken so much out of me piece by piece, fades a little in the southern california sunshine. in the salty pacific air. in the youthful cherry blossom branches. i walk the green fields and into the arms of a boy with the ocean in his eyes. i fall onto a bed too small for the two of us, warmth thrown like a blanket carelessly across my shoulders and hips and thighs. i sleep beside the body of a man who will fight for me, and win every time. i sleep.
and the black wisp beast sleeps too.
-----
8/20/23
can i tell you a story? once upon a time i fell in love with the ocean. he has dark grey-blue eyes and hair the color of beach sand. he took me dancing, and he took me to see the stars. he kissed me, my first kiss, there on the coast. can i tell you a secret? the ocean carries angry waves and his tides are strong. he loves unfathomably deeply but he holds his secrets close and he drowns the things he doesn't want to face into the murky dark. when the winds are strong, he pounds the cliffsides with rage. i am scared of my ocean, and i have never loved someone more. because when he loves you he carries you in glassy waters, calm and smooth. when he loves you he is warm and slow and soft against your skin. when the ocean loves you, he convinces you that he can be your whole world, and he carries you safely in his arms to meet the sun and the stars. yes, i love my ocean, but some days i wonder just where he is bringing me.
our tensioned guitar-string bodies coiled around each other, the space of each breath you take filling the room and emptying my lungs. i looked inside your longing eyes and found the immensity of the ocean in their blue-grey depths, found the surf in pale cream lines drifting through your irises. in that moment i could have recalled every birthright, betrayal, and belief in your lifetime. your history already taking root inside of me. i don't remember what i said, something about taking time to see other people and not waiting on each other. something vague and noncommittal. but i remember how you leaned in close, breath hot on my cheek. "those are situationship words, and i thought we agreed we're not doing that." oh, what to do with you. the lingering warmth of your scent washed over my senses and then i couldn't think, i couldn't say i'd never date again. this is how you overcame my guard. easily, with a fast heartbeat and steady breath. i rested two fingers on your skin where your jawline meets your neck, just past your ear. where i could feel the evidence of your existence, drumming out the rhythm of my tangled feelings. like your fingers tapping on my wrist in the car, our music crescendoing through my ribcage.
. . .
my fingers trailed across the hillside of your vertebrae, each ridge of your rib another reason to find you so raw and thus gorgeous. the blue of your shirt matched the blue of my blahaj and my blanket. streetlights filtering past my blinds gilded the tip of your nose and the edge of your cheekbone with gold. i held your face in my hands like you were a wild animal, a wide-eyed rabbit with twitching pelt and big eyes. and i whispered "you're so fucking beautiful." that was the first time i told you that. you told me later no one had ever said that to you before. in between flashes in my mind of your bare arm strumming under moonlight, your veins and knuckles and the constellation of freckles that sprinkled your skin, i couldn't begin to figure out why. how could anyone know you and not fall madly in love with you? i thought i would be able to stop myself just shy of the cliff edge. little did i know i had long begun my descent. and you held me through it, coaxing, convincing. with the softness of your smile and the ease of your words, with the promise that we would focus on building our bond. we laid on my bed with our faces so close, nose to nose sometimes touching. and one night you asked, "can i kiss you?" with the same longing in your eyes i'd always return to. i felt your whole body come perfectly still for the seconds i hesitated. you had promised that nothing would be broken if we fell apart, only changed. that our love for each other was real enough to be worth a try. so i said "yes."
. . .
you murmured into my hair. like if it was quiet enough it would never come true. "i'm worried you'll convince yourself you don't deserve a love this good. or that you'll decide i deserve something different, something somehow better than what you can give me." and in each shuddering breath between: you are enough, you are enough. in the way you lightly traced my knee with your fingertips: don't make that choice for me, don't you dare. in the darkness of the night, my fears loomed as tall as the shadows around us. i didn't think i could survive whatever came next, some admittance or lack thereof. i clung to our undefined ambiguity, hoping the connection would last forever if i never put a name to it. and i tried, so hard, to pull apart the threads; to untangle the pieces i knew to be myself from the tapestry of us. i tried to think of every reason not to love you, but there was only one collapsing into itself over and over. that i would not suffice, and damaged as i was, i'd injure you too. you wrapped your arms tight around my shoulders, pressing me to your chest. "don't do this," you said, "don't pull yourself away." and just like that i knew you knew and i couldn't do it anymore, couldn't hold myself to my own unkindness. you made me believe in healing. you told me over and over again that you hoped one day i'd love myself the same way i loved others. i looked into your open, vulnerable face and promised you i would give you my best try. i knew then we would become something more than i was ready for. but i knew i'd spend every day learning to become ready.
. . .
several meters off the ground in that lifeguard tower, i felt the condensation soaking into my ripped jeans and studied the matching soles of our two pairs of converses. my head tucked neatly under your chin, your breath on my ear and your arms wrapped around my waist. this is how we wound together, like gears in a clock, simple and elegant. my knee rested on your thigh, our bodies learning the shapes of each other as newly unwrapped puzzle pieces. we looked out at the endless expanse of the ocean, so dark as to be black in the night and only the paleness of the surf glowing to give any indication of its movement. your eyes traversed my eyes, my nose, down to my lips though i pretended not to notice. then back up to the stars, to the alleged meteor shower. i felt a gasp tumble out of your body when you saw a flash of light, the shooting stars faintly prophetic despite my skepticism. you gave it several long minutes, just soaking up the thrumming potential of us. your voice so low and quiet: "let me just rip the bandaid off. i want you so fucking bad." and it was everything i wanted and everything i was scared of all hurling through my body at once. and i became the meteor, barreling towards the earth, unknowing and bracing for impact. i told you i didn't want to ask you to wait, that it would be unfair. but you grasped my shoulders tight in your hands and told me there was nobody else. no one you would rather date, no one you could think of being with instead. and suddenly i realized that was all i ever needed: your own belief in us, feeding into mine. your certainty which coincided so deeply with mine.
. . .
i threw my leg over your hips slowly, giving you time to get used to the feeling, or to move away. your hands came to my waist and you looked at me like i was the slice of heaven you gave up when you left the church. i shifted my weight over, straddling you, head brushing the ceiling of your car, hands cradling the base of your neck to tangle into your hair. we learned each other by touch, by glimpses of skin and the slow rocking movement of our bodies as we kissed. i held your lip between my teeth, bit down gentle and heard you groan against my breath. that day you learned you liked a little bit of pain, and i realized how much i love exploring your body. love hearing your breathing grow shallow and rapid, until you're panting against my neck and trembling under my hands. until you put your face into the dip between my neck and my collarbone, quivering for air. you told me last night, you said i play you like an instrument. well you're the only instrument i'm any good at, though i hope you'll keep teaching me guitar. you asked if i wanted you to take off your shirt and you meant that you wanted to and it was everything, everything to let my fingers wander across your bare body. you wanted to be touched everywhere, not sexually, just to be known. and i never got tired of it, learning the curvatures and crevices and your little gasps as i got to your stomach or the side of your torso. i wandered back again and again and again, infinite nights stretching into mornings at Denny's. i don't know where we'll go next but when i said "what are we gonna do about us" with my head in my hands for the third time you said "what do you mean" and looked into my eyes and told me we should date, eventually. when i'm ready. and i could finally admit it without feeling guilty, that i would date you.
i remember that when i started doing whatever this is again (late night drinking & hot skin pressed together) that being grabbed feels the same no matter who does it. the same hands squeeze my breasts and ass and i pretend to like it. performing this duty like breathing, habitually, i move my body as a machine to manipulate. last night you did not grab me but touched me so tenderly i almost cried. i laid as still as i possibly could. i felt my skin trembling like a loose spring leaf and wondered if i could cleanse the night off my flesh, awaken into dawn and soft light. your fingers trailed across my arm, my knee, soft and gentle and desirous in a way that didn't feel hungry. you dropped your slender fingers into my hair and ran them down my back: a cool creak waterstream flowing through my blood. i thought about leith ross and never wanted to have sex ever again but when i went to the bathroom i was wet and bewildered. when i told you i wasnt what you needed, you said you could introduce me to your friend who also did therapy with you, and i thought how silly of you to care so much for me you would lay yourself down and bring me to somebody else. i am not interested in somebody else; i can barely comprehend the two of us together but i want to i want to. clinging to your bones your shoulderblade and your leg thrown over my hip as if i were rock climbing again, you the steady mountain against my life loose rocks shifting and crumbling around me. holding me so close as the tears filled and drained contained within my eyes, you assured me i would be okay and i believed you as easily as my endless heartbeat.Â
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on loving somebody who i met 4 days ago, in a new way
so you don't want to be a novel, sparkly person and you think that people will stop caring for you once you aren't. but what if you are? i can't answer that for you because i can't answer that for myself. i've met so many people, had so many late-night conversations in the car. so why are you the first one who's made me really say something i haven't told anyone else? how did you do that besides just being yourself- open, honest, and mature? i can't tell you what it meant to me, having someone understand me so thoroughly. and worst of all, i can't promise you that you aren't just a shiny new person to me, center of my life one moment and fading into obscurity the next.
but you are nothing like anyone i've met before. you are impossible to stereotype, yet i can pin you down- to your base beliefs and past traumas. you are not someone i would want to share the rest of my life with, and yet i think you are the only one i've shared my life with. you are neither natural disaster nor an anchor, neither chaos nor calm, just something with depth and ready for anything in between. you told me no one has ever listened to you like this before, but i've heard that so many times before. you know what's crazy to me? no one's drawn these words from my lips before. the un-thought-out ones, the ones i didn't carefully prepare to meet your vulnerability with a small dose of my own.
i don't know what to do with you, but when you reached across the console to hug me (gangly, awkward) and we didn't fit together (every other fit-together puzzle piece i've had), i almost breathed a sigh of relief. sitting in the car i was wondering, what was i brought into your life to do? it's always something, some kind of healing that others needed. but for once maybe you were brought into my life, to help me. for once maybe i'm not the lifeline, i'm the ship. and you, another ship, sailing into my waters.
you are like me; you don't want these simple good things to end. we sit and talk way past your bedtime, and the first time you stayed until the sun rose. does it mean something? i don't want it to. i like how loosely we're knotted together, like an intricate tapestry that will fall apart with the slightest tug in the right place. i like how little and how intensely i know you. will these things change? inevitably. but i think you are the first person i've talked to like this since high school with the man who broke my heart, and the only person who could pull it out of me. i think you are the first person i've cared so much about, who i can't help but write simply for, because you are not made to be re-interpreted into poetry. your existence, as is, has been enough.
you give me the simple sense that life is worth living. you remind me that happiness can be an achievable goal. you make me want to keep pursuing life experiences and you, like me, see the suffering as a part of the joy. we grew up so similarly and yet i learn something new from you every time i see you (twice, admittedly). i don't know what else to say about you. i hope you write a song about me.
on loving someone just to grow in different directions and feel that love fade
i carry a bruise from the blood pooled behind my eyelid that you dont notice because you dont look at my face when you hold it and kiss it. i carry a cut on my hand that he noticed because he studies the things that he can't touch. you tell me you miss me and love me every day but i get the impression you're talking about someone that doesn't exist anymore and maybe never did. because i can never seem to pinpoint what you miss, because i won't share my life with you who won't ask and won't share your own. because everything i make seems to receive more attention than me and everything i say seems to pass over you like the weather, unabsorbed rainfall. because i cannot give this brilliance of light to the shallowest of shadows, which will either stifle and lessen me or become absorbed and absolved by me. what is it you love? a fraction of a whole. a passed soul to the twin still alive.
i like to know people's birthdays and astrology signs, favorite colors and pasttimes. i memorize the belongings of people i love because my memory is the only place they live for most of the year, and to know is to keep them alive. a metaphorical sort of cpr as they fade, not die. i am only looking for someone who will do the same. dance weightlessly, without carrying the world's eyes. sing joyously, without carrying the world's voices. climb fearlessly, without carrying the world's weight. you fail in the fundamental grit i greet the waves with. you would sit ashore and watch me run into the surf again and again until i swim past the break line. maybe one day i will not find it in myself to let go and allow the tide to carry me back to shore. maybe one day i will swim on and on and on.
im sorry that you struggle to understand me in the same breath i've understood you over and over again. ive worn down all your edges with how much i run my fingers over them, and you're still trying to figure out my shape. one day you will reach a crevice of me and claim i have changed, become someone different. in the same moment i will have loved you and let you go a hundred lifetimes.
