Darlingtonia

“I am not a creature that was born. I am a fire that was set.”

“Dear Juniper, I keep trying to put the time our eyes locked together back into the present but somehow it is on a separate mesa from me & the gorge is filled with different parts of weird donkeys & my hands aren’t touching things right anymore. I just want to make sure we look the same still, or like a version of some resurrectable thing I might still see tonight if I were to go outside at this late hour, which I know I won’t. Juniper, the math just doesn’t work out. When can we live like we’re always about to get on an airplane? As it is we keep holding hands with ourselves like there isn’t a word for love, but there is & it’s so easy to spell. I tried to send you the last letter I wrote you, but it was returned with all kinds of extra stamps I didn’t put there originally & it smelled like a vitamin store. If the lake goes under we’re all going down with it & that’s just how things are, right? Yesterday I bought fifty feet of chicken wire & today I returned fifty feet of chicken wire. I think I’m just spinning my wheels until you make the stars turn back to the colors they were when I was in grade school & you weren’t even a thing to speak of. Or maybe you’re older. What I mean is that we used to be able to conquer worlds like touching a little anthill & now it feels like we’ve charted the gaps inside of us to the point that it’s obvious where the darts would go. Just tell me it’s impossible for someone to stop being invincible later on after starting out that way. I’m just spitballing here but what if we cleaned our glasses? Maybe there are some careful mountains out there that aren’t on fire, but are just smoking a bit. No, wait, Juniper, forget all that, because I want to set everything we do to organ music & put red velvet on all the floors. You know, we could lay in the grass & touch our teeth to rocks. I’ll sell my car & burn the money in our hot air balloon torch & you can drop out of school to read tarot. We’ll roll the sleeves on our t-shirts up a little bit & kiss in front of people we haven’t met, Juniper! There are too many sandboxes to push our hands in for us to be this out of it & that’s wrong. I’m tired of pushing against my boundaries like there isn’t light slipping in from everywhere all the time & those cracks are us-shaped. If I can touch the skin on the back of your hand & move it I’ll light every lamp in your hair & that’s a real promise. Love, XXXXXXX”

someday

“I want to admit now I am a dirt-eater, & one without anything left to stand for. I want to admit now I am possibly an angry sea”

“We are forests that forgot we were forests & started kissing, pressing our walnut trees so close they would crack.”

I, like Imogen Binnie, also fucking love this whole weird project. It’s my 2nd favorite work of trans lit, after Nevada.

“Why draw symbols when you can use all of who you are. When you can act as one yourself.”