tib

My voice is fuelled by charcoal and bricks

at the sight of feeling misunderstood

my skull wrinkles, my heart swells up 

to the back of my nostrils, my throat searches 

for other airways to breathe

to be misunderstood at first attempt

is the disease of the year.

there are many reasons to be stretched to the edge

with an eighty pound weight swinging at our chests

sometimes we cope by holding in air

by focusing on the metal in our hands

by keeping a tally of inconveniences

every conversation costs us

to be misunderstood at first attempt

feels much worse than screaming memes and convictions into the digital abyss

to be misunderstood at first attempt

causes our skull to wrinkle because we feel the urgency

we wished the work of understanding and being understood 

were completed by now

so that in case of a global meltdown,

we would have already known how to hold each other

softly with warmth, gently with words

cradling each other with service and handmade gifts

sanitized with a bow or washi tape at each other’s door

instead – we are at the first step

reaching out our fingers and toes

crossing our eyes to look at our nose 

filling our chest, then emptying it again

deeply, with intention

we are still learning to stretch our necks 

as far as we ever have without straining it,

to see ourselves clearly

I followed the breadcrumbs 

In search of the bathroom

 Instead of the toilet,

I found pastries on a skateboard

Five phones lined up by the sink

One of them on livestream

 A man asks if I need help

I ask him, with what?

Clearly, I am stacking pastries

Baguettes and donuts

loading the pineapple bun onto the pie

 Something falls, I kick it back up

Egg tarts do a double flip and stack

 We laugh and laugh and laugh

and laughed so hard I slipped

Right back onto my bed

 The usual mobile siren song:

My blankets are accompanied by a thousand frogs

their gaze transfixed as if the moon is howling

i gulp my spit all the way to my collarbones 

where my body stores corn

Do I pull my sheets closer?

Do I dare risk a thousand bug-eyed slime balls leaping

– so hard as if their bubbly soft throats depended on it –

Into where my body stores corn?

I turn to see the howling moon.

It is a vertical stream

a liquid mirror, no moon beam

through my chest and crawl to my elbow

all the way to the finger tips

biting off parts of me in their way

training my instincts to recoil

these fingers are meant to curl

some things are better untouched

let my own palms be enough

there is nothing beneath what i see 

no tender soil

no unconscious reasons

decorationday.bandcamp.com/releases

afraid there will soon be no more recipient

the toil of taking apart what used to be

gallons of courage gathered, gone in a breath

if words are often spilt out on a whim

then Forever is meant to be a misnomer

hero to none

a short-lived siren

a wave of familiar danger

bone-carving, captivating

only passing

near, blaring

(piercing pressure)

distant, now, indistinct

(wounded wonder)

yet the city is not so vast