nonsense

i'm nine years old, i'm nineteen. before crumpled cans in the cupholders and keys thrown under the floormat. after hours/weeks/years of carrying my life in boxes and stuffing it into dusty cupboards.

i woke up to lights and sirens and wasn't sure what year it was.

i traveled through time, it was bitter and sublime,

through the temporal loop of a sedan's backseat.

i picked you up from jail the other day and i couldn't pinpoint when

i crossed the finish line into adulthood while you stayed behind, drawing circles in the dirt track

and i think it was supposed to hurt but it doesn't, not anymore, i'll tuck my medal into my pocket and sit next to you in the stadium. don't forget your doctor's appointment thursday morning. i think your friends are a bad influence. i'm usually in the driver's seat while you play your punk bands but for the one day

im not sure how to proceed.

im not sure what happiness is to me anymore.

there is comfort and there is joy and sometimes they coexist but oftentimes they live on different islands.

i'm not sure what i'm doing with myself.

im not sure when i'm going to be honest with myself about the things i do,

the things i take,

the chemicals i fall back on to make it all easier.

things feel so much more beautiful and simple like this.

i miss you dearly and all i want is to be held.

but that's because i'm limited, isn't it?

when the veil lifts and all i can see is the crumpled clothes on the floor and the bed falling off the frame.

good sex, bad judgements, money talks money screams. what is happiness and what is settlement.

sparks catching onto the dry brush and spreading, twig by twig, until the landscape of my soul is alight and

burning from the inside out.

the smoke, oh god the smoke

it travels up my windpipe and all i want to do is cough

out three little words, i want a breath of air, i want relief

put your lips to mine and breathe in life, breathe infinity, good god

but sometimes it slips halfway out the room and we're

staring at the space left behind

hesitant to cross over it and touch the other side.

we've both been in rooms, we've thundered across them, we've slammed our bodies into the plastered walls-

but we've never been in this one.

what they don't mention is that elephants scream and trumpet and

we're boxed into the cacophony.

emptiness, for me, is more of a vacuum, and i'm terrified of being

sucked dry once again

but every now and then, when that beast sneaks out of the room,

so much light is let in

like a desperate hungry dog?

i've kissed knuckles and caressed bruises and

took them as a pledge of allegiance and

i fucking hate it.

i love how my feelings fill me,

radiant and deep and bright

but they overflow and fill the room and suddenly we're all drowning on

my place in the world-

i would like to think i am honing the skill of finding my nook in the universe.

i used to pull myself apart for people and let them gnaw at the pieces.

being whole is a new experience but i have found it so lovely; even when i only push one part of myself forward, there is the rest of my body holding it up.

i will not give myself away anymore, we are back to sharing.

proprioception,

i am currently turned one hundred and eighty degrees from my previous position

and accelerating at an unprecedented rate, broken free of

everything i once orbited.

untethered, a renegade, a multiplicity, a lone

i jumped into the paintings, i jumped into the words, i stripped my clothes off and jumped into the river and waited for the shock to drag me under.

it has always been this way, this is not mourning, this is just how things are.

i moved on from fieldwork, now it's mostly clerical.

i wish i could point to each scar on my body and name the when and why, but i can't. i can only remember how they healed.

an arc of light cuts across the sky. a starling stabs at the sidewalk. jackhammers down the street in a raucous melody. glass breaks. bones heal. seven hail marys awarded in confession. dolls with circled points. hard-backed turtles in saltwater pools, kudzu tears through the continent, and the bones of coral are bleached white under the water.

somewhere in all of this i am nestled.

but most of all biting at the hands

that feed, that hold, that love, that fork over cash like it is

the umbilical cord

that ties mother to child.

when a child is hungry you don't leave it, no,

you spill out your crumpled green guts and arrange it in meticulous preparation

while fresh bandages cover the bite marks on your fingers.

i'm not sure when i grew up, only that i did.

when the child has to be the parent

crying out their little injustices

layered one after another like sediment.

the scars on your hands were once

open and ragged and singing with pain and

i touch them gently like they are still that way, like the

skin didn't come back tougher,

like the wounds run down to viscera.

how badly i wish i was there when it happened,

blocking you off with bared daggers behind my lips and a raised sail of fur along my spine, muttering a protective throaty rumble.

i wish you could have curled up your body instead of your fists.

you have this great strength and yes,

i love it and worship it

lick stripes into the grooves and palpate your biceps but i know it wasn't always that way, you don't have to lie to me, once we were all

soft and small and defenseless

so don't you dare let the world tell you it's wrong.

with me you can shed each muscle and widen your eyes and be small

the way you weren't allowed to be before.

i will always damn the world for not gifting you to me sooner but now that i have you

i will tend to you like a garden so please

this new reality as the end product of combustive decisions.

i see all of my belongings packed into little boxes and marveling

at how small my life is when condensed

like organs in a ribcage

they pulsed in their chamber, chanting old stories and soft mundanities, throwing memories forward and

arranged in foreign systems around me while i laid on this new bed in this strange new life.

will it be like that for you, with the strangeness and the welcomeness and the fear and grief and joy

packed into boxes like organs in a ribcage,

pulling in each breath?

will it be better to know that you aren't alone, not like i was, that i will be an old face in a new world

in the light of the suns long rays

i never realized how sweet things taste

in the heat of sticky golden days

strange how the hours bleed together,

interwoven like lace.

i never realized how short summer was

until winter took its place.

some things changed, and some things stayed, but my heart will always remain

by your side, right by your side.

i never realized how short summer was

until i realized there was less sun on your face

tracking the way it lights you up-

that's how i want to count my days.

the buzz of cicadas or the hum of a radiator,

i don't give a damn

i'll sing each tune with you

as in, little things set me off, but i'm not upset over the little thing. i'm mad over x event, but not because of x event.

i don't mind doing the dishes for you, but i mind that you never scrape them off for me.

i hate to be placed in the foreground when i'm being painted for the background. either keep me behind, or take the thought to add some details.

i'm happy to lend you a dollar, but i hate that your request isn't really a question.

for whatever reason i'm mad, it's not some juvenile thing, there's this big picture behind it that apparently only i have the eyes to see.

and it's suffocating. where is face value, and how can i take it.

i hate the passage of time but good god, i love how it passes so sweetly when i'm with you.

i got hooked in the mouth once and it healed over just fine- actually, too well. now this scar jumps in front of my windpipe and chokes me out even when skies are clear and waters are calm.

brain is an empty room with a ball bouncing off the wall, onto the floor, into the hand, back to the wall.

brain is tangled cords and exposed wires

brain is filled with oil and water and being stirred around.

tonight i won't give a fuck and i'll let the words fall free from my mouth. i'll watch them crystallize in the 20 degree air and bite back at the chill.

i could spill coffee on your shirt- a weathered cotton shirt faded by the years- and i'd lick the stains off all hot and heavy. i could take a piece of you into me- slick bodies and melting together- and laugh with you as i do. normal is fucking sexy. normal is what i need.

so what if i want the white picket fences. so what if i want the big house and the two dogs. so what if i want to bring you a cold glass of lemonade after you mow the lawn. so fucking what.

when i was younger i thought that love was all sharp edges and tissues. when i was younger i thought that love would be like whitewater rafting. but i think i prefer the lazy river.

i've been through enough nights to know how i should look down and push forward,

through the cold and the dark and the quiet.

people get it confused about suicide,

they think that it's the darkness that gets you,

but it's not, not really, it's the fact that it will come again and again, you know it always will, you can't hold the night back from the sky with just two hands and

your head.

there are two ways to look at it once the sun rises again:

from my humor, to my face, to every curve in my body.

i held my love close to my chest, like something shameful

and never let it see the light

save for some monitored walks where i tugged and tugged at its tight leash before

eventually locking it away.

sometimes it got bitter, sometimes it went crazy

and would break through and snap its teeth at each ray of sunlight

i'd say, "my love is a feral creature,

that's why it stays in the dark,"

i never realized i'd been in the dark too,

all the faces it wears.

most commonly, my own:

grief draped in my own reflection.

i'd love to put the blame outwards, but i really think it's my fault