2019. october. auvergne, france. i know i'll never try again. it's not that it couldn't change — is it worth it to pretend?. you feel as fleeting as an eclipse encasing the moon; held for a moment before letting go. something lurks like the decay of a water stain in the corner of the ceiling, just waiting for the right moment to spill into my lungs, to take root and fill me up all the way to my fingers. it happened sometime during the night. the urgency to delete, erase, wipe myself clean that i can barely bear it — all cruel and complacent reverie of my wants leaving me bruised in a way i press on them in the shower, hoping that enough appeasement would quieten disillusionment come morn. cut my hair off with the blade of a kitchen knife, you're an invisible bug around my ears. a mouse trapped in the walls of a cellar tearing down causation that holds me when i awaken. if i change myself every time i become too full of this particular feeling, teeth and fists clenched amid a thousand why's; maybe it would be a reset. "people move cities so they can start over. but no one stars over. they just bring their old selves with them." a stitch in my side to help me remember, and forget the way you told me you were unsure of the ring, and what you really meant was you're always a little sick of the sourest parts of me, and a little disgusted by the sweetest. i don't compare us to beautiful things out of our reach anymore: the rolling swells of outros in songs, hung paintings begging to be touched by fingers, little nuggets of knowledge hidden behind teeth. sifting through the hours for scoures of affection, panning for fool's gold of love. |
2020. june. los angeles, california. and then my head slowly comes apart, and all my thoughts that i've locked up fly away from me, deep into the evergreens. i hear nothing all day and our candor is still open on my phone like a lifeline. curling into myself, uterus of noise and sound, warmth radiating like an electronic buzz instead of your beating heart. missing makes me malleable. i stretch my back out and watch pituitary clouds roll by while i make shapes of my timed shivers to each time you looked away, or sliding sock-footed across the false hardwood into a young man's constellation of dying. even at my smallest, shortest, sweetest; i'm losing myself to transient states and grappling with the idea that i lack no inherent meaning. that usually delicious, lulling roar of lacking importance in the grander scheme usually dazzles, now insignificance makes my chest tighten. walk until i hit my unbecoming, and steep myself on a constant. taking my time to bare myself anew — not for the art, mais pour l'honnêteté. for the honesty — and hope that by doing so, i'll meet myself like a form of a prayer. desperately. lovingly so, relearning. find the most fit place for seeing, yet not being seen at all. projected dreams on tangerine walls and slivered lighting tell me, "respite is not something you wake up to." we make homes out of bullet shells, of broken want and necessary needs. as brushing hands as borrowed tales; until all of our hope is deafened by new sun stripping closeness out of our skin. and when i let myself be spatchcocked, when they wear me like a blanket of stars, i'll try so damn hard to empty my cavity out. i still can't seem to get used to the feeling of my naked hands. of opening my arms to new people. unable to find where i begin. blondes don't have more fun. |
2023. august. boston, massachusetts. love and friendship running through the garden. one day to come, it will never feel real to miss you. in an old nightmare, the stomach flu-fever dreams, red casket roses are still wilting and nothing to take root within me has ever not torn my skin upon emergence. i escape the funeral panic out into the alley, out into the taxi, out into the airport; away from disasters and the places my grief is born from. i've mourned more times than i can count on my fingers. the heat of the pavement warps my self-image. because, my joints never bent to fold paper cranes with you. because, when you weigh the consequences they all sink into your skin and land on you. i no longer watch myself as closely, my heart only beats until it's tired, my hands are full of barbed stringers and parsley you failed to date in the walk-in fridge. a therapist told me to lean on friends' shoulders and i said i'd rather they hang from my neck. it's hard for anything to be about something other than ghosts, it's harder to write about grieving silhouettes, like i gave my piece of cake to someone else. i'm back to who i came from, cradling death in two hands. my smile isn't fixed in place yet the lines still linger. decomposing but intact enough to move. i'm loud and rowdy like an old english pub, i'm a fire turned on by my thumb on a light switch. i coloured my hair like your roses, now i act like the thorn love made of me. |