a break from bad weather

I don't know what to do, so when I get a chance to, I sleep.

E says isn't this and its ongoing presence

a characteristic of depression? depression, as though a huge finger

is pushing me down deep into the earth from above,

is stopping the come-up.

(And when it takes its finger away

perhaps I will zing towards the heavens with equal force

unleashed unbounded high

before my eventual crash to reality).

Papa calls me. I panic, but I pick up.

(So painful these echoes of a past reality. Grief begets grief, recalls grief.

Male archetypes in my life that I do and do not know how to speak to.

That I did and did not know how to speak to.

Now E joins their ranks).

He tells me that things have been okay.

He has been quite busy with work, but really has been wanting to get out

into the day (as he has been accidentally doing these past months he places

his hand over the speaker and I cannot hear him, and I must chide him, his child,

and this lightness buoys against the secret darknesses of our conservation).

But it's nice, he says, to have a break from bad weather.

And I laugh, a sudden sharp hurt hopeful laugh, I could not have made two years ago,

maybe even, two weeks ago. And I say, as though it is explanation (it is not)

that sounds nice. he pauses,

are you needing a break from bad weather?

and I do not even have to say, yes, yes,

desperately.

dear morning light

dear morning light that seeps in my window
how is it you touch me with your changing hands?

today I got to thinking about the insufficiency of words

and the way in which they become so unable to communicate

when we most need them to communicate.

we overcomplicate, type, retype, but it is futile–

how do we say the thing we do not know how to say?

I love you I do not want to talk to you anymore

I hate you and I want you to be in my life forever

I am so afraid to change though I am already changing

how can meaning in all its contradictions and impossibilities

be crammed into words that are meant to say one thing?

as though a comma could change everything

(eat, grandma. eat grandma). it does and it doesn't.

we are not able to control how others perceive us.

we are not able to control the future.

I was doing my best, I was always doing my best.

and I can die, knowing that.

marie, yannic, and I

sit on the sidewalk curb

eating oranges and drinking yogurt

and talking about what the versions of us

two years ago would have done had they known

what they were about to embark on. 

yannic smokes a cigarette. then after marie asks if

we are not going back to class, and it becomes apparent in fact

that none of us will, he smokes another. marie says certainly

the biggest thing she has gotten from this is language skills,

are language skills soft or hard? none of us know.

maybe hard I say. yannic says her German is very good so sweetly,

his blue eyes twinkling. the madrid sun has tempered and in this shade

everything is orange like the skins marie piles into her empty yogurt cup. 

the moment is perfect. recharges me like a battery. 

makes me remember what it is that I want to live for:

tiny moments like this, the small teaspoon on my lips, 

yannic's hand cupping the butt as he lights it up again and the smell

wafts over me in the wind, and marie places her spoon directly on the concrete

without a second thought. it is a spring moment tinged with summer,

anything is possible and the smallest things are dangerously sweet

something one would give their life for over and over again

never getting anywhere, but never needing to.

I don't know anything

i.

I don't know anything

this is the only thing I know

the only thing that is quite clear to me.

ii.

I am sick of perfection.

Let me be reckless. Let me be foolish.

Let me be irresponsible.

I spend most of my time crying,

anyway.

iii.

Things I wish for:

to wake up and feel rested

to wake up not anxious not worrying if I should go back to sleep

the intimacy of a watch on the bedside table without the pain

comfort

to finish my thesis

to not be so tired

to know what to do

vi.

life perhaps

is a constant undoing

of past illusions.

(and what is built up

in their place?)

ode to the French boy to whom I did not speak

oh French boy

you are so beautiful

I truly thought I might die

"He is so cute I could literally die"

I type in my notes app

(and for all intents and purposes,

for all intensive purposes: I

mean it. I do not exaggerate).

Thrown to me, a pure product of

happenstance, and I so in love with you

a month ago on the metro, eyes roving

your sweatshirt and your knit cap, 

drinking you in, you were so beautiful to me even then

served up to me again today by so many overlapping moments of chance

and then you order the same sandwich as me

and I can not believe my luck

an opening, to say something, anything

it's good no? but I shy away, I always shy away

(oh god you are so beautiful, too beautiful, and nervous

when you sense me in my noticing, I can tell)

but you see me register that you have repeated my order

and you smile and inside, everything I have ever known

sets on fire.

Perhaps that is enough.

On the metro

The little girl does not want to sit

She holds her father’s hand

Her own clasped around the handle of her pink umbrella

She makes faces, pretty, ugly

To others, to herself

He is telling her things

Speaking to her as though she is an adult

(Emory says he likes this,

You say you love it,

Reflecting later on the escalator

At your station, going up)

And he is cautioning her about the day

She ran down the block and fell

You still have a bruise he says

Touches it on her temple

You can’t see it so clearly

But sometimes

Did I cry a lot she asks

He says I can’t remember

You did cry though

And she nods

Trusting him

To tell her the truth

Too young to remember everything

She wants to get off a stop early

But he says the next one is closer

So we’ll wait okay?

She says nothing

Come come he says

We will go wait by the door

She follows slow and silent

I see them pass the window

The top of her curls as

They amble down the platform

She drags her umbrella

As they pass the door

Scaled to her size

Hitting her chest probably 

Where Emory’s large one 

Hits his

I hold tightly in my fist

To their existence

Her curls tight and bouncing

They are a duo

And I remember my own palm

In that of my fathers

Our skin tones reversed

And I long for a child

To hug

To be friends with

And talk together

Know that we are duo

With which to see 

And share 

And discuss

The world

the day I found out

the day I found out doesn't exist

is this chance or a metaphor?

I don't believe in casualidad I believe in

synchronicities

I am always making meaning

you are always thinking about everything

Anniversaries mean a lot to me

I say it as a form of explanation

I hold it like a notebook in front of my chest

covering, protecting, the tenderness

I look for reasons to grieve, to mourn,

for moments where my tears can burst through the everyday

like a form of avalanche - is this performative? is this wallowing?

(her words a constant specter: life moves on fortunately and unfortunately)

your voice on the recording the other day, more high pitched than I remembered it

and affected and kind and I so longing your approval even then, years in, so wanting you to

choose me.

some things must not ever stop breaking your heart

it is futile to compare pains what is the point when what you are feeling is the 

slice of the knife in your chest

the holding in your palms of everything you once were and will never be again.