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.

the right thing

 if I could stop focusing on doing the right thing

maybe I could manage to do anything

maybe I could find a way to stop this unproductive

self-flagellation. I am like a bug caught between two panes of glass

I see both lives and I cannot choose one.

Don't you see? I don't know what is best for me.

I don't know what is truth and what mirage.

What about the left thing? The thing that is left behind.

I judge myself incessantly for trying just trying to take care of myself

in a world I no longer recognize and have not for years now.

The fallacy of thinking decisions are simply black and white

and not disintegrating spirals of life like orange peels in an adept hand

And what is wrong with a little bit of regret anyhow?

But just a shot god and not this constant drumming thrumming humming

pummeling of the inside of my mind for just doing its best

honey I'm just doing my best

trying to sort through what's right and what's left.

A small kindness

It makes me feel soft 

The way 

He comes over and asks me where I was 

And says it is worrying 

And offers me some of his snack 

Small acts of care that reaffirm 

The two of cups 

The balance in the question and the situation 

To search for it and find the resonance that rings true

The sun moves in pink streaks across the sky

And I adrift in youthful memories of love and irreplaceable wounds 

Rise 

Stand at the window and remember 

Open the latch and lean out in the cool air 

Well aware of death down below 

Of my own teetering 

Choices of destructions a tilt away

And I look at the pink in the sky 

as even now it disappears 

turns to purple to the expectant gray blue of a morning 

Like a secret I wrap it shut 

And go to wash myself clean

do you miss him or do you just miss someone he asks you standing in the horrible light of the kitchen

you pause for longer than should be necessary

(there is nothing shameful in admitting that it is both)

yet still you hold to old lessons, reciting, dragging your finger across the page,

like prayer beads these things that are so impossible to unlearn, that we teach ourselves

I cannot change, I cannot want another, I want to go back, I must always be available

Treating others as you would want to be treated, but never will be

(a consolation prize of perfectionism, of womanhood)

never able to exist in a moment always tumbling down the hill of future fantasy

following things to their (il)logical conclusions in the imagined reality of your mind

one of the scariest things

(excessive time alone with one's thoughts)

I was thinking maybe you wanted to be more independent she says face pixelated by the connection

but I didn't want you to think that I wasn't here for you if you needed me

you smile tight lipped but not taut

forgiveness given with the time with the missing with the familiarity of exchanging words

yet still something kept hidden a pebble at the heart round and smooth and produced by your own body

she sees it but lets you hold it

perhaps this is wisdom perhaps this is fear perhaps this just is

(I know you've thought about it he says to you you think about everything)

You fall asleep with his shirt pressed against your bare chest and though he must recognize it he says nothing

Remembering tiny details like the paintings you made, moments that plead to be remembered:

the curve of his wrist, the arc of his back, he is simple and flawed and you do not love him

but god is it not wonderful to try?

months later it still kills me

(you always did)

some things perhaps are always haunted

will never cease to hold the specter no matter how routine

even before you were truly a tragedy 

you held that tightly to me.

From what are you wanting to be saved?

Deny deny deny on your light I am dependent

But it's not my honor you're defending

A sentiment I understand better now I think

as the lyrics come to me without reaching

the want to be illuminated by an other

so much about you, so little about them

another just a pawn in a game we play with ourselves

(constantly, endlessly)

I wake from dreams of war, of fighting,

of escape canoes. I look her in the eyes and say,

I don't blame you.

(She does not take it well). Endings are never endings as we construe them.

Even if we pull them off they are always stickier than we had imagined,

dig a little too deep, draw blood, landed slightly funny on the ankle.

It is an eternal fight and in the morning light I see again that it is the only one.

That it is the one I am fighting and wishing it were not so

is one of the many ways to lose.

(Perhaps it is not a battle. Perhaps thinking of it in this way is also a trap.)

The key to find the light within oneself, or out in the world, but to trap it within oneself

for it not to lay reflected in the face of another (another painful fragment from yesterday,

words lodged between your ribs, she must integrate what it is she is projecting on him to herself,

that's the only way to stop loving the wrong person) is it wrong to love anyone?

can I love any one? will the stars let me? drowning in existential first world dilemmas that are

at their heart the issues of each beating chest. to make great art must I live great loneliness?

nothing is ever assured and how do we each find our own enough. find and shape and define

and redefine it, painful and necessary as that is. how do we live another day? how do we tell

ourselves, not today darling, today that is too much. today the weight of my mind might drown me

in the ocean of my own thoughts. today I must be simple and rejoice in my simpleness.

delight in the intellectualizing of such a trivial decision. today I must make decisions and not overthink them. 

today I must take at face value that what claims to be, true.