everything is breaking down

and begging to begin again

tuesday morning lament

throwing myself in every direction
hoping that I'll stick
my saviors in the mirror
but I keep at it

holding out for a hero
to wash away all my blues
kiss me in the morning
paint me bare with sunset hues

how does one learn to stop searching for the antidote?
it's an irresistible solution, a mesmerizing unforgettable trope

running from myself hold me love me know me
distract me give me some peace from the workings of my mind
when I'm alone all I can do is count the time
when I'm alone the only place I'll ever find the sublime

but I'm too stressed to think straight
and I just want to be saved.

friday night curse

So hard to break the spell
On me
A damsel in distress
Save me
I am so powerless
So angry
And unable to express

Taught to shut my lips and smile
To bide my time and wait a while
To stomach all your juvenile traits
"Why men great til they gotta be great"

And the cruelest trick
Is the one that digs into the core
Thinking myself crazy for wanting more
Unreasonable and dramatic
Over the top to your anticlimactic

I get used to pulling the strings
Being the one who does all the things
Underwhelmed by you and relishing me
You’re just a reflection that I breathe life into

Another shoddy aspect
The way paining over you just gives you more power
I should just delete you from my mind
Rise above and save myself the time
Instead of always saving drowning ships that aren’t mine

And I think to myself

What I want most really is friends
Because they last longer
The connection not so unstable
Rooted in a commitment to live ones life side by side
Interweaving in and out
A resonance of characters
A culture of care, interest, intrigue
To come back together and then part again
A wave
A dance
That allows that space to grow
That doesn’t break under its own impermanence
It takes and gives, time

[old, found in small all caps on the back of a piece of paper]

if it was so fragile
it could break
that easily
was it worth 
preserving
you + me?

a spider's web
makes a beautiful seam
but
relies on the light
to ever be seen

pictures
of you
served up
to me
on a 
platter
daintily

it's all
in my
head
this I
can
see

so 
why
do I
feel
so
extreme

               (ly
uncomfortable
when she
pulls my chain

melting when
you say my name
will anything
ever change?
it has to - 
nothing 
stays
the
same)

everywhere every second people's hearts are breaking

can you hear them? It's the crunch of stepping on tiny white beach shells

lives being fractured like pieces of glass, sudden shards from a pane that moments ago

you could see through

sense breaks down like that. reality so clearly a mirage there comes a moment

when we all just hit a wall. not metaphorically - face first

bloody nose glasses broken into two.

and then we try to do everything we can, we put on our coats

bundle up and rush over to those on the periphery of the shock

alone in their apartments even if (what was the word Joris used?) calm about things

things like suicide, at this age, Joris says, and you don't know if he means that twenty-four is young

or twenty-four is old. maybe both.

it's the biggest kind of exhale

like all the breath in your stomach, in your body, that has ever passed through your lungs

pushed out and piling up into a cavern of the earth

the breath is creating an ocean

with waves like my hand in the bathtub rocking

just because I do not hold this hurt always

just because it was the kindest thing to leave

doesn't mean I don't hold such a sadness for the ending.

permission slips

"Where in the world would you have learned that sacrificing yourself again and again in order to make others comfortable is maybe not selfless and noble, but actually a slow kind of self-murder?"

you may leave

I give you permission to save your own life

to say no

to say stop here. enough. I am out.

I do not want to engage with your toxicity.

I can choose to be in control of my one precious life.

to notice that those who sacrifice themselves over and over

in search of praise reward recognition

why are they always women?

a realization I am too slow to come to, to face the full pain of it

given the kool aid in my cup

If I work hard enough he will love me if I bear enough 

I will be a good person if I just do a little more I will be appreciated

enough. enough. Enough.

I give you permission to save your own life

Do you hear me?

To save yourself. Radically and simply. To get up and leave the room you want to. leave.

Even though someone might notice. 

To buy the cup of coffee. To take the moment.

To say goodbye to the boy you loved who couldn't help put prick tiny swords into your skin in a desperate attempt to save his own life. Something you could never do and were never responsible for, me,

I forgive you.

There is nothing wrong with

saving yourself.

I give you permission to

"and there was a new voice
which you slowly recognized as your own...
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save."

–––

(1) Elizabeth Gilbert, "Letters to Love" (11/17/24)

(2) Mary Oliver, "The Journey"

today the weather is wild

it almost depends which window you look out of

the kitchen one shows me rain and grey,

but from my room I see the blue sky, clouds,

sun peeking through. at one point 

looking up from my screen I notice in the slight distortion

of the building across the street's windows that

it is raining, raining and sunny, raining and sunny at the same time.

it all seems such a clear metaphor, the confusion of my mind,

life, the world, a matter of which window, panes we open and close,

everything a process of opening and closing, letting be,

a matter of perspective.

 last night he says

I will be in her life - as long as she wants me to be

I will always be there for her

and something inside you breaks a little

shatters, the shard lodged there

just there

I'm sorry, you say, that's just a bit triggering for me to hear.

Then opening your computer to find the photo of him waiting

the little note, with the heart on it,

slipped in by josé, and you say:

oh.

What is it? Michelangelo asks, and you say, José brought me my things.

Show me, show me. Show me, me.

From the altar

Show me, show me.

He takes it gently, looks at the skyline. The art deco skyscrapers,

Central Park so iconic. You tell him about the matching photo, 

the pair. It is clear in your mind, your memory.

These images, these photos you search for in the digital world, 

in boxes, everywhere, everywhere, even if you cannot find them,

they are there, perhaps in the safest place, your mind.

Writing a letter to love this morning, about what is precious,

your own song comes on, a meditation on the same medium,

sacred plums, bruises and joy, mixed together, 

into something we could never hold.

(Georgia to Texas)

 I always love the last song on the album
The one that doesn't quite fit
Pushes you out onto the sea
Into the endlessness

 I cannot control (and yet I want to, so badly).

If you'd like to be a bitch, please go ahead and be my guest.

Can I not rise to the challenge?

To the bait you set me. Turn around and try to be my friend.

You are like a strangler vine. You climb over everything. 

I do not want to grace you with my time.

And yet hating you is another mode of letting you win.

Giving you my frustration.

to hear from you

soothes me. tendrils of insecurity

that wrap their way around my arms receding

with the reassurance of the memory of your touch.

biking to school today, a song comes in from the other night,

and I blush involuntarily, a shiver of pleasure inside at the 

last time I heard this song, context: in your room, in your bed,

mind numb, dopey, skin on skin, skin on skin. this is the antidote

to the fire the other arises in me, suddenly everything burning

I can never be enough, can't know what's on his mind as he walks home

if I even am, if anything of this is, even the smallest hint of jealousy

obliterating my mind overrun with ants and anger, swarming with scorpions,

ready always to yell: revenge! traitor! cheat! and you - you are good - and you

are pure - and you are mine all mine and only known about by those who I let

not those who take these good basic things and split them in two like crackers

to dip in their coffee. even if I cannot expel these middle school girls from my life

(like cockroaches they refuse to die) I will not invite them to dine on my secrets.

I will find a way to wave to them across the water. Let others chat with them, that is not

my affair - after all I am not a puppeteer. Let my own friendships be enough, let me trust in them

and if and when the hurt comes, I will break like a damn in my sorrow, 

I will flood the city and wash it clean and I will leave no one, rejoice in no one,

but myself (and maybe, you).

little bits

Last night, jumping around,

my hair flying, feeling like I

was a figment, a filament, free,

Rozi under the blue lights across 

from me, dancing.

---

I have so many things to say to you

that I am never going to

some things are like that

tough and go

words aren't everything you know

visions are like memories

like images in the puddles of the street

pass me by like light shadows on the ceiling

rhythmically

---

The streets of copenhagen 

in the dark of the morning

talking games like kids

to let it be simple and deeply flawed

to not obsess over this

(But I am an artist.)

---

And the light comes to touch the buildings 

lightly with the back of its hand

lingering like the scent of 

someone who has left,

but you wish had not.

the only way through is through

the only way through is through
the only way through is through
the only way through is through

finding myself taking care of myself
learning to be myself making myself
is a lifelong process. I keep fighting
resisting I will rise above I will endure
I will survive and I will, but I will also
surrender.

 I'm having trouble finding myself

amongst all the drowning

the words the thoughts the over and unders

the worries like the panic I saw in the woman's eyes

at the coffee shop, normal but crazed, with a certain charge

that said: don't get too close. and I sift through all this

like dirty laundry, smelly, hot from the dryer, tied into knots

you will never be able to untie, I cannot tell what is clean

what I should wear and what I should get rid of

all the while looking for something true a glimmer

somewhere is there something I can hold onto.

me ananya and michelangelo
each end up with one cannele from
my saved food box. I eat mine
with a cup of ginger tea in my room
from the top, as though it is a mountain
I am decapitating. I hand michelangelo
his outside his door and he is surprised
flattered thank you soli thank you takes it
dramatically opens the bag and smells it
(a token of my appreciation, I say,
for lending ananya the bike). ananya takes
theirs in a plastic bag, wrapped up in their backpack
with their dark bread and danish cheese, folded into the
knapsack for the airplane, all the way now in london
where they text me: they are home.

slowly

you don't have to like every piece of me for this to work.

give me every affirmation I crave like the morning sun,

the warmth of the words on my skin.

I don't have to give you all my thoughts, all my personalities,

for this to contain something true. My angry, my ugly,

my innocent, my wildly unapologetically gay. 

(these are all me and I bring them with me everywhere.

and yet I do not need to switch through them like channels,

waiting to see if one will scare (or entice) you.

this is not a game, but in some ways it is.

I do not have to pull the strings perfectly, 

or even at all. we can both be responsible for ourselves

you and I. And I can relish this moment. the intimacy

of something spoken and true. the trust in the space

between me and you. as you close the door, your voice saying:

I'll see you soon 

(can I give myself enough space to process this? slowly

and without a fear of change)

I like thinking of you

somewhere nearby, playing drums with sticks in your hands. the same fingers

that touched me, made me feel light, tapping on the cymbal now, wide and shimmery,

like an unzipped smile, I let myself fall out an ocean on to you (how could you possibly

catch all of me? you weren't supposed to). foot on the kick pedal

like the heartbeat of your chest, my ear pressed against it, your narrow frame I noticed

the angles of your face as you slept holding me in this created intimacy (none of it is

perfect and it need not be to make me smile). the snare sharp and quick like intakes of breath

like your palm on my back and closer and tighter and collapse us into one, back and forth,

a trill. I like thinking of you still, back straight at the kit, knowing I have seen you, tall and naked 

in the darkness of your room, and now you are clothed, and now you are not mine, somewhere

out in this city playing the drums, in my neighborhood even, maybe still with a hint of light

from me, from yesterday, in your chest, in your smile, in your eyes.

joys of today

include the little brown children holding hands

walking through the streets of copenhagen

toddling along, led by their headscarfed teachers,

backpack-toting, curly haired and coffee colored with little matching earrings.

or the sky so beautiful I wanted to just sit on the counter

and watch the clouds, pink and white go by, awe sudden 

and impenetrable, engulfing. how can we live in such a beautiful world?

how can we do anything but look at the clouds? or the

two girls in the courtyard, blonde and riding their stick unicorns,

galloping along the paths, like they owned them (and they did).

I am lonely. I am so lonely.

I crave a loving touch. And elevate it above myself.

I want the thing that I can't have. And run towards it as though to

stab myself would make me feel better. I want the sun, a lover,

better weather. I want to feel independent and together.

I want to be enough for myself. I want to lie in bed and not think of everywhere else.

Uncomfortable, so fucking uncomfortable.

I want to rise above these itchings of the skin, that box me in.

I miss my home

I miss my mother

I miss my street

I miss my brother

I miss my father in all his inconsistencies

I miss my piano I miss the city breeze

I miss the memories. 

We are mirror images refracted
Different places different lives
Will we see each other in the mirror in the clarity of night?
You say we live in a city of mirrors
Projections of the eyes
In another's face your own
Reflection synthesized

I feel beautiful

I feel warm

I feel alive

I feel like I can live the life I like

I feel so lucky to not understand

I feel childlike and curious again

Throw off your stress

Your ideas of adulthood

Take off my coat

Go running in the wood

Within myself on city streets

I’m speeding through

I’m flying free

Patterns

I am part of a whole world that you will never know. 

Of artist gems and basement shows, of I don't know if you knows,

of Chinese food after school, swum conversations at the Red Hook pool,

of kisses on the grey seats, and silent snow on once loud streets,

of people mouthing my own lyrics back at me, of classmates who will surely be

judges, lawyers, politicians, jerks, wealthier than they deserve, poor and broke and so artsy,

of bridges that belong to me. Oh I am the intersection of worlds,

a spiders web of everything I've ever known. 

People who have touched my cheek, others who have known me,

All the contradictions that grow inside of me, and make me me, and make me me,

a combination of everything. 

 I throw myself into it as though it is a workout

here, wear me out, I say, here, use me, I say, here, do everything but touch me,

talk to me, love me, look at me, brush my hand, choose me as your partner, text me,

but never tell me that you love me. I text Emory about crushes being like being hit by a car

(Ananya's words) and he says who do you have a crush on. And I say why do you think

I tried to hold your hand today. And he says yes I know but who else.

Oh the horror of this feeling. It's all logic melting. I give myself to it, so I don't have to give myself

to the larger things that would swallow me whole. I wear myself down. I want to wear myself out.

I want you to kiss me so I don't have to think anymore.

I wait for you, knowing you'll never come (should this stop the waiting?)

You come in dreams. Meet me and kiss me gently, tell me things without

telling me things. These days all I want to remember is that I am

loved. That the soft flesh of my body has been held in another's hands, reverent,

that I have been seen when I was not looking, that I am not always picking up the slack

trailing behind like a rope, manufacturing missed glances, feeling myself not being

caught (of course this is charade in itself, I only know what I know, and so choose

to see the world that way). I reach out, all tentacles, like strands dropped in the water,

becoming alive. Searching for anything, connection, a spark, a touch, a moment, the sound 

of someone saying: I love you, a buzz, the feeling that I am glowing, emitting light,

a feeling that I exist everywhere and nowhere, a letting go of reality for just a split second.

I start to understand there is no life I should be living. To release the grip on right answers

confusing and refusing and diluting and enduing and imbuing and pursuing.

To allow wrong things. To be impulsive. To retreat, and care, and clean, and caress, and love,

and grow a little fire of tenderness. 

All these opposites exist at once and overlap like waves in the sea, 

and I lay beneath them and hope they wash over me.

My nerves are fragile

Tense and strung like a guitar string

Or a chord that echoes in an empty room.

I let it continue for as long as it wants to

I hold on to tiny special things.

Doesn't everyone?

tendernesses

tendernesses

sweet and soft

like your grandfather calling you darling

or her hands stroking your hair when you break

as you do when someone shows you the kindness

you have been craving

like the green touch of the grass as you run your fingers through it

or the spider crawling across the sky seemingly unattached to anything but it's own hope

like your father's voice on the phone

like the chairs set out around the table in the courtyard or

the friend noticing your absence like your grandmother

telling you she thought of you and picked the angel card

tenderness

darling

I love how my British grandfather calls me darling.

Darling, what a wonderful word.

It makes me feel darling, 

English, like I ought to have one leg lightly crossed over the other,

or be smoking out an open window 

or adjusting the shoulder tie of a long silk dress.

(Like this morning, Ananya telling me they are tremendously excited to come visit.

The sudden word so delicious that I let out a giggle when I see it pop up on my phone. Tremendously.)

How delightful language can be if we let it,

effervescent and vivacious, scrumptious and diddly,

vapid and intoxicating in its vapidity.

I love it even in meaninglessness, beauty for the sake of beauty,

and if something is said even better,

the luxuriousness of caring about something beyond survival

a political statement in itself

an adoption of one's right to life.

(And I am beginning to understand more and more that the worlds we live in are of our own creation.

Not everything is bequeathed. And I want to live in a world of tremendouslys, of rapture and iridescence, of darlings.)

I have always been a messy person but

I think kindness for oneself might be one of the hardest things to find

I search for it deep in the elementary school desk of my mind

shoved with pencils and chapter books, gum and crawling things,

shame, embarrassment, blame in the hair elastics, doubt spilled all over

the cover of my notebooks

And when I'm lucky enough to find it I look away and it slips away again

Leaves me frantically searching my own reflection on the metro

sifting street puddles for compassion, studying slight 

contortions of a stranger's face, or the way they hold their hands, or 

someone else's

gentleness in all its forms a practice I can learn that I am always learning

the city's rush an unlearning I will never finish

can I meet myself over and over again with nothing but this abundance

I think one of the reasons

I couldn’t do this again with E is because of how hard it was with A
Yet there are also so many other different things
E so kind and understanding
Our communication soft and clear
Not twisted and barbed and misunderstood

Last night listing the reasons she would want to stay with her boyfriend
Marina says to you
I can hear that it’s insufficient
And later
I just don’t know if we have what it takes to be each others partners

These truths we understand but do not want to
that we hope to mold like clay in our hands
into something new

(Who can blame us?)

this morning I wake up thinking of gentle things

falling asleep to the muffled sounds of my roommate having sex

waking up to a new day given like a clean folded towel in my hands

where will life take me? I stand at the metaphorical bus stop of the mind

looking back and forth for telltale round lights in any direction

and walk down the path on the thread of the journey

in between the voyage home and the voyage out

the ocean like a cloth sea in front of me

where will life take me?

On the way

Come with me into the void
All the street signs point the same way
On the way I am a dancer

Throwing myself forward
Into the unknown.

unchangeable

I keep waiting for it to get better:

(I think of Noah's line, the one I have heard criticized for being too angsty:

you ask me to cheer up, why should cheer up? it might not ever get better)

still

pieces of you everywhere - in cities I have never seen you - in cities I never will

it's an equation my mind cannot compute, it does not equate:

the simplicity and incomprehensibility of the statement.

The reframing of the context, painful and irrevocable.

Sometimes I feel like throwing a carton of eggs at a wall

Sometimes the sadness feels like dragging a rough stone across my skin or

a thin shard of glass leaving lines like the splintering of something wrapped in plastic

(these are all mental exercises to occupy my mind, block out thoughts with sensory details)

The other day I fell to pieces. I was crying in a way I did not recognize.

Suddenly and bodily, in waves it overtook me: I painted, I shook, 

I painted, I quaked. Longing for something, anything, 

the cool touch of the paintbrush on my skin a metaphor made real,

I drew myself into a tree of leaves

(My sadness growing like a seed -

into something better).

bloodstains

any 

woman 

knows something

about getting blood out of fabric.

maybe, if you ask nicely,

she will tell you.

Everyone in Vienna is so quiet

it's like the entire city is a library

on the tram

no one speaks to each other

every one cool calm and collected

moving through in their own private pierced 

world, with a Freitag bag on their shoulder,

and a beer or a cigarette on their lips,

these beautiful people stand by the side of the Donau

and they are not ashamed of their nudity

(why would they be? they are beautiful.)

Seeing my name written in another’s hand

is a kind of strange intimacy

I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand

I want to be loved I want to comprehend

How I felt from the beginning all the way to the end

Opened my chest like the cardboard box I keep

In my parents house on the top shelf I can't reach

Books, pictures, notes, folded memories

Black t-shirt on his white neck 

Reminds me of you 

And all the love I’m searching for

I could turn blue

Holding my breath

Standing at the door

Every gain I lose a little more

What remains?

What to live for?

I always thought you made my world divide

Parallel universes multiply

I lost you in one in all of them

I was too good at hiding

My fatal flaw is never deciding

What I should do

With all the love I have to give

I could turn blue

Standing here

Fingers like a sieve

Every day I have to live

What can I say?

What can you forgive?

tonight I remember listening to your heart as you fell asleep

you the first person I ever saw jolt into it

the intimacy of that transition

mine and new.

I poke myself until I cry,

over and over,

and yet there is so much

to cry about.

I want to hold things that you have held. I want to touch your letters on the page. I want to feel the depth of the love and the pain, something that was everything our relationship represented, that drove me to eventual exhaustion, that made me have to turn away. Am I stronger now? Am I far enough away to bear it? You would have killed me I think had I let you, but I could not let you.

 I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared

I repeat it to myself like a mantra

the words like beads over and over again in my mouth

I text them I tattoo them on my body I yell them I etch them in the white stone of the bathtub

anything to get them out to keep the current flowing

to not sit in the stillness that is a balm and a fire that allows for the space of an answer

I ask her a question I already know the answer to because it is the only way to get from where I am to somewhere new

I'm a big girl I can answer it myself:

Something is wrong.

sometimes humor is the only way to deal with sadness

sometimes you need to shut your sadness in a drawer. lock it. throw away the key. claw at the opening.

I am putting myself in the space between knowing and not knowing.

Wrapping myself here as though I could ever be ready to receive the news I most fear.

To hear from her is alarming he says and you can think of no better word

alarming

he has a way of making the whole world end and he always did

 you always ke(e)p(t) me suspended

dancing in honey

turning like a bug

and I wanted to

to twirl for you

we were young and we were foolish

and we loved each other and how could we not

I was always under your thumb

even as I wriggled out

even the strong woman I've become

can be tended by the memory of your hands

things we remember that no one understands.

.)

some things break your heart all the time

over and over again 

like hail hitting the pavement or the steady click of a clock that ticks only when 

some thing some where is cracking in two.

more than a dull ache, the hitting of your head against a wall

repetitive and methodical

the rituals that allow us to embody the hurting

the choice we have to make 

(to step away

from things that we can't fix

every sad girl in brooklyn

We gather information from mistakes and we plant them in the garden

Little things like how quickly our mind spins after an accidentally seen instagram post

Or how likely we are to drive to milwaukee after three days that were meant to exist in a vacuum

Slowly we tell ourselves not to understand things others do as if we did them

(The way the podcasts our therapists told us to listen to advised us as we tried not to have an existential crises over the Atlantic Ocean because we did not want to try Xanax for the first time on a plane. Plus we still have trouble thinking we are the kind of person who would take a Xanax, though we revel in the high school coolness of the idea that if we wanted some, we could acquire it.)

I am not trying to be tongue in cheek. I am not trying to be cute

Or to write the poetry of every sad girl in Brooklyn even though sometimes I feel

Like every sad girl in Brooklyn and other times when I am far away

I berate myself for ever rolling my eyes at these sad girls

Want to celebrate their right to exist as a majority

Tell myself I should be thankful for the discomfort of being one among the many

In the same way my aunt told my cousin to finish all the food in his plate

How plentiful abundance looks in all its discomfort 

when one has existed in scarcity

Even now I apologize for any profound statements. I am not trying to be artsy

To be funny I am just trying to say something, anything, that is true.