This morning

This morning

I feel stoic and serious

weighted by the wisdom

by the questions large and small of

how one might live one's life, or more

specifically––how might I live mine?

and all the little questions and

worries are like dust motes in the air

because we will die and this is true

and James Baldwin said it was so and it will be

in the same way that he is so beautiful and so wise

and no longer treads in leather soled shoes on the

sidewalks of this earth (I want to tread in leather soled

shoes on the sidewalks of this earth, to have that earthly

heavenly pleasure). 

                                And the thing is, 

life keeps going. Keeps tumbling over itself until the ending, 

and even then who knows? I am beginning to realize this;

phase after phase like beads on a string how many lives a life

can contain and how many I want it to (many, many, many)

even as each one breaks me––and in this way shows itself to be glass:

that which lets the light in and that which draws the deep red beneath our skin.

They say you cannot choose who you love, but what if right now I am not

loving, I am just trying it out. It being anything that I have made fully and completely

with my own two hands. And surely I am doing it wrong, but the secret is

there is no wrong or right. This morning I see this self assurance, a grey stone

in my eyes in the mirror, looking back at myself, hair pulled back tight into a bun,

a Renaissance painting, stoic, and not accepting, but seeing, but heavy,

and clear.

can I not let it hurt me?

your insufficiency

I tried to look away

worked so hard to ignore

the breeze through the closed window

the rain on the floor

the fact that this just doesn't

work anymore

Is it worth the disappointment?

the heartbreak?

fighting over what it is and what it isn't

temporary and longer pains

so many things that will never be named

love laying in a pool of shame

what remains?

so I love you

and it rises again to the surface

a milky truth, like hot breath

on glass

or a plant floating up to the surface

something released

something buoyant no longer

tied down.

the problem is

the problem is

everytime you poke your head above the surface

my panic sets in

it's incredibly personal, but I'll own its not your fault

it may feel like I am avoiding you, because I am

it may seem as if I am sending you mixed signals, because I do happen to be emitting them

it might read like a contradiction, because I constantly change my mind

I try to stay above the water

and your mere presence, existence, makes me drown

makes me remember why it is

I can no longer swim.

when you are both leaving (and now, apart.)

What about when you are both leaving?
Does that make it mutual?
Or are you left 
Each individually
To carry the weight of the departure
And the being departed from?
The juncture of separation
The split of the bough, the river
Proof of time
Flowing, growing, lived together
And now, apart.

I thought only you fell asleep like that

I thought only you fell asleep like that

(This is how things are in the beginning,

Greedy, Everything for the taking, 

it all belongs, to you).

Yesterday I feel the slight symptoms

and I think it is coming, and it does

until a He, the wrong He is jolted awake

by the siren. did you fall asleep too? he asks.

almost, you lie

Still each time, I feel that same first thrill

of witness

as someone slips beyond you into slumber

as you feel them fall between your fingers

into dream

(it is a private (precious) thing).

the hope of the fool vs the hope of the star

oh baby

my loved one

built of ignorant sugar and the taste of honey

one melts one is the product of travel

one is defended by the memory of the stings

even knowing as you do

that it can all fall apart

darling girl, that it will fall apart

can you let yourself

can you choose want

in this moment not the drunken kind

angrily ignorant of pitfalls

but the one of the sun rising over the horizon

in the morning

the one that is so constant

that makes no promises

but to endure.

from the floor of the netto aisle

Can you handle it?
He asks me
And I say yes
I think I’ve got it under control
Fallen strawberries
A bruised heart
Two years of grief
And a low tolerance
For rejection.

Thinking of you

So you left me a token of your unspoken love
Words in your hand cautious and clear print
Only a hint of feeling more
Could have gone unnoticed
Gifted me a moment of surprise
What it must’ve been like to live through your eyes

I never realized
How special it might have made you feel
You know that I love you
Don’t you?
You must know what I feel

Today I was thinking what lessons did I learn
From being with you
About my own judgment hasty and freewheeling
Swallowing two
About your own propensity to fence yourself in
About us both double projecting
How some things never get their ending
But that can’t rob you of the time

I clean my entire room
Face wet with tears blue
Happy, sad, gratitude
Thinking of you.

everything is changing

You stood in the doorway standing and waving 
And I trusted my heart to do what it needed to
When I have to say something or it will break me
I always do

But I let you leave

And I was kind
Brushed over the pain you also felt
You never say it out loud
But I always wear it clear

And you’re gone now

And I can’t change a thing
And everything is changing

pitahaya

you never get to choose endings

in the way you think you will

(I keep rummaging for the bow

for the thing that will tie it all together

and coming up empty-handed,

there are always loose ends left

in the end) 

today impulsively I pay an exorbitant amount

for a pitahaya sliced in two wrapped in plastic wrap

in the supermarket 

(I see it and it reminds me of you, provenance: Ecuador)

and as I dip my spoon into the flesh I think how it looks like

the inverse of the night sky, I think of your descriptions of

looking at the stars from the porch of the farm

a view that was too far for me to ever go to

and I imagine you and your father growing these fruits

how it felt to pull one from a tree, to test its ripeness,

and now on the table in front of me

scooped out leaving only a dark pink skin

it looks somewhat like

a heart.

Pedir peras del (calle de) olmo

Empezamos y terminamos en la misma calle
Asi es la vida que triunfa y se cae
La que pasó entremedio se acabó
Contenido y crecido del tiempo
Más que la acera entre los momentos
Voy pensando en tu cuerpo, en tu alma, en tu voz
Mirando como las sombras bailan en el balcón
Buscando, pidiendo cualquier perdón
Que cerca los dos puntos, pero ay que lejos

why should I give you
another opportunity to hurt me
I’m coming to
And too angry to be searching for clarity

I know peace of mind comes with peace with time
But all I can do is spin in circles
Make myself dizzy
Rob myself of serenity

I blame you

You trigger my attachment
Then leave me out to dry
There is no comprehension
There is no you and I
I destroy you in my mind
I’m such an easy scapegoat for your problems
And you are one for mine

a promise

What it meant to be to be wanted
What it still means

This is an old wound
This is an old old deep deep wound

You were beautiful
And you wanted me
And you let everyone see it

On the train
In the hallway
In your apartment
On the bus
On the sidewalk
In the pizzeria

And I was so grateful
I gave a piece of myself to you

Forever

And you took it with you
To the grave

I hope you did

Didn’t you?

fighting (with gratitude to the journey by Mary Oliver)

we pass it back and forth 

like a hot potato

and it burns oh how it burns

a pair of hypocrites

causing each other pain

you yell, I ignore

you ignore, I yell (in my mind, not at you. I am an adult).

I wish it were different

the anxiety of setting a boundary

is harsher than whiplash

slaps you in the face

forget it forget it forget it

like me like me like me

choose me choose me choose me

but if I betray myself

despite all the pressure you put on me

the only person I have to blame

the person who most suffers

is me

and it is only my life

that I can save.

Incomprehensible

Her lyrics feel like a prayer
Holy and cleansing
Despite saying underwear
Life is like that real
Tangible and not fair
Rough around the edges
Notches in the chair

Pull open the drawer
And find it overflowing
There will never be
Too much knowing
Always something else
That you could be doing
Writing songs as I wait
For the tea thats brewing

Drink it in my bed
Thinking of my mama
Feeling kind of down
Sending texts out to Ananya

I listen to her song
And I feel it wash me bare
Give me a moment of peace
As it holds me there

And I’m grateful for the music
I’m grateful for the song
For a moment I feel the gratitude
Of this world to which I belong

Sunday (Domingo)

The little black girl
Sitting at the table of men
Skins dark and glistening
Drinking beers 
In the Lavapiés evening

And I love her
The softness she brings
Almost like a secret
Her toy unapologetically
On the table
Amidst the bottles

It makes me think
How all I ever wanted
Was to be your daughter

How much pride
It gave me
For you to be proud
Of me.

small kindness

buoy me more

than I can ever know.

Madrid in summer

The men work
And the women clean
Sweep the sidewalks
Tip the empty beer cans
in the far too tiny wastebasket.
The man walks by with a Mahou in his hand,
Construction, odd jobs,
Smoking, drinking, watching women
Que guapa under his breath.
Celestino points to your bread
and makes a motion
to show it will engorge you.
It gives you a lot of pleasure
The workmen with gloves
holding huge rolls of bubble wrap
Spinning across the sidewalk in curves
like Dancers in the snow.

what to do to pass the time

being an artist certainly

seems appealing 

in that regard.

panthères, 1977 - gilles aillaud

their spots blurred in the act of moving
as though they are always moving
stalking, flashing

we can be vicious certainly
but do we have to be?

what can the camera
or the painter capture

what can it?

last night he says the thing that really hurts

last night he says the thing that really hurts

which is the simplest thing almost cliché (and yet why are clichés still used because

they must hold something, some kind of meaning, even broken and cheap as they are. we

draw away from the unabashed expression over and over again of something true.)

it is just horrible. and maybe there is nothing more.

maybe there is. maybe there isn't.

we must live in a world where we will never know which is true

so why not decide?

your acceptance

as though I have a say in anything––
the power to accept or not accept

these days I am a wisp
a waif perhaps, though nothing about it
feels sexy

and if I fight it feels trite and 
pointless, like I am angry and all you see are 
little boxes with question marks inside

in other words:
you do not get the meaning

in other words:
it does not compute

in other words;
I do not have other words,

my brain is a fog these days
and it takes me time 

to even come up
with these ones.

There is such a strong silence
  here today
It takes over my room
My jackets on the hook
  my pictures on the wall
It says everything without words
  It holds everything without words

I am not simple
  I never promised to be

The danger of intimacy
  is the pain of misunderstanding
and that is such a
  cutting wound

healing does not happen
  quickly
and it will not happen
  all at once
Fear is the enemy
  of all resolution

Please I am begging 
  you in the only
  way I know how

To try.

I sit and write sad songs

where I meld my lovers into one

and cry about the overlap

all the moments I will not get back

I do understand the gradations of knowing 

careful your vulnerability is showing

and I'm so afraid of what I might ask

of all of this shattering like glass

do you love me

do I matter to you

do you think about me without meaning to

what is this thing we've built between

will it hurt me for years like an evergreen

saturday morning odes to sadness

SO MANY EMOTIONS

ROLLICKING THROUGH MY SKIN

HOW DO PEOPLE STAND IT?

THIS THING CALLED LIVING

I DIG MYSELF GRAVES WHEN I GET LIKE THIS

I WILL TAKE ANY HILL TO DIE ON

--

I am breaking

I am breaking over and over again

Like a wave or a muscle

or the day or silence.

I am beating the shore hoping

for an end. I have had enough

of this endless repetition.

--

Rain cannot scare me

Jane (Yevheniia) says,

I am from Kyiv.

And what is unsaid is

war is a horror no one

can understand.

I don't even understand 

now as a metaphor.

How life would break down

so fully. The French

fucking through the revolution.

Weird friend social groups

becoming pandemic pods

in the most apocalyptic thing 

I had ever witnessed

(at that time)

Also horrible: your first love

dying at 25 of an overdose

without ever getting to say goodbye.

(As though there was a 

peace you could have reached

as though it were right around 

the corner as though you might

have made it if only)

(Are the goodbyes we know

are our last any less painful

than the ones we don't?

what I mean to say is

is our ignorance bliss?)

And another question:

how do I turn this sadness

into joy?

--

How does the sunflower

find the strength to lift its head

towards the sun

every single day?

---

I don't want to be alone

in my grief

but that's what sadness is

    mourning is

      an ocean

that no one else can ever truly

                                 comprehend

it's your ocean

           that breaks in waves

        that exhausts

                beautifies

                    sharpens and shatters

         placid

                    choppy

                 rhythmic

              swimming some days

              some days drowning

respect

we used to ask the children what it meant

to respect themselves, to respect their fellow farmers, to respect this place

(at this point we would have them crouch down and touch the earth which meant 

sticking their hands in the gravel that they were not supposed to play with, but would inevitably

giddy and gleeful with the rocks and gray clouds of dust).

I walk the streets of Madrid listening to Aretha Franklin sing 

Amazing Grace––suddenly unasked for the song comes to my mind

I once was lost, but now am found

Was blind, but now I see. 

(Aren't we all just searching for salvation?) And this is a live recording

even though I didn't realize it before

and the people are hooting and hollering and cooing and cackling and

Aretha is taking her sweet time between notes

and they are loving the space between the notes

almost as much as they are loving the notes themselves

they are roaring for the space between the notes

they are living as one with all the trust in the world for her 

with the deepest respect one could imagine

for her, only that which is everything, and how does one do that

for oneself? I wonder.

the lesson of the broth

to some things

only time can add

depth of flavor.

You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need

Do you respect me?
Do you know what it means?
To loosen your defenses in the face of
painful inquiries
Shed your aggressive tendencies
Like cracking autumn leaves

You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need

What I need is love
What I need is no wavering on the us
What I need is to be seen and heard
What I need is to be held to be adored

You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need

I see

You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need
You can’t give me what I need

you can't give me that
and would I want you to?
can I yearn for ungivable things
from you?

I wish I were brave enough to
have my bare chest out at the beach
let a boy take a photograph of me
arms out like I was flying

you can't give me what I need
you can't give me what I need
you can't give me what I need

There’s no use pretending
I’m not prolonging the ending

You place me in an emergency
Then bounce back into normalcy

I will not let you disregulate me
With your constant drowning

I want to kill you kiss you 
Never see you again 

Get your smell out of the air I breathe
The sound of your whistle

Triggers me.

Saturday morning

In many ways it feels easier to lose it than to keep going. You say to Luis lying on the hotel bed, how hard it is to tell someone you care about that they can’t mourn their own situation, because they are not yet safe, it is not yet over, they cannot yet put down their burden and accept the harbor of another’s arms. Do we ever reach such a point? Or do we carve out moments of peace amidst the endless barrage that is living?

What is it you gain from being sick? An excuse to not participate in the world. A way of living that does not also serve you. 

This morning I look closely, at the objects in the garbage can, at the orange petals, half the bunch hanging down, and the other half still reaching for the sun.

a moment of heartbreak

Luscious fields I want to lie in
Out the window as we’re passing
Give me a chance and I’d go back in time and
Bask there in that moment that we had

It’s so lovely building a home in a rut
Til the river comes and turns it into mud
Makes one and one out of two of us

We always knew it would

But that grass it looks so green
Glowing like your skin pale and clean
In the morning on the sheets
The smell it comes back to me
And the wheels keep turning

If you don’t let go of some things they will kill you

closer to the sea

closer to the sea
is better in every way
salt breeze
bitter moods babied
in the face of
undeniable power
and vulnerability
like a river
at its mouth
saying over + over:
please.

(the problem of) empty houses

Let's solve the problem of empty houses
fill them with light,
fruit and plants,
drawings done with a wandering mind
sketching what love is and could be 

tacked on the refrigerator,
charming chipped mugs that do not match,
and warm beds where we hold hands 

before we fall asleep.

lilies

for akb

even now
we are
unfurling
from something
ugly into
something
that is
that was
that one
day will 
be
beautiful

the train + the tracks

the train and the tracks

will go through the town

and will never be removed

imagine: pulling out the

cross bars like stitches

from the soil

red and bleeding

now framed in terms of loss

as a function of having had

healing, can we ever expect it

or do we live on with the holes

and can even that be seen

as its own form of redefinition?

tidbits (inspired and collaged from professor quotes)

we don't know what's going to happen
there's a lot of uncertainty
there's been uncertainty yesterday, today
there will be uncertainty tomorrow
this at least is certain
this is already a fact

--

we're going backwards
slowly falling
against time
and yet it refuses to care
it will not give in
still, it marches, forward.
there is a big campaign
yet it remains unfazed
(it is important to keep in mind.)

--

a space that has always experienced floodings
that has always been flooded
because we've destroyed it
when we have floods now
the damage is higher
one cause is this:
instead of protecting
we have lost coherency.
there are so many other things I could tell you.
what it is
what it's been
what it means to us.

--

we had lost connection with water
we had forgotten that we live in places
that have always been flooded
we built in places which were flooded
we've occupied the space
that the water needs.
we've interrupted and
we have forgotten that these spaces that are dry
for decades even for centuries
we forget we are living in the space that
water occupies when it rains.

Based on breaking
major crises of the
everyday
that lead each day
to new catastrophes
banal and infinitely unique
is it an adrenaline response
if it becomes a baseline?
everything heightened always forever
he looks at me with bloodshot eyes
and asks: when will it get better? 

I don't want to be a farmer anymore

it is too hard
to put my hands in the dirt
day after day
and hope
for something more.

Maybe everyone

Maybe everyone
Is just trying to be seen
I think of passing these fields six years ago
Of sending you the reaper poem from the bus
Can I forgive the cruel irony of that moment? Of that memory?
Can I love myself that much?

Why is intimacy so difficult to find?
We control who we are so closely in communities 
And then with strangers we’re suddenly so free
Like in Turkey just free to be whoever
And yet strangers have no commitment
It’s a double edged sword
Things seem to be like that
Blessings and a curse

Blue rivers criss crossing this red and green
Glittering like gold chains
Protected and serene
And I know that I’m projecting
Turn my head and change the light
Can I let this sadness go
Can I love that much to live this life?

Ceaselessly unanswered

I think I must stop searching for the answer
To the question: why?
And live instead in yes,
In the no of darkness descending.

Palms

I put my ear to your chest then
Just to hear your heart beating
Through the blue sweater
So soft and so obvious
And I felt you breathing
Right before you'd start sleeping
The way you'd shock yourself
Kick out limbs before you fell
Into dreams I'd never see
Each one lost by the morning
Watching black lashes rise and fall

Mourning what I still had
Isn’t it usually like this?
Feel it slipping out your hand
And so you start to tighten

An image that haunts me
Whenever I remember
Our palms in the stairwell 
On opposite sides of the glass
Your outline was fuzzy
But I knew that you loved me
And I felt some kind of peace in that
Though we could not touch
I knew that you loved me
I feel some kind of peace in that

When I came up the steps
I found you on the other side
Sitting there waiting
With tears in your eyes

A Girl in a Deli Doorway, Brooklyn, New York (1988) - Dawoud Bey

just a girl in the deli doorway
looking beyond the photographer
into that which is infinity
and which can never be touched
aside from with our eyes

to be a woman is a sentence 
for which there is no relief
nor crime - and she wears it

on her shoulders, in every pore 

of her face

the world a place of mutual unwanting
her soft hardness
an appeal and a threat
so she reaches into
the beyond

(so often his

subjects are leaning

against something

metal and shiny

something opposite

to the luster of their skin

so alive and defiant

and yet the need of support

of that which is real

while their faces speak

of all which is not - 

take me with you

break me you already do

I watch unable

to look away 

from such beauty.)

need a break

like a snail

take it slow

in your shell

drop a pebble and it doesn't undulate

spiral patterns in the water it does make

could never hesitate

could never think it through

just wait a moment

for time's proof

([{what am I to you?)]}

you can't give me what I need

I croon over and over again

I groove to the destruction

of you? of me?

of a self annulling fantasy

let me write the prophecy

things are getting out of hand

though they all go just as planned

something I now understand

Bathers at the end of the day

After 'Baigneurs à la fin de jour' (1945) by Pierre Bonnard

Bathers at the end of the day
are tired and only wish
to take the cold saltwater into their bodies
and make themselves
clean, once more.

Today I am feeling so depressed it is hard to want to do anything

it's strange to find myself on the other side of this feeling

like staring through the wrong side of the picture

I was so used to seeing it in others

and now I feel it within me.

And I don't know what to do,

honestly, that's the biggest thing,

it's hard to want to do anything at all

to move, to get up, I decide I won't go to the library after all

and is that an act of self care or desperation? and might it make me feel better?

or would it only make everything worse? I am so tired of taking care of myself

how can I be both the patient and the doctor? and yet I am

crying at the breakfast table silently, and wiping away the tears with the back of my hand.

sexy and

Across the street from our apartment there is a sex shop
Emory and I thought it was called sexy and
We loved this name
We cackled with delight at its discovery
Sexy and what? It had an air of mystery
It is not enough just to be sexy
One must be sexy and something else
One is always inherently sexy and something else
Our disappointment was great when we stepped forward and saw
The pole of the street sign had been covering the L.
(We still call it sexy and, anyways).

in the words of the sex shop on the road from madrid to toledo

why not? as in why not
take a chance and buy some kinky ass shit
in a strip mall building on the side of a Spanish highway?
you can think of many reasons I’m sure
but do any of them hold up to the pure abrasiveness of this question?
the power of the negative
the tauntingness of the words 
like a middle school bully
one of those questions you could fill with answers
and never fully answer enough.
needless to say, we do not stop,
we do not come indoors,
make our way into the building of love,
but I carry the question with me,
beating in my chest
much farther.

If I am going to be a writer I have to be able to fail

If I am going to be a writer I have to start putting myself out there
Without fear, but also without pretension
My creation is for me alone primarily
And if I should share it
If it should fall on someone’s ear and have a certain ring
Get caught up in their tongue and have them repeating a turn of phrase for days,
Turning it over in their mouth in circles,
Digesting it,
That is but an added bonus.

Mystery

I begin to realize
That this is a question
I will never have the answer to
What to do, what to say, who you are,
who I am, how to be.
I have been told that the most difficult thing is to
accept other people’s limitations.
And what of my own?
And what of those of this life
That we all live together and apart?
I will never know an end 
to this mystery.

Beautiful broken things

I want a house I can decorate with beautiful broken things
Fans with orange fins and buttons that are a gradient
that will never spin again,
Old film projectors that pack into themselves so neatly
in the basement of my parents house
that will not illuminate black and white any longer,
Wide black recording machines
longing for a part that is no longer in manufacture––
give me all of these and let me celebrate their simple elegant exquisite grace.
They do not have to do anything to prove themselves worthy of my love.
I welcome them into my (imagined) home
with open arms.

No one can come where I’m going
No I can’t take you too
I’m the only red thread the only river flowing
From here to there

Don’t you know I’m the missing puzzle piece
The thing that throws it all into relief
The one who links together all these disparate people
Like a string of beads
I am the meaning underneath

sugar on the bathroom floor

there is a sugar packet on the floor of the bathroom

and something about it seems very wrong, now that I mention it

everything about this bathroom feels wrong

the garbage can blocking the sink

the mirror so you can watch yourself taking a shit

sometimes there is too much space made for reflection.

maybe I am just in a funk but I find this to be true.

last night I dream of Aaron, as always, he is alive, but even in the dream

I know he is dead, I think I am lucky to get to see him,

I see him on the train, recognize him, and know he is dead,

but I think––look! he is alive. As though I can steal this moment

I ignore the fact and follow him through the dream until inevitably,

he slips through my fingers. About a year ago in Istanbul

following a thread of wild insanity clear as the water from a spring

I found myself in the arms of a Turkish man in a smoky club

called the secret garden. What am I doing here? I asked myself

and I almost walked out, but then he saw me, and then I got a drink,

God, did I need, a drink. And there was a moment, sitting on his lap,

kissing him, him biting my neck, that I moaned, said yes, was frustrated.

What? he asked alarmed, and I said, I wish we had more space.

He suggested the bathroom,

sugar on the bathroom floor.

on the train to cartagena

I place myself in different forevers
mold my future to who you are
Everyone is imperfect
Pick your poison
Choose your battles
I am a reflection of everything 

     I would ever be
It's easier, I feel better, that way

Is it cowardly?
To live for you and not for me
to never expect
  or ask for
anything

a spade

 sometimes a spade is just a spade

Retribution

Oh baby you don’t have a clue
The things I am going to do
How you’ll see my name in the paper
My face on the screen
Read my words in your books
In every magazine
Say I knew her once when
And no one will believe you

When I’m on the street signs
The monuments all mine
Masterpieces on the walls 
Of museums, galleries,
Newest season on the runway
Designed, made, modeled by me
You’ll look out the window
And wonder what you could have had

Had you been 

what you should have

You’ll say I knew her when
And no one will believe you
You’ll say I knew her when
And no one will believe you

No one will believe you
And why should they? 

It was never true
You could never see what I was

Right in front of you

Right in front of you
Now won’t that be some 

retribution

Goodbye for now

If you can't see me now 

You'll surely see me then

wisteria

Do you know that sometimes things just work out?

We hold each other in mutual unknowingness

temporarily stitching together sadnesses in the afternoon sun.

The details are unimportant, cumbersome, besides the point.

What matters is the mutual acknowledgement of frustration,

If we do not talk about it we will burst, she confesses.

Holding space need not entail perfect comprehension

to go beyond an understanding as light as it is deep.

We reach a wisteria grove 

purple and unexpected

fragrant and pungent 

and she places a fallen sprig

on my knee

                    before departing.

I sketch it hungrily, wishing for color,

an arc of green and flashes of purple.

as I sketch I realize, what I thought was 

the end was the beginning.

What if

What if not getting what you want is a gift
Perhaps the best thing that could happen 
A salvation from your own accidentally induced forms of self destruction
Darknesses that you will never know
(Saved as you were by refusal)
You will know other darknesses surely
Lovely and lonely
Chosen and not chosen
Who are you to think yourself master
Of anything?

You know how to play me

You know how to play me
blow deep blue notes into my belly
lightly touch my highest strings
make me tremble

You know how to play me,
you know how to play me.

Turn your face like a spinning coin
touch my waist just where I'm small and breaking
linger when you say goodbye–

You know how to play me, 
you know how to play me.

Never let me see (past) your eyes.
Trade in shadows and overcoats.
Say much less than it seems.

You know how to play me,
you know how to play me.

Keep me circling the sun,
unable to realize the clouds have come,
and think I was the only one:

You know how to play me,
you know how to play me,
you know how to play me.

Rejection

Perhaps to take the edge off,

a gentle setting aside,
an act of love, a care,
a saying of: not this, but that.
not now, to allow the space for
something else.

particular infinity

And then I realize
Everything is crawling with life
Watching the black ants moving in circles spirals patterns that I don’t understand
Again and again the message: live in this exact moment
In its particular infinity

mother ginger

when I am far from my mother, ginger becomes her.

hugs me with her aroma, tea in the morning, soup in the evening.

purely good. a love that is lingering. tender and soft.

I peel with the back of the spoon, Joris said, I love how you do that,

it is so delicate, but what he didn't know, what even you didn't know,

was the peeling is an act of love, the cutting, the imbuing, the drinking,

even when it doesn't lead to drinking, the ritual of doing something that might

make you better.

plants

It takes so little to upset me these days.
I walk through days as though they are glass, rapping on the windows,
fogging up the glass. Wiping with my hands.
All day I keep my windows open. 
Feel so uncomfortably hot, need the cold air to remember I am alive,
that I am a part of this world. That I breathe, that I feel.
These things, sometimes, are not so quick to come to my mind.
Slow, slow, slow down, baby. Even slower, baby.
Almost so that you can't tell that you're moving,
that's the pace these days, you need.
Even though we don't see them,
the plants are growing.

In Enghave Plads

I had
a really good kiss
one night
over a bicycle
that left me
wanting more
all the way
home

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.

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.