why do i hate the holidays so much

obligatory socializing with people i don't like
obligatory performance of love for family i don't like
obligatory expenditures for things i don't care about
disruption of what my normal is-- different schedule, different bed, different food
pressure to be seen as enjoying all of it
travel sucks, flying or driving, it's twice as expensive and time consuming and aggravating

i want to stop saying things to myself like "i'd rather be working" because, i am not valuing work over love or joy or peace, but i am valuing consistency, reciprocity, spending time with the people i actually love. i often think "i'm glad i'm not there" but that has more to do with the "there" in question than being glad i'm not celebrating a holiday.

i have always been a migrator, itinerant, the cuckoo waiting for you to leave your nest so that i can visit, be at home, and leave something of myself behind. this is what the 21st century has taught me: sometimes leaving a space better than you found it means embodying armageddon. i am a willing hurricane.

no one ever warns you that the grace of a hot mug of coffee handed to you on a winter morning will be what saves you. no one told me that the insurance policy i'd sign on my partnership would be written in kitchen soap, backyard mud, and milk from the corner store. 

all the details i have learned to notice, becoming more mindful, becoming more grateful, seeing the splendor of my ordinary life, are touched by you. the way the streetlight fans across my bedroom, coasting over your rising and falling breaths. the pile of bills and coupons and high interest rate credit card offers in the mailbox addressed to two names. you are my kettle always full, my bookshelf never empty, my needs always heard, my heart always happy. my home is a place that follows your feet. 

i live on cigarettes and shadows, chestnuts and crow meat. i am always here, even when you can't notice me. i am tall, and thin, and i fit through the space of a keyhole. i am dark, and bright, and fierce. some days you will take joy in me: it will seem there is no other partner worthy of your heart. i know you will reject me. i know you will disown me. i know you will go blind to me, and i would rather not be seen. i circle the mud, the blood, the wine, leaving no footprints on your battlefield. i will fly, when i must, to be sure that i can witness the end in silence and in secret.

well rae finally pissed me off. it took the engagement, shirley's passing and haunting, the gayrahj, the bathroom, laundry and kitchen, wedding planning alone, quitting their job, being told a billion times to just talk it out, and supporting big parts of their emotional, physical, and mental health needs for me to get angry. so at least i know where my temper lies these days.

why shouldn't i feel taken advantage of? who has ever lived with me and paid rent except for rae for three months? so fine, let's do it, let's give away all of our money and time and energy and reputation and social standing and professional achievement and mental stability and love and capacity to someone who does not reciprocate. sounds pretty fucking familiar. 

how do i find these people even when i think i won't. 

it's just like the night nina was over, they want to be the fun host and then it's 8pm and no one's made dinner and the only reason why there are groceries in the house is me and i'm the one who will cook and okay they're grateful but. how many nights? it's david, it's sean, it's jen, it's my whole pattern. so okay, i have abandonment issues? i'm afraid of not being needed, so i seek the most need? 

i don't want to be poly, or open, or eth i c a lly non mo nog a mous until i feel fucking solid in myself and my primary partnership and i do not feel solid on either of those fronts right now. 

and they had to go right for lou and then michele, right? two people who are me but better, two people who are similar but so different, two people who have things i want and am jealous of, and now they can have my partner too, so that's cool. 

remember when there was only you? remember when there was only you and your choices and your desires? remember when this was your house and you never cleaned up after anyone else? remember when no one set foot in here who wasn't personally approved? remember when you had space for all of yourself inside your home? remember when you got to opt in to all the emotional labor you were going to perform per day? 

okay, so i also remember the drinking, and the loneliness, and the hopelessness. but i also remember the freedom, the independence, the self determination, and how much less effort it was. i know that i have grass-is-greener syndrome. i know that i'm a perfectionist. i know that i am capable of loving and supporting someone in a way that is reciprocal and patient and kind. but it is so goddamn hard and right now i am so f u c k i n g tired. 

five years in cleveland as of today. five years in cleveland that includes the two hardest, biggest, bravest years i've lived yet. five years in cleveland saw me finally come all the way out of the closet. five years in cleveland let me grew a whole new community, love and connection blossoming out of the fear i had been holding onto. five years in cleveland saw my second abortion. five years in cleveland gave me the privilege of serving the reproductive justice community, of building a coalition with the most powerful, thoughtful, creative people i've ever met. five years in cleveland watched me open a brand new career and then a second one four years later. five years in cleveland in the neighborhood bars, graveyards, dance parties, and bookstores. five years that brought me rae.

spell for love

the smell of sage
the tang of onion
your voice in the afternoon
the grey calm of a cloudy sky
a yawning ache for forgiveness
bits of your heart, burned

assemble as you see fit; sing harmony to your partner's voice; repeat, and repeat, and repeat.

spell for forgiving myself after someone else has hurt me

i am full of love. the communities who claim me hold me in love. i am able to love myself.  

this is always true. 

i have not accepted any tasks that are larger than my ability. 

i refuse to feel fear. fear: i see you, i name you, and i reject you.

choose one: i did not clearly set my boundaries / i felt something complex and chose not to articulate it / i am not holding enough grace for my own learning process

(one is always true.)

i am a witch of a thousand hearts and i can have compassion for my one mind, which does not always correctly interpret which heart will beat the loudest.

i affirm my own power. i am powerful.

the time for reflection does not have to be now; i am allowed the time that i need to process, grieve, be angry, be sad, and just be.

i will always have the option to learn from this. i will know when i am ready to learn from this. 

The crush of your cowlick between my fingers I want to pull your head back and run my tongue down your golden throat
I think I am entering the golden era of my life and you, shepherd, king, companion, are the gilding and the refraction of my hope

Stretch me long against the dreams of your body: I am malleable, composed, two hands cupped to catch the grace you pour

In one of my past lives I neglected you, I am sure. I have forgotten you many times. But in this iteration, in this journey, oh I remember you. I know every smile that lurks in your mouth, the deep-muscle bruises you’ve carried for lifetimes. Oh I remember the crush of your power, the expansion of you when we are rooted in love. I remember the cost of your dreams.

In this lifetime I cherish the feel of your jaw under my hand, the texture of your lips and the way your kiss turns up at the ends, happy, beloved. I recognize you, glowing ember. We are made of the same heat.

smoke that he fights with, i can go nowhere without seeing him.

pests and predators survive. 

i was too old when i finally learned that you do not read the police report, only the headline, or else your trauma will remember itself.

i spin a single story you cannot escape from; you bring me joy, i bring you blight. 

you taste of sunrise, ochre, violet, orange, a lancing of the monochrome with flush and heat and sex.

i feel like coal, layers of dead things condensed into fuel. 

between old shadows and new light i am only kindling.
there are pine cones that cannot sprout without the razing of a forest fire to crack the seams; where the deadwood of me burns off, perhaps i will be newer, brighter, stronger.




**



smoke that he fights with, i can go nowhere without seeing him.

pests and predators survive. 

i was too old when i finally learned that you do not read the police report, only the headline, or else the trauma takes you too.

i lie here with my hardened heart and ruined mind, waiting to make you the culprit for my own misdeeds.

spinning a single story you cannot escape from, you bring me joy, i bring you blight. 

you taste of sunlight, ochre, orange, violet, a lancing of the monochrome with flush and heat and bile.

i feel like coal, layers of dead things condensed into fuel. 

between his shadows and your light i am only kindling, waiting to be pulled up into the bright destruction of my truest sense of self. and whether it is his burning or your sunshine that arrives first is anyone's guess. 

i am not convinced that there is a logic behind sobriety. all those meetings trying to convince me that i harmed others, but i did not. i never stole, never threw a punch, never lost my income or my home. mine is a quiet kind of self-destruction.
i am not convinced that there is safety in sobriety, with the wide cloud of smoke rising above my head as i write this. they say harm reduction is the new strategy, but what if i never dealt the blows i should have? only i am reduced in this new religious desert.
i am not convinced that there is independence in sobriety. i have traded one box for another, one label for something stronger. those who want you to be healthy allow you to show up, bloated and reddened and tired but in a new dress, and tell you that you look great.
who will i be after this? in another ten years, in another cage? i will spend my life picking up and trying on new caste systems, new genders, new ways to be hated by the world around me. the only doctrine i subscribe to is evasive gratification, the slow drip of self-loathing.

the realtor asked how many bedrooms i wanted, what kind of neighborhood, what homely features. bloated with four years of constant drinking i gathered my focus in my hands and did not say, i do not know, i have never been home.
we wandered through house after house, and i met the ghosts of others' pets, aging parents, lack of money, shortcut repairs. when finally i met you, i was convinced no one else lived here, you were grey and white and pale and clean. i touched your attic walls, wrenched your basement plumbing myself.
i broke up with someone who needed me as i signed the papers. they could not stand that i had a home other than them. two years later a mutual friend will tell me that their home is hoarded, stuffed full of reminders that i am not there.
but you and i, we keep our hands clean. we keep our walls firm. we flood the basement occasionally, the stinking mud a reminder of what lies beneath and what will always be broken. you are broken in all the right ways for me. we chose each other.

coffee and cigarettes keep me convinced that hope is childish. that i would be a fool to wake you up, turn you over, see your bright eyes open to mine. to hope for your recognition.
i am tired of sleep, distempered with rest and placation. i want you to bite me and leave marks. i want you to grab me and leave bruises. i want you to hurt me and leave love behind.
i should be walking the dog; i should be buying fresh produce at the discount grocery; i should be putting the books back on the shelves. i should be carrying water and fire every day for you, the mechanization of care and careful kindling.
some weeks ago, a strange man read my writing and said it was not poetry. some months ago, a hated lover fucked me and said i was not queer. some years ago, my camp counselor found my adolescent journal and called my parents. marks, all, and none deserving of the words i waste on them.
buried in the richness of your cunt is all of my peace, and safety, and hope. if i am sluggish in the ways i move to make you cum, it is only the exhaustion of having finally reached this place.

what i am with you: a thousand half-spilled apologies, retching at your mouth. the guilt of me seeps through your floorboards, i am what makes you creak, puddles in your basement and makes everything smell of age, mildew, wet. is it regret if i miss the violence i did not cause.
the better angels of my nature have tried to rule: kept sweet, keep sweet, keeping sweet. we have appropriated every culture more domineering, more patriarchal, more silencing than our own. we have bared naked logs of spite, religion, gender, anger, built a hell and called it home. i was raised in the density of your forgotten hopes.
still. when you build a home of kindling, one of your children will learn to burn. you are my kindling. is it love if i embrace the power you made me find.

If i am a lioness then you are the felt of my paws, the curve of my jaw, the flick at the end of my tongue. If I am a predator then you are my hunger and my ability, both.
After sex my hair is a cloud around my face and I would hide, but I call it a mane, and growl your name. I stay buried in the taste of your skin, the sound of your breath. Your body is a beckoning and I listen closely to the call.
If I was four-legged I think I would still be unstable. In this life I have been a desert lion, worn golden and ragged in high winds and long droughts. I am thirsty, I am hungry, lord.
Before sex when my anxiety is still curled in my mouth, I burnish myself to a high sheen, softened and sweetened till I am sure you will not taste the salt and dirt of me. I lay down my hair, lay down the hem of my dress, slick my lips so that they will glide under your ear. I hope you will not notice my torn claws, I pray the scars are deep enough in my hide.
If I am a lioness then at last I can understand my need to drag ten claws down your back, close my teeth in the beat of your throat. If I am a lioness then you are my hunger, my ability, my pride.

i don't want to die young

i don't want to die young because organizers run themselves into the ground
i don't want to die young because survivors of sexual violence have shortened lifespans
i don't want to die young because a side effect of smoking is death
i don't want to die young because bisexual people are less likely to have health insurance, less likely to access healthcare, and less likely to receive needed medical care in general
i don't want to die young because poor people have worse health and longevity than rich people

i don't want to die young because i want to promise my partner a lifetime of collaboration
i don't want to die young because i want to give my future publisher the opportunity to market my next book
i don't want to die young because i want to visit a thousand places i haven't yet been
i don't want to die young because i want to organize so many more radical, queer, community events
i don't want to die young because i want to prove that i can overcome every systemic and social hurdle in between me and good healthcare
i don't want to die young because i am not done yet

I have been hungry all month. There has been no cure for it. I have wanted Renee Gladman’s apple juice, the way a femme can douse you whole while making you realize you are only a desert, only a desert. I experienced a fleeting hunger for Sylvia Plath’s feverish skin, the pale honey of it though my memory insists there would be a brittle creaking were I actually to attempt to digest. I have even been hungry for Emily Dickinson’s bees, do you think they were the fat ones, round and fuzzy and a bit overwhelmed? In the desert there are only the thin bees, mean bees, bees with hard shells and rage as exoskeleton.
I live in the flatlands and I thirst for her. My days are a trajectory of the too-white sun burning its medians across my body. When I walk (sometimes I do walk) there are saguaros in her shape, mirages etching her name across my afternoons. There is no crying here, the salt balance is too precarious.
I have been hungry all month and I have walked, in moments, toward what has looked like water. No one recruited me; and I have wandered many landscapes, not lost, but hungry. Like Jonah I push against my faith only when I have been swallowed whole by the predatory instincts of the natural world. No one recruited me, but I thought I saw apples here, or honey, or the ability to make honey. Now I know the whole world is a desert, and I miss the whale.

Every thought has already crossed my mind—it’s all my fault, it’s all your fault, there is no fault—you’ll leave me tomorrow, you’ll leave me in a few years, you’ll be stuck with me for the rest of your life—but I cannot find a way to dig out. I cannot stomp down the sadness and the anger and the confusion and the great, aching bruise of having inflicted sadness and anger on someone I love. In hurting you I hurt myself.
If this is a possible ending I will wedge open every door. If this is death by a thousand cuts I will bury every knife in the yard. As much as I am determined on my love for you, you have also called me to honesty. I must learn what honesty serves, and how to be kind in it. This can be no new age version of keep sweet; you would see through me, and I would become invisible again.
I do remember the curve of your jaw, the curl of your hair, the twist in my heart when you smile. I do remember your goodness, your brightness, your desires for equity and grace. I do remember the way your heart sounds inches from mine.
Why can’t I see my way clear? Why can’t I establish again that foundation of love? I am lost, I feel alone. I don’t know how to move forward, and I don’t think any of my instincts serve.

Maybe I just don’t know what doing right by you in this moment means. I wish it didn’t seem like we are only functional when one of us is stable or good. I keep wanting to take all of this on but I don’t think it’s all mine.
Be my fake savior, oh.
Maybe I was right a year and a half ago, locking the door after successfully smiling my ex off my porch five months after the breakup, when I knew I attracted what was alike to me. I know I could not support two or me. I know I would not survive, would not allow myself to have to survive, any more of other peoples fucked up shit.
I can make you feel better, oh.
But I saw your face and I wanted you. I heard your voice and I wanted to listen to you for years. I tallied your humor, your skill, your style, your strength and leapt into this crush with both hands open. I thought that you would never want me; I thought your rejection would be my safety.
And i, for all the openness I have tried to grant, can still not get honesty correct on your terms. Still can’t figure out what’s mine to tell, how much of myself to share, what’s safe and what’s forcing you to shoulder something you didn’t volunteer for.
What is safe? Are you safe around me? I know sometimes I make you doubt. I am a screaming, raging daughter of the earth. I admire justice, lap up the leavings of others’ revenge. I turn cold, bitter, a Himalayan vault of nitrogen anger and untouchable spite.
Am I safe with you? How many layers of myself will I unfurl? How many will you insist upon? How many times with I resheathe my claws wet with my own blood, penance for the ills you’ll say I’ve wrought? I am only a festering, shrieking harpy. I have tried to love you in my own rotting way.
So I don’t know how to do right by you, in this moment. I feel alone. I feel sad. My ability to glory in aloneness has been supplanted by memories of your eyes, your voice, your eyes. I seek your breath, the moving of your rib cage next to mine. If we have fought let me atone. If you are sad let me cry. I would carry this alone so that I can understand it. I would carry this because weight is what I know.
I feel alone.

i want to write poems for you. i look at your face and that's all i can do. 

i want to write the kind of poem that ten years from now, you'll dig out of a shoebox and unfold the yellowed paper and i'll say oh no don't remind me of that and we'll laugh about how completely love-stricken i am for you. 

i want to write the kind of poem that keeps you with me for the next ten years. 

i want to write about the way you laugh, the pleasure and the invitation of it. i want to write the kind of poem that will make you laugh. 

i want to write about your hands. i do write about your hands. how every ounce of human strength and grace and dignity somehow grew into ten furious fingers and your ability to choke me, hold me, cook and break and write and play and create. 

i want to write poems about how carefully you handle the hearts of those you love. 

i want to write about your smile and the way it crooks everyone in the room into whatever joke you are telling, i want to write about your eyes, your voice, your eyes. 

i want to write poems that will make you pause, poems that will make you think, poems that will sneak up on you a few hours later and whisper against the back of your neck just how much i love you. i want to write poems that make your skin warm. 

there are days when all i can do is look at you, because my voice gets caught in my throat, and my heart stops moving in my chest. i think that silence might be my last defense against the layers of my shame and history and fear that threaten to wedge themselves between us. there are days when all i can do is look at you because you are golden to me, a pillar of fire in the sky toward which i will always be walking. i have walked through the same desert for generations, but every life i have lived was walking toward you. 

i am as inept a writer as i am a lover, so instead of all these poems i would write for you i have written only this one. but i am not done writing, and i am not done loving. 

mine, the joyous laughter in the hallway. mine, the flicker of candles on your bare skin. mine, the curtains moving in an evening breeze. mine, the pressure of your palm against my chest. all these gifts, and a million more.
how many times have i said: you leave me, and i grow: abandon me, i am unkempt and unmeted in my ability. but here, at last, in your proud bed i am willing to pause. here i acknowledge the need to express gratitude: here i press a kiss to the curve of your neck.
it's true that i am seismic, eternal, great and growing in the wild ways of the world, a predator and a murmuration both. it's true that i am smaller than a grain of mustard seed. it's true that i am slit open stem to stern, bare-boned and heaving with the guilt of previous generations of my self.
all these things, and a million more: learning to see myself refracted in the decisions and revisions of a distemperate world. mine, the grace of your forgiveness. mine, the pressure of your hot demands. the gift of you, all the ways that i can grow. you perch me, laden, at the threshold of desires i cannot even name.
if, in my last days, i manage still to be greeted by the warmth of your smile, the challenge of your wit, the beauty of your affection, then i will have lived well. i would spend my decades serving, twining, growing up and into the lessons you bear.

mine, the joyous laughter in the hallway. mine, the flicker of candles on your bare skin. mine, the curtains moving in an evening breeze. mine, the pressure of your palm against my chest. all these gifts, and a million more.
how many times have i said: you leave me, and i grow: abandon me, i am unkempt and unmeted in my ability. but here, at last, in your proud bed in your narrow room i am willing to pause. here i acknowledge the need to express gratitude: here i press a kiss to the nape of your neck.
it's true that i am seismic, eternal, great and growing in the wild ways of the world, a predator and a murmuration both. it's true that i am smaller than a grain of mustard seed. it's true that i am slit open stem to stern, bare-boned and heaving with the guilt of previous generations.
all these things, and a million more, learning to see myself refracted in the decisions and revisions of an intemperate world. mine, the grace of your forgiveness. mine, the pressure of your hot demands. the gift of you, all the ways that i can grow. you perch me, laden, at the threshold of desires i cannot even name.
if, in my last days, i manage still to be greeted by the warmth of your smile, the challenge of your wit, the beauty of your affection, then i will have lived well. i would spend my decades serving you for the gift of the lessons you bear.

be gentle on yourself                              but not too gentle
practice self care                                     get the fucking work done
others and yourself deserve kindness     bitches get shit done
slow and steady                                      race your own expectations
go to your closet and pray                      the sound and the fury

where i am happy: where your heart sinks
quiet into my arms, where bliss is rain falling and white walls.
your mouth fastened to my future and i had always thought
that this was impossible, but here you are,
dancing. the white ring left around my finger after
a summer of you: after years: when all of me will full bloom.
so that, shaken awake at night by the ferocity
of my dreaming, there is a spotlight in the sky
at full posture, directing me: a white halo where your hands
will be again, come morning. what could be impossible
when your name in my mouth is a realized prayer?
since now that i can speak, i am a whole voice, a place
unto myself where your soul is welcome.

what is simple? if i look at you
and see peace, and affection, and fulfillment,
can i choose that? can i opt in
to a new dream if it belongs more to you, but
i see it clearly every night?

what is ease? if in touching you
i make you say my name, if in loving you
i make us both insular and wrapped
entirely in the possibility of us,
can i make that come true
even when i have never loved anyone else?

what is new? if this is foreign, is it
just another path i can choose?
you leave me guideposts and lanterns:
would i be foolish to ignore
what is so clearly etched with my own progress?

touch me here in the forest, set my feet
on the trail you know: i hear you,
i sing your descant. and if
you are quiet where i am used to volume,
and loud where my instincts go dull, i may
accept this as portion of the new view:
this mountain, this sunset, and you.

in limestone, granite, sedimentary blocks
we built the channel, ran the course.
the green of the water, hemmed in
and dutifully moving us place to place:
the braying of the labor, side by side,
grey backs and heat and flies.
where i refuse, you insist, and years from now
we may have built a world for that.

i dream of children and fences
the moon and a dozen things that smell like you
green eyes follow me across the dawn
you measure me, silent, absent, seen

in you i have a treasure smaller than skies,
tangible, hot in our bed at night

small voices that are not yet born
haunt my hips: what will you ask of me,
before the end? and, in the end,
what will be beautiful?

keystone, summer sunshine, path along the canal
where other beasts of burden called out—
you are a world to me, a delicate ecology unto yourself
in the paths of my veins.
lynch pin, wishbone, the grace of rain
at the end of a long drought: bring me with you
wherever you will go, show me the path.
i am dark with desire:
endless chasm, bottomless trench, an Atlantic storm
and miles of thunderheads in my wake
waiting to me filled
with the wind and the rain of your love.
you touch my arm, my neck, i light with
your insistence—else a canyon, rift of needing
in the broken soundscape of my heart.
draw your riverbed here, love:
carve an eon of traveling, feeding, blessing
here between my throat and breast.

i have worked so hard—worked so long—to arrive
in this place where you are everything i am.
will you pull me out of this city? will you tell me who i am?
after years maybe i am willing—or is it
too tired to say no, too broken
to work against your knowing, learning hands—
i wonder, does the work go to waste?
i have been so afraid, i have been hard pressed
to protect and preserve my self.
do i cede myself to you? what does this grant accomplish?
where i am land—traversed, seismic,
built and rebuilt in a thousand ways—you are
water, blood of my veins, spit of my mouth,
the river that is never quite tamed.
i could build bridges but i
have known too many storms, will not extend myself
for structures that can be torn down.
you make a canyon out of me, i am all echoes,
a long low coyote howl
of loneliness and discontent.

when you say my name, the lurch of me—
a rope direct to my heart, my womb, my mouth—
you draw me continuously forward, pliable
in the timbre of your voice.
call me Mary, call me Naomi, call me daughter or wife or mother
but call me:
without your voice in my ears i am
deaf to motion or growth, without your taste
i am barren, full of lack.

loneliness is a heartbeat:
the constant thrumming of your absence in my body.
how can i have met you this early, and crave you this late?
in the crevices of my bones—
between my joints, crooked into the lapses of my spine—
your name, your taste, your voice collide
and leave me spent for the chemical pleasure
of reaction. if i
was exoskeletal i could wear you on my sleeve:
but, mammalian and hot-blooded, i keep you warm,
i hold you close as bones.

that if i could make you feel cared for—
seen—protected—that i would prize you
and your body and your health and your name—
that if i could bring you joy, or pleasure,
or solidarity or knowledge or increase in any way—
that i might be able to earn you—a rock, a
solid and magnificent ownership of self
and what is worthy—that if i could be
worthy of you—and your affection, intention,
your blessing or your time—that i could cede
idealism, or individualism, for the pride
of caretaking and reciprocating your love.

between us your voice stretches, loom to loom:
where we both build and knit and seek, your story
could be enough to hold the line.
your voice as antidote, as cureall, as potion:
string me sweet and song along these passages
where the lantern is your sound and taste.
where i walk i make your pattern:
a whole picture, bright and mindfully made.

what i wish i could be:
a litany of the ways i feel you now, overturned.
if i am a canyon, you are a river
and i echo in the rush of your name.
more, then: built high and carved deep
with the ability to transform. should i
be less than what i am? if i am igneous
then let me burn, since sedimentary i cave
for the grinding and pressure of you.
tell me what i am and i can only
repeat it back to you, yours, yours, yours.

in our next lives, we say.
to gather--to earn--to find--
whatever we miss here, we say, on the next attempt,
we will secure.
(everybody wants to be a tree; nobody
wants to be a blade of grass.)
but if i am any part of my self following
whatever is to come,
i am most likely a dandelion: simultaneously
edible and purposeless, beautiful
and entirely at odds with every aesthete.
i am here to be digested.
i am full of sour milk.
coming in alone, leaving alone, is purity
to me. a full circle of absolution:
let me be useful, in the end.

i am here to be digested
i am full of sour milk

vegas, march 2019

that if i held out my hand for you in a crowded room, you would find it:
that you and i can be secure, rooted, unashamed and unafraid.

when we have lost you, we struggle to know the loss.
what day to day touches are missed?
whose growth goes unnoticed, whose metamorphosis unsung?
but i wonder too what we miss of you:
if we could follow, would we see you active,
flying, singing, creating, answering?
or a complete, still peace--
would you, indeed, rest well?
or if there is a third option, are you at rest in motion--
a breeze of karma, a night wind over the lake,
a shaft of sunshine between the blinds,
the eddies of sloughed off skin that circle there.
when we have lost you, what have we lost?
and what can we yet glean?

if you watch for me to take my place in the crowd around you
and become one of many
it is your gaze that does that work
and not my will

*

i have underestimated the necessity of reflection

i want to sit with my grief
look it in the eye
speak with it
but it won't sit still

it ranges, restless, between the extreme and obscure
between mimicry and denunciation

it insists on action where i would seek rest
it insists on community where i would seek solitude
it insists on meaning where i would seek blackness

perhaps following
grief
is the best direction i can take

*

some days you are called to let someone's heart break
at your kitchen table in your hands in your lap in your mouth

gifts i accept from your mouth:
acceptance, charity, understanding, story.
i do not know what to say to you but i know that you will listen.
i spit out ire and fear and self-protection
faster than your warmth can disarm me.
for you i might be beautiful, who could say?
for you i might be peace or solidarity or support,
produce some amalgam between your mouth and mine.
i should be so lucky, to capture you in this way.

secrets i cannot even whisper to myself
insist on writhing out over the breakfast table,
wet and gelatinous as they slide toward your hands.
they are limp for you, a relaxed twining
of the worst of me, seeking stillness and rot.
and you will only listen, and tell me i am wrong:
you will not notice these entrails
till the heart of me, red and steaming, is laid out
before you like a lie i couldn't keep.

when i see you, an idea lights
up bright between my hips,
of sleep, of promise, of nightmares
and the sound of you
whispering my name.
tongue my terror: these phantoms
become realer with your acknowledgement,
the pressure of your attention
a cause for higher heights of fear.
crash me gentle to
the crags below: your face
and the ghosts you'll use to catch me.

"the beauty of my youth is gone, but the chemicals remain"

fat girls wear black
i feel myself to be a bottomless pit of endings
the feral way you size me up on the street
and in the bedroom
because i owe you greater strength
i owe you tireless force of will

this winter i am alone but you are still somehow everywhere i am
i walk, hunched shoulders against the howl, through
the tunnels of this city, grey palace of race and chrome, and
somewhere in the rush of juries, judges and felons
is your name. somewhere between church and the vacuous hiss
of snow around my ears is the timbre of your voice.

this winter i am present but still somehow you pull me
away from what this is, the ease of connection to one's body when
knees and biceps and cheeks all tremble together
in the bitter wind, the press of traffic, and i have lost the ability
to speak back to the rhythm of my blood when you take me by surprise:
on every street corner, a flickering lamp of your heartbeat.

Are rape jokes funny when they’re about someone you hate?
Are rape jokes funny when they’re about someone in jail?
Are rape jokes more funny when they’re about a woman or a man?
Are rape jokes more funny when they happen in frat houses or Sunday schools?
Are rape jokes funny when the people in them are violent?
Are rape jokes more funny when both the victim and the attacker have been victimized before?
Are rape jokes more funny if the victim is wearing a short skirt or a burqa?

I dream of the curl of your brown hair, the curve of your smile in the palm of my hand. I dream of giving you the ocean, a thousand miles of sunset and salt and bright air, ours to take and taste. I dream of the steps to get there: the time it will take, the ways we will grow, the miles we’ll travel to put our faces in the wind.

Who will we be, when we’re old? And what dreams will we chase in the meantime? A wide world, so much to want from it, and you and I so capable, fearless, brave under a big sky and gaining strength.

I dream of being next to you at night when your body slows and your breath is grounded in the bottom of the day. I dream of the mundane details where you are present: the artifacts of you in my life, the ticket stubs, hairbands, dinner plates. The days made sweeter by the works of your hands, there is no place I’d rather be than with you.

Angry, and looking for reassurance that I am allowed to be, in a way that only women do.

There is always magma beneath the stable ground, there is always a new volcano forming in the sea. I will build a world, raw and hot and sharp and pure, and you will never step foot there. I will grow it black inside the ocean waves, the rising of a bright basalt. Green for your envy, the kelps that grow to trees, white for your fear, the oysters that grow limbs and eyes and mouths. When it rains, I will be fed, and you’ll be gone.

We cannot choose much of who we are—queer, introverted, graying early, survivor—but I have never been so proud to be what I am than when I am with you
What I am most: is grateful, tides of thankfulness that break on me perpetually, a rolling cataclysm of adoration for your kindness, your sensibility, your support
I have always been a saltwater sea but now I think too an igneous outflow, something sedimentary in the way I will build whole worlds to bring you safety, happiness, sunshine

self medication

says i believe that i deserve to feel better
says i can find resources on my own
says no one else should have to put up with me when i'm like this
says i know there is something out there that will help

is sure that the world can be more navigable
is sure that there is greater peace to be found
is sure that the best of me can be brought to light again
is sure that the cost will be worth the gain

i lie here with my hardened heart and ruined mind, waiting to make you the culprit for my own misdeeds.
i spin my single story: you are inescapable, and trapped.
you bring me joy, i bring you blight.

you taste of sunlight, make my smokescreens visible in the slant of orange late afternoon.
brown, ochre, maroon, violet, a lancing of my monochrome, flush with purpose and heat.
oh i am hungry for you.
i am the chrysalis, writhing.