Something 13.04.024

 I can remember walking somewhere—

Very likely, it was at work, as I am hardly anywhere else while out in the world—

And seeing two men. A couple. 

I could not have known what one was saying to the other, for

(As always)

They were far from me. 

But, as I watched, one reached out with his left hand

And, lovingly, ran it round his partner’s back in serial, small ellipses. 

All the reassurance, comfort, a being could need

In this swiftly-darkening world. 

My being still yearns to this day. 

Exquisite Corpse (Minty Man to Squirtle) 24.12.023

Six summers ago
high as a kite, likely,
I tried to capture a blue turtle.
I do not remember if I succeeded,
but there you were—and for the same reason—
and we met, finally, in person.
I forget a lot—
and I cannot tell if it is by
intelligent design
or my own doing—
but I will never forget your smile,
the mischief in your eyes, that insistence.

Later that day, you came by—and in—my place.
My right eye: red and swollen as you bade me goodbye.
I wanted to call you Squirtle.
I did not (good choice).

Later, a year or more, I called you “cortadito.”
On your birthday. In writing.
That was a mistake—one of many, too many.

I still love you; it will not stop.
And sometimes, through the loss,
I am still so grateful for the gift of feeling.

Ten whole years after
your magnum opus of love found—and now lost—
I, too, can still only count on one hand
the number of times I’ve fallen and not been heard.
Yours still has my heartstrings singing;
Earth-signs, you and I:

Virgo-snake to your Taurus-dragon—
bull horns and a well-endowed virgin.
The pun is lost in seeming contradiction
No benediction left in your diction,
or in the lack thereof:
Silence killing what might have been love.
Stubborn as a Bull (do you feel lost, now?)
perfect as a virgin, outside and in;
venomous as a scorpion.

(And I do not know the rest of you)

Sorry to say, but you never found a clover
four-leaves-number’d.
You found a rarity, nevertheless.
Juicy, piquant edible—
wood sorrel, sweet-tart four-hearts Oxalis:
Yours; He who made you honest;
Mine (pale-moonlight memories);
and the One whom comes After.
You greedily devoured them all.
You called it luck.

In so many words:
I did too.

I too felt fireworks—
on the Eve of the New Year;
the most fortuitous and best-spent one yet;
and yet

So many new years have passed since Then.
And I am stuck Here.
Still stuck on You.

I’ve tried and tried to figure out why
I can write nothing Happy,
why
it all comes out as a lament or a sigh

or why
numbers, though useful,
oftentimes lie

and why, despite this, we tend

to lend

them such credence,
why we still measure with trust
instead

of trusting in our heartstrings,
timekeeping
intercalated discs
translating signals chemoelectric
into waveform movements;
disparate cells
thund’ring in seeming unison

to propel us towards
a homeostatic,
interoceptive co-regulation
of our limbic systems;
vaso-vagal interdependence—

the Lightning within sparking stores
of internal warmth and a
shared existence, leading
from stunn’d silence—
electrocution—
to comfort, home, to
absolution.

I want to share.
I don’t know where I can take you,
except to the places within.
Please draw the blinds to let the light in.
I don’t care
if you gave half to Him.

Here I am.
I am.
I am.

Letter to an old Home 04.11.022

I deleted your number today. I should have a long time ago, but letting go and learning to just breathe and be and not ruminate— it takes time. I haven’t seen you in over three years. I moved across the country, got very lonely, got serious help when I made serious plans to kill myself, saw the inception a pandemic, stayed lonely, and moved back across the country. And I have been back for a year and eight months, without so much as a word from you.

I am never going to know why you decided to cut me out. It’s become less and less difficult to deal with that fact, with this reality. That difficulty will continue to diminish. I will continue to live and to feel intensely. The world is devolving into a sicker place than I feel it ever has been, and this weighs on me, but I am still pressing forward. Doing my best to just keep on living. This feeling of relief, from finally ridding myself of you— like the sensation of prickling leaving the body as feeling returns to an appendage starved of blood— means I am still moving.

“Listen closely to what’s still moving: the hum that never goes away from me.”

Sigh 21.10.022

If I’d had a key, I would have left, then
Locked the door behind me,
And left you sleeping silently
Soothéd breathing

Instead, I woke you up
Let you know I would be leaving
And I grabbed my shoes
Placed them upon me
Foot by foot
Laced them
Tied the cords tight

And I waltzed out your door,
Felt you lock it behind me
As I walked down the stairs
Three flights, or more

I took a picture of my reflection in the glass at the bottom

Like a ghost
Done up
In a full-body snowsuit in the middle of winter
Before I stepped out into the night
And embarked upon my 12-minute walk home

Rewind

I could have done this every night
I thought, to myself, “I have arrived”
You laid there on your stomach
And I massaged your neck, your back, your buttocks,
Your legs, hamstrings and calves and feet
And I soon realized your breathing had changed

I laid down beside you,
One, two,
Three in the morning

[Siiiiiiiigh]

I thought to myself, ‘I could do this for the rest of my life,’
Every night,
Massaging you from head to toe
As you slipped into another world

I would then lay down beside you
Listening to your breathing
Feeling
How my own breathing changed
Soon slipping into that same world
(Beside you)

Had I a key,
I would have slipped away into the night
Locking the door behind me
But instead
I roused you, with my hand on your shoulder

My voice whispering, I woke you up,
And I brought you back into this world with me
I told you I would be leaving

You followed me down the hallway
As I laced up my boots
Put on my full-body snowsuit
Said goodbye to you

I shut the door— which you locked—
Behind me
And I tread my way down the stairs
Three flights or more
I took a picture at the door made of glass— I looked like a ghost
Then I stepped out into the night

Twelve minutes’ walk home
I disrobed
Laid down in my bed
Slept, as always, not in the center,
But on the left

Making space for no one.

Tool Belt 24.04.018

When little, my dad taught us deep-breathing:

“in through your nose

and out through your mouth,”

as my brother stumbled through his words,

all halting gasps and tears,

incoherencies;

as my butterflies frothed

in pyloric chyme: back-seat driving to 9ine
AM Sunday swimming lessons,
knowing 

throwing up chlorine-water, snot, Cheerio-cereal
after bad-backstroke nosechugging

might be my pricey ticket home. 

Better than a car’s back seat
was a quiet afternoon: threat looming, 
yet couchbound by a purring cat.
There I learned some mindfulness,
puzzling the cues of a creature with claws
who modeled such depth of breath.

Re-turn, re-turn to the breath,

fo-cus

on

the-breath.

From my mother I’ve taken grace and dignity;
she sits now with herself
through sadness and all else unpleasant besides;
I’ve learned the patience we must keep
as we await our own arrivals on the Other Side.

Hardly fearing any longer

nigh-unending forests in twilit gloom—

there is always an Afterwards.

Spell for Closure: Extrication, Disentanglement, Cord-Cutting 18.03.022 - 12.07.022

Entangled

(arms, legs; staccato-heartbeats, and shapers of language),

as though on a quantum level.

At first, so close, and then,

suddenly— 

in the span of three days—

nearly a continent apart.

I am sorry.

Everything you did influenced me in some way,

though you would not have it, and did not want

the tether to remain.

Two thousand miles and eighteen months of separation—

measurement, the old detractor, the destructor as it Where—

we decohered, connections failing, falling into disrepair.

I left. You despaired.

You told me you loved me,

and yet…

here we are:

here I am, and here

(less than a mile, again)

you are, and are not.

I am naught.

And yet…

all at once, I, too, am far too much.

What to say?

You hold too much sway over me—

enough.

I loved you once.

Somewhere inside, not too deep,

I hold that same love for you.

It will not go away.

For you, there will always be some space,

but I can safeguard it no longer.

You have not claimed it—

you do not want it— and so:

I seek to banish you.

With all my might, I will try

to cut every tie, cords wrapped around me

undone, untwined, and— gods damn it—

fully-severed, if so it must be.

…

…

…

To the overcast Skies, blanketing this city with the quintessence of haze;

to the diffuse Light of March, easing our eyes into the brilliance of Spring;

to the barely-bare Trees, budding out tentatively amidst the first uncertain days in the fifties;

to the Daffodils, the Crocus, Lilies of the Valley;

to the Aether, Dark Energy, and the voids they fill in our lives, in our Physical theories;

to the stilled waters of Mishigami, suspended between winter’s ice heaves and the endless waves of summer;

sixfold Deities— greater or lesser— I ask for your guidance

in a matter of things most in-between:

I request your assistance in determining

how to cut ties from a man I once loved.

To the nebulous man, whose manhood is brought into question by a lack of tenacity;

to the liminal lover, whose absence I cannot shake:

I ask for some respite; resolution; closure.

For mine own Self, who cannot let go;

for mine own Self, who loves both because and despite:

daily reaffirmations, to ground me in the present moment.

Rituals and practices to keep my toes pointed forward, with my heels following suit.

An abstinence from substances which might rake me across the coals;

exercise to soothe me; movement to ground me in the anti-inflammatory.

May the muddied haze of March Skies mollify my plight;

the cloying clouds about my head kindly dampen the Light

of Spring come too early— assuaging the ache

of a Truth I must face:

yet another cord cut, a tie come undone—

the pang more a familiar than any friend now or former.

And may these clouds soon clear, as I am ready—

may the Sun soon burn hot holes through the fugue,

beams alighting warmly upon budding branches.

Slowly, and with some caution, may they begin to leaf out:

suffused with Truth, turning Light into food, bathing the world

in emerald-green, a daytime gloaming.

Topsoil defrosted, emitting once more

the scent of new ozone: the chill, and the Freezing,

banished righteously: a mantling

of Flowers, both fragrant and deadly

(toxic and intoxicating),

spreading beneath every burgeoning limb.

Incandescent inflorescence upon every lawn and hillside, 

reminding me again of both poison and growth.

Dark Energy;

Luminiferous Aether;

Quintessence. 

More space

between us continuing

to come into existence.

My “biggest blunder”

suddenly making sense:

our decohesion, decoherence

(particles moving in waveforms,

the two of us)…

…

…

…

Return to Mishigami:

where blue meets blue

and the atmosphere colludes

with the cerulean waters

of the Lake.

Stilled waves:

suspension between

winter’s floes and ice heaves

and the rolling surf of a blazing summer.

Whether Frozen or warm;

whether immobilized and jagged,

or ferocious and liquid—

I have a need for movement.

Whether strewn about the shore,

piling up in craggy and barren hills— or

whether tumbling, untethered

and cataclysmic, onto the sand—

beating rocks and jagged glass

into smooth gems as I foam and recede,

strength and ferocity

abating in an instant-—

I will always return to stillness,

to some space in between.

As the Sun sets,

so too

does my face smooth

over, and soften.

Black, and glassy,

reflecting the Light of the Moon:

promising absolution.

Strawberry Shortcake 16.06.022

All those times

he washed and cut potatoes and beets,

oven-roasted

in vintage amber glassware

(sunflower oil, salt, and thyme);

all those salads delicately prepared—

not a one

containing the despised tomato.

Every mini loaf of banana bread;

every sable, each macaron

(he used to forget and leave eggs out for too long—

days, sometimes— 

he was the first to explain to me

that one at room temperature

would whip up far better).

He never touched red meat.

Oh, there were times— too few,

too far between— when tables were turned

and I’d be the one to prepare a dish:

the tomato-based soup

(there was a lot of it)

before I knew he hated tomatoes;

the thirty coconut cupcakes

for his thirtieth birthday;

I wish I could say there was more,

that somehow I’d forgotten something;

that— though I know

my memory does not serve me—

I could say, today,

that things were eluding me

more than normal.

Too few, too far between.

It is 90 degrees in my apartment.

Mid-June.

Sweat collects

about my crown, droplets

forming dripping circlets,

dribbles trickling down my neck.

Amassing about my eyebrows;

caressing the small of my back.

The cake—

the cake is store-bought.

The whipped cream comes from a can:

a distinct aftertaste of aerosols and nitrous oxide,

though unctuous— and sweet— all the same.

I am hovering over the kitchen sink,

paring knife quartering freshly-washed strawberries,

glistening like the back of my neck.

Maybe, I think to myself:

maybe if I had done this for him,

he would have loved me.