Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.

Un Oceano Sconosciuto

2012-01-09T12:29:00.009-05:00

I urge you now; don't choose the difficult one.

Don't choose the one who laughs like bells, wakes you up at midnight to read aloud from the biography of Murasaki Shikibu. Break the thrill of satisfaction that tremors in the heart every time your key clicks home in the lock, but before the sliver of golden light slips from the open door.

For you, I want comfort, the way of softness as easy as falling. It is too late, now, for ideas as sharp as flint arrows. The surprise is a small thing to trade, chose instead the one who is plain and sure. Choose simplicity, as direct as a ripe apple.

She is not for you, that one who sails a faltering ship into the unknown ocean. No, not the one whose voice growls low or honey-sweet. Not the one whose path is littered and dark, fraught with sparks of sun. The one who plans, careful, whose plans are unfurling and uncoiling like flags, rippling into the strange wind that blows you ever towards whatever's next.

There is a girl who does not unfold from a matrix so complex your searching hands might never know it. There is a girl with dreams which do not whisper and hold, a girl who speaks languages you know. Reach for her, now.

I believe in love.

2011-08-27T01:49:00.007-04:00

I believe in the three am phone call, the pull of dread and spike of fear growing rancid in the belly. I believe in laughter, skittered across the magic of satellites finding a home with a shy smile somewhere far.

I have thrown my own soul down through love, prayed to imaginary gods for redemption by love. I have torn parts from my most hidden places; I have destroyed what is left in me that still might be worth saving. I have built up riches, my heart bursting with a treasury of love still unspent. I have traveled far but the city of lights flickering on the horizon seems to grow no closer, and this is occasionally a dark, dark country.

But still I head out along a wildering way.

Mental Math

2009-12-05T19:28:00.007-05:00

Ask me your portion of the cheque or the tax rate in Massachusetts and you're certain to be met with a blank stare, at best. However, I breathe in and calculate complex formulae known to the ancient Sumerians, only recently rediscovered by modern mathematicians – the silent language of abomination, the science of decimation. I lock my keys in the car, but can't manage to forget the way the rain painted your hair, sparked blue in the dark halo of your eyes and face. When asked my age, I stutter and estimate, but remember the precise shape of the strange puzzle of your bones. Molecular weights, the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, they're all gone, but the burst of white and gasp that exploded as you tossed your head and laughed that night it stays and stays. My own birthday slipped past, but the wet, warm crumbling wood of the park bench beneath me is as fresh in my mind as though it had been this morning.

The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn

2009-12-05T14:24:00.000-05:00

The Orange

2009-11-08T22:23:00.007-05:00

My feet find their way on the cold white pine, toes curling against themselves, miserly with their quickly escaping warmth. I stand in the kitchen, longing for bitterness to answer the sour tang of panic, adrenaline gone stale. But I do not like coffee and contemplating the effort of tea and sugar and milk exhausts me.

Letting hunger and nausea in turns burn a hole in my stomach, I turn my mind to the day, to the shower and drive ahead. My hair hangs in a limp fan across my shoulders, snaking around my ears and neck. I would sooner cut it off than wash it again, if only I could muster the will.

Surprising myself, I reach across the nearly empty counter to dig my nails into the peel of an orange. Pulling it close, the wild effluvium smothers me in a dark and seething nostalgia. I drown it beneath the sharp spray of juice that rips across my face as I tear the fruit in half.

It might as well be tractor wheel. It might as well be a mirror as I lift it to my lips, bleeding and supple. I gag and spit it into the sink, leaving the white pulp shivering in stainless steel.

Aching, I limp back to the warm dark cocoon of my bed, the strange scent of citrus winding behind.

In My Craft or Sullen Art

2009-08-25T11:06:00.000-04:00

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art.

- Dylan Thomas

How I Pass my Days These Days

2009-07-09T00:06:00.006-04:00

I trace the long, slow arc of sun across the window. I read too many books, wait for your puzzles and shy laugh.

You have strangely gentle hands, flickering like nervous birds. I fear your goodness, thinking on it, wondering if my dark jokes have struck somewhere soft and silent. If anything, you teach me to choose my words carefully.

I comfort myself, since you are so far away, remembering the line of your jaw. We create small joys, and so it is mainly small joys I imagine, the quick laugh and flick of the eyes, your rambling stories unfolding coltishly.

You are not like me. Tonight I spilled half a jar of almond essence and laughed and tasted amaretto, my room is strewn with clothes and jewelry, I don't even wince when someone spills wine on the new sofa cover. I laugh too loudly, speak too often.

But I'm already there, with you. I sit on the windowsill and pet your wicked little cat, she wiggles out of reach and you stop to put your lips to mine, quickly, not interrupting your concentration on your recipe.

Arsenic Snacks

2009-05-19T12:34:00.004-04:00

My best friend eats
apple cores
and drinks coconut water.

She says it is
economical
and healthy.

I say she is
dreaming
of foreign lands,
long trips on clipper ships.

Nested in Myrrh

2009-05-11T00:12:00.006-04:00

I have long listened at doors in empty hallways, with only the faraway sound of clattering metal and the gold-whispering dust turning in the light. It is beyond all sense now, to dissemble, too late I have warned you of scars in bone and sinew, but I tell you now; if hope is a thing with feathers, its carcass is on my doorstep. Wild, unnameable things have torn at it, now it is a ghost of gut and wing.

I kneel, hope it has nested in myrrh.

I have never had a listener, a reader. Especially not one who waits for each word, wants in silence until I speak.

If You Follow

2009-05-08T17:30:00.002-04:00

If there are words, they are as yet unknown to me. I have spent hours spinning spells, invoking ghosts long since settled, but those fruits have left my mouth sour, my eyes shining and wild.

Against good sense and sound advice I find a narrow path; I seek a darkened sun. I bear my burdens alone, often in a world with too few dimensions to support life.

I have not known kindness, and I do not speak to trust, not here. Those are words spoken low and whispered in foreign tongues.

It was easier, I moved from consequence, I drew demons in sand and sky and moved on again. If you follow, if all my stories are told; where, then, will I go?

It's Not About Robots

2009-05-04T23:54:00.000-04:00

I hope time and isolation have not done damage beyond repair. I hope your heart has not grown silent, but instead was waiting, in stasis, or that you were finding your way out of a labyrinth of your own making.

You are careful, and those words are so new, and still strange in your mouth. I wonder how you could know that I smile as you struggle to find your way into conversation.

I would unwind you from those many long nights alone, if you would find me beneath so many layers of ice and wind.

I am tired and worn ragged on the rocks, having missed the lighthouse by some miles. I would undo whatever brought me here, but if not for that, then I would not have your name or your secrets. I hope you are patient, even if my language is dense and foreign. I hope you have a way with broken things, with nervous and unsure things.

The Likelihood of Happiness, Heartache

2009-05-04T00:16:00.001-04:00

For RJH

I work out facts and figures, the likelihood of happiness, heartache, each on an actuarial table with signs and symbols previously unknown to me.

I invent formulae of such complexity the variables become unmanageable, publish them in obscure journals in languages I do not speak.

I have no reason for hope, but it burns bright out of cracks and fissures from a poorly repaired heart.

It is the first time I wake to think of you, the first time I think of you and laugh, and wonder if you would laugh to know.

It is not good

2009-04-21T01:53:00.000-04:00

It has recently become clear that it is not good for me to miss my exit while driving alone. I pull over and turn the radio on. For no reason at all, just the sound of a voice not my own makes me think of you and I stop, rest my head on the steering wheel and sob until my throat is raw.

It is also not good to believe any promises given, especially that I'll be glad after it's over. What a fool to nod and say yes, yes, yes that I know one day I'll never again speak your name, that I'll crawl into a dark bed alone and smile to remember you. I'll never tell you that to keep from thinking of you I imagine a world, any world other than this. I sometimes forget, lose the reigns of fantasy and you, no, not even you, the idea of you comes back to me. And you wind your fingers in my hair and spark in the dark like electricity.

La lumière

2009-04-21T01:34:00.000-04:00

I'd have bargained, begged. For fuck's sake, I'd have wept tears of blood, torn my hair, thrown myself to the ground.

Instead, I unknowingly sought a more subtle poison, your half-stunned joy. It was a gorgeous thing to share and I crept towards it, flinching wildly with every silence, every misspoken word.

How do you bear it? What reason can you give, now, for that useless hope?

What terrible grief did I uncover there, in that long-deserted wreckage?

2009-04-18T14:44:00.000-04:00

It was you, after all, reaching out an empty hand. With the wisdom of long years and many failed expeditions, I observed silently your wounded smile, your careful laugh. I found you beneath an avalanche of folly and plans long ago gone awry and forgotten.

I glimpsed then, your true self, unmirrored and sure. How quickly you unfolded for me stories of midnight suns and crinolines ripped in a darkened cloakroom, your lips smeared dark.

You insisted I had found you, had rediscovered you, the cascade of bright longing and secret lusts springing forth from a heart stoppered for all the world like a champagne bottle.

I braved the tundra, the rocks and ice. I felt for the path beneath the terrible will of the fog, then grew parched beneath a venomous sun. I waited for morning, licking dew from a few ragged leaves, and by nightfall was lost beneath a terrible seething jungle.

Now I only curse the path, look for signs and symbols in the sun and the burning green grass.

Without destination, I turn inward like a broken compass, wait in a willful silence for the phone to ring, for your voice, your key in the door.

Bits and bobs from yesteryear

2009-04-16T21:28:00.000-04:00

there is a sickness in you
and it grows
you bear it,
a gentle gun
against splitting skin
even as it breaks bones
you pull it closer, caressing

as you shake and spit
your careful claws
snake across my heaving heart

you curl and cry
to nurse your dissatisfaction
I am, as ever, your willing victim
and even as you crave comfort,
my soft white arms around you
you lift your head
to the soft shell of my ear
to loose a terrible poison there

which works in silence
until nothing is left of me
but a thick dark pool

****

You were a coward, you say
an unbearable booming silence tears across the line
jumps satellite to satellite
until it finds my quiet apartment
my bare white room
my mouth opens to speak
I shiver and shake
tucked in the dark bed, a pillow empty beside me
I imagine your slender hands
a hank of black hair, nearly blue, caught in a ripping wind
under a white winter sun
we huddled in the car, it's throaty rumble
bringing soon the miracle of rushing warmth

I would kill you if I could
despite your goodness
and explosive smile

A Forgotten Letter

2009-04-16T00:14:00.000-04:00

The heart is dessicated, pressed flat between the pages of a textbook. It's the memory of a heart, preserved for posterity at the height of its vibrant colors. I felt the color begin to fade, the stems began to droop and for the sake of who'll come next I plucked it carefully and folded it between those blind pages.

Months pass in careful silence; I return to the heart, finger it's whisper thinness. Occasionally, I bring it to my mouth, warm it with blushing breath. It is a letter, folded and forgotten from last year's lover.

Without You

2009-04-14T23:28:00.001-04:00

My stomach aches, I lie down on the white-clad bed. Here, loneliness develops form, a shape previously unknown. I read signs and signals in the sun, the burning green grass. This is the same room where you grasped my arm, wondering at the scent of chamomile and ylang-ylang. Your laugh skipped silver around this spare room; it's echoing still. I would wrench even your name from here if I could.

I imagine you carefully packing your bag for the walk to work, how the bright winter wind pulls your scarf and you nervously tuck it beneath your lapels again. I see you coming home alone, how you search your pockets for the keys, how the crack of the door opening sounds in the empty apartment. You pour the single glass of wine, curl up on the worn sofa.

It has fallen dark, and I wait and wait to sleep, to slip away from this hour and the one before.

With You

2009-04-08T01:32:00.001-04:00

There was a worn wooden floor, tiny sunlit yellow rooms. There were the echoes of laughter clinging to the cobwebs. A tomato plant, maybe basil. There were lost glasses, keys, the novel under the couch cushions. There was a threadbare cotton coverlet, halfway off the bed, your tousled hair. A glass of wine, left out all night. And there was you, always, when I slipped into the side of the bed that's cold.

Time Circling Back

2009-04-05T02:44:00.000-04:00

It has been proven by minds much finer than mine that time is, in fact, linear. However, I am allowed to hope it is not, but it is as the Toltec imagined - circular.

I am not headed towards another day of sunshine wearing thin over long hours. I am not to fall asleep tonight in another of a long series of whispering linens, but instead am bounding ceaselessly towards your ripe voice skipping across my bare shoulder.

Not away, you see, I'm returning to your desperate hands clasped across my back, your warm sleeping form beside me. I will once again find myself in the crossfire of gently lobbed words so like watered silk, curl beneath a flickering clock spelling out the hours until you find me in the dark.

Soon time will circle back on itself and you'll find me. Find me again.

A Feast at the End of the World

2009-04-05T02:06:00.001-04:00

Pour le premier homme

What madness comes to those who fall too long towards the horizon? I learned quickly to stop fighting the rushing water, realized I had slipped too far into a biting undertow to ever see the surface again. It was a shock then, to wake beside you, your laughter picking out the sun from the sky.

You smile, I recoil; this dream had better last, or start to fade soon.

You lift the slice of green dappled pear to your lips and your eyes widen at the burst of juicy sweetness.

"I have made this, here, it's for you."

It has been a long, dry time and I am grateful for your generous hands. I taste a tiny morsel of what you've laid out; I blanch and turn, it's too sweet after such a long hunger. Give me water, not sweet wine. I'll die of privation even in the land of milk and honey, retching in the sand. But you laugh, and pile my arms with fruits too strange too name. I blink, and am wreathed in a bower of berry. I mouth my small words of thanks, but you still the sound with your hands. And so I fall prey to your sugared sweets. You wipe honey and liquor from my chin with gentle fingers.

"A feast at the end of the world" you whisper and lean closer.

How you have found me here, at the end of the world, I cannot think to ask. I hoped only for silence, for distance.

I lean in and your lips meet mine, but you turn your face. In an instant I think to grasp the falling fruits, and I am alone and I am beneath the surface of the water.

The Price of Pleasure

2009-04-02T00:54:00.000-04:00

It's late. The light skips yellow across the wood floor and catches on my fingers, my bare feet. For the past hour, the window has been nothing but a dark mirror, but as I watch, the night splits down the middle to admit headlights. A car drives slowly by and realize I have been waiting breathlessly for it to stop.

I fold one leg beneath the other and sit, still and quiet. You spelled it out so clearly, I am A and you are B and the path was too dark between the two. I listened and waited and you did not answer. I told you it was foolish, but I am not a fool and the line fell silent between us. That night I dreamt of your voice.

This is the price of pleasure. Now I have silence, the comfort of clean linens and a wool sweater. Because I can, I walk outside and I do not think of you.

What Now?

2009-03-31T01:40:00.001-04:00

I skip forward in time without realizing it. I find a day or two has gone by only because I see myself in different clothes when I look in the mirror.

I have learned to sleep many more hours a day but cannot yet figure out how to stop dreaming.

I'm bad at this.

2009-03-27T23:00:00.000-04:00

"Happiness" - Grant Lee Buffalo

This Isn't a Key

2009-03-26T02:09:00.001-04:00

Before we met I said "never, no never again" but you built a fantasy out of a darkened cloakroom and a wide-open window. You held a key, but leaned against the door, whispered sweet wild things, your ear against the echoing wood. "I'm on the other side; is the key in your hand?"

You're not sure how to use it, why would you be? I flatten my hand against the door, so close if I lean in I can feel the warmth of your sweet face.

"Open the door, open the door."

I can't tell but I think you shook your head. I heard you whisper, "this isn't a key" before you walked away. I heard metal on the floor.

Late Night Notes

2009-03-25T14:35:00.002-04:00

This doesn't work out? I'm moving away, under the sea.
Going to be a nanny to a school of clever fish.
I'd skip out to the stars,
write down their sputtering silences.
I'll dig and dig
until I can warm myself with the molten core of the earth.
This doesn't work
and I'm damned to start to lose myself
the wind will blow one day
and a little bit of me will be gone
the next, a little more
until I'm gone altogether.
I'll live in a tree house,
learn the language of growing green things,
never speak again so that any man can hear.
I'll billow and fly away like a sail, a kite
into a blue blank sky
and cover myself in clouds
and scream lightning and thunder.
I'll become transparent,
people will see through me
I'll moonlight as a double-paned glass door.
I think I'll be an apple
my skin will toughen
and I'll rot away in an orchard
somewhere in Maine.
Maybe I'll slip inside the sun
and see what exactly a nuclear furnace is,
what colors burn brightest.

Or maybe, what's truest is;
this is the last time I think I can bear this.
After this, it's only me,
a wool sweater, a clever conversation,
lust and lovely linens
but nothing, ever again, approaching love.
I'll turn inward like a broken compass
and write and read and
slowly become Emily Dickinson.
It was all laid out long, long ago.
I'll wear black, instead, so people can tell us apart.

Say No, Say Yes

2009-03-25T00:49:00.001-04:00

They tell me a plane is just the ticket, that silence is best kept. That I should say nothing to you, wait and if you come back on your own, then it's true. No, I should sit outside your door. Yes, while you sleep I should cover from your doorstep to where you're going with poetry, with your name and mine, entwined. That you should find me, charcoal in hand, in the middle of the night, outside your window. Or maybe say nothing, tell you it's okay, that I know nothing and everything can happen from this moment on. That whatever's next will break us down or apart, or into pieces so small we'll never be able to find them all. I make a fool of myself; I'm unsure. You'd laugh, but it's true, you turn a small part of me inside out, make me reconsider the cool silences between last night and this one. I imagine I can close my eyes, smell your hair, the points of your fingers dancing warm on mine. Neither of us need love, neither of us think this is wise. From two people who're known for being pragmatic realists it's a dangerous propostion. Maybe we should turn away, smother a flustering flame in sand and sky. Maybe I should stop imagining your smile coming easy, stop running your name over my tongue like a sweet. This is all possibility, you know?

What matters, here? Really? That if you were here I'd have long ago laughed when you grew wild and afraid, kissed your eyes, held my hand against your runaway heart until you were calm and sure. If this is distance that made you fall towards the horizon and distance alone, know this - I will unravel every mile between us. It means nothing to me. Haven't you figured it out by now? It's all possibility. And you, it's you.

Desire.

2009-03-25T00:33:00.000-04:00

What is this fire?

In Warmth and Hunger

2009-03-22T22:55:00.000-04:00

I tuck my legs beneath me, wrap myself in warmth and hunger. I rest my head on the arm of the loveseat; my eyes focus and refocus on your name, your face. Your uncertain smile begins to flicker and finally fade. My hands grow heavy over time. I am used to the bright hiccup of your laugh but now somehow manage to hear the quicksilver slide of one disobedient tear slip and fall into the rough upholstery. The signs are no longer clear, I search for intent. Not long ago you whispered poetry across the ocean until I writhed with longing for your voice. Did I imagine my throat sore from words unsaid? Do you grow tired, dropping your head to a plastic pillow, your monitor glaring blankly down?

I spun silver and green for you, promises whipped into a froth and a skipping giggle. In the rushing blush of want and imagination I found you. I found you. Now let me hear your answer, if it's your nervous call or a dark and hollow no, I can bear it. All but silence, all but this, whatever the price of pleasure, I'll pay and count myself lucky.

"Are you alright? I wish you'd give me a little clue.
Is there something that you want to say? 'Cause you took off without a word.
Are you alright, you flew away like a little bird.
Is there anything I can do? 'Cause I need to hear from you."
- Lucinda Williams

Le Premier Homme

2009-03-18T21:37:00.000-04:00

J'attendrai, il me démêlerai me. Les étoiles chuchotent son nom.

I Bear the Hard News

2009-03-16T23:11:00.000-04:00

I bear the hard news,
the shaking trees
unfurling darkly across a winter-whitened sky.

I rock back and forth for only a moment,
my eyes turning back, far back
to memories that play like a sick reel-to-reel.

Good thing now, my bones are plated in steel,
my gut, mesh and wire,
my feet are bare and blue.

I bear the hard news,
and I bear it alone
and even the stars whisper your name.

I am frantic, searching,
my hair unwashed and falling,
lank and dark across my shoulder.

I eat stones, I taste iron,
resting my head on concrete
my hands ragged and torn.

I bear the hard news,
and the world begins to buzz
and finally to split.

Sonata Pathétique

2009-03-16T22:29:00.000-04:00

I am always a disappointment, I'm afraid. I speak clearly of beautiful people, eyes flashing across dinner tables and concert halls. I am not even the same species, sleeves too short, skin too blemished. Not even my sorrows are original, copied from my betters. There will never be a man who gasps to see me in cobalt silk, skin like cream and bisque. Eyes will always slide over me, judging correctly what I have to offer and oh, it always falls short. How I laugh loudest, never last, cheap pantyhose unraveling beneath stapled hems.

"You are nothing; you have nothing."

You Number the Stars

2009-03-16T22:24:00.000-04:00

You number the stars, find secrets in science
and silence.
You turned and climbed,
whispered foreign phrases.

"I outran grief;
I graphed here, the points of loss.
Do you see, now,
how I could not fail?"

You kneel to the ground,
laughing, wanting,
reciting the names of the gods,
translating the geometry of want
and the physics of loss.

Did I wait too late,
your gently burning heart
skipping like a turning record?

Fields Lie Fallow

2009-03-16T22:21:00.001-04:00

Fields lie fallow;
birds wheel wildly in a blankly burning sky.
There is a dreadful waiting,
the sigh before the wailing cry.
the silent hiss of an ill-turned radio.
What next? I can only beg.
The crackling bark of lightning,
the terrible will of the fog.

I collapse and fold myself beneath myself,
hands over my head,
as freezing rain counts off:
This is not a drill.
This is not a drill.

The Shivering Moon

2009-03-09T22:57:00.001-04:00

Since we've met, it seems the stars have left the sky. I could pull the dense blanket of night around my shoulders and there hardly be a murmur to protest. The moon is as bright as an eye, a shiny dime leaching into silvery white, sneaking past and scattering shards across my bed and my sleeping face.

You laugh upon hearing this, insist there are too many stars to name still whispering brightly toward me. I leave you and stand under a blank, dark sky and wonder if you, too, see the shivering moon turning alone.

The Beacon

2009-02-11T01:03:00.000-05:00

For CE

It is the bare, flashing beacon, tremulously alight, whispering white into a meaningless face of a dark sky. Your voice, your nervous laugh, at supersonic speeds shimmies across my ear and smiling face. Across my shaking hands and winds its way in, in towards the white guardians of my slipping lungs. Into a dark miasma of pulsing want, into a heart overburdened by want. I feel your cool fingers grab my arm, pull it towards you. Closer, closer the heaving furnace of your loneliness pulls me. I shiver and burn, slide next to you, as you are broken, aching. My hands find their way. After all, this, at least, is familiar territory. You vomit sand, my searching hands find the sucking jointed thing of metal. It does not come without a fight, but what else do I have energy for? And the beacon winks, blinks out, and does not again burst white.

Find Me

2009-01-30T19:28:00.000-05:00

I'm tired, I turn away from a flashing yellow sun, pulling myself down low in a blanket of down. Over my eyes, in a blank cocoon of sleep. My hair has grown long and winds around my neck. I wake again and again. The night and day seem to bleed together, I'm no longer sure when I dream of you and when longing for you seeps from my pores, soaks the bed. My voice has grown rasping and I taste metal. I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired. I want only clean linen and silence. Though it hasn't happened yet, I've heard it should start to fade, I should no longer wake in a small salty sea. Last night, or the night before, my heart fluttering like a wild bird, I breathed your name in and out, the shallow shudder tearing away at my throat. I curl down deep, a nautilus without a shell. I'd bury myself here and let dust and sorrow bury me until I could only be unearthed as an archaeological find.

Find me. Find me, please.

fragment

2008-11-14T19:06:00.000-05:00

eyes deep in dark poisonous pools

she stares straight ahead as if blind

but if you speak her name,

she turns her face to you

winterwhite and ivory

your question writhes beneath you,

across the floor and as you wish,

it scatters away like a many-legged thing.

you have lost all sense of truth;

if her face is that of the crone

or your lover.

you seek and she turns her head

a crimson shadow
a hank of dark hair shudders,
her breath fecund,
a whisper resonating in your shell-like ear.
It is her only gift,
whistling and low.

Your Wasted Voice

2008-11-08T13:18:00.000-05:00

I wake and find the past has fallen over the room like wet gray snow. I turn my head and all the sweet names you called me under your breath fly into the air to sting my eyes and rest on my lashes. Moving the comforter over, I discover the feeling of your hand in my hair has crusted icy and thick across my legs. My feet are bare and aching beneath a spare and unfailing promise of love. Have I not mourned you enough? A glacial ceiling of white and blue formed from the sharp crystals of your disingenuiously warm hands slithering across the white expanse of my back. I lie in the cool circle of your wasted voice calling, calling, calling; your fragile wrists shaking beneath the weight you pretend to bear.

Everything they said was a lie.

2008-11-03T21:46:00.000-05:00

Everyone here is amazingly kind.

A Letter, Never Sent

2008-09-29T21:19:00.000-04:00

This is a letter that will never be sent. This is a letter I might as well write in the sand; I might as well write it in smoke.

You will never hear my voice again.

You will never spark with a bubbling laugh and spread your arms wide to hug me, your hair scented sweetly with clove cigarettes. You will never ever listen to another song with me and consider the warm melancholy of a dark-haired boy's voice. You will never shudder with joy, digging your fingers into the grass, in the summerwhite sun. Your grief will never fall into step with mine again and we will not weep together until a rushing river runs from our tears.

You have betrayed me, and your name will never again pass my lips without a taint of blood and earth.

I hope your grave is a comfort to you.

In Praise Of

2008-09-13T23:08:00.000-04:00

This is in praise of your fine-boned wrists

and gentle hands,

of your arms laced with blue veins

and your long beautiful neck and pointed chin.

This is in praise of the sharp bones of your hips beneath the flat of my hand.

I sigh with my lips resting on your freckled shoulder

and I pull you closer to me,

even as you sleep

the strange architecture of your back working against me.

What I Want

2008-09-12T17:59:00.000-04:00

They say there is a secret power in naming. In fact, in many cultures, you have a secret name you do not share so that others cannot wield it's power over you.

It is also said that knowing the most secret name of things is a sort of magic, that you are able to truly own and manipulate something if only you can speak it's true name.

There are some well-meaning but confused daytime tv type of people who explain that only by naming your wish, the universe will respond. Though it might be nice to think that a blind and wise system grants your heart's desire, it's a selfish dream.

But I did make a list, two lists, in fact. What I want from the future and what I want from a partner. My heart went cold as I wrote both short lists. You see, I knew it was too much to ask. But having made the lists, I then knew what I could not live without.

And somehow, instead of the universe responding, I did. I started to seek, and to feel. And found found everything I'd dreamt of, and more.

Lost

2008-09-11T23:59:00.000-04:00

You were the gods of our childhood. As soon as your voice shook the earth beneath us, you must have known you were also turning the hourglass. I imagine our tiny hands, the fine pink blush beneath our minute window-like fingernails. I know you looked down upon a head like an bird's egg, delicate and whole. How did you not reach out your hand to feel the soft down of our hair? There is a particular smell to a small hot child, chest heaving from the frenzied joy of running wild. Didn't you want to lean down, pick up the wandering child and whisper a sweet word into their tiny shell-like ear?

Instead, your hand seized the delicate wrist, squeezed until tears slipped from tight-shut eyes. Your rage quickened and grew along with our tiny jerking hearts and bodies. Your voice, a dangerous whisper, raised the hair on our arms and necks, or as a roar like a blind waterfall, rang in our ears for hours.

You laughed, liquid and dark, while we burned with sorrow and fear. Blazing white hot, your violence melted steel until even our hearts were soldered. We hid behind a flimsy paperboard door, tiny shoulders shaking. With time, your very name became a curse.

The Little Boy Lost

William Blake

from Songs of Innocence, 1791

“Father! father! where are you going?

O do not walk so fast.

Speak, father, speak to your little boy,

Or else I shall be lost.”

The night was dark, no father was there;

The child was wet with dew;

The mire was deep, & the child did weep,

And away the vapour flew.

The Center of the World

2008-09-09T18:15:00.001-04:00

I remember your hands hovering
like sick satellites over my reluctant hips

I felt you flay me
night after night
imagining my suffering
would somehow draw me to you

and your monstrous magnetics
made you the gravitational
center of my world

undated, around 2002

For VS

2008-09-09T18:09:00.000-04:00

I explain to the quiet Russian boy
that the streets of Moscow
have lingered long in my dreams
their golden domes glittering in my imagination
he stares and asks
if I plan to go alone
and if I have a gun

You see, here, the two questions
are hardly related
so I laugh when saying
yes then no

With a tired voice
He explains

His uncle, whose name he shares
who still lives in Russia, in the fabled city
was walking home at five p.m.
not two months ago
his own gun nestled in the soft cloud of his down jacket
and he stopped to cross the street
without a threat,
a single sound of warning,
a crowbar or lead pipe was
bashed into the back of his skull
splitting it in three places
and as he hit the ground he saw
frightened women drawing paper shades
looking away

2002

Ancient History

2008-09-09T18:04:00.000-04:00

you went on and broke
our agreements, paths, pacts and promises

somewhere along the line
instead of screaming
wailing and wearing your sorrow
on your sleeve like a bloody rose
instead of pulling the emergency brake
you opened the window
mangled and pulled yourself
out, into the wind and onto the rocks below

I could have saved you
we speak the same language

but you didn't want saving
you wanted the swift hum and thrum to

end

You Find Me

2008-08-31T23:40:00.000-04:00

You find me on the rocky shore of a dark lake, the quiet wound round my heart, a gentle serpent I have learned to bear. So long now there has been only the hush of the water, and the hiss of the wild wood behind. Once there was the staccato crack of my own footfall, now silent as I am washed and still in a moonless night.

First there is only the idea of you, hazy in the winter light. Sleeping, I do not want to wake. The idea I could turn and pull close, my hands empty and searching. Then the gentle call of your voice, elucidating want without exception. I remember your voice, and follow, my feet bare and blue. Now you are as close to me as if your lips were brushing my ear and you whisper back my inmost heart's secret want but as your own. Now knowing you, I know your breath on me would set the day afire.

It Will Find Us

2008-08-31T22:37:00.000-04:00

I must tell you now, it will find us. It will not be the spark of metal in the night, the pool of warmth wasting away on asphalt. Despite your fears, it will not come pressed against a car in a poorly lit parking lot, your cheek a dark smear on the glass, the stars staring dumbly down. It will not be the delicate pop and whisper in the night, one pupil dilated to bring on a longer, shivering sleep. You will not clutch your heart in the lukewarm tub, left hand going brightly numb as the weight of oceans crushes your ribcage. Sadly, you will not scream the name of your beloved while kneeling in the turmoil of a bank lobby, the hiss of radios wild outside.

I wish I could say you would clutch the hand of your youngest while a kind-eyed nurse administers that sweet final injection. I cannot even mention the possibility of the dark heady smell of burning oil, the constellation of glass spread before you as you realize the radio plays on but something vital inside does not.

It will not come any of those ways. Instead, it will come down a brightly-lit corridor and it will not reason, it does not know. We comfort ourselves with the words, as the incantations our watchwords, chanted over and over again at night; virus, prion, bacteriology, deoxyribonucleic acid, immunosuppressant, and so on until sleep finds us again. Despite this, it will find it's way out of the shaft, the airlock, the sliding glass doors. You will carefully tape the windows and doors but even then it works within you, as in your neighbors, your children. And before it's over, you will beg and beg for the claustrophobia of the car trunk, a warm tailpipe burning your leg. You will count and re-count the small blue pills, even before the television reports flicker out. But you too will start to feel the tell-tale signs and know that nothing nothing nothing you have ever thought or dreamt will ease this end.

"So Lovely was the Lonliness" - Antony Hegarty

2008-08-31T17:25:00.000-04:00

I swallowed stones
to fill the ache in my belly.
One caught in my throat,
weighed down words
so that they gathered in the dark canal of my pulse.
Others were ground to dust
and with each heartbeat
ran wild, surged within me.
As a spider web, as antique lace,
delicate cells
replaced with stone and ash.
I felt myself become brittle
and finally broken.
My eyes, blank as granite.
I heard marble crack as I opened my hands,
white-cold skin seeking yours.

The Scent of Ozone

2008-08-02T19:02:00.000-04:00

I could not help it. I could not keep myself from it, I did not know then it was not wise. I opened the door, stepped out and into the storm. There was only the wild wind lifting my hair, the scent of ozone and the whipping water. If you had a voice, if you said something, it was lost in the chaos of that downpour. I did not know that to stand alone there was to invite something more, to tempt the gods too far. I thought then, that I was brave. Instead, I tasted steel and all was white and I was lost.

No happy ending.

2008-08-02T18:42:00.000-04:00

I feel as if I'm wasted and I've wasted every day.

I Invent the World

2008-07-31T21:21:00.001-04:00

I fold my arm again, smoothing the soft green blanket over my chest. The past comes whispering out at me, and with a snapping blink of wide-open eyes, I will it away. I have a world of almost-sleep, I build it every night as I turn and turn in bed. I go to it now. It once was the dream of a dream, much less than a world. Now, I spend many hours outlining every golden leaf, painting the scent of loamy earth in the air, imbuing even the lichen with a strange green surging life. One part of me screams for sleep; the other goes on, dressing flesh on ideas, spitting out a sun-lit shaft of golden hair. Characters here die and go unmourned, until the next night, when I reinvent the world again.

I dreamt of loving something used

2008-07-24T21:32:00.000-04:00

I dreamt of loving something worn
a sodden cardboard sign
dissolving in the winter weather
I dreamt of loving something used.
I dreamt of loving Athos
of his eyes blazing bright with drink.
I laid my hand on his fevered cheek and
He whispered a name

It wasn't mine.

Unravel

2008-07-17T19:16:00.000-04:00

Will every part of me unravel? Seams unroll and drop, trailing into puddles behind me. Will my hair start to fall out, in damp hanks into shaking hands?

I'd give whatever throbs within me for a single taste of your skin; if every time I opened my mouth to speak your name, I'd have been satisfied if a memory of my childhood escaped.

While sleeping, I grasp for your naked foot, your flush cheek, your outstretched hand.

When waking, instead of reaching, I turn away. Turn towards a distant hill, a brightly burning star, the horizon, each equally unreachable.

I search through stacks of yellowing pages and crumbling books for my most secret name, now long forgotten.

Thomas Wolfe Might Have Been Wrong

2008-06-30T20:11:00.000-04:00

You can go home again.

"I've shed selves since then, like a snake sheds skin" she said, her eyes whipping past me. I nod and agree but say only "I allowed it to happen, I made the choice, and live with it even now."

"What?" The question a Rubik's cube.

The answer is out of me before I can close my mouth, it has slipped past, and unfurls like flag. "I have always always loved him."

In the perfect world, I'd have fallen to the ground, my eyes rolling back, the shivering seizure taking the truth of it from me. She'd have been struck deaf by god, if he'd been kind. I should have let out a scream that went on till I coughed blood, I'd have torn my hair and thrown myself on the pyre of the past.

Instead

the miles keep flying by, the forest is not the skeletons of char after a fire, the sky blazes blue instead and I close my eyes and cover them with my hands.

There is a creeping joy in knowing, and now I do know. "I could never tell him no" I whisper. "I have looked for him always, and defined and redefined love by what he had to offer, though it was so much less than love."

She is silent, then a small burst of laughter, like a child.

"Now what?"

Waiting

2008-06-09T20:06:00.000-04:00

Where have I felt happiness?
I don't even know now what to seek, where to find it.

Joy slithers in

2008-05-28T13:45:00.001-04:00

It's true - joy and fear all at once. So many changes in the works - a plan to travel beyond the distant horizons into dreams I've not yet dared to weave, a plan to sit in silence and pain for a number of days (dazed and mute, what will I think up?), and more even.

I watched a movie in which a delicate child, two months premature, died for lack of medical equipment. How can I not be moved to inflict some change of my own onto the world?

For TNB

2008-04-12T18:15:00.000-04:00

I warn you, now wonder what his hands hurry to hide
I warn you now, beware the faulty fruit this love should bring
Eyes certain, will certainly stray
What warning would you have?
Build what you can from those fickle fibers
those half-laughed lines
I swear, give it time
and you'll choke with the lie

I bear you nothing but witness.
A heart as dark and sickly sweet
you'll find is filled with nothing
but raspberry jam.

For KL, because I have nothing else to offer.

2008-02-23T20:21:00.000-05:00

I wonder what parts of myself I'll hide without even thinking. I wonder what I'll conceal and pretend, how much of myself I'll be able to swallow down or push away. I wonder what will slip out and what I'll sell.

I peel skin in layers, shedding whatever part of me I feel is attaching itself permanently. I wonder if you can even find something within me that is me, something solid within the gelatinous pulse that endlessly renews. I'm beginning to fear that there is no skeleton below, nothing hard and solid for you to grasp, nothing immobile to set your heart onto.

I wonder if disappointment will flutter ripe and willful through a heart borne onwards towards treachery. I wait, breathless, for the pale wash over your eyes, for the rush to speak, to cover what you first thought with a kind word.

I tread by an uncertain rhythm towards whatever fate has in mind for me. My heart and hands, endlessly calculating probabilities, the painful geometry of reality. I manage to convince myself that any possible outcome is, in fact, desirable.

I also wonder how much of the hunger for love is the longing for death. Because surely, what else makes me feel both more alive, more vibrant and flush and more dead, more wasted and gnawingly empty than love? Is it licking the grave or giving birth?

In an empty apartment -

2008-01-15T22:37:00.000-05:00

I walk down the hallway, close the doors, turn out all the lights. The soft breath of the central heating sighs on. Otherwise, it is silent. I flip on a song or two every now and then, but the silence only seems more acute after they're over.

Sometimes I'm sure I live with a ghost, or maybe I occasionally slip into an alternate universe. They say it's easier than you might imagine, one wrong step and a new horizon blossoms out of the old, or this reality simply slips away out of the corner of your eye. Your voice, the incandescent incantation, breathes life into the transparent figment I conjure. And you are there, in a bright burst of hope and color. I know it would be too much to ask you to stay.

So you go, with a hiss like electricity, you slip away.

Picking through the pieces...

2008-01-14T23:06:00.000-05:00

And trying to find the best. The ginkgo is an orphan, did you know that? Last of it's kind. Such a lonely beauty in that.

A while ago I saw a friend who hadn't realized how things had ended and she asked about you, her face as innocent and open as a silver dollar. How easy it was to smile and say it was for the best. I still reach for you in an empty room, but it's better this way. I hear your voice when the telephone rings; this is best for everyone. The world we created drifted away as easily as dust, you can't want any more than that. In my mind, I reach across an empty table to feel your collarbone like the strange sculpture of a wild genius; this is better, much better.

In Which I Grow Tired of the Wingman

2007-12-19T23:11:00.000-05:00

We sat around the table and traded "I was drinking at a party and hooked up with this boy...and here's the silly story" and the only one I had to tell was how I lost a good friend because he was later embarrassed to have been seen as going with the unattractive girl. And I'm still that girl. We were out tonight at a great place, and an adorable Australian man introduces himself to us to get to my friend. And I realized I'm the unattractive friend again. And I get over it by being sarcastic, funny, stupid, and trying to get her to take his card (thinking maybe something good can come out of it, at least a nice date for a friend who needs a nice time). And I realize I'm being too over the top, embarrassing her, and pointlessly encouraging a nice man to get his feelings hurt because she's not into him.

So yeah, that's me. Not-quite-right. Never quite right. Often the least attractive girl at the bar. Always the girl the wingman takes. Not sometimes, all the time.

I know how you look is important, but I thought that at some point, it'd be less important.

I heart Tricky & PJ Harvey

2007-11-17T23:43:00.000-05:00

They never built a life.

2007-11-04T22:26:00.000-05:00

My parents never seemed to build a life together. For as far back as I can remember, they only stumbled through, days and years passing without a meaning, without any sort of message to their children desperately searching, asking.

My mother became depressed, I think she started to see it for what it was - living without kindness, without love, without reason, art and beauty.

My father, even now, sees it every now and again, but pushes it away. It's too hard to think so much has been wasted by thoughtless cruelty.

A friend once asked me what my childhood was like. I hadn't been keeping it a secret; it's finally starting to fade. I turned my heart inside out trying to explain it to someone who'd been well-loved, then left it as one word - fear.

My sister and I spent a night a few weeks ago trading stories. Only two years apart, and our experiences were so different. I told her about the early morning orthodontist appointment, trying to explain exactly how I fell in such a way as to drive my braces into my cheek, almost as though I'd been hit.

There were four of us, four children now adults, all still listening for what we never heard, what we never felt when we were young.

The oldest searching, always, for approval, seeking some sort of reward for self-denial. Like her father, endlessly critical, impatient with any fault. She looks for god because the gods of her childhood disappointed her so thoroughly.

Myself, the youngest girl, at 27, an uncertain lover, still asking "Can you love me?" , but always sure of the real answer. Taught to hate myself so completely, I can't bear the scrutiny of being wanted.

The oldest boy, now a bitter, confused manchild. Blame and anger seeps from every pore, and he deadens it with drugs, with danger.

The baby, he was never able to harden his soft spirit, so he pushes himself further and further away with every passing moment to save his heart, and seek his own approval.

I haven't lived with my father in more than a dozen years. How long do I live in the shadow of a childhood that should evaporate, pass like smoke through me? Now I reinvent myself, turning every fear into a question, asking, always asking, how to make a life of meaning and love. The best I've come up with is to tell myself not to waste any time telling people how unbelievably perfect and deserving of love they are. I try to let anger be only an experience, and kindness the rule. What else do I have?

My second favorite Irish man.

2007-10-23T20:09:00.000-04:00

Okay, distant second.

If there is joy?

2007-10-10T21:54:00.000-04:00

I have a special skill for avoiding things, it seems. Even now, the screen blank and staring before me, I rearrange my desk, pick up pieces of broken plastic, play songs I don't need to hear.

I've been wrecked by love.

And yet, I turn my hands to the sky and go again. It seems love burns out at me from the darkness but when I grasp, I come away with a handful of feathers, a few dusty curls.

I hope, that this time will the the last. That this fear, it will dissolve into him, be shriven from me finally. Self-hatred creeps, dark fingers clawing, and I wait, almost expectant, almost hoping for the truth, that this is the way.

Oh, but how my dreams dilate, expanding exponentially, his voice painting a bright streamer of desire. "Here" he says "is my heart in my hand, here is the world, here is everything and everything." and "Please, please, please."

Ember of Rage.

2007-09-29T17:59:00.000-04:00

Go! Do something!

Rules, and having them. And occasionally breaking them.

2007-09-03T18:12:00.001-04:00

This is clearly against the rules. Basically, all of them.

But I don't mind.

The Guest House

2007-08-22T20:16:00.001-04:00

This being human is a guest house.
Every day is a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He or she may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door, laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi

Open

2007-08-21T17:22:00.000-04:00

Here, he says, is my gift.

"I dream of your hands, of your face, of your lips. I have heard your every dream and fear and bless your generous heart with every ounce of mine. These are the things that come to me over and over again: your form moving against mine in a soft, dark world of our own creation; your eyes sparking with laughter, ready to light me afire; your voice, a secret pathway to the garden exploding with the scents of my desire, ylang ylang, lemon verbena, and lily.

Ask me whatever you want; I am an open book."

No, I am an open book.

Equal Parts

2007-08-18T14:04:00.001-04:00

I have this desire to take my posts down, to undo all that was done. To unfeel what was felt. But I won't. I'm struggling to accept what I feel and am, without editing and revising for my own satisfaction, for my own approval.

Right now, here I'm feeling everything is equal parts death and life. Things are passing too quickly, as though I were the unmoving star of a time-lapse video. I'm living like I should have years ago. I feel behind. I feel too far ahead of everyone else my age. I want to say "I'm sorry I disappoint you by being 26 and not married. Fuck you for thinking I should be." But I don't say it. I never do, instead, I cringe and say "I do hope you're happy!" While knowing they're already not.

I fall in love too easily, my heart pours itself out to every waiting ear, giving up a bit of itself every time, hoping for something back.

And I'm reluctant to even post this.

On the dream.

2007-08-18T00:31:00.000-04:00

Waking up, after a night in the woods, I am groggy and cranky because there's no shower, no hope of one any time soon. We have pine needles in our hair. I have morning breath, and am struggling out of sleep and uncertain if I can actually live without hot water, or a comfortable bed. And then, a kiss, laughter.

And the knowledge that even now, I love you. I couldn't imagine anyone more perfect than you.

It bears repeating.

2007-08-15T17:28:00.000-04:00

Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe. - Neil Gaiman

"The law of averages maintains there must be other people out there like me."

2007-07-18T17:59:00.000-04:00

I have written and rewritten this next post so many times I don't even remember what I was trying to say.

I just had a really amazing experience of knowing someone wonderful. Someone who was so like me, someone who made me laugh and renewed my faith in intelligence and caring. Someone I already miss, someone I feel somehow smaller, less without. One of the things that brought us closer when I asked these two questions - "What do you fear most?" and "What do you dream?"

My answer to the latter was I dream of the end of the world. Of an apocalypse. I dream of the coming plague, the sun dissolving on the horizon, of reality falling away like puzzle pieces to reveal another reality beneath. I dream of utter horror and loneliness and I dream of the world reborn. Mostly I dream of knowing it will end, that the power of a thousand suns will be released on earth, that what we have created will end us, and we will die in a nuclear holocaust, or worse survive.

But that's not what I fear, it's what I dream. When I asked what you fear most, I didn't have an answer to my own question. But now I know.

And even saying it turns my spine inside out, knowing who helped me find the answer turns my heart to shadow because what happened between us made it even more likely to be true.

I fear being alone. Not temporarily. I love living alone, I love being on my own. I love dancing in my car, staying up curled around trashy disposable fiction, passing hours on my own. What I fear most lead me to ask what I wanted most. And what I want most is a family. A partner to share my life with, someone committed to seeing the next day with me, and the next. And the next. Someone who knows me, is overwhelmed by love for me and the whole world, and maybe wants to adopt a kid with me. And we have friends.

That's what I want most. Stupidly simple. Maybe just stupid. Because I can't do it on my own. You can't have a dream that depends on someone else because there's no guarantee that it can happen. In fact, the law of averages maintains it cannot happen. And so that's what I fear most, dying, leaving this world, and not having had that.

A Message

2007-07-16T22:23:00.000-04:00

I want to scream my throat raw, collapsing in the street. I want to say I feel nothing, to laugh at the mention of your name. I want to saw away at ice for hours before I find your face, surrounded by a shimmering blue halo. Instead there is only an echo, an ache. I wake up, your name on my lips, and feel (instead of anger) only want.

I turn your kindness and comments over and over again, shuffling what was said and unsaid.

Even now, I only wish for the silence before your nervous laugh.

What New Orleans was Really Like

2007-07-16T22:19:00.001-04:00

Of course, it was wonderful, squeaks the plastered smile.

I wrote this while I was there.

I could die here and no one would know for days. Maybe I already have. I wasn't able to resist, hooked one heel over the railing and leaned...

I am in a sort of limbo, clearly neither heaven nor hell. There are too many beautiful things here - exquisite snuff bottles etched with bats and butterflies, but it is a sort of hell, each room and restaurant as faceless and unfamiliar as the last.

I Never Learn: A Follow-Up to Three Conversations

2007-07-16T22:15:00.000-04:00

Here is the problem with resting under the hand that could strike you. Sometimes, most times, it does. Whatever the blow, it is always a shock. The explosion of light upon impact, the bursting of warm metal in the mouth, tasting iron and fear.

Without knowing it, he was

2007-07-16T22:03:00.000-04:00

Coaxing out whatever was left, a paper
heart, carefully folded and
Refolded, easily torn
Is as rotten as
silk drapes dropping into dust.

Off to the Big Easy!

2007-07-08T21:53:00.000-04:00

I am destined to spend a week in the real Sin City - New Orleans. Three days of work, three days of play. This is my first vacation on my own, so please send me good luck and safety.

I think it'd be a gross simplification to say I have mixed feelings about going. Some say it's the wicked stepsister/evil twin of my beautiful, twisted hometown, Charleston. Some say it plays hostess to a very stylish cocktail party at the end of civilization. I know it's the last place one of my best friends lived. She committed suicide in New Orleans, while we were planning my first visit. I've still never been. Will I wrestle with her ghost or her madness when I'm there? I don't know. When she died I saw her face everywhere, but it's been years, and her features have faded into a haze, I can't pick them out in my mind anymore, much less in a crowd. The reality, the bone-rattling rawness of her death is gone, in it's place only a weight, as cold and immovable as iron.

For SR

The story you told with fluid hands and tumbling awkward pauses killed me long before you died.
When I taste vodka, I kiss your mouth.
I see only your white breast, scented with clove.
How could you have left me with those witless junkies?
Did you think their chatter would be my balm?
I reread your letters, realize you were only there to chronicle the sinking ship.

How Much?

2007-07-06T09:48:00.000-04:00

How much can change in a week?

How much? A handful of days that the swift unceasing planet dispenses with in only 7 nights. So much can change. Patrice Lamumba slid from saviour to corpse in as few days. Tulips will fail, their petals turning into a stiff memory of their vivid selves, littering the table below with a fragile shell bursting into colored ash at the touch.

Or, in a week, after the prayer for rain there might be the river running wild over the parched desperate skin of crackling dust.

There might be the chance, the distance, the transparent joy of blooming.

This Fear

2007-07-04T11:29:00.001-04:00

That bright ribbon of trust, the delicate thread of sweetness that connects us is so fragile that someone clumsy like me can break it and not even know.

I keep moving forward, knowing that it can't last. Hoping it does.

This relationship can only end in lung cancer.

2007-07-04T11:04:00.001-04:00

It's true.

I get weird when something wonderful happens. It makes me very nervous. I can't eat, I can't sleep at night.

No Bravery.

2007-07-03T20:45:00.000-04:00

James Blunt's protest song.

3 Conversations

2007-06-29T00:03:00.000-04:00

Two days ago, I had three conversations with three very different people. All three were beautiful, and made me feel alive.

It was wonderful electricity buzzing between hearts, as open and vulnerable as lying beneath the hand that could strike you.

I can never decide if I'm too broken, that no one can really know me, that some strangeness in my heart prevents it. The fear of that distance grows within me, shifts shape and size. Sometimes it is a stone at the back of my throat, worn and smooth like a river rock. Sometimes I feel it seeping out from underneath, unfurling like a flag.

It was too late

2007-04-12T21:43:00.000-04:00

I got my returned mail from Kurt Vonnegut - he didn't get it because the day I sent it was probably the day he fell. He died yesterday, and I bought A Man Without a Country the same day.

He was right.

One life - you got to do what you can.

2007-03-09T21:54:00.000-05:00

Well, for one I work for a large health non-profit. Let's call it the Foundation. My job is challenging, tough, exhausting, exhilarating, depressing...it tears me in so many directions I sleep it, eat it, dream it. But am I giving my all to a cause that only feeds on itself? Am I working there because it's somewhere comfortable ($, health insurance) or doing something good?

I do like the health insurance, and it's a challenge to live in a major city without money. But there are other jobs. So it's the "doing good" eh? That canned answer...

So why are you applying to law school?
What made you want to be a doctor?

I really am not complaining...I started writing this and then went to a workshop. During that workshop an oncology nurse said that when she started nursing about 25 years ago, if a child was diagnosed with cancer, they would immediately begin preparing the family for the death of that child. Now, with cure rates of the most common form of cancer at over 80% things are very different. Which is good.

Which makes me want to stay at this job. It really can't be about the money.

What exactly are you doing here?

2007-03-06T21:27:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure.

But I think I have things to say, some of them I want to remember. Some of them I want you to know. If you are reading this, thank you. Please always feel free to email me at KindnessIsTheAnswer@gmail.com.

I just mailed a fan letter to Kurt Vonnegut. I hope it gets to him before he dies. I recently read God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian, and it was beautiful. It helped me clarify some of my own thoughts about death and the afterlife.

Just some things I have been thinking about lately-

I wish I could agree with Richard Dawkins and never look back. I yearn for more, but I have a heart lead by intellect. I know this life is all that we have. But I want more. I know there is beauty beyond myself, and it seems like something Great. Things here are so laden with richness it takes my breath away. I am constantly struck/heart-numbed by what I have at my fingertips.