As time dilates and the tempo
of my little bird heart slows,
I recover pieces of self,
cast like felt petals on the way,
doubling back with a bug-catcher's
glass, counting the legs of my days
outgrown. I capture my child-like
wonder on a twig. I spy curiosity
on a leaf, speckled with holes
bored by time that rushes
like a stream with no regard
for the riverbed it erodes.
I step into myself like old clothes
and remember what it feels like
to be – existing for the sake
of existing. Where life is treasure
enough.
Jun 12, 2023
Jun 12, 2023 at 10:06 AM UTC
I catch myself wondering
if all this quiet chaos
will resolve —
a black hole collapsing,
internal and unseen.
Or will the nebulae
of bursting into being
extend beyond the edges
of who I am and was?
Will they see me give up
on giving up?
I've been led to believe
that new beginnings like these
happen in an instant —
a distant flicker on cosmic rings.
But what if my future,
much like anything
worth seeing through,
devours an abundance
of time? What if
I must surrender
years of light and breath and
atoms to outrun
the galactic hunger
of my unrepenting mind?
Mar 24, 2023
Mar 24, 2023 at 8:40 AM UTC
Love is in the details, the way
you ask me softly on that quiet,
charcoal couch if I need you
to press the web of flesh between
my finger and my thumb to ease
the pounding in my head:
Pressure for pressure.
It’s the way you say
I’ll be okay before I tell you
that I’m not. The way you know
I need to hear the things I don’t
believe. The way you see me
broken and beautiful —
a duality, not
a mutual exclusion. I don’t
know what to make
of us, but
it feels safe here. So I’ll stay
under nebulous terms,
until I burn your open heart.
I don't know why
I cannot hold affection
without tearing
my closest friends apart.
Feb 17, 2023
Feb 17, 2023 at 7:51 PM UTC
I wonder: how much
of my soul — that red-hot,
throat-tearing,
incandescent soul —
shivers
on the brink
of extinction?
Jan 8, 2023
Jan 8, 2023 at 10:52 AM UTC
What a challenge to discern
between different shades of love,
bundled vessels
beneath the surgeon’s gaze.
Am I enamored, or simply
safe within the confines
of your presence? Electricity —
or a grounded, warm affection?
Why must I cut us open so?
What about our coexistence
befits a keen dissection?
I cannot paint us faithfully
on canvas, gauze, or paper;
I remain chromatically confused.
I pray you do not take
uncertainty for misdirection —
I’ve naught but
colorful abstraction
with which to leave
our hearts perfused.
Nov 9, 2022
Nov 9, 2022 at 9:45 AM UTC
I’d like to think the forest and I
have something in common:
a quiet comfort to imagine
my veins as xylem and phloem,
vernal vasculature
full of sugar and elegance.
I’d like to be autotrophic,
in a way—a provider.
Sustainable, substantial, life-giving.
Imagine it: the world thrumming
about your roots, communication
with the soil, nitrogenous and softly damp.
I don’t know about you,
but I find peace
in my potential for symbiosis.
I can close my eyes around it
comfortably, breathing in the knowledge
that my exhales sustain trees.
Aug 31, 2022
Aug 31, 2022 at 10:22 AM UTC
Like a flipped-over puzzle to me,
the edges of your heartflesh—
regal pieces
of stained glass and veneer.
Who are you, love of mine?
Not my love;
I was never under
such delusion.
I map our trajectory
with sorrowful hands,
the topography of unrequited devotion
an elegy in Braille.
All instruments fail to measure
the weight you carry
in my bones. You would sink me
in the Dead Sea.
And I would live it willingly—
a fate of saturation—
if it offered permanence,
a way to hold you
in my cells like water.
I’d surrender the need
for land and air if we
could inhabit the dawn of time.
I’d cast off all evolution—
eons of bells and whistles—
if it meant
that you could be mine.
Aug 16, 2022
Aug 16, 2022 at 11:15 AM UTC
Your other self watches softly
from the far side of the room,
a decade and a half or so
between you. I line you up,
placing one over the other
like wax paper for tracing.
More lines this time around,
more furrowed concern
and a sternness
in the pursing of your lips—
flatlining, discerning. I wonder
what has darkened your eyes.
If not time, something quicker
and more violent. It hangs
in the drapes about your face,
upholstery of the self, rolled out.
Nothing wavers in your gaze,
no candles dancing. Only smoke
of a dream, thinning, deferred—
snuffed out.
Jun 29, 2022
Jun 29, 2022 at 3:10 PM UTC
There’s something about
new-wave jazz,
all modern and electric,
that beckons armageddon—
a set of never-ending
Shepard tones, swelling
in sun-baked suburbia
like a body in the water:
light, rising, mercifully vague
as to the terrors
it may unleash tomorrow.
Jun 18, 2022
Jun 18, 2022 at 10:22 AM UTC