Dec 2021
The air is magic
In the same way a human nervous system is divinely inspired by tree roots
As tree roots seek other tree roots to bind to, sharing nutrients and information underground in secret tongues lost to time (but not to trees),
So too does the nervous system talk to our various insides,
electricity and fat and water and blood,
mysterious even to us as we haphazardly propel ourselves through space,
a mess of actions and reactions.
Magic
In the same way that time exists only because death exists
And death exists both because of and in spite of time.
And I am alive.
(If you ever doubt yourself, remember the incredible odds you overcame just to become).
Months maybe, a year?
We were unmasked in your home or mine,
Or on a walk
Or texting our words into knitted ropes that became our strength and our life line
And you said
“I never realized how connected we all are. That every moment spent with others, I am breathing their breath. We’re sharing breath, all of us, all the time.”
Oh.
Oh. Yes.
Lashes of breath like lizard tongues
Forked and solid and hot
Plunging and coiling;
Ariel losing her song.
(I carry this with me still, like I carry the threat of the possibility of blood drying in the veins, crystallizing there.)
A sharing of totems, airborne on the exhale, between the vastness of humanity.
Maybe it’s a
Heart,
feather,
child,
guitar string,
equation,
pet,
sense memory
- a bit of mustard,
a crumb of cheese -
a shame,
a secret,
an illness,
a loss,
a hope,
a flame,
a diary entry,
a passage in a story that is so written on your DNA that your ancestors will possess its truth and sacredness,
Not ******, but nakedness.
The unknowable intricacies that terraform the gallery walls of every life ever lived,
Each of us a cavern sprawling brimming with a trail mix of escaped fragments of other souls, nestled among our own wreckage and music and roots of trees.
This invisible connection to each other,
so wrought now, warped and vivid
against the sky.
Drawing breath as drawing sword,
building blocks as barriers built,
We are withdrawing from each other in our sick rooms,
dosed on breath from birth,
suddenly forced into thickened singularity for an easier swallow, weighted heavy on the chest.
Oh I know, it’s the X-ray blanket at the dentist when you were a kid
It’s Ian’s sweaty shaking hand during that first detox, 20 bars deep, wanting to tell him that I ******* told you so, I TOLD you. Knowing that no one’s voice would ever be louder than his own.
You look at me,
And I’m losing you.
I see it like bitterness on your lips
But I don’t mind.
You’re right, I’m exhausted too.
I wish I was better at being frank.
How, though, to make sense of this new world if not to drag the old world into it?
How to point and name and say “this is”
When all you know is what it is not?
In the same way a human nervous system is divinely inspired by tree roots
As tree roots seek other tree roots to bind to, sharing nutrients and information underground in secret tongues lost to time (but not to trees),
So too does the nervous system talk to our various insides,
electricity and fat and water and blood,
mysterious even to us as we haphazardly propel ourselves through space,
a mess of actions and reactions.
Magic
In the same way that time exists only because death exists
And death exists both because of and in spite of time.
And I am alive.
(If you ever doubt yourself, remember the incredible odds you overcame just to become).
Months maybe, a year?
We were unmasked in your home or mine,
Or on a walk
Or texting our words into knitted ropes that became our strength and our life line
And you said
“I never realized how connected we all are. That every moment spent with others, I am breathing their breath. We’re sharing breath, all of us, all the time.”
Oh.
Oh. Yes.
Lashes of breath like lizard tongues
Forked and solid and hot
Plunging and coiling;
Ariel losing her song.
(I carry this with me still, like I carry the threat of the possibility of blood drying in the veins, crystallizing there.)
A sharing of totems, airborne on the exhale, between the vastness of humanity.
Maybe it’s a
Heart,
feather,
child,
guitar string,
equation,
pet,
sense memory
- a bit of mustard,
a crumb of cheese -
a shame,
a secret,
an illness,
a loss,
a hope,
a flame,
a diary entry,
a passage in a story that is so written on your DNA that your ancestors will possess its truth and sacredness,
Not ******, but nakedness.
The unknowable intricacies that terraform the gallery walls of every life ever lived,
Each of us a cavern sprawling brimming with a trail mix of escaped fragments of other souls, nestled among our own wreckage and music and roots of trees.
This invisible connection to each other,
so wrought now, warped and vivid
against the sky.
Drawing breath as drawing sword,
building blocks as barriers built,
We are withdrawing from each other in our sick rooms,
dosed on breath from birth,
suddenly forced into thickened singularity for an easier swallow, weighted heavy on the chest.
Oh I know, it’s the X-ray blanket at the dentist when you were a kid
It’s Ian’s sweaty shaking hand during that first detox, 20 bars deep, wanting to tell him that I ******* told you so, I TOLD you. Knowing that no one’s voice would ever be louder than his own.
You look at me,
And I’m losing you.
I see it like bitterness on your lips
But I don’t mind.
You’re right, I’m exhausted too.
I wish I was better at being frank.
How, though, to make sense of this new world if not to drag the old world into it?
How to point and name and say “this is”
When all you know is what it is not?
