-
This is the only poem I am allowed to write about you.

I went to a strange store today. Immediately, it smelled like my childhood. It smelled like the stores my mother went to downtown. The snacks in transparent little bags, the keychains, the painkillers, the unmarked items. But this place was different in that it was so big. In the toy section, amongst the many visibly cheaper toys, they had a handful of toys from big brands, just sitting there collecting dust. I found a certain big brand stuffed lion and thought, "This is unreasonably priced but I can't walk out of here without him." So I got that for myself. I'm excited for when he's washed so I can hold him all day, he's very soft.

There was a small hair section. Hair ties, hair brushes, hair things; hair clips. One of them caught my eye. In a white, slightly bent square piece of cardboard- mostly unmarked save for a tiny, tiny logo that said "Melody"- was a hair clip in the shape of a flower. I thought it was so pretty. I instantly thought of you, I'm not sure why. It was beige, and soft to the touch. I noticed there were other colors. I picked up a red one and looked at the beige one. Obviously the red one, right? And with a little bit of hesitation I put back the beige flower, the first one I'd seen. I always do that. I feel so sad picking a different one, slowly setting down the first one I'd picked up and held in my hand. It feels like abandoning someone you love.

For when I see her, I thought. For if I ever see her.
-

"What do you mean, when you say 'angel'?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean why do you call me that. What does that word mean to you?"

"You know what it means."

"Sometimes I think I do."

"It means dark thing. Because there's a violence to it. Because it's hard to see. Like looking at the body in the distance- the thing standing between the trees, with only the faint glow of the moon illuminating its face."

"You think angels are dark?"

"I think angels are mysterious. You know they're there, but that's it. You think you know what they are, what they look like, but you're incapable of grasping their image."

"So, what does that look like?"

"It looks like everything. And nothing. Total darkness, blinding light."

"Sounds.. overwhelmingly incomprehensible."

"That's why it looks like different things to different people. A woman, a man, the recurring nightmare from your childhood. Some people think it looks wrong. But to an angel, there is no wrong way to have a body."

"Now why does that sound familiar?"

"I think an angel looks like a sword. Like the terrifying indifference of nature, and the undying, righteous rage of a person with a good heart. All and none, never wrong in their being."

"And this is what you call me?"

"Yes. This is what I call you.
My darling mystery. My dark thing.
My angel."

The flowers grow. Your garden is there. I beg you to grow like I always have. This time it's a little bit different. A halo of black around your face, I think I'm losing consciousness. I remind you my body can't do it anymore. I'm crying, I think we're done. You hand me the plastic bottle, to water me before the flowers. You step outside, you tell me the night is cool. The wind whispers, the petals dance. There's a watermelon, you tell me. It's growing.
Your garden is there. And the flowers, under the moon, they grow.

JG (2)

There's so much more to say about the things you did to me.
I know it's not black and white.
I know you were hurt by me,
but never in the way you hurt me.
I gave you a scratch while in an autistic meltdown living with you caused, and you told me I wasn't a person. That's an important distinction.

I just woke up from a nightmare. It was so vivid.
I often have very vivid dreams, and I've had terrible nightmares before. Of course I have. You get nightmares when you live in unlivable conditions. But that's over now. I haven't had a nightmare for over a year.

You know what? My last nightmare- the last one I really remember- was about someone else.

She's beautiful. Just absolutely gorgeous- she loves to hear it, too. She's kind- because after having experienced her own darkness, she knows to be. But she's also afraid. I don't think she knows I can see it.
She hides away when she's unsure about things, but only because she wants to get it right- I think she's a perfectionist that way- and she's very secretive. Especially when it comes to her fears.
She's made mistakes, and when she does she tends to run away from them, but in the end, she wants to be better. Ultimately, she wants to grow. I believe that.

That's why I'll forgive her when she comes.

I feel a softness for her that I also feel for you. Each person is infinitely precious; what we go through matters and our experiences make us rich, like wines that become more valuable with time-- except.. putting it that way isn't quite right.
I think that existence equals value. I'd love the grape as much as I'd love the wine. I believe the value you hold now was there when you were born. I think people just become brighter with time, no matter what we experience. But we have always been precious, and worth being protected.

You're so precious. There's only one of you.
I feel love for you, of course I do. I'm probably wrong about a few things, not getting the full story of it. I certainly don't totally know how you felt during all that. Since you've just..never told me.

But I don't care.
I don't mean that in a cruel, defensive way. I just don't want to engage with it. I'm not interested.
I'm not necessarily even upset about any of this.

I don't feel resentment. I don't feel like it's even me you betrayed.
I've processed so much of my trauma; the me who suffered and the present me feel like different people now. And I'm angry you hurt someone.
You put them through something they didn't have to experience. You made their dissociation permanent by forcing them into this environment when they had already told you they weren't ready.

They'd lie awake at night having these episodes of despair, and you were annoyed.
"I just want to sleep" you said, with a person crying, spiraling in despair, unable to cope with any of it, next to you in bed.
That's a whole person, as infinitely precious as you and everyone else on the planet and you treated them- you guessed it- not like a person, but like a problem. An annoyance.

I'm not going to forgive you for that.

Not only that, but you come offering nostalgia of all things, to pull me back into you. Nostalgia. What's that got to do with the **** you put me through?

There's so much more. The time you hid the matches just to try to make things a little harder for me and Dani. The jealousy. But then you'd ****** some girl days after we'd separated. Touching me, thinking you were seducing me somehow, when I came into your place for less than a minute- while Dani and my mother were outside waiting. Do you know how ****** up and uncomfortable that was?
The disrespect. I should've decked you. I should have dislocated your jaw. Should have opened the scar above your lip.

It's not about whether you intended to or not.
"I didn't know any better" is a truth that very rarely changes anything.
You didn't know any better and it hurt me. That's why we learn. That's why we grow. That's why we must refuse to stay still.
But you loved being still. And you refused to grow, and you proudly kept yourself ignorant.

What else can I even say.

Oh, my nightmare.

I dreamt a friend of yours had me institutionalized, and because you were angry at me for something small that I did, you let it happen.
Which is just exactly what you would've done in real life.

It was terrifying. I woke up so scared. I thought it was real.

I'm tired and hungry.
I'm gonna go pet my cats.

Journal entry
May 7, xxxx

She knows I love her, my creature. Of course she does.
There are still secrets between us; there might always be. We haven't decided.
You see, some lovers- they reach a point- where they dance that silent dance, and wordlessly through looks and smiles, will decide that some secrets will always be secrets. Others say everything, and find strength in doing so. We're not there yet. And so, some things remain unspoken.

A secret I keep from her now is- I know what she is, yes, but I can't help but think of her as the opposite sometimes. A thing not with dove wings and a halo, like the paintings, but a creature with thick, rubbery wings. Heavy horns sitting on her head. There is something uniquely dark about her.

There is so much I still don't know. There is a heaven, is what she's told me. It isn't as beautiful as you think, she says. When I ask her if there is a God, she looks away. And I know there is something in my question that brings her pain. She has never answered the question.

She still walks to her lake. (Yes- it's hers now.) She visits it often.
She does it at night, when I'm asleep. But I wake easily in her presence. I've caught her walking towards the wood. I know it's the lake she goes to. It must be. I've never followed her.

She thinks she hides it well. But I can tell there is a rage. You visit your lake in secret, and what would you have to hide, if not the fact that over there you must be inflicting yourself with some violent ritual. Something I should not see. You must have some kind of terrible thing inside of you. Divine grief, or envy, something that must be gnawing at your heart. I can see it in your eyes.

Why won't she tell me? I worry sometimes that I'll never be allowed to help her. I suffer with these thoughts, and she doesn't say a thing.

There are silences like arrows, aimed at you, meant to **** you. Meant to maim the heart. But not hers.
Her silence is the kind that hurts to look at, because you know it isn't a choice. The more I **** the more her throat seems to tighten. It's as if she wants to tell you everything, but physically can't. As if telling you was an arrow. As if telling you her truths and her fears would

  **** her


I want to know why she goes to the lake, I do. I want to know what happened before. What is God to you, what has he done? Tell me please, even if I am not enough, even if I am just the rabbit you tell your sorrows to. I may be from another world, I may be the animal unable to ever understand your pain, but my ears are long and my eyes are big and I will listen and watch you intently. I love you.

Sometimes I think I'm too small. How could a thing like you choose a thing like me? The thought used to **** me. I'm learning not to spiral. Even if you won't help me. I have to stay strong. I have to show patience.
Yes, if she wants to keep her secrets, then keep her secrets she must. I worry about her, but what can I do. I can only be patient. I can only do what I can. I can only love her until she decides to bloom before me.

My angel who howls by the moonlit lake.
I will wait for you.

God did not mean to give me a mouth.
He meant to give me hands, eyes, a heart
but not a mouth.
When I speak something in me bleeds. When I-
I speak, and my eyes fog over like glass.  
I can't see you standing there, I'm so sorry. Show me again, where did you put the bread?  

I feel like a thing that needs to be forgiven.

I feel so fragile sometimes.
I am trying to understand the
weight of the evil inflicted upon me.
It is heavy. I never understood that 'till now.

I wasn't meant to carry this weight, but I do.
I wasn't meant to speak the way I
so often will, but I do.

What can I say anymore?
I can't write without bleeding. I can't speak without knowing it is a wound. How can I communicate without tearing something open? I'm afraid of shutting up and looking for my language. If I decide to leave behind every word that hurts me, would I have any words left? Will it **** the little bit of connection with people I have left?

Listen.
I hope you forgive me for the little sadness I'll inspire in you.
I am afraid, but don't pity me. I am blossoming and becoming something else.
This, apotheosis, this becoming closer and closer to my own light.
It is a process that requires allowing death.
What must die must die. Allow grief.

I'll leave you with this:
If you slept next to me, it would be
much like sleeping with a letter under your pillow.
Every night, every night...

*"Here I write to you a list of cruelties I am capable of.
May you never forget:
I have made the flower so that it may blossom, and I have made the lamb so that it may eat it.
Blessed be the one willing to become.
Here, the flower. Here, the lamb."

- God

A wolf in the bushes. A deer in the clearing.
      I know you are looking at me
        because I too am the wolf.

You know I know, because you are me in my knowing.
We are so quiet in our hiding, and yet the deer raises its head.
You sprint to me now.
Here our ever-loving, this sacred tragedy.

O beloved Ever-Creature,
Will you chase me into Godliness, or into the end of It?
I will chase you more–
My precious enemy, again and again.

Divine Ouroboros.

How fragile the leg that snaps, how ****** the neck torn.
You slip and I catch you. I fight and we die together.
The antlers today, the doe eye tomorrow.
Forever this day, no matter the way.

We are the running, the forest, the hooves and fang.
The twig that catches my leg, the corner that traps us.
God is when I **** you.
It is your teeth in my flesh, the tear in the widened eye– my precious thing, and then we do it all again.

A wolf in the bush. A deer in the clearing. You make no sound, but I know where you are. I lift my head and see you. I know you. I know you. I have always known you.

If you say to me, "I need you", it's not a weakness.
It is a giving.
It is
   a trust in me to know, and I know;
You love me and choose to depend on me.
Because--  you could fetch the cup of water
  yourself, with your strong legs, your long legs, or
You could ask me,
Sitting on the writing desk we put somewhere in the living room.
   Next to the kitchen, my love, next to the kitchen.
(Because when I write, I like to watch you cook)

You could ask me, to reach,
for the cup, with my short legs.
You could ask me because we know, and we know,
You love me and choose to depend on me.

I will reach for the cup. I will reach for the cup because I love you
and I know, I know, when you say you need me,
it is a giving.

I'm tired of seeing the good in you. I'm tired of giving and watching as you sit and receive. Did someone tell you you were a king? Your made a crown from paper when you were twelve and you still walk around with it on your head.
I don't want your apology. If I see you I want to punch you in your mouth for all the times it could've said the words and didn't. Even now you have no idea what an apology is. Even now you have no idea what it all did to me.

I'm tired of trying to see the good in you when I know you've never tried doing the same for me. I'm tired of giving and watching as you sit and think you have a throne, that I owe you myself, like a jester, that I exist to fix it like you asked me to do that day in bed in that nightmare of an apartment. I'm not a hammer. I'm not your mommy. I'm not your dad. Go to therapy.

You idiot, you stupid idiot. I nurtured my own light and you never even tried to do the same for yourself. I watched you run that day and kept my wide, unblinking eyes open as your body gave next to the finish line. I sat in the hallway and you came back so I'd chase you. If I looked inside your skin the bruise on your leg would still be there, unhealed to this day. Now you get nothing. There's nothing. You didn't try and now nobody gets anything.

The lesson I had learned was that I have to allow it.
When it comes, I have to let it rip me apart.
It's a good lesson. I apply it to every pain.

But with this thing in particular, allowing may not
be enough.

I don't know how else to say it anymore.

What do I say? That I want you to **** the pride out of me,
So something in me shatters and I allow, allow
That I want to do the same for you?

That I'll let you hold my mouth open, so you see what I can never seem to say, so you see your name, so you see yourself dripping down my chin?
What do I say-
That nobody was sharp enough to even try, that sharpness is what I've become-
That nobody told me what to do with a blade that is alive.

I'll tell you.
Everything alive knows only to be what it is. To grow, to be more of itself.
The blade that is alive knows only to be sharp. And over the years, only grows sharper.

But if I say it, if I say these things, what will you say?
Angel.
Tell me you can dull me.
You, golden blade.
Tell me you want to.

Has it ever happened to you that
Have you ever felt like living was not enough.?
Like you craved something so rich and true that existence felt like it paled in comparison?
That’s how I want.

I think I feel desire the way gods do.

I want completely. I want to wrap my tongue around yours. I want to reach inside you and kiss your beating heart. I want to be able to look at you and see the things behind your eyes and hold the hand inside your hand.
I want you to **** me as foreplay.

Do you th
Do you think gods want like this?
Do I want to be consumed the way a god does?
Bored with existence. Needing the light behind the light.
I want to forget my name when you **** me.
I want nothing but us to exist.

I want us to take turns killing each other.
I want the ecstasy of death. What replaces that? What could replace that?
What will I do if I can’t have it?
I’ll throw another fit, and sit on the edge of the bed with my leg bouncing, again, like I have so many times before. Before. Before you.

I don’t think there’s a cure.

I think about what it would do to her. To call her: god. Divine majesty.
Do not be afraid she says.
And how we must be reminded every time...

When these creatures undress before us, and their form is an arrow sleeping in our gut. Our insides wrenching again and again each time we look. The more you worship, the more pain you know. Terror resides in the beauty of their form- a body we cannot understand. A body that is never wrong.
And oh, how we can’t help but look.

I look.

For me, the moon is full and hanging behind my eyes.
The wrenching and the writhing
The moaning and pain
It is sublime, unbearable transformation.
Transmutable worship, transmutable horror-- Nourishment for a thing caught in its becoming.

You caught me in my becoming.

I am the dragon and the maiden it keeps.
I am the mouth and the hand reaching inside it.
Darkness and light begin to blur.  
         𝐃𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐝.
𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠.​​​​

[...] and the greater the wound the greater the fang. And, when we experience trauma that is given to us by so many people, we find that we have become every one of them at once. In my body I hold every trauma. In my eye is all of theirs. In the eyes of God, I am an abomination.

Perhaps the most striking part of this trauma is how we grow fangs in response to being bitten.
I did not lick my wounds.
I became you.

Today, I helped my mother with her garden. I made the earth soft, I placed the seeds carefully, I added a little bit of the nutrient-rich soil. I tried to place the seeds upright in the ground. I’ve never done this before. When I ask her how I’m doing, she says I’m doing good. She says I plant them so carefully.

My wrists and back haven’t been doing very well these past few days, but I know that if I let her, my mother will sacrifice her entire body to her flowers. She’ll offer her exposed skin to the sun and her aching joints to the earth. Her muscles will cry and the tears make the earth richer.

The doctor said she needs to rest. Her knees, the bad arm, her back.
My body hurts sometimes, but all I have to do is stretch and rest and it goes away.

I have to plant the bell pepper seeds.
I have to sacrifice my own body to the sun, to the earth and the flowers. It is a duty to the selfishness of giving. I must because I want to.

What would I do if I saw you weep again? How could I bear to see anything keep you from joy for a even a single moment?
How incredible to see you after all of the sorrow. You touch the earth, you plant the seed. Every morning I walk outside to look at the flowers with you.

And this is my dark soil. This is my water.

I wake up. I see her dutifully tending to her garden. I put on my shoes.
I am the flower blooming with the love of a mother.

I thought I was a desert, but the chaos of my longing was water.
Water, and water, and more water.

It pained me to say it before, but now it is simply a fact—Sweetest darlings, I drowned you away from me.

There is love in your breath
When you speak to me—
But oh, when I look at your mouth,
It is there behind your teeth;
And you clench your jaw so that none of its legs peek out.

Will you tell it to me?
Will you tell it to me like a story—
The dark thing that hides in you, amongst the wind-kissed fields of your love?

“I need to get ahold of myself” I say, scolding myself for wanting (and forgetting what I’m needing).

The warmth of your arm.
The love of a friend.

I am confused in my needing, my yearning;

I have dreamt of being on the floor, and you offering your arm to me.
Yes, how whole it must feel, to be cared for with love.
How warm it is in my dream.

It gives me so much joy, to look at you.
Sometimes it’s too much, and I worry.
Is it okay?
Is it okay to feel this much joy?

Is it joy?

I don’t dream of you like that anymore.
but if I did, what would you say?

I imagine it.
“It’s okay.”
I breathe. I smile. I know it isn’t for me.
The day is still bright.

O,
And my longing;
I hold the Christ in my hands

And offer it to you.

I put my voice under a light not knowing that it would burn to a crisp, and all you would hear would be the weakening growls of an animal refusing to die. I thought I had to speak to exist, when all one should ever have to do is be.

Who?

Who would come lay their hand on me
in the thickness of my confusion;
The thickness of my Love.

Will you offer your Hand to me
in my fog
And when home is lost to me
Will you tell me where it is?

Will you salt the wound that needs to sting before
it begins to heal,
Will you salt my wounds for me?

O mystery; Who will you be?
Will you Taste me and spit me out,
for fear of keeping a lukewarm thing in your mouth,
Your mouth, Steady with change.

Will you know I too am steady with change,
Will you know I too am an eager student?
Will you keep me in your mouth,
the days I am not burning and delicious?

Will you forget me
Will you let go of my hand
And forget me in the fog

¡Oh, que frustración!— hoy, creo que eres un capricho. Ayer, era tan grave e importante hablarte para destruir el silencio que causé, y mañana seguramente estaré convencido que no tienes ninguna importancia en mi vida.

Que frustración; he aquí mi solución:

Me cocí los labios para nunca hablar de ti, y las manos para nunca escribir de ti. Me he amarrado un laso en la cabeza para taparme los ojos; pero ah, que frustración, con cada solución se me presenta otro problema.

He aquí los problemas que ahora tengo:

Los labios que me cocí no me dejan cantar, así que ahora paso el día entero escuchando música, pero resulta que  todas las canciones del mundo se tratan de ti.

Las manos que me cocí juntas no me dejan escribir, y- quizás entenderás- así es como rezo. Pero ahora con las manos juntas, solo puedo rezarle a un dios. Pero resulta que no hay un ser más grande que tú.

Y es cierto que con este lazo tapándome los ojos, ya no te voy a ver; pero en esta oscuridad, inevitablemente, eventualmente, siempre me duermo, y en mis sueños te apareces.

Y cuando te veo- oh, que frustración- nunca quiero cerrar mis ojos.

PRAISE BE THE GOD THAT MADE YOUR QUIET MOUTH. PRAISE BE THE GOD THAT STRUCK YOU AT YOUR CORE, SO SHE’D COME INTO YOUR LIFE AND NURSE YOU BACK TO HEALTH. DIVINITY IS YOUR HAND THAT HOLDS HER GIFTS. HOLY IS YOUR SHARED JOY, HOLY LIKE BURNING. HOLY LIKE THE DEER STUCK IN THE FROZEN LAKE. I AM BURNING IN MY FROZEN PAIN. I AM BURNING AND I CANNOT MELT IT AWAY. HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH. CHRIST IS MY SUFFERING. CHRIST IS THE MEMORY OF THE FIRST TIME I HEARD YOUR VOICE AND KNEW I WANTED TO FALL IN LOVE.

My creature– My creature can only be from the Wood, from the lake in the heart of it. He must be the ember in the cabin dying by fire, he must emerge from it; and his eye must be red with passion, burning in wrath.
Indeed, my babe can only have the eye of the Wrathful Lamb.
He can only be blade. Tongue wet with Passion.
Heavy with divinity. God-defying. Nothing less. Nothing less.

I want to have you. I want to have you because you’ve given yourself. I don’t want to steal you from you and I don’t want to steal you from her. I don’t want to do anything less than giving you something. What can I give you? What can I give you now, as I am? I cannot even give you my truth. You speak and I am mute. You are and I die. I fell in love with your violence but called you a saint. How ridiculous I am. How ridiculous I am even when I think of you, and after all this time. There you are, thinking I must be a small thing with no eyes, and here I am, becoming blind from the sight of you in my mind’s eye. Here I am, here I am, here I am.

I had this big TV in front of me. No sofa. The living room was just
the computer desk, and I was using this big TV as a monitor.
The kitchen light- next to the small living room- was on, the light from the hallway behind me was on. But I kept the living room light off. The screen was bright and the night was dark. It was too bright for my eyes and the room felt like a sad, private wonderland.

I heard that song for the first time. I didn't know what to expect. As the song started, and Julian Casablanca's voice- raspy, young and confused- filled the house, I came alive. My eyes lit up, I sat up, I put my knees on the chair. I loved it. I felt like my wonderland was real. This house- this cage, it was small and miserable and magical. This dimly lit living room, empty of furniture, the sound of my neglectful mother watching TV at the end of the hall in her room. This room. This small, miserable wonderland.

It was a portal to hope. The screen, the light. It had been a year of isolation. I heard his voice, the song, and I was a child again, and all I knew was eternal wonder and hope. I wasn't consciously thinking about it all- it's hard to explain- but everything was real. I hoped for a future, and friends, and a life, and in that moment the living room and the light and my mother and her TV were real, and that future I longed for and cried for was real. Everything was real.

You were sweet, yes. I won’t be the poet who compares you to honey for it, but yes. You were honey.
But not for your sweetness; honey–
Not in spite of your acid, but because of it.

You are the gods painted
in our imperfect, mortal image.

In your mortality, in your burning
In your acidic, golden eye.

Honey.



-

You were honey. I’ll say it unashamed—you were honey.

Not in spite of the acid,
but because of it.

I give my fear so it is held, and held, softy and weightless.
You hold it gently.
You hold me so gently.

The world comes to me again with my sunlit room. A bird is nestled on the branch outside my window. My troubled-kitten sleep. The ceiling. The pictures in the cracks. My emptiness outside of school.

Yes, divine is this space
for holy are the tears I’ve shed in it.


-

The world comes to me again with my sunlit room. A bird is nestled on the branch outside my window. My troubled-kitten sleep. The ceiling. The pictures in the cracks. My emptiness outside of school. Yes, divine is this space, for holy are the tears I’ve shed in it.

There was once a little fox who was born lame. Its brothers liked to play and bite and grow, and none of these things did the little fox care to know.
In the light of a setting sun, they ran and skipped, playing with each other’s tails. The lame little fox, healthy of body, albeit smaller than its brothers, stood by and watched. Its mother approaches it.

She sits next to it, watching the others play.
“Your brothers are almost ready for the hunt.” She begins, and the little fox looks at her.
“You will not survive.” She tells it, sparing them both the discomfort of looking a son in the eye while bearing such news.
The little fox does not cry.
“Will I die at the jaw of an animal?” He asks.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The mother does not answer.
The fox looks back at its brothers. He’s never liked playing with them much.
“If you hunt at my pace, will I slow you all down?”
“Yes. It will be your brothers who will die at the jaw of an animal then.”
The little fox looks on, and with a blink of its knowing little eye, understands.
“You are going to **** me.” it says.
“I must.”
“Then do not be kind to me in my taking. Lest I survive, run away, and come back a creature you will not recognize.“
The mother is calm, her response a knowing silence. The breeze is a sigh of fall. Winter soon approaching.
“**** me sooner rather than later.”

The little fox walks away (for they both know today is not his day) no doubt to take a nap in the family’s den.
If the little fox were to leave, thought the *****, it would leave tonight or tomorrow morning. She would strike then.

The foxes were all done with their play, and the mother sees them to their den.
“I will strike tonight” she thinks, decided. But when she arrives at the mouth of the den, among the chatter of the young babes was the fox’s absence, which could only be noticed by a loving mother’s gaze.

“Come, children.” Says the mother to her settling kits.
“Sleep now. We’ve God’s own wrath to prepare for.”

With every word, with every misguidance
This sharp, unbearable thing that digs into the center of me.

This sweetness that I salt ‘till it is nothing but undrinkable sea water.

This love wrapped in the ribbons of Death; almighty Death-

The end of human connection.

Esto es lo que siento. Esto es lo que siento. El porqué lo puedo sentir y no decir no lo sé. No entiendo y si pido explicación, sé que se me enterrarán las espinas, las espinas de esa flor— su aroma dulce, sus pétalos en la oscuridad.
Oh, que mucho arde el vino cuando no sabemos qué es.

I’m absolutely hopeless. I can’t say anything that matters with my mouth. Sometimes I can’t even write it, or say it with my eyes. Sometimes I think maybe I could say it with my hands. Maybe I could say something so tender, so terrifying and true, if you’d hold my hand. If you will, please pay attention to your fingers. I’ll write it there.

I don’t mean to be rude, it just comes out that way. I’m just tryin’ too hard. The moon looks full sometimes, and when I look out the window, I can’t quite see it.
I can’t quite see it.

It’s like that sometimes. There’s something beautiful. I want to reach it with words. I want the permission to hold it. But I can’t quite say it. I open my mouth, and I can’t quite say it. I’m sorry. I wish it were different.

The compass inside me has always been fragile, broken. Do you know what happens to a child with no direction? They wear your face. I knew the grownups didn’t love me the way I was. I’ve never been loved. Not when I wore my own face.

She told me, “I think you think this”
and I said, “I don’t.”
and then I said, “I know why I thought that.”
and I thought, “I only said I thought that because I knew she thought I did.”
I thought, “I did my best to never let myself think that.”
I thought, “I’m not interested in thinking about this anymore. I’m tired. I’m just so scared of this. Always so scared.”
I thought, “I’ve done what I understood was expected of me in order to be loved. It used to be the only way I could communicate with others.”
I thought, “I want nothing more than the thrill of experiencing myself.
I thought, “I want nothing more than to be as genuine as I can be. I wish I could fix it now. I wish I could give myself to people. I wish I could be bare today.
“But I think,” I thought, “I think that will have to wait.”

When I wrote about beautiful strangers,
I only wrote dreams of them. Fantastic little stories. Fantasy.

I didn’t know her.

I knew I didn’t know her.
I wanted to.

I don’t mean to be rude, it just comes out that way. I’m just tryin’ too hard. The moon looks full sometimes, and when I look out the window, I can’t quite see it.
I can’t quite see it.

It’s like that sometimes. There’s something beautiful. I want to reach it with words. I want the permission to hold it. But I can’t quite say it. I open my mouth, and I can’t quite say it. I’m sorry. I wish it were different.

Summer was so good to me. But now September’s had its hands on my throat, and I’ve closed my eyes and let my arms go limp. I don’t know how I forgot to fight. The way out is to rebel. Receive your pain, let it be known in the palace of your heart, love it, become it, and return it in deafening waves.

I’m always grasping. Trying to retain some form. Painfully and desperately, I try to keep it, shape it, define it into permanence.

This longing for certainty, this anxiety and desire to be— like the statues unmoving, named and certain— to be something I know, forever, and ever and ever.

But our splendor is in our changing, in our ever shifting consciousness. The heart floods and becomes empty again. The breeze of autumn. The hot of summer. My blood on the rocks. The wound tender in infection. The scar I touch like a feather.

We are made in God’s knowing of ephemera, ever changing, ever fleeting. Undefined, and ephemeral forever, ever and ever.