those small blots of ink
you're the calligraphy
that loops around me

She is the typesetter’s “e”

The once-rounded uncial script,
Unbroken like the solemn vow of a monk,
His whisper, a shepherd of words under the cowl,
Murmurations of the Holy Mother to the lambswool shroud of candlelight.

His candle-flock of dreams to some hill of penitent towers, war-cowed
And broken open like faith-unfended helmets, littering the ground,
With their unspeaking tassels in babbling pagan sound of wind,
That hill too, once-rounded bare under the glittering apostles of twilight.

In the abbeywork of air, calligraphy was a cipher of souls,
He unwrested demons from an inkwell of sunsets, smothered them in blotting paper,
Freed the incarnate whole to the book of hours, nib-pointed in quills and illuminated in gold,
Line by line, in Carolingian winding sheets, he returned the misshapen to the fold,
To the carpet page of home and the warm ligatures of their waiting women.
So the shutters of the heavenly house could blow light in slanted rays to a wilderness in storm.

But he never tamed the aero-elongated, descender of Troy in a “t,”
He never knew the unholiness of the underscore or fonts as ******,
Or the world unwilling to know itself in serif robes of ancient lore.
His life was a simple rounded-out syllable of one man,
Left in the muddied, unintelligible text of faith and war.

She is the typesetter’s “e” and now belongs to any hand.

High up on the scaffolding
She is green painting
In soft rain
Now she makes
Silent calligraphy
Invisible to the eye

today i feel like velvet.
forest green velvet, to be exact.
today i flow like a waterfall of jazz notes,
a crescendo over a tuxedo piano.
my soul feels soft;
slinky, too,
like it could melt with anyone and
create something beautiful.
today i taste like salt,
mostly because tears are sliding down the back of my throat
and my eyes are the Dead Sea
and oh god, you actually thought i was sugar, didn't you?
today i am a nightmare,
robed in a lacy white dress and stuck under a peach sky.
i'm sure you'll tell me i look beautiful.
would you say the same if you knew i wrote about you?
today i am the ink of a ballpoint pen...
i'm sure you know what it's like to doodle calligraphy
on the corner of your math homework when suddenly
and ink blot appears
where the last letter of my name should be.
well, that's me.
everything is perfect--
until it's not.
today i am beautiful trauma.
try to hold me down.
i dare you.

I'm intoxicated inside this tragedy,
it weighs in my palms.

paints something timid
and thick like a calligraphy pen.

I try to write the words that keep me sane
and try to rationalize falling in love again.

but can I carry the weight?

will my palms be able to hold onto
both the pen and still maintain the penmanship
or is this dynamic too graphic
too unrelenting
and messy?

who will I become when the ink dries?

will I smudge this pain
onto the mouths of others?

or will my silence
be enough of a concealer-
or will my silence
be but a fashion accessory
that I wear on my wrist.

this fear it has no use for me anymore
it is just taking up space now.

I must find something to make it all worth it
something that looks a bit more pretty.

do I continue to carry this with me
when it is all I have ever known?

or do I learn to let it go?

so I write until the pen runs out of ink
and I seem to run out of stories.

maybe I'll make it out in one piece
or maybe I will make a piece out of it.

either way this is where the fear stops.

somewhere between lost earrings
and the stain of alcohol the next morning-
I have found something.

It's stuck behind my snaggle tooth
and beside the lump in my throat.

it's called salvation
it's called ambition
it's a misnomer that spells out the sound of my own voice
I will spill myself as ink spills on paper
and I will unfold, over and over again.

I will make more than a story out of this malice.

We call it “a beautiful hand,”
the trace a practiced pen leaves
on its travels across the page.

Or a fine hand, whose sleight,
swift and surprising, makes
old letters new and delights

the dulled and scampering eye.
Swash and tail entice the reader
to look again, slow and consider

what it is that catches the breath
just where a spur leaves the stem,
or where the spine curves.

Men and women of letters learn
by inscription: the shape and space
of an O teases the mind

to a place just beyond reason. The S
summons us to a winding way and the T
offers a place to alight.  Alight

and watch the alphabet unfold
its thicket of veins and tendrils,
its solid declarations, its secrets.

we both had two different painting styles. he was into calligraphy, the bold and gentle strokes of black ink on white paper; i was into watercolor, the translucent colors slowly spreading to a gradient on a Canson. we were two painters with brush styles of stark contrasts.

three objects. a flower arrangement, an antique vase and grecian sculpture. we were asked to pick the most eye-catching one out of the three, paint it in our of style of representation. and so we began.

him: what will you be painting?
me: i can't tell, you might judge me for it.
him: alright, but promise me you'll show it to me once you're done.
me: okay. same to you too, then.

hours passed, and while i often discreetly glimpsed at him, he caught my eye sometimes and would make funny faces or just softly smiled at me. i could not deny that my hands were shaking as i dunked my brushes into the watercolor jar and continued to finish my painting.

him: i'm finally done. this is a masterpiece.
me: i believe it's the same for me too.
him: should we count down as we turn our boards to each other?
me: nothing better than a surprise of what's the most beautiful thing out of all the objects before us.

we flipped our boards to each other's viewpoint, and we were both shocked to be looking at ourselves, a painting of ourselves, one done by the other. he painted me in black and white, a figure-ground influenced painting, strong in lines, simplicity in its finest state, rendering me bare and raw. i painted him in pale colors, a positive reflection of him lighting up life, and soft shadings to give depth to the meaning of his existence.

after knowing this and scrutinizing our works, his cheeks turned pink as the pink on my palette, while i covered my eyes with my hair as dark as his ink. we burst out laughing and blushing at the fact that the most beautiful object before our eyes was each other.

sometimes, i wonder if he's my muse, the art or the artist. and i felt like a watercolor jar at that exact moment, as if brushes soaked with different colors were being dipped into me all at once, the tint, hue and vibrancy bleeding into the clear liquid, getting murky. it was like those colors are my emotions, and with every emotion mixing, my thoughts get murky. i guess this is how it feels to be in love with all forms of art at once.

a letter is just a piece of paper
and ink is just a mess if it falls off a table
these are incredibly simple things but
i want to make them special
and special is a very broad term but
i mean as special as that burning, flaming desire to
give other people our entire lives worth of special

so if i shape the mess into words
and i craft the paper into a message
could you understand what special truly means to me
could you realize it encompasses all that you are
and could you hold me the way
pieces of paper soak up ink and
symbols soak up meaning and
romantic daydreamers soak up beautiful fantasies

with this burning, flaming desire i’ve lit the candlestick at both ends
crafting carefully the contents of my heart
into this letter for you.
and in calligraphy, too.
because i want to shape the ink to fit
the curves of your lips when you smile
and the creases of the paper to bend
your heart into knots like mine,
and you could imagine your favorite word
in my handwriting
and sometimes the meaning of special will be me
just as much as it is you