Peter (my bf) is coming to town - tonight. I’m breathy with excitement.
My energy is so sick. “Someone scrape her off the walls,” Leong remarked, as I bounded out of my room this morning.
Lisa winced, holding her hand up, as if to block the sun, “You never smile in the morning.”   “And she’s humming,” Sunny observed.
“I’m not,” I started, then after a pause I amended, “yeah, I guess I was.”

I’m not just happy, I’m some new kind of happy. It’s been too long.
I’m swinging a school’s-out, pre-Christmas, free iced-latte vibe.
I’ve been on the busiest stretch, clearing my schedule. I have to define my thesis this semester. Argh!

But I’m ready for some bf fun. I’ve changed my sheets, hidden the general mess and God, even vacuumed.
That’s very un-university-like behavior - believe me.
As down as I was last Friday night, from tanking that quiz, that’s how up I am now.

Speaking of that quiz, the only way to deal with a fret is to exorcize it, defeat it, vanquish it. I stalked the TA after class last Tuesday, finally cornering him, like a wounded animal at his desk.
“I tanked last week’s quiz,” I admitted, which sounded way more whiny out loud than it did in my head.
“Vionet, right?” He’d asked rhetorically, already clicking his keyboard to bring up the grade sheet.
“Are there any extra cred..” I began. “You got an 88,” he interrupted me. “Yeah, but,” I’d begun again
“That’s a B,” he’d deadpanned in a low, ‘why do I have to talk to idiots,’ voice.
“Yeah, but,” I’d began freshly, only to be re-interrupted.
“A weekly quiz,” he’d said, “like a hundredth of your grade.”  
“A B,” I began, shaking my head side to side in a ‘no’ way, but I’d smiled ingratiatingly too - I was going to win this guy over.
“You’re way too tightly wound,” he’d snarked, insensitively.
I opened my mouth to speak again when he said “OUT,” twisting his head to nod towards the door.
“You don’t,” I began, only to have him give me a teen-like, wide-eyed look as he nodded again at the door.
So, I flounced out, giving a silent voice to my indignation.
Bureaucracies.
.
.
Songs for this:
Take Off Ur Pants by Indigo De Souza
Kool Thing by Sonic Youth
.
.
Our cast
Peter, (My bf), is a bearded, 27-year-old from the sage hills of Malibu, California. He’s 6’1, too thin, his jet-black hair is perpetually uncombed and his skin is pale from over exposure to fluorescent lighting. He earned his PhD in Applied Physics last year and now he works for CERN in Geneva. He’s smart, quiet, awkward and he can be too serious. I’m unreasonably cRaZy about this guy.

Lisa, (roommate) 21, my bff and Manhattanite ‘glamor girl’ (who’d bristle at that description but it’s hundo-p true.) who grew up in a 50th floor Central Park South high-rise. A (pre-med) molecular biophysics and biochemistry major.

Leong, (roommate) 21, a ‘molecular, cellular, and developmental biology major,’ is from Macau, China - the Las Vegas of Asia and she’s a proud communist (don’t knock it til you’ve tried it). Growing up, I lived in Shenzhen China (about 30 miles from Macau) we both speak Cantonese (maybe why we were paired?) and we're able to talk a lot of secret trash together.

Sunny, (suitemate) 21, a (pre-med) molecular, cellular, and developmental biology major, is a cowgirl from Nebraska (seriously, she has a quarter horse and barrel races). She’s an outspoken fem-facing ladies-lady.

Your author, a simple country girl from Athens, Georgia is also a (pre-med) molecular biophysics and biochemistry major.

a grain of sand holds the water
and the wave nudges the sand
the birds pollinate the flowers
and the tree bears their tiny nests
the aphids feed the hungry ants
and the ants protect them in turn
i guess you can get from this
that everyone serves a purpose
the mutualism in nature
doesn’t stop there
somebody will need you
from your heart to your hair
just because you don’t see
the aphids or the trees
doesn’t mean they don’t exist
the creatures will still be
someone loves you and needs you
and sees you as their sea
family members or friends
or somebody like me 🩷

~
She is not our shrine,
she prays differently
with eyes wide open,
fingers on votive offerings,
preferring her solitude
in the Tea Garden, drinking light

Tomorrow on the tarmac
one flowered suitcase,
stamped for the city of neon people,
will travel to her song,
the pilgrimage of anemic lovers

Her hoisting from water,
(ampullae in hand),
and the unique boutique
growing out of
an alabaster chamber
bring monks out of hiding

The center line of her,
where the flower blooms forth
and learns by observation,
is still an unvisited temple

Until in season of calligraphy,
when she releases the Kogai
from her hair and sits with friendly toes
outstretched in the warm intimacy of
shared water
~

She is hiding behind her projected frumpiness..
but when my young lovely takes off her glasses;

   Ah,    ****..

Those eyes are the reason men were given theirs.

Group facilitator is Christ incarnate..
                                      I am sure of it.

     "How well do you want to get, Paul"

I look over at her--
curled up on a chair pad..
hiding,  wondering
Looking down.. and then looking up at me
wondering if I'm gonna answer him;

      "Paul?  Are you there?"

I stare at her--  all alone,
biting the back of her fingers
fighting tears few in this world
would understand


There is roll-playing  in the group
using both action and Word
   to climb all over me
   and uncover me from where I hide.

He (my Jesus with an MA)
is staring at me,  inviting
I look back over at her
"I'm not leaving it, Dave"

              "Leaving what. Paul?"

"My brokenness..
its shattering of my soul"

He is staring at me, but begins to smile.
I look over at her,  and just know

  I will be with her forever

I like to run with

the hare and hunt with the hounds --


Is that my freedom?

night is falling with high speed on my shoulders
it has a strange elasticity
I ask your skin to give me some memories,
a superconductivity for sonic pulses & tactile waves,
quantic waves are collapsing into a strange synchronicity
the air might survive untrapped but not in my cells
a torid torrent makes your moves catch gravity
I can't be prosaic cause desire might ****
all the singing birds of the blue nights
that were rarely seen losing their tension
between silence and pain this emotional upheaval
that pushes the skin to the frontiers of asphyxiation
we are in Plato's cave right now burning down
the shadows with the magnitude of
you and I inside we are or just this
reciprocal dislocation
there is no I, no you, nothing less than
an infinite field of mutual recognition
a blazing simplicity unspoken

I want to hold you close forever,
to savor the vivid, fleeting intimacy,
that, like candy, seems gone too soon.

I’m a practical person, so I asked Peter,
“What works better, duct tape or velcro?”

Sure, some things will be awkward, at first,
like walking, thanksgiving dinner with parents,
shopping, bathing and driver’s license photos
but those always **** - let’s accept that.

We’ll live and love - together - without apologies

.

Making him argue with me about something silly, so we can make up.
Stealing his pencil so he has to put his arms around me to get it.
Walking to class a different way, because I know I’ll pass him.
Jogging together or racing him to the top of the climbing wall.
Having him walk me to class even though it’s out of his way.
Playing, “yeah, but have you ever seen one of THESE?”
Driving the countryside to see the changing fall leaves.
He’s weird, I’m weird, our weirdnesses mesh perfectly.
Hearing a love song and thinking, wow, it’s about him.
Watching him work out, study, or talk to his friends.
He’ll call me at 2am and tell me to stop studying.
Making up stories to tell him in silly voices.
When he brings me coffee between classes.
When he picks me up, like I’m weightless.
Stargazing together on chill fall evenings.
When he picks out my outfit for the day.
When we get ready, together, to go out.
Studying at a coffee shop together.
The way he makes me feel happy.
The way he makes me feel smart.
Buying him things, like clothes.
His twangy western accent.
The way he says my name.
Dancing without music.
His exciting otherness.
The way he smells.
The butterflies I feel knowing he’s coming to town - tomorrow.

The audience isn't

listening to the concert --


It's background music.

You don't have to say a thing
not even my name
we walk a bit

from embrace to embrace
securing all the preceding
deep in our belly

Maybe there is too much
to discuss, but soon
half words will be enough

and we will kiss each other
with poetic sentences
full of love in their gaps

like our whole life is
an agenda full of gaps
filled with friends

care and roses
experiences kept deep
in our belly without words