gold plated, irony faded
Haded. tell me all the truth unjaded
if it's all meant to be i'd hate it

i've got a body stuck in my body
help me, someone
please, somebody
please somebody, i'm calling somebody
I'm Calling Somebody, I'm Calling Somebody
don't you know I'm ruddy? sitting in the muddy
patches of grass, grass always loved me
Grass Always Loved Me
I got High before You Called Me
Grass Always Loved Me

when I go back to you
and you run to me
thank God for this

if all i ever wrote, was a mountain of hurt
well, it would be a tall mountain indeed

i would climb it to the top, the point
and the point would tell me all along there had been a point

and at this point, where there had been a point,
i would give my hurt away. to see all there is to see
and just let it be

she said: Get in the Car
and this was her way of telling me she loved me
this was her way of saying she as so tired of everything I'd said to her that day but she was still there
as always, still willing to be there
still willing to take me home, willing to tuck me into bed, willing to be stronger for me
willing to be the pillar, willing to be the brick and mortar, the
standalone shop of all the support i could ever ask for


she said get in the car,
i will love you more once we get home, i will put you in the shower, i will show you when you cry you can always get cleaned right back up, i will show you broken is never broken because i will always show up, and all your pieces are something i know how to put all back together. i've seen you all put back together. i've been the one putting you back together for years now. a decade and a half now, how could i not know where they go? you're my baby you're my baby

she said get in the car and it was her way of showing up to be the best friend I always felt I needed but did not deserve

she collects me in a room
i am thin like paper
i am too busy being sad to be hungry
i am too busy being sorry to be hungry
i am too busy being an outcast to be hungry

the more i want to feel like myself the less i feel like myself
the more i start to think this is for the best
the more i start to think there is no best
that i never really liked myself, that i was the worst for myself
that this is my body giving me what i deserved

was my body doing this to be nice to me? separating me from me? was she doing this so i didn't have to carry her weight anymore
or was this punishment, for never taking care of me
back when me felt like me
instead of a boiling core

i am thin like paper and i am crumpled like tissue
like the collection of tissues
collecting like cobwebs in a garage on the bedside table

i am spending most nights crying
some nights i rage so much i knock myself out
others i rage so much i sleep for half an hour
and spend the rest of the week
running off this anger

there are only two constants in my life at this point
I only tell one of them because I am afraid of losing both at the same time

the other senses it anyway
my mother friend my big sister friend my protector friend
she saved me once from dying and she was here again to stop me again

let's put up a fight (like we always do, she noted)

I am tired I remark. I am tired, and heavy, I am lightheaded, I don't eat anymore, stop feeding me, where's your Advil
Where's your Advil?
You're out? You're out?

This is your fifth one in two hours you need to slow down

Don't tell me to slow down

My life is depending on bursts of energy and motivation to get through it and I am so terrified of the slowness and the aloneness and the being engulfed in myself and I need a stupid Advil because food is the last thing on my mind today

Okay


Get in the car

And it was here
She said wait till Christmas, this place gets packed
with people and prayers

She said: I need you to hold still
or else how can I write about you

trying to remember what cupid used to tell me
after i told him if he ever came was there a chance that he would stay
cause i got so sick of feeling a certain way
then having it go away

the water doesn't always spill
it doesn't always soak
it doesn't always drown sometimes it is lovely and i like to put myself under the shower head to feel my problems come down with it
down the drain and i am no longer drained or worn
in fact i am washed and brand new car clean and pure and no longer what i was

No, you don't know
what it feels like for me
to sink in water
because water is easy enough to tread in/
or so you say.

And how much
farther on a limp do I have to go
before you tell me
it's not too far
from here now.

I said hold me
I'm sinking
and you kept
trying to teach me to swim

hold me
I'm sinking
stop
teaching
stop
teaching
I'm sinking
I'm sinking

bet to bet
fuse to fuse
a couple of hearts
running loose

running

a loose cannon, far away
clear as day


start a tally keep a score
run our mouths

how many more
can we afford to lose?



playing time
wondering when this ends
whether we'll be winners
or just "good" "friends"

oh, here's a feeling
we're going to draw it out from the middle
it'll feel new it'll feel new
give it time
it'll feel new

when the heat gets too high it starts to feel cold
well, that's what you ought to wait for when things start to get old
if you want to unknow what you already do so well
if you want to unlearn what you could be blind and still spell

then give it time
it'll feel new

you say you know pain
i have never known before
what do you know about it?

i tell you what i know
about my own pain
when it is sitting with us

between the spaces of our fingers
between where you stand and i
shift

between my mattress and my bed
my pillow and my head
between the flickers of the light bulb
and the flick of a switch

the spaces you start to think you are better off filling
because at least you'll know what you're filling it with

instead of this enemy you cannot declare persona non grata
to ban it you have to know it
and to know it would be even more pain

like those viruses that trick your immunity
over and over again

you take a shot, you try to help your body recognize it, you get a response
you think you've had its disguise all figured out
until they shape shift again

so you say i know shape shifting pain
so i'm sure you know a pain that cannot hold still
that cannot get its fill
that gnaws and claws
subtly enough that
no one believes you even have pain

you say you know pain
but you don't know a pain that does not qualify, justify, speak for itself
you know a pain with a name you can grab off the shelf
you know pain that society boxes as a grievance, or a loss,
or a disability, an inability, or just don't come to work the next day!

i'll call and i'll get your tone.
but i think you'll find
my pain is the kind of pain that i cannot say over the phone.

i stand around like freedom in the doorway
lending a sense of urgency to the air
if you take me now, you will find out sooner
the paths you could take, if you dare


but i don't hang around the doorway long enough for you to take me
because to be taken at my challenge would have given me a scare
and i know the next time i look to find you
you and i won't truly be there

Years ago l swore off writing because it was getting in the way of my story. Some sort of observer's paradox where the perception broke into a dam of longer restrained introspection, and as we all know spelt a recipe for interception. When things were bad, this effect, though consciously not intended, was a welcome source of scarcely-had agency. It was a veil from reality despite its best attempts to portray simultaneous events and tame them all the same. To begin to tell the story was a matter of literary teething, foretelling a survival and endurance of the narrator that carries beyond the events themselves. However sharp those teeth, the experience came with soreness. I longed to write like a teething infant longs to chew, an instinct, a balm to the pain that is so tangible viscerally. And yet I felt stabbed by my own unsheathed pen: first when I touched my own emotional bruises with it, and then when it began to carve marks into the story itself. When writing, it felt as though I had been deployed as a spy: using all of what I know and witnessed, against myself.

i run to you
finding you fallen like a feather
lost from my softest pillow
an object of comfort, when i most needed most to have my arms around something
around anything, to hold me still, to anchor me to this sea of an earth, this oxymoronic existence filled with nothingness and everything all the same.
when my arms sunk into it i felt a connectedness that kept me from floating away

i say this to try and get at what you used to provide me with
it was no easy feat, grounding someone who had their hands perpetually in the sky, always grasping for something beyond and out of reach

but now that i look down, i see you are a fragment of your old self
barely a full sentence, physically but a feather, light enough you could float on air, light enough you could be here and barely be there, light enough that
i can barely see you! barely feel you!
when you are your most bare self you are barely even there.
it makes me wonder how many layers you wore. if being you without the role of comforting me rendered you imperceptible.

i used to love you when you were tangible

but i lost because you are frangible... diffrangible...
diffracted into so many waves

i could find you. i could see you. as one ocean. but you need to have got yourself together. otherwise you are fractions of yourself

and as a rule, i refuse to love a wave.

it was just like him to slip into her dream
to not quite meet her gaze, and begin to apologize
not because he was sorry, but because he had felt he had suffered enough time
without her forgiveness

he asked her if she was done being angry
and she asked him if he was done being blind

he turned away from her and opened a window she was startled to see. when he was in her dreams it was often tunnel vision.

but today there were details blooming in the peripheries. she felt herself expand from within as the exit naturally showed itself, like a thief of air showing itself out.

he jumped out
and she woke before the thud

you can't speak because all the worries would come spilling out.
overflowing nightmare realities borne of anxiety-fuelled doubt.
and every time you look at me
i get an urge to shout.
but i can't, so i don't, because i don't want all the worries
to come roaring out.

but if i could
oh, i would
tell you with a glance
instead of having my eyes do that familiar yet uncontrollable dance
because i admit to myself (admit to you)
that this is all a little too much

i'd say a little too much more than that, too

and when you're me, and you're like this,
you can't really smile.
because stress pins your lips
into a single file.

(all the worry going: hack - hack - hack)

you submit to it, like we do in the city
when tasked with its defeaning
construction sounds.
opening the blinds, thinking: urbane visionary pretty

and here labor and its fruits align.
  the beauty. the skyline.
that withstanding pain
allowed you to feel

and here you know it's real.
the work on the skyscraper is part of the landscape.

the scraping at my nerves: this is part of my landscape.
the worries that sit inside, that dance outside,
that pinch themselves in between.

the roaring, the dancing, the hacking. telling me
always what i'm lacking.
having me wish i could get packing, abandon myself, leave myself, teach myself, show myself, throw myself,

all this makes up the architecture of my mind.
our gray and white matter contents.
because i chose today to define and anchor this existence
as much in its function as it is by construction.

i choose to be a work in progress
over self destruction

it followed me around
like a rumor
until one day, lost its wings
fell into a ditch
and i looked down upon it
eye-to-eye, with its lifeless face
and i could not face it with the same bitterness i had for it
this whole time


i picked up some dirt
and rubbed it on my hands
and let traces of me mixed into the dirt fall onto it
in a way i could not let it go,
at my wit's end, or a dead-end

and even i could see that there was no use pretending we were not intertwined, from life to death

I slip my hand into yours to tell you
my voice is back,
my voice is back

nervous excitement crawling up my back
put my internal mic on, no more lack


I sit in her spot to tell you
she’s gone,
long gone

the space between us fills me with
so much wait

that ironically, I don’t dare say another thing.

this is called a body scan
one, two, three
chest rise, hold...
now imagine your breath
going through every part of you
find where you have tension
and relax it...

so I find my hands
over my eyes, hiding the sun
blocking the light
so subtle I almost don’t realize it
and I force them to come down.

i have to open my eyes, to open my eyes
i want to look and see as far as it goes
i worried before, felt sore ahead
a feeling of dread
pushing me to look away  

But this time I have all I need
what I don’t have, I have learned to ask for
and when it is denied to me,
I have learned to be grateful
and to let that feeling take over
my visual field

so that it is always
what is on my mind
that is in my view

so that I see
what I want to see more of.

inhale, exhale
one glance at a time.

sometimes you ask the right questions
but you still don't get the right answers

and sometimes the right questions escape you
and you find yourself knocking on doors
you didn't want to open

like i know a blind spot,
like i know it's there,
like i know it's real
      but i can't see it to believe it

that's how i know you


when the pain catches us
at the foot of the year
i start to believe
in a feeling

and let it grow inside me

when we realize what happened
that we can really see each other now

we are startled,
And let go.

And start to begin,

and end all the same.

i wish i could bring you back
to the form that you once held
as it fit so nicely
into my head

but instead, i find you now
in the the form you take

and i look at you
and i see familiarity
faded by the years, faded by the hurt
faded by the ridge growing between us...

and i begin to wonder if i would care to lose you
and i know just by the fact that i am engaging in this
once-absurd, now-regular line of questioning
that i have lost you

and i check in with myself at this point... if i care about what is happening?
but it is too much like hearing a dial tone

and feeling no urge to call back.

she leaves me alone and like this i learn where to go

what I did!
and what you did!
then, what I did!
then, what you did!

this is how we go! this is how we keep up the
charade! this bed that we made.

this is how we
fight into the night! this is our grand scheme at its height!

this is how you
rob me of sleep! this is how i
keep you from peace!
this is how we
intertwine. until there is no more me or mine.
  
until the only way i seem to know you iswhen the anger hits your bones.
and i lose all sense of cool. guess you could call me love's fool.
i just have no sense of chill. i try to hold still.
but i can't hold still

so, i don't, and i spill out, and
i cough out, and i
run out
of ways to say
how deeply i have started to despise you

how to come clean, of all these thoughts, that sully my brain?
unless i share my pain?
what's the saying about fighting fire with fire?
but you called me a liar!


so i finally wanted it out
i just wanted to have it out on the table
and there you go again you call me unstable

but i'm honestly just tired.
i just need to sleep first,
and i'll call you when i wake up

so, i put my hand on your face
in a wave of wanting closeness,
in a wave of resisting fear
and it washed over me
and passed us by
as if it was hardly ever there

i had my hand on your face
and thought: this is vulnerability

and thought: i will hurt you

and thought: i will hurt you

and thought: i will hurt you


and i could not stop it. i could not stop the thought.

and i waited for the wave of bravery, of resilience, of belief in the greater good to wash over me.

but it was like waiting for a train that never came

i began to lose myself very much like a thunderstorm
that wasn't in the forecast
that came unannounced
but in hindsight, all the people around it would say
"we were due one anyway"

i saw myself in the sudden downpour, in the grayness that
so quickly consumed the atmosphere

i saw myself in the headaches that came as the pressure dropped
in the ache of pre-emptively, and unconsciously adjusting to imminent change, even in the moments before it seems to show up

when the wind of change reaches us, it is how we brace ourselves before we even feel it, that knocks us down first

i saw myself in weary window watching. i saw myself in changes of plans. i saw myself in interrupted growth, in uprootedness, in the disheveled and crooked sprouts that i call attempts for stability.

i saw myself in the rush of people scrambling for shelter
trying to get out of the misery of having their clothes wet

mostly, i saw myself in the panic with which they scatter, in all directions
and i see myself, too, in the people who couldn't get out in time

nowadays, i resign myself as a passive recipient to the storm before it begins. i will likely get caught in it, and i accept that fate for myself now

when i found myself one morning gazing upon the city, noting
the lack of gray clouds, thinking i had found myself a respite in the
middle of the rainiest season i'd ever had

i would feel a sense of longing, for days when i could enjoy them for the fact that they are so beautiful, rather than the fact that they represent a brief culmination to the most recent torrent of storms.

when the leaves started to lose their colour
this year
i felt a sense of softness for them. because they seem to hang on so much better through so many kinds of weather. and they turn all the same.

perhaps i believed my resistance and my surrendering could never go hand in hand. but i see myself when i see change now

and i am turning all the same.

nowadays
it is like trying to breathe air
from the same room
you've been in for months.

it is like needing something
to stop the feeling
of lightness in your hands
and lightness in your step
and heaviness in your head.
but finding every breath
even less satisfying than the one before it
when every breath, no matter how wanted,
feels laboured
and void of relief

as i try and shrug off
the way this hill of
unsatisfying breaths
has rolled far too long along this coastline
that we call a timeline

but time hasn't moved in a line for me in months.

when it feels like walking in molasses
when it feels like someone has been pulling threads out of your head.
when you can't place a memory to a place, or tie together details anymore. when the names of objects you use daily just seem to escape you.

when you talk to your grandma and you complain of the same ailments. when you talk to a cancer survivor and you feel heard. when you hurt, and you hurt, and you hurt.


these days i find myself nursing myself.
and i am trying to be the most patient patient.

but the words to soothe myself escape me. the actions to self-care exhaust me. getting up to feed myself is fatiguing. picking up the phone to call a friend is suffocating.

when you become your own sanctuary, because you feel sicker trying to keep up with the world around you.

when you try and forget even breathing reminds you of what has changed. people offer distractions as though your body will let you escape.

nowadays,  in these hardest days,
i am both hurting and healing

Been feeling like
I'm one of those cuts that you can only see under a certain light
and once you see them in that certain light, it's hard to unsee it
   and you can't stop seeing it in that light. Even when it's dark you can still see it on your skin.

Lately I've just been cut with my own sadness, as though there's nothing more occupying in the world than the chills I get after a disappointing text message. Hugging my knees, I'll sit and stare at a wall. I'm depressing myself, they say.

Maybe I am. But I can't fight the urge enough not to.

I asked her how many more times?

she stares at me for a long time

eyes about to change. this is the answer before the answer.

she inhaled, and the little trust I had left in her begins to fade.

I know the answer, before she exhales.

again and again and again

that’s how many