I go by Finn, but with an o so its
Fionn
because in senior year I chose to do a project about Irish folklore,
well I had to do the project
but I could pick the topic
so I read Irish myths and told everyone about Fionn mcumhail and my little pocket knife’s namesake
in the Newton library I was looking up articles on folk-websites, the kinds with funny graphics
the sun was coming in through the windows and it got in my eyes
I was drinking seltzer and I crushed the can in my hand
when I hugged Lydia
the hug was hard and the water spilled on my shirt

i’m collecting all my sweet, translucent turbulent marble darlings
I’m breathing life into them

they were always mine and will never be anyone else’s
and no one gets to know when my feet were cold
or when i could only eat butter spaghetti for dinner
or what I got at CVS
or anything I ever told my “kids”
or ******* whatever else or the sun on my jeans when i walked on the charles
with my sunday school students.

On Ash wednesday I got some candy hearts, one of them was a # and the other said BAE
but there was no ‘call me’ or ‘fax me’ or even something contemporaneous like
‘text me’
like maybe we’ve aged out of those, I don’t know.
last saturday car put gel in my hair
and dust stuck to it so I had to shower and I found glitter
and donuts in Dupre
and we were greedy little silly boys, shoving stale, sticky sweetness down our throats.
We had soft cheese spread on bread with grant, too
who got his glasses broken by some guy a few months back, grant
who looks like elly pickette but with flat, blue hair
slicked down! and John lennon glasses, like gavin’s

on Saturday we sang Talking heads in owen’s room
and we had real irish whiskey, sipped it slow, let it burn in our throats
it didn’t feel like much, at least not too bad.
on Saturday, I felt so organically pleased it was almost frightening
look at my pretty friends! look at those angels.
they’re gonna go so far,

because I study with them sometimes
on days like Thursday when I read dylan thomas
and I just love them, so truly
not unafraid yet, but I do love them. i look at them looking at their books
and I feel grateful for a place such as the library
and I read this little think piece (when’s the last time you heard that word? I havent heard it in awhile )
about Mussolini, it was a satirical play.
and this Russian sentimental sonnet about the tropic sea
(oh but the sea, it does not raise its voice to me!)
and the oppressive sun,
like my third grade play (yikes)
and I wish I could tell people stories without laughing.

The saturday before the last last saturday
yamalí and I got an uber and we walked up
flights of winding stairs and learned about the golden horses on top of the statehouse
and someone rode on the horses
(but you can’t do that anymore.)

I dropped a bag of sleeptyime into my steeping cup of steaming tea
turmeric turned it this deep orange shade, sort of beautiful,
I turned up Marlena shaw
I sat and typed against my cinderblock wall, face to close to the screen as always,
comforted by that familiar return, the learned response to the stimuli,
and the unconsciously practiced
and I am not afraid of all the things I don’t know and
I have so much to learn and i have to do lots of things,
im going to try to make it all worth the while and gather memories
of time, my little friends.

The kettle is trying desperately to boil more water than it can hold, 1.7 liters,

it vibrates the table with its monotone groan.

Sixca says the flowers in the square vase are real, she touches their petals and says you can tell

because they’re wilted, they smell.

The coastline is vast— we are thumbtacks on the rocky hills, our lines cast out to sea. Sinking an anchor is an act of trust,

we believe the anchor will find the seafloor each time with the same length of rope let down.

The kraken will sleep, until he is awoken with fire.

There are wolf spiders perched atop the red seas of Wisconsin.

The kidney beans are the same color as the beets, but the beans do not bleed.

The cat’s back was greasy, brown-red; the harbor cat was not hungry in July.

I burnt my window screen with a blue candle split in two, its pieces held together in my palm.

I saw a sign that said Name it, they’ll do it — princess, robin, hello, cat, sugar, skull.

The stars do not boil in the St Paul airspace. The moon is bright and full. Photos can find my face, but ‘moon’ in the search bar yields nothing.

The kraken will die upon the water’s surface.

The love is intertwined with the horror, forever.

One might propagate pothos in glass, so as to see the white-yellow roots curl outwards, larger and swarming underwater.

Little bubbles form at the top of the kettle and now they soar rapidly towards its plastic cover, hissing.

Nothing smaller than your fist should be recycled.

The stale taste in your mouth grating
only remedied by more mints that melt away
into only more staleness.
some of your body is too warm and some of it cool
some of it itches from this shuttle bus seat which has crumbs from the last person who sat here.
The livid clouds outside are shifting across the sky, shirking nightfall, the street lamps fulgurating, giving the bus interior a ghastly glow.
there is not enough to look at, to listen to, to do, just the temporary sensations
of ******* on peppermint altoids, tapping on your phone, pressing your shoe heel into the soft skin of your thigh, feeling ugly but more tired than ugly under that harsh aisle seat light. Home soon, and not home soon enough.

Almost sad beneath their fantastic disguises, they crawl under the moonshine above. In a minor key, the lute strums— the marvelous night hums with the fervor of churning water; fountains of shining marble contain the ephemeral source, funneled towards heaven. Day breaks and moonlight slips away, the dancers abandon their masquerade and dissipate into the atmosphere. On the horizon, a castle across the yellow sea blushes pink, its shadow cast across the waves.

I buried your box of notes and some cicadas
in a hole in the earth outside my front door.
Then I was small and I went inside the box
there were beds there, damp walls, a toilet  
a crochety man and a girl
who wrapped me in orange flowers  
and cradled me on a bug ridden bed.

The 50% floating out in the G column somewhere
it’s waiting for me to put it down and place it
I’m not 50% but I’m gagging at the numbers, so many
This clanging piano is making me feel like I’m in the midwest, definitely
indefinitely, do you think I could spend the rest of my life away from the sea, next to Canada
in the cold-slowly-warming?  
I could move to Duluth.
in 2010,
I was five
I didn’t know about Alex G,
I didn’t know about anything but the way the swing in the cherry tree made me feel,
trapped and small
(I’m hopping around lines
but not reading them once I write them)
yeah I could go across the country
yeah I could walk for awhile
yeah I probably couldn’t tell if I liked a boy
or tell him I like him
yeah I think acoustic guitarists and emo vocalists and edgy, chainsmoking guys
get It.
whatever It is (and doesn’t everyone! feel that way too)
and my teapot smells like plastic when it boils
and it doesn’t whistle
and I chewed all the gum I bought yesterday and
my mom’s name is Alex, too and
my face is puffy, round, just soft skin folding in on itself for eternity,
soft hanging skin stuck to me, and recently, I've been thinking 'everything’s fused it couldn’t rip apart
without dragging the rest of it with itself--
My family’s in new hampshire and they miss me. 
my family drove to new hampshire with my sister and they are a family
four years apart (without me).
I don’t know if I miss them right now and
this coding project makes me feel like
V-sauce or a conspiracy theorist
or something awfully STEM-y and it scares me
and it makes me awfully happy too.
i hope everyone majors in what they want to and that they love it
and they feel glad when they have that degree
and we’re gonna be twenty-two in May
some people will be twenty-three
and last night, Vik said she’s glad I’m awesome and I told her
awesome is a strong word, I don't know about that,
awesome is a big word
and we laughed about it.

Sweet, cold, pinprick, windy sky
streaked with color
Rolled up my sleeves

And I stepped out in it all
I walked rainy  
streets and smiled