not for emma, not forever ago.

go find another lover
to bring a … to string along
with all your lies
you’re still very lovable
i toured the light
so many foreign roads

- bon iver
(thanks for giving me such a good winter)

i'm starting to become more and more convinced that i don't deserve this.
i gave so much. if i wasn't anything, i was a loyal lover.
that's what i am, a lover. i have that capacity, and even after all this heartbreak
i think it still remains. i'm glad that even after you took so much away,
you can't take that away. i'm just relieved. it won't be you.

karma, baby. you get what you give. if you give your most empty, vacant self ; hollow words
thick with idle intoxication...
you'll get it right back.

this is what i will take solace in now.

love as artifice

here are my conflicting thoughts on love. love is an artifice. it is self-serving. one sees in their partner that which they'd like to see in themselves. if there is a void, one looks for a "counterpart" to fill said void. for example, someone has a low self-esteem, but their partner validates it. they comfort you, make you feel strong, make you feel sure of yourself.
you can be in love with how someone makes you feel, certainly, but i'm wondering if someone can ever truly love another without it being narcissistic.
for example, when you are with your girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse, partner, whatever, and you observe them doing something that makes you smile. you know that feeling of watching someone in their element?...it seems there is nothing more beautiful and natural and candid. you watch their beautiful limbs move, admire how their hair shines, smirk at the little nuances, little characteristics that you have claimed as "yours". are you really appreciating and experiencing someone outside yourself making you happy? or is it this unconscious self-contentment, smugness - the recognition that you have the capability to feel this way - that makes us think "this is love".

just like there's something self-congratulatory about being happy for someone (as uncomfortable as it is to admit it). are you truly happy for that person? or are you more pleased with the fact that, yes, you had the capability to be happy for someone outside yourself. "this makes me a good person" - it's a good feeling, no? you took a moment to express a good feeling toward someone else - a compliment, well wishing, happy birthday. are we ever really happy that it's someone's birthday? or are you just happy that you remembered? "yes, i'm organized, i have it all together".

what do you think?

pain

"people are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. people talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. love hurts. feelings are disturbing. people are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. how can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? pain is meant to wake us up. people try to hide their pain. but they're wrong. pain is something to carry, like a radio. you feel your strength in the experience of pain. it's all in how you carry it. that's what matters. pain is a feeling. your feelings are a part of you. your own reality. if you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. you should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

-jim morrison

ongiara

i became awake,
from a very dark place, a patchwork of fear, of poorly conceived ideas.
with a blister of water, the mark of working hands,
ready to catch, or cut.
the senses aligned, the animal urgency, and voices picked up,
flowing over the static, late, quiet.

i became awake.
fingers are open, eyes they are open, the firing of images, an orchestra of scribbles.
the guts of an engine, the veins of a leaf, light onto paper, exposed.
a filament in a bulb, up above or in the ground.
together we are magic, together we are dreaming, together we reach endlessly,
the center of a seed, so full of possibilities.

i became awake.
i thought i was sleeping, but i was only forming
a structure with no ceiling,
with words like a runway, a cloud of a person drifting away.
i was heavy, but now i am light.
i was heavy, but now i am light.

sun it rises

concave, my arms are around my knees and i have this pillow taken from the corner of the couch in your living room that was a mistake. i can't be bothered to perk the corners of my eyes and flood those dry spots with the surrounding, penetrating sun. i'm in the t-shirt i wear every day but it's thinned out from the way i sleep in it every night. my body is thinned out, too, from the way i live in it every day. the sleeves of my shirt are huddled atop my shoulders. i like how i feel so small beneath the reaching cherry blossom trees, dappling gently in the light wind. if any one still inhabited the crook of my neck, they would smell the wind and grapefruit and sugar beet hair creme - the only contribution i'm willing to give to my feminine responsibilities. the air is rarefied but cold enough to make me aware of the gaps between my teeth when i seethe it in. right now i'm empathizing with the spots of shadow on the ground that aren't lit up in small budding patches of blurry light. the elastics in my underwear have nothing to hug and hang a little limp and showy in the cotton. right now i want this privacy this peace forever as i sit so small and the trees they arch and the sun it rises and i observe through my fanned eyelashes.

mutability

"i wish i was like you - easily amused." - kurt cobain
what is it that makes us such inconstant creatures? what makes us happy one day makes us restless the next. we can work for something, put blood sweat tears more blood more tears less sweat into something, and then one day it's not enough. we are like children, greedily casting away toys that our parents have put thought into, paid money for.
and relationships. this one is boring - not holding my attention. time to find some new pussy.
and drugs, booze included - enjoyable and pathetic ways to pass the hours of your life, enhancing or stifling your senses so that you might appreciate what you have around you. "whoa! the floor is like water!" haven't you ever had your washing machine overflow? "dude - look at all the fucking colours" (these exist in the real, tangible world my friend. next time you're not lying face down on the floor, look out the window!)
waking up one day, five years down the road in a fucking haze, realizing that you had meaning, had beauty all around you this whole time.
but it wasn't enough.

please don't misunderstand me - i'm just as bad as the next person. but, you know, it just makes me sad.

i'd punch your fucking head in if i felt confident that i wouldn't want to kiss it all better afterward.

beach baby

when you're out,
tell your lucky one
to know that you'll leave.
don't you lock when you're fleeing
i'd like not to hear keys.

only hold till your coffee warms,
don't hurry or speed.

once a time put a tongue
in your ear on the beach
and you clutch
kicking heels

the pain of memory

today is exciting. i saw a photo of you, and felt nothing. nothing and everything, all at once.

the hardest struggle has been memory - precise or imperfect, it's dangerous. i can't shake those fragile moments between us. when our breathing was shallow. entering a hotel room, dizzy with expectation, heightened senses, lying on the unnaturally white blankets. bodies pulsing, clutching. dopey smiles on our faces - we're alone now, baby.

the more i think of those moments, the more pressure i feel in my chest. and the more i realize, maybe you were right. maybe it wasn't that perfect. maybe we got there, and were too tired to appreciate everything. maybe your eye wandered while we held hands, too comfortable. i'll never know. i don't want to.

what i want is to forget. as nice as it is to romanticize...get it the fuck out of my head, all of it. was it real? was it a ruse? it doesn't matter, it's irrelevant, it's over. those places, once having been ripe with meaning, so bright, so inviting in my mind, will fade. the sheets will dirty, will be replaced. weeds will grow, matted along the sidewalks.

this is where it starts. feeling nothing. sweet numbness. i'm getting closer.

henrietta

i leave the blurry light of the wood-paneled room
with filmy, downcast eyes.
my mother and three aunts hum around you.
they are trying to stroke your eyelids and murmur
significant things in your placid ears, all of them.

Angus, the African grey tilts to the side of his cage,
wrinkled eyes tightly drawn.
his maroon feathers gluey and sparse.
he will be still soon, too.

i peek in as though intruding on a ritual.
you are thrashing, your blood-clot limbs
caught in stuffy quilts.
the curled and yellowing tiles beneath you hold on
by their finger nails.

the generations - all flitting about
without me, because i know,
because you told me it would happen this way.
i see past the reddish ruse. it isn’t you.

witch daughter

tired green. bleeding yellow. why do you drape your clothes around your body that way? lips are pale and swollen as if the colour has been bitten out. a peach bobbing in skim milk. split ends snake across your skin. your thick flannel shirt hangs out. witch daughter; you wait for someone to notice. everyone notices. your biggest secret is your crooked bottom row of teeth. stop making me feel this way. witch daughter, born on the wooden table your grandfather made. your legs are small, delicate, isolated posts. everything winds around them. ivy. searching hands, cold. over-sized garments, warm breath. you look up at your mother. you lie too close to the fire, the heat bubbling the skim on your shoulder. you need an answer. you look up at your mother, in the tree. she is dead, and the branches pierce her limbs. come down. how can you coax her lifeless body down? you are the daughter of the witch. you are also the daughter of the lumberjack. you possess no real power. except power over me.

i really am glad. this will change, inevitably, this feeling of appreciation. i might as well milk it while it lasts, and hope it lingers, gently, somewhere in my subconscious. i feel grateful; free. despite what a mess the last few months of my life have been, i would be foolish to deny how lucky i am. i'm incredibly fortunate to have loved like i have loved. to have made connections with people on such a raw, emotional level. to have felt full; of passion; of contentment; of simple, childish glee; of inhibition.
i have felt loss. loss so absolute that i have been known to clutch my chest, my sides, the contours of my ribs. kneading in the skin, pushing the fragments together again. hollow, resounding loss. i have lost love, friends, my health, my sanity. i have woken, pushing an eye mask past my lids to blurry, afternoon light, unaware of what day it was, how i got there.
i often wonder how i got here.
but i am glad. if these empty days have taught me anything, it is what i'm capable of. i'm still alive, aren't i? i'm young. i have opportunity.
i hope this blog will help me heal. visible, tangible pieces of myself, my thought processes, my passions. a place where i can be honest, stripped of all pretense. confronting elation, pain, struggles, numbness in it's entirety.