re-membering

every day i build a ladder from my heart to God

on lazy afternoons angels stroll down
they like to eat pistachio ice cream in the sunlight
and make babies smile

they can only do God's will

when i don't know what to do
with this pinch of the cosmos i have been given
i climb up the ladder
to watch the stars
spiral along the skeleton of the universe

i re-member
there is no separation
we are all made of mystery
we are all cells of the divine
every moment is an exchange
we are forever becoming
there is no end

it makes it much easier
to deal with the state of my bank account

a secret in 4 parts

1.1 here's the secret
in your absence my love turns into green apples
i imagine eating them with you
under the trees

2.1 i left the bar when it was raining
down the stairs, into the night
except...
everything turned into poetry
tom waits was playing
i smoked under the christmas lights
thinking about unrequited love

3.1 here's the secret
i don't miss you anymore

2.2 it's been raining since you left

1.2 there are no apples

4.1 i don't miss you anymore

2.3 um, I don't even know you?

0.1 when i am with you, the air i breath turns into bone

3.1.1 but...

2.4 the romantic and the cynic have been battling since we met
even the cynic wants to throw the game
lose spectacularly

0.2 we all carry the past within us
in the crook of our dendrites
in the lines of our palms
in our bones

1.3 here's the secret
there are apples when you touch me

4.1.1 i will always miss you

4.2 you understand the beauty of the perfect moment

2.5 i loved you at first sight (more or less)

2.5.1 a secret i try to keep from myself

3.2 i loved you when you told me "this is what a pecan a tree smells like"

4.3 i loved you at first sight (more or less)

1.4 i will never know when I first loved you

0.3 everything turns into the beating of blood
everything turns into poetry
everything turns

0.4 here's the not-very-well-kept secret
I confuse dreams with reality

0.4.1 because i am human

1.5 thank you

4.4 thank you

you don't know me well enough to know that i have this thing about skeletons. and embodiment. the heart, with its ventricles, and atria, and valves. the human body as a metaphorical landscape.

but you do know me well enough to know that i am intoxicated by your loveliness. it's not something i am good at hiding. as if i even have the option of hiding it. with you i am all yes. yes yes yes.

i guess what i am trying to say is that i am glad they did not take a bone saw to your sternum.

i know the metaphors of my heart. jewels in the cardiac muscle. the beating of wings in my chest. birds waiting to fly towards the light.

i know nothing of what circles around your heart.

what would the doctors have found? by all accounts you have a lovely heart. copper light, perhaps. or fat green caterpillars. but i don't really know. i don't really know you.

and lately God has done nothing but press reset buttons - for me, for you, for everyone. definitely for "us." the possibility of "we" has been set aside, maybe for ever.

i guess what i am trying to say is that even though i may never learn the metaphors of your heart, i am glad they did not take a bone saw to your sternum.

We Transform.

I want to thank the spirit of Flipside and Burning Man for showing us, truly, what humans can do. We can create the world that we want. We are creating the world that we want. Thank you for showing us our place in the universe, between the sun and the moon and the stars, above the grass and the earth. We celebrate there, us humans, reveling in our aliveness. We spark, we dance, we love, we build. We transform. Thank you for allowing so many openings - in ourselves, between each another, between us and something higher. Everything we need passes through these openings. I am humbled by and grateful for these gifts. I will do my best to remain open.

Thank you for giving us what we need. Thank you for giving us what we need. Thank you for giving us what we need.

There are no other words.

This entry is self-referential. And also heavily influenced by Rumi, Douglas Hofstadter and office politics.

I could probably write pages and pages about language. Which might be lovely and meta and self-referential and ironic because, well, I mostly dislike language. During my brief foray into the land of internet dating, I actually spent some time trying to accurately describe myself for the "About Me" section. And one thing I wrote was that I like words but dislike language. Which is so very true. So many things about my relationship with language are paradoxical. I'm a good writer, but I mostly hate writing, except sometimes I have to get the words out and they have to be exactly right and there is something, I don't know, almost cathartic about doing so. Except cathartic isn't really the right word, because when I write, the sense of release isn't quite as intense as the word cathartic sounds. Or I don't experience enough joy at the release or something. Hmm, maybe I should look up cathartic in the thesaurus (or Visuwords) and try to find the exact, right word for what I experience when writing. Except thesauri are often dangerous for me, what with all those lovely, shiny words all nestled together like chickity chick chicks under their mamas feathery belly, just waiting to distract me... but I can probably handle it. Oh! Did you know that cathartic is used medically to refer to a purging of the bowels, so writing is sort-of like taking a shit? Hmm, what an interesting metaphor;I wonder how far I can take it? So the words are what remain of things I can't digest, or that I don't need to digest? And I excrete them through my finger-tips and/or pre-frontal cortex? Digestion itself is such a great metaphor. You can do all sorts-of things with it. Except it is not even really a metaphor, in some ways, because you actually have millions of neurons in your intestines, so that you can actually know things with your gut. For real. Not speaking metaphorically. You can literally know things with your gut. Hmm, I wonder how many neurons are outside of the brain? Because even if it is only like a tenth of the neurons in your brain, it still has major repercussions for how we conceptualize mind and body, so that your whole body, is in a sense, your brain, or your brain is just a part of your body... Wait, why do I have this thesaurus? Oh, right, I was writing something.

The above is why I have turned in every paper I have ever written in grad school late. Usually days late. Because language and I don't really get along. Despite the fact that I write well and love to read and want to kiss individual words, language actually traumatizes me a little. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to pare down my actual, extravagant experience of the world into something I can stuff into tiny, tiny squiggles which I then give to you so you can de-squiggle and un-pare them and arrive back at my original experience so it becomes part of your experience? How? How how how how how? Is what I have to say even worth the time and effort?

Wouldn't you rather go dancing?

The truth is, I am right-brained, dancing mystic living in a left-brained, disembodied, secular world. And I have to write email messages. E-mails! Which people then take seriously and get upset about that one clause I used and take that clause really fucking personally and want to talk to me and my supervisor about the repercussions of that clause (Yes, this entry brought to by office politics). I don't give a damn about that fucking e-mail. I would rather talk to you on the phone. Or in person. Or hand-craft a letter to you, embossed with artistic nudes and decorated with washers I found on the street. Or take you out to coffee and talk about what it is like to be alive. Or teach you to meditate. Or play with you. Or dance with you. But no. I've got to send you an e-mail message apologizing for my last email message.

I've forgotten what the initial point of this post was, so I shall stop. Words no work anymore.

The Other Side of Desire

It's strange not too hold on to every instant so goddamn tightly. Strange to uncurl my strained, hungry fingers and let the air kiss the lines on my palm. Somewhere, when I was looking the other way, I stopped wanting to suck every last drop of poetry from the moment. The constant longing has subsided. I can drop the metaphors of hummingbirds and honeysuckles. I can run across the street in the brightness of the Texas sun and not want so very, very much to find the truth of the moment.

It's even stranger that I am okay with this. I am okay with letting go of the truth of the moment. Who can imagine a Wendy not infatuated with the truth of the moment, a Wendy not trying to rub up against every shade of meaning, graph every nuance of feeling?

Whatever. The other side of desire seems nice enough. There still seems to be dancing and silliness and wordplay and good music on the other side, so I should be fine. I will let the moments dance themselves. I will let them dance me. I will show God the palms of my hands so she can see they are open open open. I am pretty sure she will want to kiss them too.

How I Roll - Dreams, Cat Vomit and Crystals

Last night I dreamt you were left-handed and lived in a tree-house. The tree had a strong trunk and the air at the top almost always felt cool and bright. People who were about to die were drawn to you, as were spirits, and consequently you developed a habit of spending a lot of time alone. You liked to find places high, high up where your eyes could look down and contain all the corners and edges sharpened by the distance. You had a calmness about you that I never saw in real life. Except maybe sometimes in the margins of your writing, or in the space under the dots of your "i"s. There was very little static.

The calmness made you look different. I am not even sure how I knew it was you. I think somehow my subconscious endowed you with the qualities of a bird. Maybe this is how you exist to me, somewhere at the back of my eyes, at the border of my retina where the letters you have strung together transform into electricity.

*******************************************************

And then I woke up and began the process of separating my dreams from reality. And since I am not particularly good at this type of threshing, it didn't go very well. In fact, after turning off my alarm clock, I fell back asleep and dreamt I was getting ready for work and was on my way, out the door, almost there. Only to wake up fifty minutes later with just a few minutes left to scramble around and get ready. Tricky, tricky dreams....

So I maneuvered around the cat vomit on the floor and removed the crystals from the sink so I could brush my teeth; the whole time the phrase "Last night I dreamt you were left-handed and lived in a tree-house" was beating through my brain. And while I was admiring the way the zoisite looked in the water and trying to recall the exact feel of my dream and attempting to avoid thinking about taking my cat to the vet, the juxtaposition of unattended cat vomit and crystals in the sink became laughable to me. How clear is it that I mix up dreams and reality? What says that more than cat vomit and crystals? Could it be any clearer?

Even as reality slowly seeped into my sleep-soaked body, I was still mesmerized by my dream of you. They way it felt at the top of your tree-house. The lightness of your spirit. Even the realization that I left my car in the parking garage at work yesterday when it ran out of gas BECAUSE I SPENT MY LAST FIFTY DOLLARS ON CRYSTALS didn't pull me away from the dream. It just caused me to smile at my own ridiculousness. I confuse dreams with reality, you see. So I walked to work, ten minutes late, down the street with all the cats that are scared of strangers, trying to figure out exactly where that tree-house of yours was. Near a church maybe? Behind a cemetary? Neither of those seemed quite right.

And I cut through the park, with its lovely trees and cool, clear air and shifting light, and I realized that this must be where your tree-house was. This was where you lived up up high, with birds for neighbors. And I wanted to stop and sit and drink in the air, remember the dream of you. But somehow reality won and I kept on going, strolling towards my cubicle and my co-workers who don't seem to have as much trouble separating dreams from reality as I do. My co-workers whose floors are free of vomit and whose sinks are free of crystals. Towards putting on the appearance of normalcy for a few hours until I have to walk to the gas station to buy a gas can and a gallon of gas. Towards a dream of reality.

Lonicera periclymenum

It's April. I know because I can smell honeysuckles on the wind. Which reminds me of every April of my life.

I want to measure time solely by the smell of flowers. I want to encode my memories in a garden. We can sip iced tea by the Texas mountain laurel and talk about childhood. We can fall asleep when the night-blooming jasmine wakes up.

Are you in?

My lovely metaphova

Lately I've been carrying around bits of poetry like a secret. An unfinished secret I can't share because I don't know where the edges are. Scrawly scrawls, testaments, and pictograms tucked away into books I haven't read, mixed in with notes about pointless meetings, hovering behind the creases on my forehead. The sense of burgeoning returns. The sense of coalescing.

Perhaps it started as I drove away at dusk, asking myself "What I am doing?" Of course, I am always asking myself that, over and over again, with every breath and every unexpected shift in energy. But this time the words were clear and crisp in my mind. Like autumn. "It is just autumn, it is just autumn, it is just autumn" beats something inside me, something looking for reassurance. And when I got to the coffee shop there was a picture of a woman who looked like me on the Dia de los Muertos altar. I tried not to stare at her too much as I attempted to read. Her picture, at the back of the altar, was underneath a sign that read, "Do not light a candle too close to the wall." I can't even light a candle for my doppelganger.

But wait. That is not really where it all began. I want to tell the story of the beginning; I want to find its pulse. I want to feel the beat of the beginning under my fingertips, under the curve of flesh over bone, skin on skin. The shimmery movement. Except the pulse that I feel doesn't seem to be the right one. Perhaps it is a question of beginnings. The human desire for a starting point. My desire for this to be a story, and I, presumably, to be the protagonist. Or the narrator. Maybe it is simply the power of narration that the postmodernists and the neuroscientists blink at, somewhat blinded, pupils tightened, mesmerized by the glare.

What it really comes down to is that I cannot settle on a metaphor. Hell, even "settle" is a metaphor. The verb has 32 different uses, didya know that? Including "to become pregnant; conceive." So, I cannot conceive of a metaphor. I have been carrying around my scribbles, my metaphors like ova, awaiting fertilization. Carrying metaphova around like a secret. Waiting for something to germinate. But it appears that I am not, metaphorically speaking, getting any. So my lovely metaphova can only wait in the mottled light of my ribcage, curled in on themselves like a fist. They can't implant themselves in anything fleshy or bloody or smelling of the earth.

My metaphova. I have been thinking about the stillness near the ground. I have been thinking about tectonic plates. Of things slowly shifting beneath my feet, even though I am standing still. Of things carried by currents. Of currents. Of sea ice breaking free from the Arctic shelf. Of the movement of icebergs. Of icy landscapes bearing silent witness to the sky.

I have been thinking about all the things with wings. All the things with wings. All the things with wings. I have been thinking of birds nesting along my spine, once at each chakra. The hummingbird at my sacrum, the bluebird in my heart, and so on. And the tiniest bird in my mouth, nestled in the curve of my tongue. Breaking stems off my words for bedding. Being fed with each kiss.

I have been thinking about the people I buy birthday presents for. How I want them to nest along my spine, too. I guess in some way they already do; that is where the dreams of them reside. The dream of Chris curled up with the bluebird, the dream of my mother curled up with an egret. The mixing of the material with the immaterial. The mixing of metaphor.

I mean metaphova.

Whatova. This took so long to write that I don't even really feel this way anymore. Except, maybe, for the bird on my tongue part.

This blog entry brought to you by my current song obsessions.

Singing and confluence

Walking to work today I passed a plot of grass being watered by sprinklers. The sprinklers were well positioned to cover the maximum amount of grass without dousing passers-by (although it is always a little bit fun to negotiate sprinklers and think about childhood and rain and play). But the middle sprinkler was placed just so that the full force of the water hit the pole of a street sign at the very left-most edge of its range, just as it turned back. Which made the street sign sing. It sang, to me and to the cars and to the clouds and to everyone, every 20 seconds.

And then I thought about the confluence of things. Of the moments when things join up, touch one another, glance off of one another. Of the kiss of connection. Of items in their own cyclical patterns occasionally brushing up against one another. And, in that brushing against, one sometimes finds a song. I like things that sing when touched. I like things that resonate. When the circumstances are just right and the moment is silvery, on the tip of the tongue, until the vocal chords breathe of their own accord, singing, singing singing singing, singing a song of connection.

Really, my whole life is an existential crisis.

In addition to my CAD (Cubicle Adjustment Disorder), I am also having a tad more of a career-related existential crisis than usual. This is because I am in the middle of a fairly meaningless and boring (i.e., soul-crushing) project with no end in sight. I am scanning all of the old alumni files so we have them digitally instead of, oh whatever, the opposite of that is - paperly? materially? analogically? I am going to spend about three months doing this and the raw, hard truth of the matter is that NO ONE IS EVER GOING TO LOOK AT THESE FILES. Ever. What I am doing serves absolutely no purpose. I am, in fact, trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare. In a cubicle.

Now, if it was up to me, I would have had these old files destroyed without a second thought. Well actually, if it was really up to me I would have commissioned someone to turn them into art in some way. Or done it myself. This office would be overflowing with those fortune-tellers you made in elementary school, sailor's hats, paper snowflakes and silly poetry reconstituted from students' letters of recommendation. Paper airplanes would fly from every window. You wouldn't even be able to make it to the copier because you would be knee-deep in origami cranes and couldn't take a step without crushing their wings. And you don't want to crush the wings of cranes, do you? No, you want to nestle down in the middle of them and think of all the people who need wishes. But this is not the reality, alas, as this project was started before I got here and I am the one to finish it.

Here is the thing. Student files from 1970 are just as boring as student files from 2007. Sure, there is the occasional black and white photo to stare at. I get to think about the differences in paper over the past forty years and how paper varies from country to country. It turns out that other countries aren't so fond of the 8.5" by 11" paper size. Turns out that some Asian countries use really tiny staples, at least in comparison to our (possibly exceedingly wide) 1/4" counterparts. These are things that are vaguely interesting to know. Yes, I get to read letters of recommendation from 1971 and think about how language and ideas about politeness change over time. Yes, I get to imagine what it was like for a woman or an international student to be a young scientist back in the day.

But, just in case this ever comes up, you should know that these sort of things are only interesting for, oh, maybe four days. Five days, tops. And I am on day 30. I have officially extracted as much meaning as possible from this situation. The only meaning left is that generated by thinking about the lack of meaning. Which is what I am doing right now. Once this blog entry is done my brain will officially turn itself off, become jelly, and slide right on out of my ears. And possibly my nostrils. Which seems like it might be gross, because then I might smell my own jellified brain and possibly even taste it. Which then leads to the word blech, which makes me kind-of happy because I like the word blech. (If it is even a real word and not something I have made up and used so many times that I actually think it is a word now. Which, after consulting the dictionary, appears to be the case).

Okay, maybe this is the thing - I like the idea of old files. They seem like they should be interesting. They seem like they should be full of magic and wonder and secrets and discoveries. They seem like when you open them your face should be doused in rainbow colored light and you should be able to hear the faint whinny of tiny, tiny unicorns who prance through the old brittle pages and live and love and raise even tinier baby unicorns in the files of every dusty and neglected filing cabinet across the nation.

It turns out, shockingly, that this is not the case.

So I have been thinking about what I would want to be in these files (besides the unicorns, I mean). And the answer is, basically, truth and beauty. I want all files everywhere to be filled with truth and beauty. I want to turn the page of that file from 1974 and see that grad student's dreams represented visually, perhaps through giant swaths of color, perhaps by a very complicated flow chart. I want creased pages of poetry about their insecurities and anxiety. Especially if it might be bad and drunken poetry. Especially if it might be fabulous poetry and the words might drip moon nectar. I want blueprints of that great conversation they had with their friends about science at the coffee shop where they totally joked about semi-permeable membranes and RNA and their professors' weird power-hungry nature. I want paper sculptures of the relationship they had that made them stop caring about their lab work for weeks on end. I want transcripts of the phone calls they made when they were on the verge of quitting grad school altogether and didn't think they could do it and their friend or sister or mother had to talk them down and remind them who they were and what they wanted. I want a collage of that moment when they suddenly understood what that enzyme was doing to the DNA and how they could experimentally prove what it was doing and how fucking excited they were to tell their supervising professor about their idea. That is what I want in the files. I want the best and worst moments of their graduate school experience distilled into something I can understand. Not cover sheets and memos and test scores.

But what I get is cover sheets and memos and test scores. So here it is again. The gap between dreams and reality. The gap between what I desire and what I get. The difference between tiny unicorns raising babies and memos scheduling a dissertation defense. It is a big difference. Maybe it is so big that it has its own kind of beauty. Or maybe that too is a dream. I keep facing it, again and again. Maybe I will always be facing it. Maybe everyone is facing it. Maybe this is what it means to be human - to try and see what it is right in front of your face instead of getting lost in your own dreams. Maybe that is only the first step, the one you have to take over and over again until you stop falling down. Maybe I am learning how to walk.

Or maybe my brain is just too damn big to fit into this godforsaken cubicle. Maybe that is what us modern day shamans have to do - find God in the cubicle. It seems sort-of difficult. But I'm on it. Somewhat unwillingly and annoyed that I have to start at 8 in the morning - but I'm on it.

what i really want to say is this

i miss the night. the softness, the shadowed edges, the stillness. walking out under the stars and realizing you are a human being. everything weighs differently at night - i'm pretty sure gravity changes. some things float a few inches above the surface of things while others weigh you down. if virginia woolf had tried to kill herself at night, the stones she put in her coat pocket would probably have pulled her right out of the river, and taken her up up up up and away like a balloon, until she kissed the face of the moon.

time is different, too. slower. maybe heavier, maybe lighter. dreamier. perhaps that is it. maybe the world of dreams seeps out at night, gliding along the surface of things, pooling in unexpected places, brushing up against corners like a cat, painting everything strange colors, making things more permeable. everything is more permeable at night. past, present, and future bleed into each, causing everything to make a different kind of sense, a new kind of sense. love makes sense at night. and families, too. all of that heart bone blood marrow stone stuff makes sense at night.

ach. i want to be painted the color of dreams. i want all the rocks in my apartment to float against the ceiling, to try to break free. i want to feel the weight of someone's dreams, of their bones, of their heart.

i want to stay up until i get all the words right.

What happens when an adult child of an alcoholic dates a narcissist? Read on!

I was in love with a monster. The cold, hard, middle-of-the-night truth is I was in love with a monster. A monster I painted in fairy tale colors, clothed in my dreams. I wrapped him up so tight so I couldn’t see him, couldn’t see his face, or his tail, or the ravenous hunger in his eyes. I daubed him in gold dust and we both admired the way he glinted in the sunshine, his image fractured by the light, difficult to discern. Sometimes he looked like a prince. He wanted to be a prince. I wanted him to be prince. I held the monster lovingly, and tickled his underbelly, and cooed soothing words into his ears. I fed him, helped him grow, made sure he didn’t disappear. Sweetly offering him honey and nectar, candies made of my own desire, Irish coffee, ambrosia, and chicken wings. Monsters like chicken wings. I think it has something to do with being flightless. Of eating appendages that are supposed to lift you from the ground but can no longer do so.

I was in love with a monster.

So what of this monster? This monster who wants to be a prince? “I’m a prince!” the petulant child says, with, of course, a stamp of his foot. And he notices that his fingernails grow thicker each time he says that phrase. “I’m a prince, not a little boy!” he yells stubbornly, and feels a tingling at the base of his spine. He starts to dress himself in purple, but everywhere that color touches his skin coarse black hair starts to grow. “I’m a prince! I’m a prince!” he cries into the mirror, even as his reflection is changing, morphing, unnerving him even more. He runs his hand over two small bumps forming on the crown of his skull. Too ashamed to tell anyone, he desperately starts looking for people who understand that he really is a prince. Looking for the people who will give him jewels, put a crown on his head, let him sit on whatever could pass for a throne. And there are some who see a bit of a prince in him - everyone has a bit of prince in them, after all. But the hint of a tail worries him, and the bumps on his head are growing and hardening. His shame starts to turn him into an imitation, desperately turning tattered purple linens into a costume, making fake jewels out of lint and glue and stolen food dye, creating scepters out of toilet paper rolls. And he has to hide himself more and more, hide his increasingly claw-like hands, cover every inch of his skin growing rough, dark hair. He can’t smile too much because his teeth are lengthening and sharpening themselves into points. And his eyes have become ravenous, searching out anyone who sees a bit of prince in him, ready to suck every last drop of that belief from them. But he doesn’t really believe them anymore. How can they not see the horns behind the tinfoil crown? He’s weary now. “I’m a prince” he echoes hollowly, looking at himself in the mirror. I don’t even know what he sees now. Monster or prince or monster or prince or monster or prince or monster or prince? Whatever happened to the little boy? Did he disappear entirely? Is he in there somewhere?

Enough. Fairy tales aside. I crawl into bed and turn off the light and realize – I was in love with a monster.

I want wings.

Do we ever get a chance to really see another person? Their full humanity? Or is all we ever get our own dreams reflected back to us? A vague form dressed in our hopes and expectations and irrational beliefs. Enraptured by the image of them we've created, the stories we tell ourselves. Do we get nothing more than brief glimpses? Not even when you can feel the weight of their body, the line of their skeleton? Not even when you can taste their scent, when you can see the light in their eyes as they look at you? Is all we ever get an occasional flash of luminescence, a temporary moment of understanding? That is over just as soon it begins?

We all flicker on and off, on and off.
We all want permanence in an impermanent world.

I do not want to fall in love with my own dreams.
I want wings. I want wings. I want wings.

Dear Universe, Please send me a magical boyfriend or 2.5 lovers. Thanks, Wendy.

I've been thinking about you, night after night after night. I'm not sure why. Unexplainable. Unexplainable how when I turn off the light and curl under the covers I want you. I want you. And it doesn't seem real, this want, this desire. I don't even really know you. Except...except I do.

But I don't trust this knowledge. Not one bit. So I try to unfool myself, think my way out it, feel my way out of it, mysticize my way out of it. I'm just a skeleton wrapped in flesh after all, oddly alive for a while, forgetful of the mystery, and then gone. And sex is just a way to make more skeletons wrapped in flesh after all, the selfish gene and so forth and so on. Sex has to be compelling to keep the species alive. There is no magic to it, no mystery - its about evolution.

Except. Except I imagine trying to tell you this. Maybe we bump into each other unexpectedly, or maybe we are at Trudy's and you are feeding me vodka-soaked olives and I start to feel...I start to feel... I start to feel that I want more. That I want to be close to you, closer yet, closer still. Which can't be real, somehow. So I will do my best to convince myself that it is not real. I will try to unfool myself, normalize the situation, clear my head, forget the dreams, remember what is real.

Except, what is real is us, alive, right now. Right now. Together, here, in the mystery. You and me and desire and the now now now. The now now nowness of it all. And we are only here briefly, briefly here, before our skeletons undress and dig themselves into the earth. Before our skeletons undress themselves, alive right now, right now, together.

Which of course makes me want to do unspeakable things to you. And normalizes absolutely nothing. And I want to explain this to you, somehow, to see if I am making any sense, if you understand, make sure that I am not making it up. Except. Except in the explanation, when I am feeling for the words, and you are listening to me, looking at my face, and our bodies know exactly how far apart they are from one another, well... we're already fucking. Regardless of whether we are touching or not.

So, I want you. And I can't have you. Oldest story in the book. The end. Except... except I'm looking for a line somewhere, a troublesome line, a line that might not even exist. An edge, a space I might create simply by looking for it. A boundary where I can have you briefly, brieflybrieflybriefly. I want to rub up against that space, rub up against it.

Preferably in your bed.

I am clearly not going to listen to my head when the time comes for me to do so.

new constellation

I want to make a new constellation
fashioning stars from rusted pocket watches and kindergarteners' art projects
old library cards and cats' stares
the shape of our hands while we sleep
the smell of pecan trees
my first thoughts upon waking
the color of your beard
train whistles, snail shells, and the tiredness of old men
the sounds that slip from us during sex
secret gardens and crushed wisdom teeth
the space above your collarbone
timelines
disappearing magic
all the tiny things that slip away
and the crinkles at the corner of your eyes

we can give each star its own gravity and spin
spend sunday afternoons lazily naming our favorites
and then pin it in my hair
or rest it on your pillow
or place it in the stillest part of me
where its orbits will carve spirals on my spine
and my veins will become entangled with its meteors
until eventually my movement, my pulse
will depend upon its nightfalls

Damn.

How to understand this microcosm that is another person. With its own arching galaxies, and infinite nightfalls, and flashing suns busily turning hydrogen into helium. With its own inhalations and exhalations (that sometimes match mine.) How to taste the truth hidden inside, like a vial of honey that will never spoil. How to understand this pull from the center, this pull from me to you, that makes me want to smooth the hairs on your belly.

I want to get before myself, turn the lights on and off, on and off, on and off, and look at you.

Dear Universe, Please send me an uncomplicated lover. Thanks, Wendy.

still processing. still eventful. still full under the surface.

i need some sort-of refuge. like a garden that smells of honeysuckles, or an uncomplicated lover, or night after night of skinny-dipping. some time or place where it is lovely to be a human being, lovely that i don't know what i'm doing, lovely that i forget my own strength.

some place where i am not restless.

how to turn the volume up on quiet
amidst all this life
with the edges of my lips
still raw from kissing you

movement

Even apart I can still feel your movement
like I spent the night in the sea