see, this is what (this is how)
i’d like to think—
that i have star fire in my eyes
that i won’t fall to ashes
to hailstorms
to empty harborsbut i know now;
my bones are quivering,
humming, singing:don’t go
i am too full(of
ifs and whys)my heart is
(cracked and
bruised and
missing
in the middle)too big to break
I’m growing too big now to lean on you anymore. I can’t keep running to you when I’m afraid, hoping you’ll fight away the demons lurking in the shadows. But mommy, mommy sometimes I want to be small again and let you make everything alright, because truly, I don’t know what I’m doing, stumbling along blindly, figuring it out as I go. Sometimes, when things turn sour, I want to go back to a time when you were magic and could make everything right again with a flick of your fingers, like my own secret special lucky charm.
Mommy, you’re wonderful. I love you, no matter how big I am now. I love you, I love you, I love you, always.
See, that’s what life does when you’re not looking; it passes you by. The next thing you know, it’ll be the next month or the next year, and you’re still stuck in the same place you were last you checked. Stop waiting.
My bones feel so heavy that I think I would drown if I tried to go swimming today.
Oh little girl, you’re going to have to let go soon. You’re growing too big to cling to old threads now. It’s time to turn away and run, find a new tree to nestle yourself in, build up a new nest as beautiful as the one you have now. It’s going to be wonderful, you just wait and see. Soon you’ll molt your downy baby feathers and become something magnificent.
This is no time for being scared.
I have always wanted
to be the kind of person who
can say that others need me
more
than I need them.So believe me when I say
I don’t know how to tell you
that I want you to consume me whole,
from my head down to my
toes.I’m terrified,
of myself, of you,
of what you’ve made me become.
My bones are shaking.
My breath is growing thin.I’m not used to this,
to wanting,
to needing.
Can you tell?
Can you feel it too?The words are getting stuck
in my throat,
the right words, proper, certain.
And because I am me (that is to say, imperfect),
all I can say is—Please.
Sometimes I feel as if my heart is too wide. I cry too easily and care too much. My chest is too full of things that I can’t grasp, and sometimes I feel as if I could burst. Yet I fear that all the same, I’m empty, hollow on the inside like grapefruit rinds left over from breakfast. I’m not sure if I can make room for anyone else under my paper-thin skin, if I can shift and resettle to allow someone to become a part of me. I’m not sure if I have enough of me left.
I went to a psychic today to have my palm read.
She told me I would soon find myself living
amongst jade green Buddhas and worn yellow paper,
taking laughter for food
and bleeding myself dry over lost
words and memories and blots of ink.
I sometimes think and laugh about how even ink,
so permanent and everlasting, can be easily covered up, never read,
and everyone continues on, unaware of their loss.
This is no way to live.
How can it be, when material and food
are more important than wrinkled newspapers?
Supposing I collected lost papers
out of books with ink
running down the pages, feeding
the stains on my skin, impossible to read,
would it be possible to make them come alive
once more to recreate something we thought we’d lost?
Though I assume it’s impossible to truly save something that’s doomed to be lost,
how could I forsake the worlds woven out of paper?
How could I live
with myself knowing I’d abandoned those inky
words screaming to be read
to serve the mind as food?
This is just food
for thought, but don’t you think it’s worse losing
books you never knew you could read
than letting lose a handful of paper
into the wind and watching it disappear into the inky
nighttime after learning it’s life?
When I left the psychic, I didn’t think of a life
starving for a kind of food
that’s found only in texts of ink.
I thought only of whether or not the mailman got lost
delivering the day’s paper,
and if that was why I had nothing to read.
I was already living her prophecy, unaware of lost
food in the form of paper,
those volumes of ink, burned and thrown away before I had a chance to sit down and read.
I woke up this morning at the bottom of a lake. The light turned a milky blue and blades of seaweed danced around me like ballerinas. Huge gold fish with eyes the size of my head swam out in a swarm, and when I reached out to touch them, their scales came away like flower petals, casting rays of light that intersected my path. I captured a shimmering scale in my hands like a butterfly, and it glowed as bright as the sun. Maybe, I thought, maybe I could try being nocturnal.
My skin felt like butter, gliding through the clear, calm water, and my hair no longer felt shaggy and unkempt. I felt timeless, floating in the middle of that lake with my very own stare, bubbles tickling my toes. I wondered if I would die this way and the people of the future would turn me into a goddess.
I began to feel woozy and feared for my fingertips. Did this mean my time had come? What would become of me? The light was leaving me now, and even my star was fading, leeching the warmth out of my body.
“I don’t want to go,” I cried, my voice lost in a blur of noise. “I don’t want to go.”
“The Jean and James Douglas Family Sculpture Garden”
Jean and James met on on one of those unlikely days when it was sunny, yet still, inexplicably, raining. It was a Wednesday, and Jean was going to be late for work. James bought Jean a coffee and they spent too long talking about modern art and metal working and the constant boom of the city. They both agreed that it was unfair that black had to be so warm on sunny days and that sometimes being in the city made them want to close their eyes and never wake up again, and Jean was almost (very) late for work.
They got married on a Saturday with James’ cat as the witness. Everybody was moved to tears.
Jean soon got in the habit of collecting strange odds and ends, misshapen pieces of junk that in certain lights managed to look appealing. When James asked her what she was doing, piling up bits of discarded treasure in their backyard, she replied, “I’m building us a family that can never die.” And because James thought she was wonderful and she thoughtthiswas wonderful, he thought it was wonderful too.
Two hundred and seventy-six years later, when their garden is excavated by archeologists, the sculpture garden is mistaken for a temple.
If I were still small and believed in Santa Claus and metal sheets still towered over me like skyscrapers, I think I would make the world my playground. Words like “off limits” and “do not touch” would nave no meaning to me, because I would be an adventurer, and great explorers don’t have to follow the rules.
I wonder if Zim Zum I would like a hug.
I’ve always found it hard to say things like “I miss you” to people. the best I’ve ever really been able to do is smile when others say it to me first and then reply in a sort of false, over-enthusiastic manner that can’t seem at all serious. I think it’s because saying something like “I miss you” makes me feel too vulnerable, because saying something like that is admitting that I need people to feel whole, and I get scared. I don’t like the way my chest feels tight with a sort of constant, phantom ache. I don’t like the feeling of relying on others because my instinct is for self-preservation above all else. how can I expect to make it out in one piece if the entirety of my being is scattered amongst countless people?
I guess what I’m really trying to say is I miss you, boo. come home soon.
Sometimes, I like to stand on street corners with the traffic rushing around me, the constant rumble of cars and people, and I feel a little bit invincible. I feel so small and insignificant, so completely invisible that I think that maybe, I could start a revolution and no one would notice. I could stand there with the NO U-TURNS, ONE WAY, NO PARKING AT ANY TIME glaring at me, and I could defy them, park myself right there on that corner and no one would so much as blink.
What’s it like, they ask, to be a fixed point in an ever-changing world? What’s it like to remain static?
It feels like you can never die.
Tired and lonely and filling the time with bittersweet tea, he sits by the window, reading and waiting. He sits with his head in his hands, wondering why it’s taking so long. Shouldn’t he feel a little less empty by now? Shouldn’t he feel less like he wants to be someone else, like those bicycles chained to the curb or the bus idling on the other side of the street? He picks up his pen and begins to write, jotting down little things he’d like to remember about himself and underlining words that seem to own his soul. At least, he thinks, at least here, there are cookies the size of your head.
