what to do first
i will figure something out
yes
write
write
write
i walk my mother's dog
all the way to the end of my neighborhood
on my way back i see the house of an older woman i know,
karen.
her husband has been gone for two and a half weeks,
rowbear.
a walker sits outside with a paper sign on it
that says free,
in two more weeks, doves will fly over the house.
every car that drives past should be yours
every paper sign on haunted objects homes my handwriting
I push the curtains open only slightly. I imagine a yellow warmth on my skin today.
I’ll make focaccia. I never have before, but I loved to bake. And I hate to sit alone and think. I don't try to occupy myself with too many things, but it does me good. I make lists, I cook, I read and consume all the media I can find. Too much. Today I want some good bitter black coffee from a french press. In the seminary, we have two french presses. I will choose the one without mold. My face is swollen and unhappy, a smile disgusts it. You just ain't got it all together. But I will go to intermarche super and I will look at the list I wrote out and maybe for today I will get just that together.It's a windy summer night in late June, my window is open, my legs are warm under the comforter I keep on my bed year round. It’s difficult to look at myself in the mirror today, the unruliness of my eyebrows, the curves of my nose, my hair, my pale sickly face.
I slept until noon today after waking and falling back asleep several times. I use the restroom, look at myself in the mirror, and walk into the hallway. I can see my unmade bed and clutter surrounding every walkable part of my room. I know I need to organize but I feel so paralyzed in a way, I am thinking of too many things so often for me to just walk in and get this done. My mom gets home early and she makes me a tofu scramble with pinto beans and peppers. It’s crisp and warm, I don’t always like peppers but I do today I guess. We watch tv and my mind wanders, it hurts.
I know I have to get off social media, I wonder sometimes if it's not social media but rather me that is the problem. I hate myself and it's a plain sentence to type out and tell someone. Maybe all of us have that realization and who knows maybe all of us realize it some days. I try not to focus on individuality too much because truthfully we are more alike than it looks and truly someone has felt what you felt.
I feel passion for so many things, and I feel invisible to so many, even myself. I try to help him, I try to help everyone, maybe I'm a gnat sometimes. I listen to you tell me how things have gone horribly wrong, and I keep my mouth zipped shut so I don't vomit out the words, “I wish you would have listened”.
I ran four miles yesterday after I read the words, “you win marlee”. I hate to run, it hurts my lungs, legs, and gut. But really, everything hurts, thinking about it all, thinking about myself. It hurts to wake up in the morning, it hurts to sit alone and eat the meals I spend time putting love into, just for myself. Am I meant to feel sad, disappointed, and alone for the rest of my life? Should I start believing in god? I tried as a child. My mom would tuck me in and kiss me goodnight and I would wait a few minutes and get on my knees and try to pray.
There are a few things that I think of when I want to stop waking up. But some days I spend a while weighing the pros and cons.
I’ve been athirst for solace,
When do you notice it?
Is it at the park,
Or at the bar?
I leave a seat open for it.
Once I stopped calling,
You never did again.
Every morning I wake up pained,
My skin,
My joints,
Aching.
You told me you had your reasons,
We’re all entitled to our own,
You’d been busy,
A burden some of us ache to place on ourselves,
I suppose you did.
I can’t help
but check in
on what's left.
It will take,
A long time,
For that,
To be ignored.
The weather's been horrible,
The outsole of my shoe shows where I've been,
I've been horrible,
I've been okay,
Been traveling,
Been waking up aching,
I never call anyone now.
You take a shower after. And you think about jumping off the golden gate bridge but you don’t really want to kill yourself because you’re put off by the metal nets they put up anyway. You don’t brush your hair after. It curls. Wondering how successful you’ll be at feeding yourself this week and reading an entire book by Friday. You’re not enjoying things, you suddenly realize this out of nowhere, as you do, a realization that also makes you come to terms with either the fact your depression is only temporary or you’re permanently depressed and you don’t actually feel much joy in the first place. Painting your nails purple. You hate purple. Wondering if you’ll like the texture of egg drop miso soup. Half a loco moco left in the fridge, the texture irks you. Cold hard rice. You ate half a leftover chicken bake from Costco and you have a 10:30 am doctor's appointment tomorrow and you’re wondering if your body will just do the job for you. Get it over with for you. You skipped over your pointer finger twice while painting it. You can’t feel it. Would someone take your picture. Would someone hold you. Call you baby once. You opened the blinds tonight to feel the sun you forgot was there and once you looked back up again it was gone.
a list to be sorry for what i said,
five am,
a coffee as bitter as missing you,
a mom and pop donut shop,
crumb and orange juice,
from concentrate,
on the train to go,
somewhere I still don’t belong,
no one waiting for me to get there,
I burn my tongue and the coffee tastes like I don’t mind,
if this all,
keeps burning.
Farmers wake up to keep up,
the land waits for them all night,
on sundays and holidays,
I see them,
there is more to me watching.
a coffee so hot and bitter I want it,
to keep burning,
just so I can taste you.
I want it to keep burning,
so I keep feeling it.
the wound this all leaves on my tongue
is salty when i bite it.
a skeleton of a violent creature,
smaller than you’d expect so where was the violence stored?
she was stitched up with metal wires, wrapped like a christmas ham,
almost fake from the silicone,
her violence looked only like spilled wine.
the neon yellow tint of the room,
making the fatty flesh glow like something that was beautiful,
but it’s only just a table of meat,
we could be,
but not beautiful,
instead dark and heinous, riddled with black spikes, painful to the touch,
rotting flowers in the room,
white table cloths and curtains,
a red shard of glass leftover from when she’s had a fit.
almost something i’d put in a gallery,
to be stared at on the wall,
did you mean for it to not be beautiful?
they’d ask.
it wasn’t up for decision,
the trade between beauty and violence,
slaughter.
pure white cotton doesn’t disguise disgust.
it covers the room.
5,938 miles away on a bus in france listening to Tennessee whiskey,
in a sudden instance,
i am not anybody’s,
and i have a general lack of enthusiasm for keeping myself safe,
im not so special
and it floods back, dirty and muddy,
a puddle that makes your socks wet and brown,
it is that easy to figure that out after all.
and what i’ve been looking for might not exist.
i will keep smoking and ripping my hair out
Save in memory: a smell of dust on the decor in my grandparents house
An indescribable journey I’m on,
Unsure of why I had to be in charge,
Alas choosing to be gone,
I was difficult and presently,
I can say it,
I can’t even tell you my favorite song,
I can tell you about my first memories
From before I could speak,
And also memories of what was in
My grandparents neighbors kitchen
In the sun city gated community,
What the public pool looked like,
The jacuzzi room,
And I could tell you
How I
Didn’t know the walls around myself
Were an option
I accept my flaws the way an old woman would accept a dying cat on her porch. she will have to assume the poor thing, she knows it will die, she knows she will get attached, She knows her heart will break, still, ignorance to interfere is unfeasible. I accept my flaws like I accept loss. I grieve every day. I weep and mourn for them, I watch my body from the outside like I'm floating in the stars. I watch wars take place in a hush, and I start to slip out of the sky and back into this unforgiving place where I'm living on borrowed time. i’ve met dead kittens, saw myself in their cloudy eyes, recognized the stench of their rotting sleep. wet with mist, I’ve met a dead kitten with tiny teeth, If I stared for long enough, I could almost see her breathe. Buoyant, I only looked for the best, Flawed, I weep.
I don’t know what to tell people when they ask where I’m from, I feel unrelatable and offputting when I say “all around I guess”. That’s stupid. But I find myself to be nothing but unrelatable and offputting most of the time. There are so many things about every single person that another can relate to, but even if I’ve experienced the same things as many other people, I still feel on my own. Wilson used to let me drive his car so often, he was so much taller, it’d take me minutes to readjust everything and it still felt like the car was driving me. Sometimes I’d feel magical, like all the pain I felt was worth it, was building up to something big I needed to prepare for, when he drove I felt like I was flying next to him. It’d feel like my parents driving home after being out of town and M83 would come on and the only thing I could see were the stigmatized lights of cars and houses that look abandoned. I could imagine that I was controlling the car with my mind, I could take us to space if I wanted but I knew we had to go home. I always half-slept so well in the car, but I hardly could in my own bed, I would think of too much. I would think of flying, I could have flown to New York, felt the clouds and the wind touching my small arms full of that strength you need for flying without fairy wings, something held me down though, I don’t know what. Wilson gave me anything I wanted and more, I knew there had to be a reason I didn’t deserve it. I couldn’t really fly, Wilson. Obviously, I couldn’t. I remember how soft his skin was, but it also felt like I was contaminating the softness, like he would turn to dust if I enjoyed myself too much. I don’t remember what ruined me the first time, something got in the way. I figured it had to, I was undeserving and ugly, I found out I was ugly. I kept finding that out. Wait until they all found out I couldn’t fly either. Every corner I turned, something was waiting for me in the dark, a darkness I couldn’t see through. I kept my fists clenched while walking and often thought of something that could be useful as a makeshift weapon. Nothing ever got me though, I kept waiting. In bathtub drains, dark windows, under my bed, in my closet, something was there and only it could fully see me. Soon enough, I could almost see it in the mirror. Wilson would walk me to my door, he would walk me home, I remember kissing in the street. Lots of people knew I had a fear of the dark, but I wondered every so often who could tell that it was in me too. Washing the dishes late at night, with only a sheer lace polka dotted curtain, to protect my identity, I figured it could see me crying, it could see me wondering how long I had. Some days I gave it the chance to finish me, I got tired, but it never came. I’d lock myself in pitch dark rooms, waiting for the lack of light to eat me whole, I knew, I knew that when I turned the light back on I wouldn’t even be able to see myself anymore, I’d be gone too, a lack of darkness. But I remained. Somehow.