The Memories of Last Summer
I didn't want it to end like this.
Like intertwining strings on braids, we were inseparable.
Through that open garage door, we played our instruments over cicadas' calls. Drums shouted. Guitars chattered. Violins sang. We had fun.
Days passed with familiar hollers from that garage. At least, until the last day of summer break.
Winds babbled, leaves responded.
We took silent footsteps to the train station. Two hands waved as they were left behind.
Like intertwining strings on braids, without the knot holding us together, we are but gears of a broken clock, waiting for time to move once more.
The Jewelry Set
It was not quite an ouroboros.
Two birds, linked at the tails, pouring into one another, an ebb and a flow, a yin and yang, the holy messengers of the shifting tides of infinitude. They knew, they forgot, they smiled, and wept. But yet, it was all the same. What has been, will be, pacing footprints destined to become fixtures of the sand.
I slip the ring onto my finger--perfect fit-- and drape the chain around my neck. The earrings catch the lamplight, and the bracelet sings quietly against my wrist.
I lose myself in zirconia and colored glass, fellow fixture of the sand. I will be, I have been, I am, forever linked into the shifting tide.
Press Send
This morning I got a “Facebook memory” from my long-ago high school friend. I wanted to reach out to her, but didn’t. Mind you, I graduated from high school almost fifteen years ago. Mind you, she’s dead.
When I imagine this friend now, I imagine her on the doctor’s inspection table, being told her ovarian cancer had a 20% survival rate. I only know that fact now (and isn’t everything we remember influenced by the future?) because my ballet teacher recently got diagnosed with the same stage of ovarian cancer. Her GoFundMe page relayed this brutal fact: by the time we feel any pain, it’s already too late.
By the time people become only Facebook memories, it’s hard to remember them except in their most glaring circumstances, in a doctor’s office where I wasn’t even present.
In her case, she lives on in this short piece of writing, my reflections of her now fact for the reader, when my memory of her is very much flawed, and only centered on my view of myself.
For, what else does a girl do in high school but relate the rest of the world to herself, first and foremost?
In high school, I didn’t know a thing about working memory, or death when we least expect it.
It’s not fair, perhaps, that this is what I think about when I think of her. She posted on Instagram two months before she died, saying: my body has changed so much because of chemo - “I don’t recognize myself in the mirror most days.” I thought of my lame attempts at diminishing my own bodily frame, even during the time in high school when I knew her. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. No: it’s like comparing a death sentence, on one hand, to an insecure white girl with a complex on the other. We were perhaps never going to be the same.
I wonder where she’d be now, had she lived longer. I wonder if I’d still see her social media posts and flip past them, or linger on them. If I’d see the version of herself she’d want me to see.
Or maybe that’s just me relating the rest of the world to myself, first and foremost.
When her sister posted she was dying, and to reach out now with any last words to her, I wrote a short, uninspiring paragraph - that I would miss her and remember her. But then I thought, she doesn’t need to hear from her long-lost “friend” on her deathbed. I was probably as self-centered then as I am now.
That’s perhaps not fair to myself, is it? Harsh, I guess. Looking back, I was probably right that she wouldn’t want to hear from me. But how would I know?
This morning, when I got my “Facebook memory”, I pressed “post”, to share it. Or maybe I didn’t.
What do you think I did?
It’s never too late, I suppose.
She deserves to be remembered, a phoenix out of her own ashes.
No matter how flawed memory is.
Life + 1
Life--hard and cursed and cruel
Mysoft--oblivious, and self-blundering
When they, two, meet and imbue the fuel
To send what's unburnt, self-wondering
The abyss of what-ifs and ashen what-nows
Seals me over with what-nots of why-me
I surmise that's just life in its fashion and how
I look up, when lowest, to ruin's ceiling so highly
What rises is a refusal to settle; a gumption:
To awaken, stir, deny conventional wisdom
Mitigate limitation, decry intentional assumption
That ablates stagnation, that I am formerly, viz., from
I tread new footsteps onto pitch-blackened past
Storm toward futures that beckon me in
Against paths of resistance, witch-patterned vast
To close the mighty doors where many begin
To live and to die--just to break even
Is the so-what of life that divides by zero
For an imaginary number, an unoccupied life to recede in
And subtraction stops short my well-meaning hero
Refusal is addition of wings that torque 'gainst the thick
The bulwarks of surrender, the mark of the beast
The dive, into the deep end, snaps angst's training stick
And rails affirmation against abiding the least
I hesitate to give loving a seventeenth try
accustomed to the smell of my own farts
without regret shame embarrassment rue
grown to not considering me & you
just me although drowning in despair
waters gloomy familiar I've learned to
survive without oxygen so deep down
among the octopus squid starfish crab
slow to move & prey lively well active
I too find I can more than exist without
your hot air filled bubbles of love & lust
inhaling just black ink & pithy flatulence
Try
His motto for life, yet he always kept coming back and going away and returning and leaving suddenly and begging for another chance then disappearing one morning. He always chose such beautiful days. Such preciously crafted skies of the deepest hues in which one of the more patient may even spot a new color. This time, he has made it longer than I could have imagined. This chance I have given him, he has stayed long enough to give me hope even.
I hope for everyone.
Just when I am nearly convinced that he is ready to stay, I paint for him a sky with two new colors this time, and happen upon his cold, breathless, stiff body.
Again.
And again, he wanders into my domain through a bardo now so familiar to him, he has begun to traverse casually. I prepare myself for his words which come as sure as Time turns the cosmos:
“I don’t know if I want to try again...”
I am silent. I always am. They always do the talking anyways, my input has long since proved useless.
“But I do want another chance, I have figured it out this time, and I know what to do now.”
Can he perceive my sigh? It matters not. I reach forth and pluck his blue thread, and weave it once again into its place within another tapestry of sky, so he may once again forget himself, and eventually make his return, once again.
your parenting made me avoid begetting a child
so fierce unforgiving wicked stern easy to anger
belittling scolding "don't speak did i ask you to
your gifts childish poorly constructed garbage
why would you do this god you wretched rag
to be thrown in the fire weeping gnashing teeth
i'll beat god into you yet spare the fucking rod
on your bare bottom get the belt hit him again
i didn't ask to be a mother why are you so needy
get away from me begging to suck my dry nipple
heal yourself go out and play until called to sleep"
I hear your voice still haunting daytime convictions
the specter of your genes tainting my thin blood
made me know I could never do to any poor child
what was done to me by you in the name of love
dead rose petals strewn clog
the hard arteries of my heart
your requested favorite
expensive frail fleeting
a dozen for a benjamin
thornless stems hand plucked
least you bled while arranging
them in that crystal vase kept
above the fridge for especially
expecting my deposit ransom
for an exchange kiss hug fuck
too soon dead rotting scummy
stinking water dried dead petals
shriveled crimson mouse ears
brief transitory cursory fading
your fragrance suffocates me
Left for dead without you
I used to think my love for you was like a flower;
constantly growing,
being fed by your light shining on me,
the roots going deeper and deeper
until you're rooted in my soul-
stuck there inside of me forever.
Turns out,
my love for you is more like a weed.
It's not beautiful anymore;
sometimes it seems like it is,
but then it turns grey again,
and when I pick it,
try to get rid of it,
it keeps returning.
My love for you never goes away;
the roots are too deep to ever leave me
without taking too much of my soil,
and leaving me for dead.