Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any sad boi vibes that arise while reading my poetry
Come watch my mind’s old movies.
Each scene is clear as day.
Is the film reel heavy with hoping?
Is the projector dusty and dazed?
Could you please hit re-record.
Replace and wipe it clean.
Each memory sticks on my skin
& leaves a sickly sheen.
My hair changes with the seasons,
It was short to match my temper.
Montage of collarbone length;
Reverse mortgage to unremember.
Would you delete me if you could?
Do you recall the time I stole?
Are we bound to meet again,
Like Clementine and Joel?
Humans—you and I—receive
“cosmic radiation from outer space” every day.
We absorb, denature and then renature it.
We become it, and it becomes us.
So I am a daughter of the cosmos like I’ve suspected
all this time,
or a sister of the cosmos,
or maybe a first cousin once removed?
Mercury’s blood saturates me, nonetheless,
and her exosphere is made of the same air I breathe.
Andromeda’s DNA cushions the tender muscles
between my shoulder blades.
Galactic in its dose,
alien in its abstraction,
earthly in its understanding.
Subastral, simple,
ordinary in the way this fact was taught to me:
the words dropped from my professor’s mouth
as if she hadn’t just expressed totality,
as if she hadn’t just told me that I’m made of stars.
Dosed about 3 millisieverts per year.
Alive in my body, spiraling and seeping,
merging with my mandible,
incorporating with my eyelashes,
welcomed by its victim—
its gracious host.
Who am I to fear the background dose
that makes me a part of this all;
that continues to further integrate my thighs
with the impossible system from which our galaxy
only scratches the surface?
Who am I to turn away the energy
that makes me more celestial each night,
nebulas claiming another square centimeter of my body,
bathing me in the glow of it all?
The universe is selfless
like a mother.
The constellations above are often concealed by city lights,
but those within us are eternal.
They speckle the soles of my feet,
soften my palate,
solder together my spine.
Who am I to bite the hand that made me?
I don’t care who you were.
Who are you today?
How did it reshape you
Old versions undrape you
Heel-dug Ego forced to give way?
Past evils among us
Are they here in the room?
Just like your past lives
You allow what survives
Old bodies asleep in their tomb.
I’d forgive all of yours
Up from flowered grave
While my old iterations
With their nasty temptations
Beg me to be saved.
My standard stays doubled
To unyielding degree.
Despite mutual destruction
I deny my own damn fluxion.
You’re acquitted, but go easy on me.
I looked forward to Tuesdays
And you probably did, too.
The garbage man waves
As he soaked up my praise
Each Tuesday the world anew.
To have a young mind
No hint of foreshadow
Oh, to be comfort-blind
See alien humankind
And make sense as you go.
Or I guess, how we went
Before familiar ongoing
Hundreds from a cent,
For wasting, I repent
The time I spent unknowing.
I just got back from buying food
Market more super each time.
My foreign feet surely intrude
With awe each aisle was imbued
Same body, but no paradigm.
I’ll wake up tomorrow without plan
Reclaiming my childhood eyes.
Savor the wave from the garbage man
Stripped of the jade from old lifespan
And simply be under blue skies.
One time I burned rose incense
In the midst of chaotic hope
That the smoke would find its way to my heart.
Today I burn some incense
Not rose—I know better.
Hope’s been replaced
By something I can’t name.
Nameless smells good,
But I’d still prefer blameless.
I fall asleep on my back
Perfumed listless and aimless.
I bought my mom some incense
Not rose—I know better.
She told me once she forgot to blow out the flame
And it burned down to its base.
Without scent
Without patience.
It’s silly, the mistakes that teach us peace.
My mind can lead the smoke now
And in it I look for signs.
If I focus hard enough
I can keep the smoke in line.
Control’s an airy concept
Elusive and divine.
Tonight I’ll burn rose incense.
Heart surgery supine.
Well, I guess that’s it.
Trader Joe’s let me down.
No more sumos, soft and full.
This lonely time around.
Just like people, habits change.
My orange ritual forced to shift.
I’ll try to be happy with minneolas
Joy unbearingly makeshift.
I’ll still lock eyes with the sun while I peel.
Smaller fruit from a different tree.
Produce imitates its grand yellow shape
Just like my days always imitate me.
I smile as I reach the very last piece.
Find the strength for goodbyes that I lack.
Until next year, my favorite season.
The snack that smiles back.
My box has almighty lightning
Never seen a storm so frightening
I don’t think the eye is near.
Monsoon fills my nostrils with dread
Even the horse buries its head
But the box is still transparent this year.
So you can probably see right through it
Closed eyes, criss-cross, candle-lit
To me meditating behind its veneer.
Electric moisture destroying wallpaper.
What’s it like up there above the vapor?
Is the ladder top calm and clear?
What’s the meaning in my hurricanes?
Of all the things my box contains,
I can’t believe the horse is still here.
I know why convertible sales go up in the summer
And why Lexapro scripts do not.
I know why I forget nudging zinc on my nose
Just to be reminded by a later sunspot.
I know why last weekend felt like a second
And why two years was its own fable.
The ending cliché, just like this metaphor,
Did I look forward or was I unable?
I know why I never saw this coming,
Ego hiding plain future from fair thought.
The bad doesn’t last, and the good never stays
But they both leave around what they brought.
Snow in my car, I left the roof open.
And not even aloe will soothe my burn.
I still don’t believe them when they say it gets better
But maybe I’ll just never learn.
I wish I could play the piano
Lento to teach me the pace of solitude.
To find the gray nuance you stole
On a string of
Black and white keys
black and blue fists.
I wish I could play the fiddle
Because nothing makes me shatter
Like folk sweet as summer peaches
Biting right into tender skin
Endless fruit, the pit somewhere far away.
We knew the band.
I wish I could play the bass,
Stand-up legs on buckling knees
Because bassists know a secret that we don’t.
Need to learn more instruments
Because acoustic tangles my hair.
My own lonely symphony,
The reverb is grim to me,
A slowly moving prayer.
She takes her chalk
And her pink corduroy pants
Down to the dock.
Legs dangle above,
Barnacles below,
And the wood gifts crevices
Made for skin to fill.
She fits in perfectly.
And she will use the daylight,
Its transience a problem for tonight,
To hum and watch the wind play with the water,
And draw people that look like trees,
And wonder if the crab she sees today
Is the same crab she saw yesterday,
Or if this is just the other crab’s wife.
Sometimes I forget my age by accident
And sometimes I forget it on purpose.
Either way, I get to be with the little one
and tell her that it is the same crab as yesterday
and the day before.
And so are we.
Fear in the fabric
Loss in the loom
Woven so tragic
Garments consume.
Blue jacket so gentle
Folded through haze
To wear makes me mental
To keep still delays
Healing so slow
Stitching sincere
Rosy cheeks just for show
The cloth getting sheer
Wearing what hurts.
My closet knows grief
Bet you’re buying new shirts.
Love, the sweater thief.
I eat my orange alone
And sometimes I eat the rind
Because if I can make the bitter sweet,
Months of tears can be redefined.
Each carpel peels off slowly
Teaching me to listen, to stop and hear.
Who knew citrus had so many lessons?
Only March and it’s been a long year.
I can smell it on my fingertips
Infatuated with the taste.
Juice grazes each thought of my wandering mind
Unbothered, unsettled, unchaste.
When will I ever learn?
Maybe once orange season ends too soon.
Just when I got used to golden fruit
On each lonely afternoon.
A city so warm but it leaves me so cold.
A city of forks and knives behold.
A disposable I developed three months too late,
Pictures dusting so neatly while I silently wait.
How vain of me to think that your words were meant for me.
How vain of me to steal them, the first two lines a plea.
Desperation’s not the title, or at least not the one I claim.
Been through all five stages, I suppose I’ve made it to shame.
Built a domain all to myself, twelve whole dollars a year.
It’s full of my heart’s fabric, corralled by my career.
Strawberries on my birthday, chlorine in our pores.
Twenty-three’s cedar so much sweeter than twenty-four’s.
My eyes would look the same again, chocolate, knowing, clear.
Playlists laced with melodies that I can’t stand to hear.
Longer for-loops, same strumming pattern, at least I am creating.
I’ll drink bitter coffee and relish in my books, but just know that I’m waiting.
Scapula, because it was the first bone I learned.
Lunate, because it reminds me of the moon.
Sternum, because it’s close to my heart.
No, I’m choosing to remember wrong.
Scapula, because that was what broke.
Along with two ribs.
Lunate, because your hand couldn’t soften your fall.
The hand of a surgeon.
Sternum, because it was close to your heart.
Bones are all that’s left.
My vertebrae remember your hands
Checking for scoliosis
But the spines of your favorite books remain unbent.
Sandpaper stiff.
And you never told me about your working days
But I heard the stories, still.
What happened?
Swallow.
Hard pill.
Coughing it up as I read my speech
Coffin at foot.
Oh, these are my favorite bones.
They said twenty-two was too young
To say goodbye to a father
Even though I mourned my youth
The first time you forgot my age.
At least I have my favorite bones…
Not your hands, your dementia, nor you.
But I know I’ll love them always,
Through crepitus and blue.