this summer

I'm going to get a tattoo, take pills, and play with my friends.

I cut out my tongue.

Articulation used to feel so natural.
I am out of practice.
I never considered myself a master of rhetoric and language,
but I prided myself in my ability to fluidly and coherently
translate my thoughts into words.
I was my own best stenographer—
dutifully and obediently transcribing
my investigations, analyses and conclusions,
passions, anxieties and recollections of time and place
into sentences, stringing my sentiments together
like pearls on a necklace.
With my metaphorical spinning wheel,
I would try my best to make sense of my situations,
spinning straw into gold, twisting wool into a unified thread,
and trying to weave these errant strands into a blanket of understanding.
This process used to feel so effortless.
And it was therapeutic.

These days, expression is like
prying impacted teeth,
like I’m grasping at straws, and trying, in vain,
to pull the unbudging sword from the stone.

Articulation was much easier when I was writing for someone.
I wanted to be eloquent. I wanted to be graceful.
I wanted to communicate matters of the heart
soundly, thoroughly and candidly.

Bereavement has yielded a loss for words.

A friend recently told me that he has an affinity for my art
because I don’t create for a larger audience.
I create for just one other.
He saw that my art-making acts as a quiet action waiting to be noticed
by an object of affection, and explained that the beauty behind my art
resided in my actions going unnoticed.

I fail to see that beauty.

The state of my union is not well.
I feel immobilized.
I feel alienated.
I feel alone.
I want to write for someone.
I want to paint for someone.
I want to sing for someone.
I want to nest for someone.
And now that I can’t, I feel frozen.
I don’t know what to do.

I don’t feel relevant.
I don’t feel poignancy.
I don’t feel like I have anything important to say.

I made love the content of my life.
Love is what kept me invested.
But when your mating call goes unanswered,
what are you supposed to do?
You can only sing for so long before losing for voice.
You can only spend so many nights out on the widow’s peak,
furiously scanning the horizon,
before losing your will to continue.

I hate sounding so desperate,
But I am desperate.

I want to do things for myself,
but it feels entirely too selfish.

I would feel the greatest joy
in having the opportunity
to make someone happy.

I know boys don't wear jewels, but I'd wear a string of your pearls.

I’ve whispered with the wild flowers stitched onto my mattress,
and gossiped with the wives living in the watercolors on my walls—
they know how anxious I am to love.
Sometimes, we’ll burn the midnight oil—
under a cathedral built from wooden chairs, broomsticks and old bed sheets—
sipping a sweetened whisky brew,
gathering wool and spinning his golden image
from straw and scraps of fancy:

Sturdy and steadfast, graceful and diplomatic.
Eloquent and sincere, protecting and warm.
An explorer with unfamiliar insights and uncharted anecdotes,
a composer of ballads, an inventor of art and poetry,
humbly eliciting beauty,
modestly emanating ingenuity.
A relic, a treasure, a lion tamer, a bee charmer.
A lover of the rarest form.

Not without imperfections, of course,
but who isn’t?

I do not care for furs or silks,
ruby slippers or parlor tricks,
just oil paint and turpentine,
velvet and veins,
our fingers interlaced,
my body folding perfectly into his.

I see his smoky silhouette
spindling from the tip of my cigarette,
He is luminous,
and my eyes light up brilliantly like chandeliers.
He has half-moons under his nails.
He grips my neck,
my cheeks are as red as his lips.

And he thinks I’m beautiful.

the first rule of existentialism.

Just because something exists in your head,
don't mean it's real.
It takes someone else to confirm it's validity.

when will I learn?

I should know better than to do this, but..

I want to give you another last chance.

thankful.

Sartre and Beauvoir concluded
that we as humans only have the capability
to identify that which is absent from our lives
in order to fully recognize and realize
what we ultimately have the capacity to garner and obtain,
that it is impossible to address that which we already have
because its presence is too obvious to notice,
and is inherently digested and archived within.
Despite their extensive
and thorough literature defending this sentiment,
I believe Sartre and Beauvoir got it wrong,
and that it is possible, upon careful inspection,
to still describe that which we do have,
and appreciate what we’ve already acquired.

I am thankful.

“Nothing can beat wasting the day with people who truly care about you, who you don’t have to censor yourself around out of fear of being misconstrued or deconstructed. I can be a strong black woman, I can be gay; I can talk shit and sing my heart out and drink and smoke and act like a fool and feel completely safe. With my friends, I am home.”
-October 13th, 2008

I am thankful for my friends—
my noble and distinguished collection,
my select few, my kindred company, my coven.
I am thankful for our gatherings,
our discourse, our exchanges.
Our dissections and deconstructions,
our arm-chair psychology.
I am thankful for our conversation,
our front porch system, our support system
our cigarette breaks, our binges, benders
and coffee table coalescence.
I am thankful for our conspiring,
our plans, schemes, spells and charms.
I am thankful for their anecdotes,
gossip and ear-candy.
I am thankful for their insights,
and pearls of wisdom.
I am thankful for the sunsets we’ve shared—
the ones we knew were specifically painted for us.
I am thankful for the early morning lessons
in bomb construction.
I am thankful for our plans.
I am thankful for our traditions,
I am thankful for our apocalyptic visions,
and basement bomb shelter blueprints.
I am thankful for winters to hide away from,
I am thankful for pianos,
I am thankful for musical telepathy,
and three chord songs.

I am thankful for the one who broke my heart.
You taught me about resilience, and how to persevere.
You stirred something within me that I didn’t know existed.
You made me feel alive.
And even though you couldn’t requite,
you allowed me to practice sainthood,
you saw the best of me,
a side of myself I had never even seen before.
You were the first person I ever loved,
thank you for letting me.

I am thankful for everyone who ever let me love them,
you showed me that I have the capacity to love
and all the magic and the poetry it entails.

I am thankful for the little bird.
This whole time I’ve been nesting,
I thought I was taking an active role,
by creating a space to meet a lover.
You showed me that I was actually tying myself up,
And passively waiting for someone to rescue me.

And you also give me hope that someone will rescue me.

I am thankful for everything that has transpired,
that I was able to create everything that I have,
learn everything that I know,
and know everyone that I do.

I am thankful for the person I am.

Thank you.

there is no winter and no santa claus, and, yes virginia, that's because..

And all the lights hanging
from the peaks of the houses and the arms of the trees
reminded me of all the years I asked for a lover
for Christmas and never once found a boy
gift-wrapped in reams of tissue paper
and gold ribbon under my tree.
and I wondered if I should even bother asking again
or if Santa Claus was even alive.
I’ve been building nests for years
and I just don’t understand why
no one has come to fill any of them.