The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
Jun 21, 2025
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Such a shame
so much love lost to entropy
Who’s to blame
for the high cost of a memory?
What remains
when the tides wash our energy?
Recycled lust
must be just fine for us to glean
I can’t afford what I’ve left behind
I ruminate on love lost —
or rather dispersed
For I have so much to give you
But no mouth to find the words.
May 4, 2025
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This poem is so striking and pulls on my heart strings in a violent way I haven’t felt in most other writing, especially the excerpts below
I want to live longer.
I want to love you longer, say it again,
I want to love you longer
& sing that song
again. & get pummeled by the sea
& come up breathing & hot sun
& those walks & those kids
& hard laugh, clap your hands.
I am not ready to die yet.
& when I go or you go,
let me see you again somewhere,
or you see me.
Isn’t that you, old friend, my love?
you might say, while swimming in some ocean
to the small fish at your ankle.
Or, Weren’t you my sister once?
I might say to the sad, brown dog who follows me down
the street. Or to the small boy
or old woman or horse eye
or to the tree. I know I knew I know you, too.
Feb 13, 2025
⭐
there is something figuratively beautiful about the things we know and don’t know, the sublime and mundane
and when you visit the beach, do you ever think about if the animals who live in the embrace of the depths remember the beauty of the ocean?
where the salt envelops every single one of us,
accepting us as kin
letting her wind tousle our raw, visceral edges
and pepper them with her sea-foamed kisses
which tell me that it’s okay to pretend
and okay to tell the ocean all of myself
the ocean reaches out to me, hands cloaked in the sharp coolness of water and something else- something i don’t understand
as I poke around in a tide pool, like a vendor at a bustling market, observing the wares that the ocean has to offer
and i turn around and ask her, do the barnacles see themselves? do anemones understand their own beauty, fragile and ephemeral?
i don’t think they do.
but the ocean doesn’t have any words for me, instead shutting my mouth with a shhhh
as her sandy dress rustles down the shore, laced with white foam and gossamer trails of ripples
and wordlessly, tells me to look
and i do.
until the sun hurriedly retreats from the wispy radiance of the moon, enrobed in puffy clouds
and it's just the three of us.
the moon tugs at the ocean’s hand, dancing to their own secret rhythm,
letting me see them in their love.
personally, i think it’s beautiful \\ and i wish i had something like it
and the ocean laughs. nothing jeering or ridiculing, simply an acknowledgement that i understand.
everything around me falls,
like petals cast off from a chrysanthemum.
and then, we were wordless
like the ocean had never spoken in the first place.
i want to descend into the depths of the ocean one day,
to be hugged once more and never again.
not because i am tired of being alive,
but frankly within me exists too much zeal to live.
uncontrollable surges of wow i am alive in flesh, blood through my veins, and thoughts in my head
become more addictive than any form of fentanyl, cocaine, heroin
and better than any gateway into a better life
or a better existence, transcending normality
and the moment it’s just me in my head, without the viscous energy of being alive
suddenly drains me like a leaking bucket,
decrepit and dry.
i want to burn like a torch, setting my world alight into embers,
into flames,
into an inferno.
Sunrise:: being alight || with a halo of only thoughts and dreams || and the divinity of something new
May 2, 2025
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No screen Sundays. If I want to listen to music its CDs or radio. If I want to watch a movie, no I don’t. If I want to see a friend, I will make plans with them on Friday or Saturday to meet up. As a result, I read more, write more, and sit with questions like “did Citizen Kane‘s 50 year winning streak in the Sight and Sound critics choice survey end in 2012 or 2022? When did Stephen Merritt come out? Whats the etymology of Whitsun?“
This is something that I have practiced off and on for many years but I’ve been doing it every week since December and I love the way that it just allows me one day of true freedom and rest.
Jan 22, 2025
Mar 3, 2025
My calendar this year has 52 of these week at a glance pages but I don’t think that way. So, I've been inspired by Ross Gay’s Book of Delighs to start recording the little moments and sensations that bring me joy throughout the day. An analog pi.fyi, if you will.
heres some of what I have so far:
- Waking up to the sound of my upstairs neighbor‘s footstep. It sounded nostalgic. Felt like company.
- Strawberry jam
- feeling tender for strangers: their lips, nail colors, their small wrists. Thinking of all the lives we hold gently.
- A young girl bought an LP at the bookstore just before I left. She stroked its cover with love
- Green tiles —the mint shade always makes me think of Jancie
- Charlie’s little bop and punch dancing to some German language punk
- lunch with Katherine, curry Brussels sprouts
- small talk at the photo studio. The photographer's brother was named after their dad, stole his identity, bought jet skis.
Jan 13, 2025