silent recycled frost free air and particolored Sunday fruit flies inside the fluorescent breath of organs deaf to the outside world between a punch clock and a pair of shoes
August 10, 2018
Ajax Kallistrate
everything about me
you said
you liked
everything about me
(i lied)
i said
i'd lost
your number
i showed you a picture
of myself playing hockey
long hair
big smile
thirty years
before
and now?
you said
but
i disbelieved
clumsy buzzcut
lines on my face
your name
your naked feet
you said
your name was Nick
i disbelieved
but i remembered.
July 6, 2018
my fingertips smell like garlic like cooking like a knife and a pan like they never did when i was fed through the bars of a cell with no walls so i don't mind when my fingertips smell like garlic
March 26, 2019
sometimes when you fall asleep your rumble becomes a gurgle becomes a pop pop! pop! becomes a… and I call you 'ma moitie' I call you 'beloved' I call you 'boo boo' I call you 'beep'
April 27, 2019
there's a meme about grandmothers are you happy? are you fed? are you loved? i find it wonderful and absurd why would anyone care if i am happy? if i am fed? if i am loved? how much simpler it would have been if my father had succeeded in cutting off my air a little longer holding on a little longer until no one else would have had to put up with me had to be disappointed in me had to hate me i can't leave now though what's the use of surviving if i'm only going to go away again? i am not happy but i can find happiness on my own in my own way i need a chance to feed myself an opportunity and then they can all breathe a sigh of relief "thank god she's gone" and talk about me behind my back and lie to my face "of course we love you" and hate you and humiliate you and stand aside while you are hated and humiliated there's nothing pure in human affection it's crowded about with insecurities and despair and unkept promises i'll take friends over lovers lovers over family cats over everyone it makes me happy to make them happy it's what keeps me here still trying
January 28, 2018
I don't speak in riddles. I speak in convolutions of labyrinthine digression. I'm not sad. I look askance to give myself time to borrow a happier frame. I'm not devious, though I am a liar. I can be noble, perhaps courageous. In time.
July 3, 2018
i live an improvisational life in between bouts of depression. bravado shelters me like a tarp in a hurricane. no glass just boards spray- painted with pithy slogans. fun fact: my father tried to kill me when i was sixteen. interested yet? twenty years spent treading water is no substitute for a life. five ten hot flashes and a bad temper lines on my face sculpted by dysphoria embraced too late by forty years too late by thirty-two hundred miles. i write like i'm starving hunched over a machine bringing up gouts of words like wound fever in reverse. i never know if i'm doing it right but a key with no lock can still be a pretty thing. i live an improvisational life in between one breath and the next.
January 13, 2018
Two parental figures turned away.
Smooth, frictionless.
Blank walls.
Immovable.
Immobile.
Quiet as death.
Neither speaking.
Neither listening.
Unavailable.
Unavoidable.
Until I walk away.
Out from underneath.
Out from in between.
Into silence.
Into a place where I can breathe.
Where I can speak.
Where I can hear my voice.
Like an echo.
Trailing behind me.
A wasted sound.
Of words no longer spoken.
August 8, 2015
"do you feel loved?"
she said the words with a
low slow venom dripping
drawl, her eyes fixed
on the glow of her
machine.
i could not answer.
i stood at my work-
table distracted by
the lingering warmth
of an arm around my
shoulders, a smile,
the laughter of my
"kids"
full up
cocooned by their
affection, by their
unconditional
positive
regard.
they chose so often
to visit me there, to
share a word or
a joke or a smile, to
say my name or take my
hand, to collect two or
three or four at a time,
to surround me with the
buoyant emotions of
youth, cherubic and
unfettered by the
bitter rind of cold
pain and unlanced
regret.
a year later they stand
like giants in my memory.
i'm blessed still with
some few, while some i've
lost entirely, and one
alone has grown to be
the centerpiece of my
heart. i'm grateful
every single day for
the snapshots of their
lives they shared with me,
the secrets they told, the
tears and the grief, the
joy and the drama, the
moments when they came
to me, and the
moments when
i went to
them.
i am so lucky.
i knew it then. i know
it now.
but i still remember those low
slow words sunk flat into sarcasm.
"do you" she said. "do you
feel loved?"
i did.
i do.
February 19, 2021
Where is my joy? It's flown away again, fickle creature. I should learn how to trap and shoot. Emotional taxidermy. So lifelike! Only the glassy eyes give me away.
January 17, 2018
