August 2019
The last thing I wrote was “its hard to be in love by yourself”
I couldn’t hear anything
The world was too full and I was already mourning the death of us
Its hard to get the words out when you don’t want to hear what the other person is going to say.
Why did you nod when I asked if you were done?
We shouldn’t have locked our bikes together.
You said its not a misunderstanding but it is.
I will begin removing the past piece by piece and eventually you will be a hallow shadow that doesn’t feel like my whole heart anymore.
At least I tried.
I called my mom drunk again and cried. She said some things that made me feel better but I can’t really remember them.
I started smoking again.
I trace photographs I took of him. Cooking in my kitchen, playing pool at a bar, running through sprinklers. Real things that we did together that now feel like ash.
Seven months summed up into some 5x7 pictures placed neatly next to each other in a timeline.
This can’t possibly be my life, my crumbled up reality.
I trace his figure and leave out the details so that it becomes a hole that can be filled with any human.
Now my heart hurts when I lay flat on the floor and the pain is allowed to bloom into my entire chest.
The days feel neverending and I cant figure out how to distract myself from the longing.
Sinking down to the bottom of myself
There is no light, I cant find the light, how do I turn on the light?
9/29
Bruised peach lower back pain old albums sunrise sets I want to hear you say the words I love you again not because I love you but because I haven’t heard those words in the tone of your voice in so long and it is still the holiest cadence.
In my mind, my hands carve the negative space surrounding our bodies
Surrounding the tall tall buildings that encompass both of us
Maybe you don’t feel enclosed. Maybe I don’t feel that way either (at the moment)
A fog descends upon the city that is my mind that is the city that is my mind and settles the dust of summer
I am content in settling for an erotic want of an ex lover rather than an empty need for another.
11/14
intimacy with an unknown person sounds like a chore that would make me cry.
Drowning in myself, I feel the same as everyone else, stuck in the same chokehold. Breath is shortened but I do not notice; I am too focused on the future memories I have spent years choreographing inside my skull. All of which will disappear from this early death brought on by the inability to wake the fuck up. Eyes that have been glazed over for months now, I couldn’t even see the beauty within the first snowfall. I stood in it, realizing that if I couldn’t feel its preciousness, or grace, or vulnerability, or clarity, or virginity, or even its cold then I must really be dead inside. The white began coating the city, quicker than anticipated, confusing those existing within its boundaries. There was a fucked up kind of magic in the air, floating in the spaces between the snowflakes. A boy walked onto the train and licked the fresh, frosted water off his own shoulder. I made eye contact with everyone I passed, silently acknowledging the first storm, the true start of winter. I lived in each moment with everyone else. Almost crying because I could see it all; the Earth revealing itself in front of my eyes and I still wasn’t able to feel any of it in my bones.
July 2019
EMPTY PACK OF CAMELS
USED MATCHES
USED UP CONVERSATIONS IN BED
I PULL THE COVERS OVER MY HEAD
IM SO HOT, ITS DRIPPING DOWN MY FACE
YOU PULLED THEM OFF AWAY AND NOW I AM LYING IN BED IN A COLD SWEAT
ALL FUCKING NIGHT
SENT A TEXT TO EACH PERSON IN MY FAMILY
“I LOVE YOU AND I MISS YOU”
MANIPULATED YOUR LOVE BUT I CANT HEAR IT ANYWAY
GIN DRINKS MAKE ME GO BLIND
IM SORRY
THERE IS A PART OF MY SCALP THAT TINGLES WITH SORROW AND GUILT
THE HYDRANGEAS ARE DEAD
SHE TOLD ME SHE’D BE DEAD IN A COUPLE DAYS
BUT HER VOICE WAS GOING IN AND OUT OVER THE PHONE
AND I TRIED TO LISTEN I TRIED SO HARD TO
LISTEN I TRIED SO HARD TO LISTEN WHEN SHE TOLD ME
I SHOULD TRAVEL AND BE HAPPY AND LIVE MY LIFE AND
"MY MOUTH IS SO DRY JANE I CANT TALK TO YOU ANYMORE
I LOVE YOU BYE"
THEN WE RAN THROUGH SPRINKLERS
WE WENT ON A BOAT
WE ATE ICECREAM
WE SAID WE WOULD MOVE TO GREENPOINT NEXT YEAR
I ASKED YOU WHY YOU WERE SO CONFIDENT IT WOULD LAST THAT LONG
IT FEELS DIRTY EXPRESSING FEAR THROUGH DOUBT
I TOLD YOU ABOUT MY SISTER
I TOLD YOU IT FEELS LIKE THERE ARE TOO MANY THINGS INSIDE MY MOUTH
I DIDNT TELL YOU I HAVENT BEEN ABLE TO CATCH MY BREATH
BUT YOU KNEW AND YOU TOLD ME TO MATCH MY BREATHING WITH YOURS
HAND OVER HEART
I COULDNT TELL YOU MY MOUTH WAS TOO DRY TO TALK
I COULDNT TELL YOU I LOVE YOU IN THE RIGHT WAY .
September 2018
Love stories are still stories and illusions of the heart prove the most painful.
I blacked out to forget your goodbye. No one blacks out in fairytales.
As I scanned my body, memories emerged from the corners where I have stuffed you the past couple of days. You lay in the grass of my mind and stare at me through the blades. Bugs run across our bodies trying to reach each other but our hearts have built tall walls. No ant can cross, not an intimate secret shared. And so, you got up and walked off the field of my mind, out of my life. You owe me nothing. No debt remains since all you offered were some droplets of time and time falls easily through my fingertips anyway. You can have it.
At least I tried.
I don’t mean to blame it on you but its hard to tell when your mind is tricking your soul.
Who am I to think my loneliness is different than anyone elses?
All Im asking for is a connection that lives in the cosmos of the pupils.
And again, I am reminded of the people who haunt my sleeping dreams rather than those who are inspiring the waking ones.
Happy birthday to those I could have loved, happy belated to those I have lost.
Sometimes the Earth opens up and allows us to pour our sorrows inside.
Do not underestimate the work of a soft summer wind.
The end of us would have happened anyway
Maybe this is always how I was meant to end up.
November 17
This piece lives in a world that comes from the inside. It comes from slicing open the center of the chest and turning it inside out, shoulders pulled apart and wrapped around the spine to reveal a landscape of sharp bone and pumping pipes. This area that is usually dark, messy, crowded, has been exposed. This is where Rachael moves, where I write, where you sit. But it has all been cleaned out leaving only the yarn, knitting needles, paper bag, and marker to occupy the space. We live in this world. A place where we have been stuck in for years and are only now realizing that there are tall bars encompassing us. A place where we have been wandering around next to each other, not noticing that both of our feet are constantly tethered to the fleshy floor with veins. Not noticing that the person next to me is a person. Not shifting after watching her pour poison into her body. Not turning my head after hearing her heart break. Neither of us know who we are. Neither know why we are here. Neither know why we make the choices we do, and repeat them and repeat them and repeat them and repeat them. Neither know why sometimes we can’t feel. Neither know why sometimes we feel everything. Both hear, neither listen. Maybe it is because after living inside such a extraordinary, sensitive, insightful place for so long, we have become numb. Are you lonely.
April 2017
Outside you/they/i can still penetrate through skin
Like the slowly warming spring air.
Outside on the stoop. Outside walking up the subway stairs.
Outside is not safe but I am able to challenge it for periods of
Moments. Moments that are gathered into my arms so that I can carry them in a bundle that I name Time.
This Time has no relation to Space though.
Time lives in its own world where it is forced to ask for
breath and individuality and sanity.
Time has no relation to Space because she stems from him
And he has cut off her limbs.
I told you that Time is a bundle of moments that I carry in my arms,
The moments are cherry picked from an already dying cherry blossom.
As if trying to keep alive hand picked flowers, I am trying to save these moments.
Maybe if I bundle them in a baby blanket and give them a name they wont die.
Yes, I know I am lying to myself.
But Time is beautiful and even if she is dying in my arms
It’s a slow fucking death that doesn’t seem to be happening any
quicker than my own.