journal

in the makeup aisle

in complete despair
and under unsatisfactory life
circumstances
I hold onto a rejection
of being replaced and ignored
I find the details out later, but in the
moment there is a knowing
its hovering in my hollow gut
mistaking them for butterflies
trying to understand
why they kind of feel like butterflies
the Lights above are fluorescent
zoom back to me staring
at the pink and green mascaras
a group of kids walk by
discussing who is the strongest
and who hasn’t cried
because of a death

a short story

I seemed to have lost the magic along the way. Perhaps it was stuffed in an old green backpack, lost somewhere in upstate New York and covered in leaves from several years ago. It doesn’t really matter when your in a new place or in mountain town. I’m making friends with the people I have known in a different lifetime. But still I feel like I lost something along the way.
Everyone is on a journey to a different country. I’m in a new place but still looking for that new country. Experience, yes, that is what I have acquired. Observation helps, like the observation I made of a temporary lover. That’s all I did actually. I watched him. I watched him as I let him into my house. He would tornado around my room and kitchen and then ask to use my bathroom. Announcing profound romance but not looking at me in the eye. I would watch the blood stains on his shirts. What’s crazy is the amount of effort he would put in to hide a major part of himself. The worst part, the addictive manipulative part. He wanted to keep that close. Let it shine. Let some air in. He’s cornered in the bathroom holding onto the thing that he has grown accustomed to and the ritual he would die for.

dog on the floor

I’m sitting with the
dog on the kitchen floor
the walls in this house
are sand timers
slow moving honey

it stops for a second
as I look at the reflection
of me and the dog

in the background is
yelling, screaming,
singing out of joy
it’s hard to tell
but its heavy and delusional

moans and groans
a heavy head
a heavy chest through
the wall
paralysis on both ends

lines …I’ll make lines
and pretend
that I’m showering
lines and
we both pretend he’s showering

make lines
tie the belt real tight
the shower water is running

yellowbirds/blue sky

the sky here is
more like a screen
draping against the edge
of the world
while riding my
bike I like
to stand on the pedals
and stretch my neck towards it
open my mouth as wide
as I can and try to
consume the blue
whole
I pass a mailbox with
two taxidermied
yellow birds sitting on
top , frozen in verb
stance
I pass the mango tree
that was once so ripe
a few weeks ago
the fruit hung heavy
abundant and tumbling
towards the canal
rainbow reflecting
in the water

linear

I am two feet
in front of myself
in sync with the
movements
my skin is a dark purple
and there is a hole
perfect and
circular
in my chest

I look outside and
see the sun shine
in two places

illuminating
the sparkle
and dust
a dark blue

remember what it
felt like to feel it
all at once

heart pulsing
through thick
warm honey

don’t lose the
feeling

walking in ny

A creaky heart
with each inhale and exhale
is a twig holding the
full
red belly of a
little bird that travels nocturnally

Walking past the bar that looks
like a 1920’s gathering
with its yellow round bulbs
decorative and dark borders

The trash on the sidewalk
seems to have come together
through serendipity
for the pleasure of
the moonlight, the streetlight
and the rain from earlier

Treasure from this angle

and then it started raining

Before boarding the plane
my step-dad gave me some sudden advice
“Don’t accept free food samples”
I suppose being poisoned
is a fear that I had yet to acquire

but at last here it is

I sipped from a glass of wine
elegantly placed
between a marble statue and concrete

on the third sip, I found myself upstate
in the closing part of winter

there I was, staring at the ceiling fan
trying to convince the man in the red wool sweater
to paint over
all of the thin black lines
I had painted on their door

gratefully sad

The more shit that happens,
the stronger (softer) I become.

I have to go take this face mask off
and brush my teeth

remember that it is all
temporary

every interaction
I had with that person
felt like I was cycling
through all of the emotions

every single one
in the speed of light

thrown into black hole,
and shot out of a cannon,

Lines that are reoccuring
written down