Love feels so easy when you have it, yet this same virtue can feel like a writer’s block freestyle, a spotlight on your stuttering vacuity when you don’t. That frustration sweating your brows as you try to press happiness into your forehead. There is no one out there to love you, not as you deserve.
We always tie contentment, fullness, to the presence of romantic love, don’t we? But in doing this, what we miss is the abundance of platonic love that swells around us, even when we can only see a vacant place where we feel romantic fulfillment should be.
Whether we like it or not, contentment, in many ways, is tied to love. But love is so much more than the urge between two people to kiss, and we are remiss to reduce the culture of love to a single relationship. Love exists without limits if you untether it and has the power to spread happiness when we shatter the idea of possession. Friendly and familial love is not nothing, though we tend to treat it as such.
As a child, I believed that you could hold love for anyone if you spent enough time with them, and to a certain extent, that belief remains. If you spend enough time with anyone, parts of yourself will grow attached to parts of them. It’s human nature, this desire to connect with something, anything, in the people around us. To see ourselves in their faces.
I’ve always thought of myself as a loving person, capable of seeing humanity in anyone, but as I reached the years of my later adolescence, I found a fierce hatred inside me. A burning contempt for anyone who can not find love, or at least respect for the innate being of anyone else. Coinciding with the 2016 election in the United States, America’s red brand of hatred sparked a twin flame of hatred in me. I could not wrap my childhood brain around their blatant hate for everyone deemed “other” and the grotesque way they wielded this loathing with bible verses and the insistence on the superiority of their white picket fence traditional values. Ignoring the bodies who had bled out for centuries over these sharp pillars. How could they take something meant to preach love and kindness and pervert it into hate speech?
2016 was a year of disenchantment. For the first time, I saw the political spaces I had previously diminished as outdated stories of the past become concrete in front of me. They seemed to come out of hibernation, salivating and darting their forked tongue at all the progress in universal love we had begun to settle into.
As the years continued, my snide comment-sparked rants and pink-haired protest could be slated as a classic case of young woman’s anger and patriarchal society-hating foolery, bound to come back around as I experienced more of the world. Adults told me I would settle down once I accepted the way the world was and would always be; everyone was a liberal when they were young, and young is synonymous with silly and idealistic. You could look at my liberal anger in that light, but it really was, and is, an impassioned reaction to the clash of what I thought of human nature and its reality.
I thought the later half of the 1900s’ protests and calls for equality and an eradication of hatred had worked. From my place of childhood bubble wrap and social privilege, I thought we made it. We had gotten through the drudge and sickly sweet molasses of “tradition” and arrived at a time when these values no longer informed how we treated each other. I remember feeling lucky on the playground because I was a girl and free to trade skirts for pants as I pleased. If only I knew how shallowly this perceived “freedom” extended.
Southern California is only one place, and even in my neighborhood, the claws of conservatism were sharper than I could have imagined.
Conservative, the word sickens me, but what sickened me more was how I felt a similar judgment enrage me against them, how they showed me my own capacity to hate.
I believe so fiercely in free speech, in our freedom of expression, and in accepting and loving the humanity in everyone. Yet there I was, hating based off of a label.
It is hard to grapple with the hypocrisy of harboring hatred for people based on their hatred for others; both hatreds stem from perceived differences incomprehensible to each other. But at the heart of this, I discovered the distinction between their hatred and mine.
Theirs is seeded by fear of difference, of a disruption of the status quo, a willful ignorance they water with self-affirming rhetoric and religious justifications. While mine grew out of my love of humanity and the desire to defend and preserve just equality. It was their treatment of people who don’t fit into their small box of conservative comfort that prompted me to hate their actions with the same intensity they bestowed on others for their existence.
Hatred is only more than prejudice if its cause is delivered from an individual’s free actions and choices within their circumstance. The same can be said for love.
We must become disillusioned from the understanding that indifference to the lives of others equals compassion. If you are unwilling to get angry over injustice and rather evict yourself from either end of the conversation, you are not practicing love. You are not promoting happiness.
Since boarding my first flight to Munich at the start of the European adventure that would become my life, I have kept busy with one of my more geriatric hobbies. Crochet.
I dwindled the hours over the Atlantic and chugged over train tracks in these weaves of colors. What started as a pastime has evolved into a passion.
I began to go off-script, ditching patterns and youtube videos for the shapes my fingers found in the methodical twist of wound yarn.
I have made arm warmers to keep my wrists warm and scarves to wind my neck. I have crafted vest sweaters and endured the trials and tribulations of making a dress.
Now, however many months since I started, I have truly made strides in creating creative and sturdy pieces that I am ready to share with you!
If you like what you see, don’t hesitate to check out my latest page, where I list all my latest designs for sale.
The Summer of 2021 found me tanned and studious, legs propping up my laptop by the pool, screen open to a remote class on the history and artistry of graffiti while I let the Grecian sun polarize through my sunglasses. It should have been irritating, being made to study during an astonishing vacation, the first I’d dared to embark on since the pressure cooker of COVID began.
It should have been, but it wasn’t. Instead, I found the course vastly interesting, one of those lessons that adds an asterisk to your eye, noting a new layer of appreciation over the kind of art your vision previously skipped over.
The bold beauty of graffiti feminist pioneer Lady Pink paired with the Agean island like the fine cheese and wine I dined on. Ever since I’ve held them together.
Now, 2023 Winter has me in Rennes, France, a student-filled city that does not dare skimp on the intersection of forsaken architecture and graffiti artwork. The air in Rennes hangs in abundance as time lags between human presence on each alley street. There is just a feeling of vacancy, like you are the only one watching, a sense that you are the sole observer of this cold beauty.
This is what I feel here, and I hope I do the feeling justice.
Rusted Wall Box.
The rusted wall box has no other name but this,
no friends but the crust of itself
and a gray paint that chips into deeper colors.
What do we guard but the empty room of ourselves?
Grown over by vines and teenagers,
a can-string phone line echos in two vacant halls.
Clank me into the vibrations you understand
and maybe you won’t lose me
in the gray-chipped paint that becomes
my gravestone.
Graffiti Row.
No matter who levies the last lash of color,
the acrylic blood will pool.
Dripping just off the edges
of the most prolific overwrought signatures,
but who can make a mark without bleeding?
We are remembered for our bloodstains,
not our discarded scabs, not for the wounds we heal over.
Though we never know the difference.
I could imagine myself overwhelmed by the organic splat of rouge
while the rest of the world’s eyes only sees a spring-wound dancer.
That tiny ballerina cradled in the two jointed pieces
of a painted jewelry box, holding the red crystal of solved wounds.
Still, these jewels must stalk somewhere,
so they do.
Framing plywood backboards with colors
that bleed into themselves and stay.
A pierced heart sacrificed for nothing.
Grow Up.
I can play all day I am great
& I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t fine.
I am fine. Of course, I am fine.
It’s just this juxtaposition as sinew between my bones
this wanting of nothing more
then for him to hold me in the dark,
to paint over my beige body in his dark colors,
only in the dark where we can hide our faces and feelings
and all the while, I can hold the trauma he gifted me
and I can still hate him.
It’s a decision, every day,
to stand up out of the darkness,
to stop relying on quick fixes,
to grow green over spray-paint stains
to choose yourself over and over,
even if you are the only one.
Words are beautiful, just like his paint was,
I need to borrow their beauty
& maybe together, we can build a more permanent love.
Little Prince.
The little prince nuzzles my hair,
white-gold locks that mock the white of his world.
Some aristocrat made him,
but we can’t make our makers,
we can only remake their art.
Repackage their good message, only this time
it is meant for everyone.
Little prince dreams in galaxies,
ones that parade around in billowed colors, soft and primary.
Little prince doesn’t want to challenge you.
Little prince will take your friends and paint them pastel,
any color pleasing to the eye half asleep.
He learned this from his little fox,
that all of us are made from the same array of colors.
Some aristocrat made him,
but he can take his colors and build this world into the softest galaxy.
Little prince curls into my arms
and I can’t mock the way it feels so sweet
to hold someone’s planet and close your eyes,
to fade into someone else’s idea of perfect innocence.
Mind-Altering
Taking and bending
No rules line this space between
The weight of everyone
Who have found nothing between their fingers
And cruelty rings my ears
Time dulled by the puff and exhale
The big smoke from nothing but the hot air inside, escaping
And I just want to add to my savings.
Cold-Pressed Lullaby.
Startled into 1984 brotherhood,
these hard lines beg
for concrete companions on the pavilion.
Rigid and cold without any contrast
like your spine bends backward
out of open eyelet window.
This attic habitat
and the frigid air that flows,
clinging to the hot puffs of breath
that sail over the street.
Inhale this cold and let go
of what you think is warm.
You don’t need it in backbends
in the broke backs you shape into proverbial mountains.
You aren’t gay, just like
you aren’t completely sold on men, either.
Convince yourself you are flawed in the face
so you can secretly believe you are the face
every fem girl wishes to see in the mirror without guilt.
You aren’t a narcissist because you love yourself,
but maybe you’re that self-pining flower for another reason.
You are filled with contrasting truths
only you can weave together.
Count yourself lucky because you are.
Call your sister. Tell her you love her because it’s true
and imagine she says she doesn’t judge
the mistakes she would never make.
No matter what she really says, you’ll never truly trip,
just break your back into a new window,
tricking a different pipe dream into truth.
Fade to Fuzz.
The men themselves cross their puffed arms at each curved corner.
The French are circles.
It is said in every slopped rock.
They love borders of portal blocks,
straight edges manipulated into hooks.
The green tea bird beaks its water into my cup,
spilling over its own lip to warm into shallow pool.
Do all these things count as something?
Trapped in this charm-edged world,
the Ty Anna ticket will take my coins with the same clink
owned by any jar.
You learn quickly that any destination hangs foreign deceits
before you learn to weave your straight lines into its circles.
C’est le dernier jour de mon grand voyage depuis que j’ai tout laissé derrière moi. Je suis tellement heureux que cela ait été possible et je suis toujours excité pour mon retour à Rennes dans la nouvelle année.
Ces derniers mois, j’étais en Allemagne, en Autriche et évidemment en France. J’ai appris le français au lycée, mais vraiment je n’aurais jamais pensé que je serais ici. C’est un rêve incroyable à réaliser. Malgré les montagnes difficiles des barrières linguistiques et la communication avec la famille et les amis, je suis ici et je poursuivrai mes études de français au-delà de l’école. J’aimerais être parfaite dans la langue mais je sais que j’ai un long chemin à parcourir.
Aujourd’hui, j’ai dit <<au revoir>> à ma famille française, et elle va me manquer. Ça va parce que je vais voir ma vraie famille et ensuite je vais rentrer en France. Il me reste trois mois dans la nouvelle année.
Je ne sais pas ce que je vais faire à la fin de l’année prochaine mais je sais avec confiance que je serai bon.
L’Allemagne me manque, c’est vrai, mais je pense que je préfère la France maintenant. C’est peut-être parce que la langue est plus facile pour moi. Quoi qu’il en soit, je suis en France et j’ai tous mes rêves.
A Paris, c’est trop cher comme toutes les autres grandes villes. J’ai trouvé un bar qui s’appelle <<La Robe et La Mousse>> et je viens de m’asseoir. Les murs sont turquoises sur des morceaux de vieilles pierres. Les lampes sont circulaires et montrent leur éclat dans de petits mondes de lumière.
Je suis content de la vie que j’ai dessinée ici. Tout dépend de moi, et calme quand je le veux. Mais d’un autre côté, c’est excitant quand je le veux.
C’est parfait pour moi, mais quand même, je n’ai jamais de contentement longtemps. Je ne l’ai jamais fait.
Je suis allé à Paris plus de cinq fois cette année mais je n’ai jamais eu le temps de voir la ville sereinement depuis 2019 où j’y suis allé avec mes parents. C’est très différent maintenant et plus libre, mais je suis hanté par les ombres des souvenirs de notre temps ici. Je vois encore et encore le même restaurant.
A ce bar maintenant, je peux voir que le serveur n’est pas francais. C’est très bizarre quand je sais les différences de parler tandis que je ne suis pas française non plus et que ma française n’est pas bien. Mais je remarque et je pense que c’est un bon signe pour mes études.
Ce restaurant est bon, il n’y a pas beaucoup de gens et le serveur est gentil. La seule chose que je n’aime pas est mon chapeau rose. Je ne suis pas confortable comme ça mais il n’y en a pas beaucoup pour moi a fait.
Bientôt, je vais aller à San Diego et le froid sera derrière moi.
j’ai peur de perdre mes progrès en français mais j’ai décidé de continuer à lire, écrire, et étudier pendant que je suis là. Une des choses qui m’excitent pour les Etats Unis est le changement de mes vêtements. Le style est important pour moi, la mode est tout.
Pendant que je suis en Europe, j’ai choisi mes tenues dans mes deux valises. C’était terrible, mais ce n’est pas la fin du monde. Quoi qu’il en soit, j’ai hâte de choisir parmi un placard agrandi. Ce sera une sensation incroyable après tout ce temps.
De même, j’ai hâte de manger de la nourriture mexicaine. Cette cuisine se sent toujours comme à la maison. C’est vrai que j’adore la cuisine française, mais vraiment mexicaine c’est mieux.
Ma famille et mes amis m’attendent à l’autre bout du monde, mais je serai là tout de suite.
Après tous mes voyages, je ne suis pas prêt de dire <<au revoir>> aux autres pays. Je vais dire <<à plus tard>> mais je reviendrai. C’est une promesse.
A plus tard France, tu vas me manquer ainsi que toutes les personnes que j’ai rencontrées. (Et désolé pour les mots que j’ai mal compris, je vais réessayer.)
The crowds swallow the street in tufted beanies and wound scarves, hands plunging deep in puffer pockets while chins tuck into the wrap of their necks. It is cold, but there are presents to purchase.
Wooden stands make two wide isles in front of the white-painted Ferris Wheel and mingle pottery and jewelry with sugar-stuffed churros and vin chaud. I look over the artisan spreads next to everyone else with an open mind and a closed wallet. I have neither the space nor spare change to pick up stray beauty, but it’s fun to hold rings and ceramics to the sky and play into pretend consideration, isn’t it?
(I won’t lie to you; I did give into a bright pink beanie. Though, in my defense, it was cold, cheap, and cute; a kryptonic trio.)
My crew shuffles through the wide eyes flitting between passing fancies on our way to the imposing wheel. Five euros each buys us a place in a small box car rotating three times slowly before the inevitable dismount.
From this angle, the city expands, but away from Rennes’ central buildings, there is not much to see beyond the bustling market immediately below us. The nearest intersection sighs with the crude exchange of cars and exhaust, hot tufts in the air. Clashing against the cold, a shade or two denser than the warm breath that escapes us.
Feet on the ground once more, we take ourselves to L’Arts de Fou Marche in front of the Rennes’ Opera Theater. Here, artisans of tactile art line a long loop of sculptures, jewelry, bowls and cups, and installation pieces. All these leading softly into a tented pavilion for the quiet consumption of wine and beer. The art relies heavily on animal shapes and nature’s form broken from the canvas of raw rock.
Impressive in every sense of the word, but expensive and regrettably reserved for the high class. The only place I can picture these pieces is in the grand and cold entryway of a mansion inhabited by whisps of white. To be looked upon and appreciated by everyone but its owners.
Just another three minutes away takes us to the most Christmas-heavy marche in front of Rennes’ parliament building.
A larger-than-life Christmas tree stands, somehow, dressed decadently in red bows and reflective globes. This pop-up center sticks to the food side, selling crepes, churros, and pastries alongside metal pots of vin chaud and hot cider.
With my hot cider in hand, we crowd around the handmade tables of stumps and logs that surround the larger sapin. It tastes of cinnamon and closed-eye inhales on Christmas. Gloves are replaced by the heat of our paper cups, and we look at each other through the steady wisps of steam that rise from the rim.
The cider settles over the lunch we shared before exploring these marches. This morning we met at a restaurant called Avec, a fairly unassuming name though it still subtly begs the question, with what?
As I entered the surprisingly American warehouse structure, I realized they worked with every auxiliary business they could fit into their overwhelming hipster aesthetic. Don’t get me wrong, the turquoise and burnt-yellow shaped furniture and displayed motorcycles cradled an atmosphere that was anything but tacky.
Yet, including a tattoo parlor, barbershop, merchandise shop, and auto-moto workshop in their bare metal restaurant undeniably draws the image of a 2014 man sketching graphite over his black notebooks, sipping teaspoons from small cortados. I could almost see him among the crowd with his nondescript face, which did nothing but bring an amused smile to mine.
Avec’s food and beverage side mixes cocktails and burgers for brunch before offering an ice cream bar for dessert. I inhaled my homemade fries and burger without guilt; it is the holiday season after all. Besides, I might as well take that first step back into American culture.
Not unlike Johnny Cash, as he sings, “ I keep the ends out for the tie that binds… I walk the line,” I walk this tightrope without slack. I’ve already cranked the dial, bit by bit, consuming everything untaught in the years of weeknight poetry groups and the tight art circles of strangers.
Hung low in these rooms was the kind of cigarette smoke embedded in the fabric of suburban kids’ trench coats as they all sing their hymns of too much and too little in the wrong categories.
Here, in the anonymity of a crowded room of the like-minded, I shed the last scales of self-loathing and read it into the past tense.
There are so many ways we are ourselves with the people we love. They are all true and carried and backed by watchful eyes that back your own out of authority. How many times can you break bones and find something different in front of the same people?
In the 2019 first freedom of dorm room homes and month-long family, I broke into new poses of myself countless times. My roommates heard “you know what I just realized?” more times than they heard the word “sick” tumble from my mouth. It was just as automatic.
This constant phrase changed its ending every time, contradicting its predecessors and followers with the kind of truth borne from this second’s reality. Each break in my brittle bones offered a new way to look at what makes marrow.
Every observation is true, even existing in opposition. That is the value of poetry.
These moments of clarity, spurred thought from another person’s words, or the sight of water dripping that begs a reality from inside you, can be immortalized as any emotion in art.
So as my friends tired of my repeated self-realizations, I spun them into ballads of wavering woe.
These first months of poetry classes, and the new opportunity for spoken word Wednesdays in the 7 pm writing center room, allowed me to pull a new authenticity from myself.
I didn’t have to be the blonde, suburban kid with too much privilege to divert her attention from issues of self-image and intimacy. With these same materials, I could be a voice that walks directly over human metaphors and recognizes the quiet thoughts that whisper in each person’s ear.
I fell in love with metaphors, allusions, hyperboles, conceits, just lyric. Words that can be read in an infinite amount of ways, each time plucking a chord of truth. Like humans, poems can mean a million different things to a million different people.
I became a voice, a speaker, separated from myself, my name, and anything about me except the immovable fact that my mind made these words.
It’s true, what some people say, that most of the time, strangers are the only people you can be completely honest with. I took this expression to heart and wrote from each crevice of my ever-changing understanding of my world.
We try on many different selves, don’t we, when we realize that first permission to make ourselves what we want. When we remember that people only know what we tell them, people only see what we show them.
So I dyed my hair purple. I pierced third holes in my ears with only half the materials required. I stabbed my wrist with stick n poke mistakes that are all mine. I ate the dining hall’s macaroni n cheese pizza for breakfast and drank their black coffee for dinner. I kissed boys and girls and left the party. I apologized and said “I wish” to people who asked me for cigarettes even though I never smoked them myself. I painted blue around my eyes, debuted them at the campus underage bar, and gave them an encore in COM 103 the next morning.
I followed through on every thought that hung around my head for longer than a class period, and then I read the email, and everything changed because I felt I couldn’t anymore.
Covid stole my dorm room home and new-friend-family. It stole my unencumbered realizations and my poetry evenings and everything new I had begun to call myself.
But, in the shelter of my old room, I continued to write with the self that now dominated me, and I hurt people.
Instead of calling strangers closer in rooms that called words home, I tugged on the heartstrings of my original home with words that family felt rejected every good thing they ever gave me. Still, I selfishly refused to give up the part of myself that reveled in the honesty that poetry allowed me without focusing on the facts that surrounded me.
Emotional truth is real, without needing physical fact to bolster the feeling.
Time here passed, somehow, and we can still debate whether or not it’s over. Both are true.
I wrote myself through another two years of English classes, poured my soul into poetry workshops, and earned practical credit in marketing courses. I presented a thesis collection based on an ancient religious poet and my conflicted feelings for my ex-boyfriend. I heard enough praise that I held no hesitation in creating this blog space for my self-indulgent travels and self-promoted poems.
I love it. Having a place to post thoughts I can no longer subject to whatever unfortunate group is trying to relax in my living room. But with this kind of platform, I have lost the complete anonymity I am used to.
I write for no audience, then send my words into the ether that is truly, if we want to talk about objective facts, made of friends, family, and followers who know my real name.
I want to be completely honest, but I am not used to hurting anyone but myself with my words.
Another poetry collection I have been working on for a while, this one is full of half-truths, momentary backtracks, and muted confessions. Trying to love again, in some watered-down way, I write out of that valley in my mind. The dip that cradles new hearts and breaks them, as I continue to patch myself together.
(disclaimer: if you are my family, you may want to skip this one ;))
Proof.
I feel my figure tracked along the road and I know I am there. Breathing in front of other bodies. When I write, it is for me, my truth & I don’t care to offend other eyes, but still, the thought of others weighs heavy on my hands. Inked words given an end stop, a pause, where I imagine a read receipt at each indent.
You know.
You hold this power over me. You know you do that’s why you loved me. Thats why I can’t be around you. I dream of the day you’ll cry and I’ll feel nothing. No pulse will slow and quick. No drawn heart will ricochet in my soul. I dream of this day with my eyes closed, pressed shut so that one day I can see you, and see nothing.
What do I call you?
You go by many names, and baby, so do I. I snake like a poison around my own ears and listen to the city’s heartbeat from an open window. Costar reminds me to “notice everything” and darling, I do. Someone drips their words onto my skin makes love to my lips and touches me with sweetness unmatched by any second-day sugar. I dream of someone in sliding photographs, because I am not comfortable in still frames. Hovering, always writing, over any page.
White lies are only white if the truth doesn’t matter.
Why can’t I stop biting my cheeks? Like flesh pealing from raw lips will silence your circular swarm. All midnight thoughts pull back to what I should have said and what you shouldn’t have. There is no one I love more and trust less than you. The pink skin inside lips and tongue are meant to heal the fastest. So I am always ready to bleed, each time you chew my mind. With every 2am earache, every 3am tear, every 4am conversation between teeth, comes severed skin. You don’t hear the words I scream at you they are in my head but I bear my teeth anyways. Cannines into wet scabs blood until breakfast.
melody.
there is another face pulling me when i listen to music a new theme in my soundtrack written away from the name that held too much for too long. but there are too many lyrics about someone else now there is a sweet song sliding through my ears and it builds something new inside me stacking tracks in a direction i forgot was possible. youth has a second coming, i knew it was far from over those vibrating notes were just the prelude. i have albums in me countless plastic photographs to gloss over with greasy fingertips that lie in whatever future waits for me. songs come a few times a week and they aren’t repeats anymore, though the artist remains the same. dark eyes pull me into the present, into this morning city in front of us.
A-
I thought you could be toxic while he seeped into my brain with his own poison, but maybe both can be true. Could your love for me just be a little too much? Enough to see through his bullshit when I was blind. And I need you, toxins and all, to erode all these ill intentions. You are the only one I trust to love me when everything goes up in smoke. I wait for your text, so I can divulge my soul to you. So I can tell you everything I don’t know how to say to myself. I can’t stand it when you are quiet. You sleep, or work, or dance while I roam another city and reach for your love with the stars.
True Stories.
How can we be reduced to a grain of our sand? How do we become defined by our final moments? Like all true stories, there was always going to be an end to your sweet. Your bittersweet cavity moaned loud through painkillers and I sink into that feeling again. It swells, the molasses you left me to drown in, this stick of you to my skin. Sugared sick covering every crevice filling all empty flesh. Then I know this quicksand sweet will become a grain. It must, in time, despite the residue. You- we are a part of me. Still, you & I & we are only a moment of everything.
You aren’t the “he” my diary knows without context, and nothing is life or death anymore.
Knowledge.
What would he do if he knew I was writing about him? Would he be colored in red? Or know the impact of his stroke, Know how he lands on me, And how his fingers curl me inside. He wants a playlist, and I want him, Right now, Even if I don’t know for how long. He’ll always be alive in my memory. Exist as a sexy patch of light Illuminating the French ridges of my mind. Filling the space I thought would stay empty here. And am I scared of him or how he makes me feel? Who am I to know.
Dear,
I would be lying if I said that your affection doesn’t draw me to you or that your free-flowing nights out don’t buy out the fifty percent of my brain that says- stupid girl, run. I don’t know if I’ve ever known I was making a mistake while I made it before. Not like this, not for this long. You are dangerous. But are you really? Now that I think I know you? Do your gentle friends excuse the sharp edge below your steering wheel like I do? Does the sweetness of your thumb on my chin excuse what it does to faces that aren’t mine? I know it is wrong when you throw the first punch, and it makes me want you. You broke your hand because you are too hard, but with me, you are softer than butter. I don’t have to touch you to melt you. Just the heat of my hand begins to break you, but still, you touch me.
Grass.
You were supposed to be grass under my shoe, Nothing. Nothing but a blade, Fresh-faced and green. Climbing up my boot Caressing my leather until I crush you. But now I’m crushing on you, Looking at the space below my platformed heel, Hesitating. You were supposed to be grass. Beautiful and temporary, Just for the season Then gone. Your last pleasure, the crunch Underfoot.
Read Receipts.
19 seconds on the clock, and this beer falls down my throat easy. How else are we meant to walk but hand in hand? If I text you twice, will you smile, or cringe away from my name? You make me feel safe, somehow, as I scroll and react. So shallow against your words. I love you. No, I didn’t say that. I just think about you often. You live and lie in my brain now. Just a tiny version of everything I know about you. I am tempted to know you, I hesitate, and want you. Oh, I really do, I want you. I just don’t know about forever.
Again.
How many times will I let you feed me lines, and gift you any semblance of belief? You haven’t meant what you said in a year. I dont believe a word from the forked tongue you tearfully split, and for the first time I know it’s true. I dont want to be with you. It took one picture, and in that moment something in me shifted. I grew white hot at the switches flip and here I am finally angry with you. It is all your fault, this hurt. I know it is your fault, because I looked inside myself I scraped every hallow with responsibility, and all I can find of mine is softness. I am too soft. I’ve always been too sweet. I should have screamed at you while I had the chance. It took a while, but I have found my sharpness. The part of me that cuts, and how dare you sharpen me out of understanding. How dare you make me cry on my birthday because you were too weak to bite your lip for one day. How dare you decide for me what I deserve, from everyone and you. How dare you tell me constantly that one day you would come back after you severed us, because you were too scared to imagine us in a straight line. How dare you cut down your own promises, like they were crops only rooted in this season’s reality. How dare you never tell me the whole fucking truth. How dare you swear to me you’ll follow through, this time, and convince me with drunk words that you love me. You told me to wait for you. Not to cry because you couldn’t handle it. And these are things I will never do for you. Not if you ask.
Ahead of Myself.
I don’t think I’ll miss you when I’m gone but what if that’s a lie? What if I’m the one who is falling and your arms just happen to be there to catch me? I keep tracing back to the time you held me. naked and sweaty from our nightly activities, and you just held me. At the time, all that ran through my head was fuck. What the fuck am I doing leading you on like this? It’s cruel. If you just want to be held. But now it’s me who is thinking about it. Why am I thinking about it? On the street, I’ll start smiling, because of something you said. This is wrong, I’m not supposed to think about you if you are not inside me. But I see you, The next day, and the day after that. And I’m okay with that. If I never ran into you at that bar, met you for a second time at Rennes’ universal rendezvous, I would have never said yes again. I was planning on fading, a fond memory, and now I hope to remember you for myself. The man is supposed to miss me, I am supposed to feel a bit guilty, shrug it off, and become a ghost.
Hurt Me.
When he warned me, i almost died as I soaked cotton crossed and uncrossed my legs, one strewn across his knee now. His hands like my hair, they like drawing loose strands around my ear, and turning my eyes to his. He says he is trying to be good for me, and after our first round romp he stopped me still in the back of his car and held me. He rested my head on his shoulder and did the same. Simple, but not what I was expecting. Soothing our skin with forward fingertips unafraid and unencumbered no thought. On his shoulder lines a dragon inked and ridged as I feel it, and with another kiss, we are all fire again. His hand grips my throat, and I wish I had the words to say harder. Plus fort, I guess, but instead, I place my hand over his and squeeze. He doesn’t want to hurt me but he should I will hurt him.
Storylines.
Do we start our story at the beginning or the end? I write in my pink notebook Like it’s normal at the bar Because it is, isn’t it? Doesn’t everyone write while they want a cigarette? Doesn’t everyone dance this dance? Tongues dance a million languages between us And I don’t know which is yours. Between these and a thousand other tongues I will choose you. I choose you. For now and as far as I can see into the future, Which is never longer than a week. Isn’t that enough? I make enough mistakes in my French to speak to others with assistance But with you I use nothing. I am raw with you, and you try to understand me. C’est pas nécessaire, mais pour toi c’est vrai. C’est nécessaire. Je suis nécessaire.
Danger.
But is it even that simple? Or is it that feeling, Between my legs Between my eyes and his Between the made beds we untuck And ruin. It’s his job, To be in the dark and on the run And maybe I’m okay with that Because one foot props the door. But then my stomach clenches With each minute he waits to speak And I want him to keep on wanting me Like he does Even if that means breaking him. I cool my conscience by telling him small things, With words he may not understand. Maybe I let this go on, Because I like the way he feels With his hand on my back With my fingers tracing secrets on his thigh. Of course, I like how he feels, I like our franglish jokes with their belated punchlines. The way I talk around the right word And his lips move slowly to teach me the sound. Those lips curl around our words then my lips And he is disarmed in translation. He cannot lie, Or maneuver his words to serve him. There is no mincing between us. He says what he means, and I say it again, Because when do we understand the first time? Our mouths take time to know each other, And our tongues know what to say without words. We are high on his work and my American deprivation, Learning new ways to say it. Exchanging expressions like currency though it’s him who pays for everything. He wants to buy me everything, But I can’t tell if I believe him. I’ve been trained to discredit sincerity, To write off promises, To add disbelief to anything said in love. But why would he pretend when I have given him nothing? I tell him not to pay, Because every coin is charged to my guilty conscience. Because I will leave, you can bet on it.
I have nothing and everything to say to you.
Tears soak into gray on my violet sweatshirt. You still have my favorite one, you wanted it and told me it would be waiting for me, with you when I flew back to you. And I said okay. Because I believed you when you said we would meet again. I left clothes in drawers you cleared for me & I wish I was colder to you. I wish your face didn’t startle me with forgotten contours burn-branded into me. You took liberties, and I wish I screamed at you. But I smiled & everything was your idea. This was all your idea, from the beginning. And I wasn’t angry for so long. For too long my love for you burned so bright it charred the split ends of my skin and clotted the flowing blood for me. Love licked my wounds and understanding numbed the way I never really stopped bleeding. But this love was temporary, just like yours and I still need stitches & fuck you for that. I can’t believe all the ways I let you fuck me. Over & Over & Anyway you wanted. Nothing was off limits for you. I was blind. And so small. And crying. But I loved you enough to choke down the tears I drank them, so you didn’t have to see, but now they are coming back up. Soaked with bile & blood & other indesgressions you asked me to swallow. You’ve never seen me angry. Not really. Its rare, a shooting star, burning through myself, I go cold. Tears fall like ice, I speak slow, through clenched teeth steam whistles like a kettle. You’ve never seen me angry. Not like this.
overwrought sunshine.
everyone calls me sunshine it’s in my hair lining my face as the first thing out of their mouths, once they run out of generics. i’m sure there are many of us called sunshine, can we get together, start a club, and talk about what our lovers say to us what they call us and think is original? can we hold each other, bright and breaking the stars of love burning, and the gold that falls around my shoulders can be too much. because firing eyes can cool into ashes, and they will understand this. just for the minutes recorded by our sunshine secretary can we bring a room to absolute darkness, hang our tired arms at our sides and we won’t have to smile. no one has to smile, we can laugh at the literal our favorite color- yellow, and the golden brows that tip the scale of our overwrought imagery. we are not sunny, we are the sun. the burning ball that shows the ones who share our bed the morning.
The Flipside.
It’s crazy to imagine someone trying to get over me. Me? Maybe its narcissistic, but I crave to know what it is like to know me, to unknow me. How do I look to the other eye? How does this other mind think over me? This other heart bleeding over my name. I wonder what it is like to mourn me. I used to hate the way I looked, but I’ve never hated myself. Because it’s me. If I don’t like me, I can change myself. Everything there is to hate is under my control. Everyone else is the obstacle. So I wonder what it is like to breathe in the wake of me, and I ponder what must come after.
Close.
Am I scared of love again? I don’t think so but how can I tell? I don’t want anyone, but if I feel the spark, that magic. If I felt that familiar feeling I think I would jump again. Broken bones heal, and broken hearts only have so much blood to bleed.
Uncaring.
I am sick to my stomach, or at least that’s how my body is reacting to a lazy day with little food. I know you like me. I can tell by the way you kiss places that aren’t my lips. So I don’t know why I haven’t heard you today. Are you okay? Are you running? What plagues you? Because you plague me today. My eyes dart with every flash from my home screen. I wish you would help me quiet you, before I realize I actually care.
I can’t lie, not to a blank page. Though I am an expert at lying without words.
Come to Class.
It astounds me, How we all listen and understand Words spoken and taken. Paragraphs spell out everything But I keep some for myself, With you everything is half. I half know you. I give half of myself to you. And you half understand this.
Games.
Is it worse for you to hurt, or to ignore me? I don’t know what to think. I am sat outside a bar, there are pool tables inside, but I only want to play with you. You are somewhere in the ethereal, the dense cloud of ether, connected, or not, to magnets in the sky. But even if you were here, I would still be floating, wishing you were tuned to my skin. You are a placeholder, not my anchor. You aren’t heavy enough to ground my lips to the surface.
You trace your hand between swollen skin and I feel nothing but the warm pulse of life. No sparks fly from your fingertips, its almost like I can’t feel you at all, so I don’t need you to stop. I like cosplaying as your girlfriend, drinking your drinks, smoking your splifs, holding your hand in mine. I rebuke guilt with laughter and rejection, don’t give me any gifts of permanence. Don’t give me anything of permanence.
I tell you I am too young to think about staying, but there are so many ways you don’t hear me. I can see the hope you won’t let me crush. Not completely. I hear you stop yourself from asking something too serious. Something you will have to hear the answer to. Declarations of union earn you nothing but aversion, disbelief and laughter yet you re-itch to ask me for a reason. I stare blankly until you toss your feelings to the wind, and there is fear in me that you will actually buy a ring. Please don’t ask me anything, I could never say yes.
Friends.
You touch our lips, and it could be a hug. I feel less than when I press against best friends in dim parties. Or the first time he broke skin, and I asked if it was done. Closing my eyes with the creak wood platforms and stuffed feathers. You push inside me and seek more, stretching to touch iris to iris. But when I meet your eyes like this, it feels like lying. Lying by acting out hope. By inviting you to forget every rejection from my mouth, because look how you make it gasp.
When I Grow Up.
Age comes and I believed it when it promised everything I had ever wanted. But the candles burned to their end without needing my permission. With time’s abundant hands the golden thread can be spun too long or too short as it carries you through and moves, independent of our limbs. Then and now is nothing. An invisible wind on a clock ticks a sleeping child older, seeping time into bones. Months can pass in seconds, and seconds can be pulled into eons and these are all just different types of waiting. A lobby waiting room you don’t see around you, until someone calls your name.
Stop fucking your friends.
I wish I could take back knowing you. Because now you are a friend. One who twists my hair around your finger, looking at the contrast. Smiling at my smile, while your voice only queues this mantra I ignore.
With twenty songs, Taylor over-delivered on her promise of thirteen new tracks dropping on the 20th of October. Midnights, and the extended 3 AM tracks, is one of those albums that takes a few subsequent listens before the full impact of her words hit you. Like all of her music, I hear sung poetry and could spend days in her worded worlds.
On first listen, I can understand those who will make typical comments about the homogeny of the tracks. However, as you press replay and listen individually to each song, Taylor’s genius shines through each complete encapsulation of the types of thoughts that keep you up, keep you dancing, and keep you dreaming past midnight.
If I were to get into all twenty, we would be here all day. So for your enjoyment, and mine, here are my first five favorites.
Paris I wanna brainwash you into loving me forever
Starting with a this-city-is-too-small scene in her first lines, Taylor captures that feeling that burns just outside the static that clings to you and your bottle. The synapses of electricity and nerves that follow you through nights spent betwixt flashing lights and empty alleyways.
Those spiraling midnights that pass without time into 3 AMs without you caring, so long as they pass with the ones you choose to love tonight.
This track inescapably brings me back to those first nights out when I was eighteen with my new friends in Chicago. Drinking cheap wine through quiet alleys, not knowing the difference between this and champagne in Paris. The only thing we need to feel is the embrace of youth that adorns everything in that hyper-sentimentality of now.
And this is what Taylor delivers.
High Infidelity Put on your records and regret me I bent the truth too far tonight I was dancing around, dancing around it
With the knowledge of Zoë Kravits’ collaboration on this album, it is hard to believe that she did not have a hand in the creation of this song. That being said, the most notable similarities between High Infidelity and the closely named High Fidelity, come in Taylor’s use of record-related imagery.
Telling her lover to “put on [their] records… put on [their] headphones and burn [her] city,” Taylor cues her listeners into the presence of music within the relationship she describes. Though “burn my city” can be taken as an instruction to her lover to get back at her by erasing something she loves, I prefer to think of it as a continuation of the record-era imagery.
She knows that her lover may put on their own records and drown their regret in familiar music, but will ultimately turn on her memory. Playing their scenes together through headphones connected to a burned CD implies that these good ‘ole days memories have not been made since we traded music on silver disks.
Bejeweled Familiarity breeds contempt So put me in the basement
This hit a little too close to home. With this track, Taylor perfectly encapsulates the sharp line you walk when you love yourself more than the one you love does.
In her first verse, she sets the tone of the relationship described as she admits to being too nice to her lover, putting them first while she no longer makes their top five. Though she communicates this longing for their affection, she also breaks from any ultimate attachment by letting them know, “by the way, I’m going out tonight.”
As the song continues, Taylor notes that although her lover no longer sees her shimmer, it is still brilliant for her and everyone else. “Whats a girl gonna do? A diamonds gotta shine”
Placing some distance between her and her lover, blinded by familiarity, she tells the men who come like moths to her flame that she “can still say I don’t remember” if she has a man. If he wants to draw her back into the “penthouse of [his] heart” that she desired, he will have to wait in line.
The dichotomy of your relationship with yourself while you love someone more than they love you is hard to express with all the layered nuance and particular quality of self-love, but Taylor puts it plainly. “I miss you, but I miss sparkling.”
Vigilante Shit He was doin’ lines and crossin’ all of mine… Picture me, thick as thieves with your ex-wife
Introducing more characters in her sung story, Taylor depicts an intertwined relationship between her speaker and an ex-husband and wife.
Ending most of the verses and versions of the chorus with a variation of “I don’t dress for women, I don’t dress for men, lately I’ve been dressing for revenge,” she flips the script of the typical dynamic between a couple and a mistress. “Ladies always rise above,” can be identified as the driving theme behind her lines, as she goes on to describe collaborations with his ex-wife. Taylor gives her proof, draws in the law, and gets even, on her vigilante shit.
This inverse, illustrating no scorned and broken woman, or the hysterical mania that is stereotypically prescribed to wronged women, takes on sultry overtones. The slow, vibrating beat swells behind her voice as she sings lines like, “she looks so pretty, drivin’ in your benz,” and “don’t get sad, get even.”
Question…? Does it feel like everything’s just second best After that meteor strike?
When I listen to lyrical music, I most commonly find (or seek out) songs that I can identify direct feelings with. Songs where I can be the abandoned woman, cursing or mourning her inadequate lover. But this time, Taylor hit me over the head with every question I asked myself in those first months of loss. No anger or resentment yet, just questions and imagined scenarios that reply through your mind.
“Good girl, sad boy,” “you painted all my nights a color I’ve been searching for since,” and “did you wish you put up more of a fight when she said it was too much?” Damn Taylor.
There are too many perfect communications of the miscommunications that haunt you as the night creeps into day. The questions you close your eyes and ask your ceiling a million times until one night, you just fall asleep.
There is something stopping me. A cork lodged sideways in Sauvignon, I feel like I am eighteen again, prying that pressed bark from dark glass with a fork. Using every object but the real thing to remove the blockage. Like my young hands leveraging the fork, I try to find substitutes.
Yoga in the morning, reading again from the Charlotte Bronte novel I can only digest piece by piece, long sips of coffee, pulling the caffeine behind my eyes, bus rides to unseen corners of the city. All these forks I try, but I am a firm believer in not forcing myself.
I never want to feel writing as that proverbial monkey, and I don’t want the comfort of losing myself in lyric to slip from my grasp. But as with any love, roadblocks in my writing deserve attention. This is the labor of love.
I can talk the circumference of a million circles new and exciting, but I can’t quite calculate the heart.
I am in a new city, yes, but what new stone hasn’t been overturned somewhere else? To take a page from the eternal Bronte, I’ll address you, fair reader, and ask selfishly, what should I do?
Do you want more flowery drawings of nature? Recitations of journies sat on bus seats, rides on new metro systems? Imagined stories I derive from ancient paint? A ranking of the best places to place my high-maintenance coffee order?
Maybe. But right now, my pen cannot ink those words in a new way. I want to return to these light-hearted topics, to revel in the beauty of the simplest moments I find in each day, but right now, I do not know how. Whether it is a classic case of burnout, a symptom of the sputtering broken heart that started my Summer, or a touch of that delightful writers’ block all us creatives experience, it doesn’t really matter. I need a purge.
I need to cleanse myself of all the little pieces and poems that are choking my bottleneck. So here is the cork, the pieces I am spitting out slowly, the pressed oak I’ve dismissed in previous posts and I am finally coughing from my throat.
The Three-Year-Old Paper Clip I Keep On My Pocket
something so small it becomes a feeling something your eyes learn to ignore unnecessary information, unworthy of sight until it’s gone. it’s the opposite of an aberration, whatever this is, but just as eerie when it leaves. I can feel myself growing more abstract each day I spend in my own world. one day I’ll be modern art, that red square selling for millions to millionaires who purse their lips and whisper to each other, “do you get it?” “I do.” they lie, their gold bracelet wrists bend under sculpted jaw, and they nod because they think there is a point. but what makes art but the lack of words to describe what we feel. we fill in these gaps, hoping some arrangement of letters or colors will unlock meaning like magic. what if my art is just this filler? will you need magic to understand me? I’m not hard, not expensive. I’m as simple as a toddler paperclip, bent and flexed around a flap of denim. the denim is not important; none of this is, but it’s the piece of silver that makes it worth it. the glint of metal that makes it mine, so special in the way it sits, ordinary. arms in shallow spread, reaching to hold onto something important.
Growing Pains
I miss the morning moments, when my body grew different each day. Time spent discovering the curves to my edges, realizing what my body could do, where it could stretch, how it could bend, learning the limits to my bones and how they snapped as I broke myself over a crack in the concrete. Now I only grow inside. New synapses accentuate the curves of my brain. Knowing my body and teaching it to others, I learn what their bodies say and what they mean breaking my insides over the cracks in their promises.
Self-Gratification
Do I write for the love of watching my own ink line the page? Do I love the control of curling each letter, a tendril of intention? Is it that I want to see my words stick to each other, cursive delicacies I gift myself? This self-indulgence in letters that breeds pride in violating their classroom rules. Am I addicted to the smile that clicks ignore on red underlines? All this is more modest than screaming my name in a crowd, but hardly humble. How can I feign humility on the sanctity of the open page as I grip it, host myself spilling forth, and ask you read this.
Here is the Truth
One month of stamina burned through everything I ever wanted, but I am still here. And I am paranoid, for the first time in ages. I think about him constantly & drink about him often all over again, after weeks of solace. What if I just drown myself in Red Wine and Aperol rather than sun & steps forward? I think I hear Rush on the loudspeaker, but to be honest, I hear my own voice louder. Asking if I can just let myself drink until my lips choose another’s over another glass of wine & maybe if I were younger, I would. Or if it wasn’t just me, a world away & alone, perhaps I could give in and not sit solitary & sober. What glory of stupid youth this would be, to go to the same Mexican restaurant across from my Austrian apartment & order €2.50 drinks all night until all I know is walking home.
The Same Words I Hear In My Head Each Time I Walk Outside
Listen to the timeless symphonies of leaves on leaves See how bark liters the same space where sprouts reach their green heads from hours of shade Or watch the soft plummet of curled brown arms as they break from steam These are the lyrics, the only real ones Silver circles signal away birds from their garden Blinding my eyes with each turn of the wind How slow can we break from ourselves How many times can we break from blindness and return to it Forsake our own cycles for this natural reverence and curl back like fetal flesh into ourselves each morning
The man with the pink cast looks over his lashes through the window
& at first I was offended. Another male figure taking the liberty of a perfect view of me, sat up & prettily in the sun, eyes tracing pages and lines. Now, caught in glance myself, I can’t help but sit straighter. Easy voyeur, performing myself for him, smile curling with my pages, slowing my throat as I sip my coffee, eyes caught on his in earnest.
Land of the free man & home of big britches.
these stomachs stretching 50 buttons til they pop some strained more than others plastic flying one by one while some hold on by white thread fortified by the twisted integrity of a population who defines the word differently
its time for new clothing whoever said classic doesn’t go out of style was lying to cover a country with bleach so all would ignore the big eyesore the oozing from the same ignorant sores, from the elbow, where all come together, resting against its own skin unable to see how it rubs itself raw
When I Was Afraid of Spiders
my spine crawled at the sight eight legs pin pricking points along my back a myriad of eyes sparkling into mine toes curled at this contact. Now arachnidan figures hanging loose from tented ceiling don’t shake me. Instead, my eyes close and rest easy, spine riddled rather by the harsh reality of the rest of this sleeping-bagged world.
Where are we Ourselves?
I am most myself in a crowd If I fall, here, it is real. There are eyes to see and mouths to laugh as mine do, at every folly. But there are two beings inside of me. There is Caroline, made & maintained by all those who see her. She is beautiful & happy red-faced & laughing. Then there is me, and I have no name. I am just a something, something that comes from inside. I stare with Caroline’s face & debate the center of being. Am I her brain? All her intrusive and intrinsic thoughts? Or am I in the face? The identifying cue to her name that feels different each time it burns into our retinas. Or is that just it? Am I her eyes? Trapped in these green iris depths, at the glittering point of our envisioned world.
Red Wine Lips
I want to lick hers, over there or his, just the same red & dripping- fresh & warm- flesh & wanting. Do you think they would mind? If I drowned in cherry & took the headache like a pill, blue first, then swallowing the oxidized color choking on the glass. Do you think they would care? If red passed between us, like a secret. If we looked the same & the slices were just stomped grapes sinking into the anemic feeling sinking into the barrel, aging. Could you tell the difference between us, if you only saw us from inside pressed and trampled fruit. I’ll blow smoke over us, if she is me & him & I watch all of us, dancing there, with flowing hair & drenched trousers. Can you tell which exhale is warm air, and which is air burning? Can you tell who I am? Red. Like a fallen apple, but those can be green too. Ripe & ready to be juiced, I am all the colors in between.
Just Because You Mean What You Say Doesn’t Mean You Are Telling The Truth
Bristle pulls through the gold that hangs in tangles from my head. Start from the bottom, we all know this, it hurts less, & work your way to the scalp. Tease the strands into straight lines like straight foreplay & with a quick flick from the same stroke over & over see how the ends omit a faint mist- a second shower, this one for dust as it falls to the floor. I wish I could live there, be a single strand floating in the post-soap soft cloud where all is washed & not red, scrubbed & not raw. I want to glow from places other than my hair. From that empty hall inside, the space I must gargle and rinse out of me with salt. Spitting out its pieces like the second mist of spring snow.
Remodels
when we assaulted my childhood bathroom my father and I armed ourselves with hammers and saws and sandpaper first we stripped paint from the walls layer after layer we peeled pink after purple and took back the yellow I asked for years ago. I grabbed hammer in the iron-clad grip children seem to possess & wrecked havoc broke walls into their naked beauty, smashed through the second door that made everything too small all while my father sawed in half the tub we could never bleach white enough and from the empty space I pulled powder and nails before we paused looked upon a paper cup with plastic straw preserved by working hands in the hallow walls of the room long before I was built
Construction
climbing over you is nothing but building a wall backward taking plaster from planks pulling on that pink cotton candy that’s where you are, you are the fleshy fiberglass sparkling at me with your supposed soft that cuts each hand reaching for your false pink.
Nomadic Thread 