This day has no handholds. It’s slick.

Slides through my fingertips like the wet sand memories from the coast where I fed the ocean my tears.

I will close my eyes and just recklessly glide over all this. Turning in tight circles until something manifests or I disappear.

Maybe we’ll solidify or turn into static.

Become the background sound.

The white hummmmmmmm…

So vast and resonant that I can stop greedily listening for the song that calls me home.

I’m not going to barter bits of my soul anymore to hold everything together. Waiting with a worry that burns holes in me while you nap with the dog in sunlight.

She held me in moonlight that slipped in with cool air from an open window.

Closer than anyone had ever held me and it scared me.

She pressed her face into my growling ribcage and laughed hard at my hunger.

She’d offered to feed me and I had brushed her off with a big lie about an upset belly.

She traced the jagged edges of all my boarders with her heart and mind.

She looked deeper than anyone had ever looked and it scared me.

She found me wholly amusing and worthy of loving.

“You’re good. You’re good. You’re not poison.”

“Meditate quietly on these words, Jailbird.

That we are not who we think we are and we can do the world no greater good than falling flat on our faces.

Look at me with crow-footed eyes one last time.

Kiss me goodbye.

Tomorrow when we wake up I will be someone else and so much fairy dust will turn to mud.”

You see the curves and not the

deep cuts.

Paint and varnish.

The smoke.

Mirrors.

I walk a straight line

Into a pitch black.

You’re content with veneer

while I relish all the splinters.

 

 

I feel bruised all over when you look at me.

Frayed.

I could have skipped the rest and sat on the floor.

Your curved back in a cardigan.

My cold feet in your lap.

I want to sing whenever you’re close but whisper and chew the insides of my cheeks.

My brain thrashes like something caught and held.

Truthfully you didn’t hurt my feelings at all.

I wanted more.

Instead of sitting still and asking you to speak to me, I cruised the periphery, brushing against everything like a cat.
It makes me want to cry that every bit of me is locked inside myself.

Viscera and mood.

Every thinning bone and all this heart!

Caught and held.

Thrashing.

It’s impossible to be happy all twisted up like that.

At least I did enjoy the slinking.

I hope I left my fingerprints everywhere.

J,

I hate cars. And car repairs. I get hate mail from the tire guys who
always
want to balance and rotate things. I just can’t muster up concern for
things
like “uneven wear”. Fuck it all.

My week isn’t any better, I don’t think, but I’ve given up feeling bad
about
feeling bad.

I liked sleeping on your lumpy couch better than your weird doll bed.
So
much of our stuff strikes me as weird though. A huge firmish cushion
for one
body seems excessive. I sleep on a small futon mattress. It’s just
barely
larger than a cracker. I always thought dog beds looked pretty
reasonable
too but have yet to commit to a purchase. Maybe when the futon wears
out.
Then I can rent out a closet somewhere and really reduce overhead. Or a
cabinet even.

I want a couch again. For a while after getting a divorce, I kept
getting
rid of more and more stuff. I just could not stop myself. It took me
two
trips to move. One for all my stuff, including Em’s stuff and one for
the
washer and dryer. It was great. Like shedding eight hundred pounds in a
week. But I think I may be ready for a new couch. Used and hopefully
ugly.

I’m in pain because of the tension that builds when I can’t make
things.
Paint (poorly), draw or whatever. It drives me crazy. I just can’t.
Sometimes I can do small things. Like snip bits of yarn into a tiny
pool of
glue and then smash that with my hand for a minute or cut my hair
randomly
without looking, and these stupid things will vent a great deal of this
steam. But sometimes I hate making shit more than I hate the tension.
Or I
just can’t stomach to bring it poorly or incompletely to form. Or my
emotions are ugly.

It sort of hurts everywhere and I find it hard to be near anyone when
I’m in
this mode.

I actually feel angry at people for running around shuffling stage
props
from store to suv to house and finding meaning in it. For avoiding any
ungaurded moments. For discouraging death, fucking and intimacy while
being
thouroughly preoccupied with all, sometimes in combination. It makes me
want
to bite earlobes in line at a bank or stand directly on top of peoples’
feet
when they are talking. I talk too loud. I say whatever. And I resent
being
stared at like a lunatic. I just cannot hide or pretend to give a damn
about
arbitrary rules that protect what and whom? I just can’t be that way
and not
want to smash things. So I have to wait it out and stay in my
apartment. And
sort of jog circles around Em so she doesn’t catch this bad disease of
unhappiness I have. I know it will pass. Often I am oblivious to our
collective tendencies.

My cousin gave me a mantra today. It’s, “Everything is o.k.”.

Nice. I see myself in a straightjacket in a green, tiled hallway and
the
orderlies have their hands in front of them trying to back me into a
corner,
and that is what they are saying to me really slowly.

I hope nothing breaks for a long time. I have to go. I’m hungry.

I miss you,
K

 

I’m too heavy

I’m not light

It’s too much

It’s not right

 

She’s done talking when she turns and tucks her hands between her knees. Curls into a ball with her arms across her chest like a mummy. Sinks like a stone into a deep sleep that doesn’t nourish. She’ll wake with her bones hurting like she’s been holding the world together with her spine.

 

I dreamed my soul was spinning with yours in a large pool of cool water. I could feel God’s fingertips dancing in the liquid, shaping all the things of the world and as a soul would float by he’d stroke it and it would turn into either a turtle or a fish. The turtles and fish got sorted one from the other by the inertia of the swirling water, with the heavier turtles clambering over each other to get out of the pool eventually and the fish filling any spaces with wriggling forms until there were more bodies than there was water and it seemed impossible for anything more to be created. God withdrew his hand.