Cleanliness Is a Privilege
January 2, 2013
A boy is in my bathtub. A boy with whom I am deeply in love. The tub is not deep, although it looks it. I can hear him sloshing in the water from the next room over. He moves around in his grit, trying to make crystals out of the dissolved salt.Maybe—just maaaybe—I can build a castle out of these relaxed muscles. Out of these piles of salt that are supposed to heal me. They’re supposed to mend me,he thinks.
Break me, says the porcelain. Or I’ll break you.
More sloshing, more sitting. Are his eyes closed?
Safe
November 19, 2012
How can I play with abandon
when abandon left me
for dead—or worse:
alive,
thrashing in riptides
of my own saliva.
Can’t
November 11, 2012
I can’t count the ways
that I love you because
there’s no increment
for the way I tug on your body
hair—or the way your nose scrunches
when you want me to stop.
“It Hurts to Become”
November 2, 2012
And so I worship the moon
by climbing over the gates
until I reach the illuminated
patch of grass that has never failed
to comfort me. I nestle into it,
cross-legged and wide-eyed. I stare at her.
“Thank you,” I shout.
She pours a sopping wet smile onto my forehead
and shrugs. “For what?”
Finding Faith, Squished on the Hem of My Skirt
October 29, 2012
I celebrate you the way
Christians celebrate
Christmas Eve mass,
I think:
The Sky As a Blanket
October 29, 2012
She falls to the ground and says, “Isn’t it comforting when the outside’s chaos matches the inside of your skin?”
To the boy who may or may not listen:
October 29, 2012
You exist in a world where everything is blue. Chairs, walls, chickens, books… it’s not suffocating like one would imagine it to be. You can breathe perfectly fine; perhaps it’s because you are surrounded by different shades. Not just lampshades, but aqua and turquoise, cobalt, navy and the in-betweens. And like I said, you breathe well. Of course, you do most things well. But in this world, you don’t question your wellness. You know it exists–because what’s health and happiness without an ocean?
Bitter Is For The Weak
October 25, 2012
And in that moment, I had been alive for centuries. With the decaying branches dangling in my peripheral vision, the masked moon overhead, and the shadows on my left that I thought was my mother but wasn’t. On the first day, everything was on my left. The ambulance, the tubes, the sedation, my mother… and now everything is spread out in front of my overworked eyes. Life goes onward and outward just like the hanging boughs and piles of upturned leaves that surround me. Just when I can’t hold my own weight any longer, I reconcile, reconcile, reconcile. Thank you.
Trying to keep sane. 