emchy

i feel full of words but the letters don't fit them. like things are pushing at my throat and lips and teeth from the inside. tongue twitching with want for speaking. fingers playing the keyboard like a piano wanting to make the thoughts concrete. but they won't be born yet. so i stare at the words that will come and long for the birthing.

at what would be eleven my time but isn't yet
you reach over from another coast
giving me teeny tiny sacred girfts
reminders really
of who i am
where i come from
how dirt smells different in october
how grass smelled when it stained your neck
i miss you
i have the bruises to prove it

Dreaming of sweat and lust and where exactly we’re all going to be when it’s all over.

 

When she rolls over and looks at you and knows, you are only for the right now.

 

When he looks at him and knows it was supposed to be forever, but it’s just not.

 

We walk through salty night where tears mix with sweat and it’s our human elixir in margaritas and heartbreak and we trade salt for salt.

 

We’re all trying so hard to be not as fucked up.

And our hearts are breaking for it.

 

Skin for muscle for bones for an ache

That we can’t shake off

With yoga

And dreaming

 

Because we want each other

The people

We know

We can’t trust.

you know this one time
we were drunk in a bar
and you took me aside
slurring some wisdom in my general direction
and i was distracted
by a blonde girl singing showtunes in the background
but you grabbed my jaw
and made me look
really look
at you
and i saw
that i was a moment from hearing a great truth
'listen - this is important'
you said to me

and then our friends came up to say goodbye
and i was listening
i still am listening
but now
you're too quiet.

there is too much noise in my head
i didn't go hear poetry
but i laughed and lit candles
but the ceaning never ends
and now i feel like i need to clean out my brain
just a little
lose the residue of last nights dream
of an awkward phone call with someone who defines comfort
to make some space to work on my art, not even just a little, but a lot
to make acres and acres of room and space for stars and thoughts and dreams, the good kind, to come back around and hang out for awhile.

remember that one time, when you went into your room. say you were somewhere in your teens. on a night that was boring and you felt somehow not a part of anything and itchy in your own skin. but then you put on that record, and it all felt right. you flopped into the bed and felt the good firm of it bouncing against your young thighs. felt the universe of the book you were reading take you somewhere, or maybe it was your own words that came pouring out into your journal or your best friends ear on the telephone. but for that night, for those hours of that night, you were totally present and totally yourself. there were no apologies, no making space for anything except you and the figuring out of you and the just simple being of you and beginning to realize how actually complicated that might be. you, were not so simple, but you were on your way to seeing the beauty in the complications.

i might stop writing here for a while. i think i need to go flop on a bed and remember some things. we'll see. but something needs to be... different

grey and rainy - i wish i was on the beach of keweenaw bay right now, either in baraga or on point abbey so i could get rained on while surrounded by huge pine trees sitting on slate rock and not at all worried about time or work or anything except the philospohy of my own life...

 

( poem from the drive to work )

when someone asks you how you are
they don't really want to know
nod and smile
nod and smile
nod and smile

the thoughts that run through and i put them vaguely out into the world, and i read yours, and we read theirs and here we all are with our hearts on our sleeves, pain and love and worry tattooed in typeface across our lives and then there You are - silent for the world and talking my ear off

except that i can't reread our conversations, as private as they are - and it's the rereading that i miss. i lose your words like ghosts, and am left wondering, if we ever spoke at all

inching forward towards something more beautiful
is there room here for the worm to shift
can we make room?

when i tricked brandy into clicking her seatbelt shut
when i knew it would lock
and she would be trapped
in my parents car, in the summer heat
with the blue velour of the seat
sticky and gummy on her 9 year old thighs
locked away from the water
cool lake relief

she pushed and jerked
at the nylon
finally sliding herself
free
she made room
where there was none

my seatbelt is locked
how much of me
do i have to lose
to get to the lake?

reality hit home tonight
culminating in the beginning of a mourning process that is six years late
i am angry
super fucking pissed off
but moving forward into knowing
that i can learn how to integrate all the parts of myself
into the me that I walk around with daily

i feel sad and still hopeful
i feel scared
super fucking scared
of where this could take me
but living in fear has never done me any good

we all react differently to our abuse and trauma
i still mostly don't admit mine
but its there
soon i might even be ready to tell people about it
but to even admit
that it lurks
is a first step

walk with me on the baby steps people
at the end of the path
are riches
they told me
there are riches