Pluto

I felt sorry for Pluto when they demoted to a dwarf planet. 2006. I was seven watching others playing chasings / reading gothic fiction about orphans. I wanted to know what we were meant to do about the planet chart. it was up on the wall between the whiteboard and the window in the classroom. in a dark pool of nothing Pluto sat in a line with its friends and the sun. but NASA had changed their mind. Pluto didn't matter anymore.

I remember hearing the headline on the news after dinner. my parents didn't seem to care. our teacher spoke about it the next morning. there was probably some chatter some questions before we moved onto more important things. but the planet chart stayed up on the wall. I thought a lot about this. how can something be right one day and wrong the next? one decision makes our knowledge old and incorrect. I was frustrated both by the decision - how it had startled me, having changed what I thought I knew by surprise - and the expectation that we were to accept it. what about the planet chart?

everyone moved on. we kept reading and counting and learning. the boys played soccer. I picked daisies from the pitch, half-watching in my jersey from the sidelines. they started playing handball and kissing girls behind the library. I tried to keep up and we all kept growing. twenty years older I still think about Pluto and the news that things had changed. a month is nothing in the face of decades. a person is a dying star / a lost weekend / much smaller than a planet. you rewrite your chart as you please. if I was Pluto I still am. will you remember me?

systematising

somewhere on the internet (we do not yet deeply understand the experience). trying to systematise grief. 'back to the things themselves...' like we're more than dust / the clay from which we came. still guided by what happens lacking context of our being (no escape). a fickle dance: to shape or be shaped by the world / bruise / stream in which I live / shake / dream. keep telling stories to make sense.

lived existentials in body in space in time in human relations. too many outcomes, too little control. how to measure meaning in life? authenticity? psychological capital? (made me laugh!) how much is falling through the cracks? how much matters when the sky falls?

there are different levels of belonging. the hierarchy-of-the-deserving logic is reproduced. how are needs defined and understood? what are human needs? need is more than lack (possibility). remember the first night. shaking butterflies in denim jeans on denim jeans all glowing you all over me. what do I really need?

fish out of water

you were a fish with the name of a dog

I was alone getting lost in the fog

waiting for nothing til something else came

looking for nothing but something to tame

fish out of water you move like a dream

showing me stars in your eyes in the stream

drowning me softly to your favourite song

you wanted me til you knew I was singing along

nettles (all the time)

stages of grief (widely used, empirically unsupported)

the cloud of unknowing (we cannot understand god through reason, only love)

all about love (someone else is reading at another table)

nettles playing in green refectory. I hear her voice under the scrape of chairs and plates and strangers. gardenias on the tile... look out into the river made of tram lines by the rain. you said we'd make it through the fog. tell me all the time not to worry... I can only think of you. and I wish she was right but she's not. you held back and it made a difference.

leave me in the stream with your hook through my heart. let me miss you. let me dream another day: banging down my door to say this meant more than the end we don't need to make sense but can we swim again together can we be all the time at least for now? think of us inside...

silence is a storm is my pillow is the bird in your teeth. silence is an empty church a page to fill with grief. the mind is a boulder is too heavy knowing you and that we were. your name is always everywhere. eternal sunshine me.

re: something I wrote months ago

these imagined people don't exist. watch us let them break our hearts another thousand times. how much can we trust anything more than a moment? nothing is fair all we have are choices. I choose to love you and you choose to go to work. we choose to love and they choose to leave. Joni was right. he said he was as constant as a northern star. constant? a northern star is dead light. you can't see it in the city or the morning. she chose to write about him. we chose to care. maybe. I've drunk a little much. goodnight.

what to do

close door

close eyes

drop phone

dream

think of you

ride the ripples / waves / aftershock

ride my bike

tie my shoes

talk to anyone but you

write (for nothing)

listen

        to the wind

        to your voice

                    songs we sang and things you said

wash face

wash clothes

call parents

call a friend

play the supercut again

check the news to check my pulse (not gone)

scroll and see what else is on

think of us

wonder why

close my eyes again

cry

fold and eat and shit (and fold and eat and shit)

shower

pray for dreams and severance

sleep

forget

think of you again

invasive maple shade

eyes closed in the shade of invasive maples. evading obligations incognito / across the path from south lawn / horizontal (on my back). I eavesdrop footsteps / the changing of the guard between classes / gossip in a foreign language. wind brings brief relief, dancing on my nose to fend the heat. branches swing into the sky / into a choir. how sweet the green leaves sing in spring.

war is bad and anything is possible on the backroom wall. I envy the etchings in their hiding / never having seen your face. when you held me I saw everything and only wanted more. for a moment you did too. our eyes couldn't lie in the dark.