heavy

did you dress up for Halloween? I wore armour and the cross like bandaids. in the dark I could have passed as strong or real. you weren't there and I laughed as though it didn't matter. sounds of other people washing over me for lack of screaming / currents / the voice I want to drown in / you. I danced with a computer and a knight. I only want to dance with you.

and I am still here right where you left me on the curb. cars pass like leaves under clouds that do the same. I call your name into the distance only growing every day. you're still heavy in my heart.

a double-edged thing

lightning doesn’t strike twice in three months it just doesn’t.

you don’t think so?

well never to me, no.

yeah but he's like you’ve seen him. you haven’t met him but he’s so magnetic.

but you know a lot of people are magnetic. I think it’s like I think a lot of my ex best friends are these crazy magnetic people, and I get so drawn into that and it like it really consumes me in these friendships.

mmm.

and then they grow well it’s not that they grow tired of you but you just grow apart a bit, and you suddenly feel like there are these crazy problems with you because you weren’t good enough for that friendship.

yes.

or well I’m obviously saying this in a friendship lens.

yeah.

but the point is it’s not that and it’s not that you aren’t good enough for them it’s a natural it’s just a growing apart thing. they grow apart from you but you also grow apart from them and because you’re so focused on the fact that it’s like well “why couldn’t I be this thing for them?” you’re ignoring the fact that they couldn’t be this thing for you either. you know what I mean? and that it wasn’t one-sided it was two-sided. you weren’t giving them what they wanted, sure, but they also weren’t giving you what you wanted but you’re able to ignore their faults because you’re able to focus on your own instead. do you know what I’m saying here?

I do know exactly what you’re saying.

I think this is making I feel like this is making perfect sense to me.

I know.

so you’re able to think “well, you know, I just, you know, he’s going through something and I wasn’t able to be there for him in the way that I should have been able to” but it’s also like he’s going through something and he’s not able to be a good enough person to be around in this moment.

yeah.

but even if it’s not a better or worse thing it is a double-edged thing.

it is reciprocal.

you know. and so maybe you’re thinking well it’s like “why doesn’t he want me?”

sure.

but it’s also like “why aren’t you giving me these things that I want?” “why aren’t you here for me?” you know “you know that I want someone to be here for me why can’t you do that for me? I need someone who’s gonna be able to do that for me."

mm.

do you know what I’m saying?

dressing up

rain on tin roof over tarot card reading. I pick the cards a friend translates from the book. queen of swords ace of rods three of rods. their story is mine if I want it. I don't care enough to remember how it goes. my friend talks about a quote she can't remember from a book she hasn't read but heard someone say online. something about watching your own misery in the cinema. you are the only one there and you can choose to leave at any time. when I read her cards she oohs and aahs she believes and no doubt this will help her moving forward. maybe faith is all I need.

October ends alone in another bedroom at another party. I sit in my armour and think about you. time is twisted. your silence weighs more with every day that comes between today and when we were. I wish I saw your costume. we were going to scheme together. remember dressing up and dancing in the smoke. remember kissing in the pantry. we were lightning cataclysmic bioluminescent glowing in the dark. did we really have to stop? I wish we could go back. I wish you wanted to.

Halloween

but what is Halloween without my favourite ghost?

I hear your laugh in the dark

down the hall

where we’ve been (when we were)

before

I tried to find you

we were glowing

between the faces of the internet and gods and nightmares

we can be anything

I’d dress as you if only I could find your eyes

sky blue windows to a heart to drown in

if I weren't waiting for the fire

if you were still here

in the valley

holding me like water

when I was yours and what you wanted

when we were

before we weren't

and I don't know what you dressed as

but I know you're beautiful

a month is a burning hill / a waiting room / dead air

the knight cycles home in the dark

shining armour

costume party hallows' eve eve painting faces in the bedroom of a friend. you were there once: laughing singing running away to take photos in her mirror. we drink wine from the bottle and listen to lux. I love the choir and the strings. she sings along and knows the words and what they mean. everything she wears is beautiful. everything I'm wearing comes from someone else. crucifix and chainmail on tonight I am my hero in the kitchen watching pasta on the stove under red light. by nineteen she'd saved a nation. I save dinner for a friend.

too many faces no place for a pyre. in the bathroom with myself a fairy someone else in shining armour. with my eyes closed could be you. steel smooth to the touch. I open in the dark and you are gone.

without

knowing

missing

wondering why

this is just a nightmare

wanting to wake up

limping

like a husk or a shell or

the monster in the fridge

counting

in prayer

lost in the fog

waiting

blind

in the dark

hoping you're okay

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.

two stanzas

I dream a mushroom cloud of foreign homes and nearly missing flights. my bags are stuffed with clothes I'll never wear and food I never asked for. at the departure gates you text me poetry that isn't yours. two stanzas I can't remember. in the morning there is nothing but another day without.

the letterbox is empty. your silence is a dagger through my chest. a black moth fights the ceiling fan and I am crippled by the memory of being what you wanted.

since then

I've started riding again. my wrists are feeling stronger and I can use the brakes without any strain in my thumbs. it's good to be back on the road. not having to check the trams is wonderful and I hadn't realised how much I'd missed the wind in my face. this morning I charged down Sydney Road, Phoebe screaming what I can't right through my ears to hold my bleeding heart. it felt like flying. unsurprisingly the music is my medicine and fuel. Mitski and Sufjan et al. I skip man of the year, knowing he's not ready yet but may be soon.

the show went well. I wasn't enjoying it so much until we moved into the theatre last week. once we were in the rhythm and more familiar with each other we started to loosen and relax a little more. the other players were lovely. between long hours and the claws of our directors we managed to laugh a lot. my costumes were silly. the gravedigger wore dark denim overalls and boots. I think you would have liked him. the stage was a square, with audience skirting the show in each direction. I didn't invite anyone, though a few friends came along with flowers. I still hoped I'd hear you laughing in the dark one night.

do you know what you'll be for Halloween? I'd love to see your costume. I'm slowly finding armour for mine (my friend is lending me their chain mail). I want to be my favourite saint, the one they sold off as a witch and burnt alive for saying what she meant. when we still were I'd hoped we might end up dressing up together, like we had for the spaceship party. we turned the mirror in my room and painted faces on the floor. I wore your purple stars because you said they looked better on me. we danced with my friends and you kissed me in the pantry and the playground. we rode our bikes and sang and glowed together in the dark. 

at night I drink tea and listen to the static / what I remember / songs we played and breathed together. I wonder what you're doing / how you're feeling / where you are. I wonder if you read the letter / think of me. I wash my face and brush my teeth and I still think of you.

midday showers

a curse that haunts still in the growing distance between when we were and now. your scent down the hall in the library (third floor). a punch through the hollow of my heart. a rush of blood all wrong. heavy eyelids threaten midday showers. I take a turn to hide behind a bookshelf / reapply my mask. you weren't there.

here and beautiful

what happens now my fears are manifest? the sky fell and I am still here: digging graves and folding on the floor. the moon laughs through my bedroom windows. I am still here, limbs coiled up on my side of a bed in which we shared ourselves. you held me and we gave each other everything. you were here and we were beautiful. I am still here in the dark.

passenger seat witness

before another day I dream. driven by a former friend I am passenger seat witness to one crash after another. I wake into the dark and quiet of my room, mouth dry and sweating through one side of the bed. not so long ago you would have asked how I’d slept and if I’d dreamt. I did but you don’t and so dreams pass as clouds: aimless, unremarkable, washed away with soap and yesterday’s growth into the sink. I miss hearing yours. I still miss you all the time.

flowers

another round of play pretend to ward off foul reflections. an unexpected friend brings flowers in a paper bag. for lack of a vase I use the glass you drank from, still sitting on the desk from right before you left. I haven't had the heart to move it. what proof I have of you wanes further with the passing days and dreams. I don't want to wash it clean. at least it serves a purpose now.

nettles in the river

making face in dressing room mirror. I wear blue stockings under green pantaloons and a jester's hat with bells. a fool for a play within another play. onstage I only skirt the story, garnish used as needed to make a greater case for others. from the wings I listen to the disgraced prince break his lover's heart. she will take this wound as sentence to a death too soon, lying with the daisies and the nettles in the river. a little like the song you love. soon after I will bring a spade to dig her grave as someone else. this someone else will sing and laugh, knowing death is just a door we bide our lifetime queueing for. I wonder if he'd make you laugh. I remember when you said you'd love to help me learn his lines.