"And we wear our love in the way long
intersecting roots wear the earth. And we wrap it around ourselves the
way I've seen children wrap blaankets around themselves.
And we pull ourselves tight and together, beneath blankets, beneath
earth, and we are warmed through and through."

and i guess now i just wonder
if you were ever really mine to begin with
as quickly as you pulled away
breaking off your roots, tangled in my heart
dead growth now left to choke me.

and i wonder, do you miss these parts of you
the ones you left behind, enmeshed
did you figure it would be worth the loss
as you turned and made haste?

i have spent my entire life
waiting for morning to fall
so as not to lie awake
in your absence.

we are quantum crashes, you and i
a million millionths of a second where
we collide and nothing exists
perhaps it is this repetition (and constant renewal)
that has worn us both down.

today i learned that this chaos of you and i
has a quiet and tidy written expression
(natural with ungainly applications).
i tried to remove you from the formula
and found that the equation does not solve.

when you loved me rugged and raw and kind
you holding every fragment of my matter
as though you had known it since your time began
the solution began to come into view;
but can you love me antimatter
blinking fragments always present and blind
on a path to perpetually crash and merge
if i can draw for you every bit of me
invisibly waiting for you to move or breathe?

i could spend your afternoon pointing at trees
and showing you how x times y equals
something completely different than its reverse
but if you would still be afraid to lay your hands on me
for fear that you would find that i was never truly here
then there is nothing left for me to do
except wait for the crashing and renewing
to remind your every atom of its shadow.

magellan's bitch.

i keep playing things over again
as though, from the right angle,
i could circumvent this tragedy
as easily as you circumnavigated
every word i ever had to offer.

the best of days for atonement.

for penance i would offer you
a million nights of humble servitude
my hand at your side, waiting.

i would hang myself openly for the theft
of your heart but moreso the lack of care
with which i kept it.

candles lit, remember this:
i would make you a new covenant
should you find the old one too broken to bear.

skyrockets in flight; afternoon delight

we are naked atoms running for cover
out of the glaring heat of 40x magnification
showing all our flaws, all our truths
triple oxygen keeping me stuck to you
warning that we are volatile, explosive
pure potential energy violating every law
as sitting we wait, in stasis

we are a spacetime curve collision
time's cessation halting churning nothingness
grasping distant bits of far off universes
setting them to congeal in this new amalgam of us
and light, begging to be free of us
bends and turns upon itself without end
and our every axis converging to form
a single point
where
everything
stops
and we begin.

is the thought of a unicorn a real thought?

einstein never stopped breathing because he couldn't reconcile his atoms.
i've never been so good at daily life, which is to say that i'm not a good enough taoist,
that i'm not very zen, that i can't just embrace the chaos and in doing so say 'there is no chaos.'
in a grander scheme, sure, i get it. life is a series of collisions and so on and take a deep breath.
and then move on.

but i can't accept chaos on an atomic level, the idea that the second we stop looking, there are no rules. i can play a game of chaos chess with the best of them, and sweeping my piece onto the floor or knocking over my cup of coffee declare that "I--" because what i've done isn't important, and when there are no rules, it's not about winning or losing, or even being or ceasing to exist, it just is, or isn't, depending on how you look at it or don't. but then i know that it's a game, and thereby just an illusion, and i can accept the unreality of an illusion but not the unreality of the stuff of which the illusion is made, the matter of the illusion. because on a fundamental level, things fall apart.

say that you were making a movie. of your life, your family, your job, or anything about which you would possibly alter your version of the truth and fictionalize. well, when you watch the film, you know that it's not real, and that it's just a depiction of the real thing. that's easy to accept-- you can see your own part in making the illusion. but then suppose that you find out that the digital camcorder, the firewire cable, the computer you used to edit, the hands you used to hold the camera, the eye you used to focus, the sound waves that put everyone on their marks-- none of it is real. suppose you're sitting one day happily watching your fictional video and then everything that had a part in making the film just disintegrated. poof. crumbled into nothingness right before your eyes. well, then the question arises-- how the hell did you make the video in the first place, if there was never a camera, never hands, never sound waves?

i count breaths, every one
between the me you know
and the bleeding tree
sometimes the numbers are so few.

bodies that don't hold up and
perfect girls flying off of buildings
just to say hello to the ground
these things are all i see
until my chest tightens
and choking on blood
i try to extract you.

i won't wait, so you'd better move fast

i feel vaguely like my nose is going to fall off of my face, yet another herald that autumn is here.
it's a worthwhile sacrifice, this being able to breathe, and besides, allergies make one look cute and vulnerable, and nice girls will get you tissues, if nice and pragmatic is really what does it for you. since i never remember to carry my own tissues, pragmatists are sometimes handy to have around.

i love the demanding chill of the air, running past with its tangible secrets. i love the changing leaves, precursors to personal transformations. is it really almost samhain again? perhaps i'll think of going with tracy this year, since i apparently do nothing but trouble when i go out on my own.

there are miles of that town bathed in one night of my blood, that cursed rainy night and the bloodied footprints as the rain hit feet, hit concrete, and swept up that part of me, to be mingled in with a million other sounds and lives and moments.

sometimes that night haunts me, and i wonder why i did what i did. but asking questions like that is simply silly, when you stop to consider that wedged in between the alpha and omega really simply lies no choice, nothing that can possibly be done except to manipulate the letters we are given to tell the same story over and over and over again until we get it right.

a year ago was work and lots of play. bubble teas and meandering nights with jill, walking and just conversing about what became not really anything at all.

i walked through a hurricane
to bring you carefully wrapped peace
roses, wilted, so you would know they were mine.

mud caked onto my shoes and made me infinitely taller;
by the time i reached you i was a giant among men and yet
my footing was shaky, unsteady
and part of me climbed down down down into the deep dark
to rest with you a while.

as they closed off the sky i found
infinite corridors that each went on forever
with tired feet and heart of stone i sat
immobile
staring off into eternity,
mine or yours or no one's at all
perhaps just a corner where our worlds overlap.

to see starlight again, i would give most anything,
for the slightest chance for one last wish
(i would wish you up up up and back
where cicadas sing and each singular
firefly is a flash that sends you home)

here it is cold, metal, must and fear
panic decayed into molecules
of earth, splintered wood, and fingers
ever reaching,
snagged on roots and tangled in rapunzel hair,
reaching, ever reaching
into the blackness where we knew the sky to be.

every room has a skeleton, and a closet to keep it in, and you're mine

i sometimes forget that hearts are fragile things.
this, of course, is really just to say that i'm reevaluating my options.

it's not really a matter of figuring out what i want to do, because truthfully i want to do everything, and therefore don't really want to do anything, because doing one thing means that there's another 500 that i could be doing in its stead that i'm now missing out on. it's not that i've ever really disliked anything that i've done... i just didn't like not being able to do everything else.

but i think that i've made up my mind to apply for graduate school in the spring. here in tyler.
yes, the violent succubus of cities, and i'd sign on for some extra time here, and the strange thing is that i'm really not even doing it for a girl (which is what i would expect of me, honestly).

so i'm looking for a second job right now, so that i can pay all the money that i need to pay to have all of my school paperwork in my hands and ready to roll come february 1st, which is my deadline for admissions. maybe i'll take a vacation this summer, maybe next. maybe i'll calm down and abduct my true love and climb to the highest point in Scotland and everything will be roses. but that's all an awful lot of speculation when i still have no idea whether it's something i would even want to do, since i have no idea of what else i could be doing instead.

it's like ani said, "i wonder if everything i do, i do instead of something i'd like to do more... the question fills my head."

when i wasn't too busy being lonely, i'd stare over his shoulder at a map of the world

rage.
of the perpetual variety.
it subsided when the rain came, in that sweeping "maybe it will wash this all away" variety.
but my heart lurched when the clouds parted; it seemed that the least the heavens could do is feel the same way i do, and it is in fact always raining within my mind.

but enough patty griffin and i start to calm down, enough, even, that i can start to focus, which i haven't been able to do for a while (though this is clearly because i'm stupid, and not because, say, because my dyslexia gets worse when i'm stressed or because i stopped taking my anti-anxiety meds shortly before i started freaking out all the time, because i got crap for taking them). i calmed enough, even, that i could add an entry to my newly-begun list of things that make me happy.

i can't wait to get into my car and drive somewhere-- anywhere. maybe just to assert that i'm not stuck here, or to have some time and space that's just mine, some place unadulterated, without idiotic memories attached to it. i just need enough distance to aver that there does exist a space and time wherein i'm no longer... any of the jumble of emotions that i am... and then i can come back and function like a normal person and pretend that i don't feel like i'm selling out. or maybe i wouldn't feel that way any more, if i could get away from this for a while. times like this, i'm so effin' happy i don't have a cell phone. i forgot how nice it could feel to be unreachable.

someone somewhere has unglued our epoxy

i woke up unwilling to embrace the cold
which is really just to say
it's your fault i missed the bus this morning
stumbled through foreign city streets
where it would have rained if it were more poetic.

and i promise you that i will be brave

i could split apart my father's love for my mother
and show you all of my secrets
(because this is where i hide all things plainly)
but frankly i have no codex to predict
how you would react to the stark redness of my life
and i would sooner you wrap your hand around my heart
than try to patch the wound, even as it gapes.

here is the violent contrast, the sudden realization
you are less contamination and more evolution
the path my atoms were meant to take
breaking down and merging in perpetual osmosis
until even in madness i do not attempt to extract you.

the truth is that i would happily be your loyal subject
always for you, i was afraid of being of you
spurting equations and manically calculating
which pieces of me would remain
should this chemical reaction reverse itself.
i feared that your atoms in me were the only ones
that remembered how to breathe,
and i had gone too long in your presense
unaware that i was holding my breath.

flush my worries down the drain, fly away to somewhere new

i thought that if i emptied my wrist into your pasta, it meant you would have to love me forever.
maybe it did, and maybe you will.
but i was afraidafraidafraid of your atoms taking over mine until every cell was touched, yours.
i tried to tell you this but said it in passing, like i do most things of import.
i danced in rain and smeared forever across my heart
never scared in practice, i grew terrified in theory
but i knew that nothing else would do.

been up for 38 hours and it don't look like sleep's coming soon

i dreamt of my lips on your inner thigh
and awoke hungry for you
knowing you are the only sustenance i need
early morning woke to find me
suffocating upon your flesh
my mouth pressed to you unrelenting
my ritual communion
forever making you part of me.

moments later i could feel your breaths
ragged as mine have ever been
heaving me towards abandoned hope
etching your mark inside me once more
and i buried myself in you
surrendered in screams and exultations
my painful confessions and repentance
and i was yours once more.

none but you shall touch this temple
you have made of my body
like an eager god i await your prayers
rain blessings, cover you
and like a slave i will beseech you
in anxious cries and reticent touch
to have me always in your mercy
carry me always in your thoughts.

i watched you laugh almost inactive
remembered you clothed in boiling light
i clutched desperately to my silent morning
while still in slumber, we entwined
each blinking a new capitulation
to the fire lodged in your fingertips
every counted breath extracting you
from those places only you can go.

i dreamed desperately to keep silent
and prayed i could consistently conceal
the way my mind placed my mouth to yours
and your dulcet tones became whispers
hushed and longing and hopeful
i could feel your body move beneath mine
and how, as afternoon sun began to fade,
my hungry lips rested on your inner thigh.

if you love enough, you lie a lot (at least they did in camelot)

when i was little, we'd go on these big cross-country trips, and we'd leave insanely early in the morning... sometimes around 4am. except knowing that something big was coming only made it harder to sleep, and knowing that i had to get up early for this big something made trying to sleep even worse. it's like that now, i guess, and i'd suppose that it's a matter of being on the crux of moving, trying to put my proverbial affairs in order at the last minute.

this all still strikes me as being terribly sudden; i guess i thought that i would have more time. more time to say goodbye to old friends and create some more good memories before i left, time to go for walks and stare up at the sky or recall the rocks by the crystals buried at their bases. i thought there would be time to sound an alarm, but instead, it feels as though i'm sneaking out in the dead of night, skulking in shadows after everyone (at long last) is asleep. perhaps it's the only way to get out, and i really should get out.

i think a lot about rita now, about how she was my ally long before she was my friend. i guess that she's what i'll miss most about this town, even though we haven't spent a lot of time lately, since becky moved out and eric came around and i've been running off with stevie habitually for the last month. if we were younger, i would say that we've grown apart, but i guess at this juncture in our lives it's a matter of making all the pieces fit. and we both know that we fit in one another's puzzles, and knowing that means that we can wait until our piece is called.

and then there's tracy, sweet fae tracy, whose absence causes a distinct surge of sadness. where will i find our kind, i wonder, who will i take on spelunking adventures with me? but i know the answer, and i guess i have all along. why does it feel like i have to grow up really fast, all of a sudden? and not grow old, just grow... into a different set of responsibilities?

i guess i've sent off the e-mails that i needed to send, so now there's nothing left to do but try to get some sleep.

in short there's simply not/ a more congenial spot/for happily every aftering than here in camelot

so at long last, i secured the city library's one book on gay female teens, only to find, upon opening it, that it was written in 1982. 1982! that's before my girlfriend was born! that's before i left maryland! that's before the date in orwell's classic...

but i guess that it just reinforces my point. i try not to think about london, and i try less to think about tony blair, and instead i make every attempt at thinking happy irish american thoughts about being in love, writing, and collecting movies. i think about camelot, the first one, and then about jackie onassis, which i do a lot more than i'd like to admit, times completely seperate from those i devote to interior design and collecting recipies for international cuisine, though you'd think that all that stuff would run together, leave me girly in clumps, rather than in some strange pervasive element.

pretending the echoes belong to someone

the last disc of the first season of twin peaks won't copy. in the grand scheme of things, this doesn't really bother me, as it's one more thing going wrong in a long list of things going wrong. at least this isn't life-shattering, since it's just a dvd, and all. i really can't even muster disappointment, though i imagine that's probably due to being unable to muster much of anything at the moment.

i'm thoroughly disturbed by the lack of literature available about being gay and a young female; in the seven libraries in this town, one can find a single book dealing with the subject, whereas men, who have always had an easier time establishing for themselves a creative space, have handfuls. still not terrific, but alternate stories about the same subject matter. different ways the story could end. here in denton, the girls only get one. i haven't read it yet, though i'm about to, since i'm curious to see what one story is available for the telling here. i look back on the people that i've known and i think about all of their stories, stories that somebody, somewhere should tell, and that only makes me wonder how many more stories like that are out there, waiting to be told.

i guess it just irks me to think that a straight teenager can go to the library and check out a bunch of books by an author that they really like, books that deal with parents and life and relationships from a straight perspective, but the good old queer kids get to read the one book offered, if they can find it, and then go back to reading the straight teen literature, because it's either that, or just not reading at all. and let's put aside the argument that it's potentially damaging to the psychological development of these kids, and just go with the simple fact that it's not fair. and i don't really have a soft spot in my heart for things that are blatantly unfair.

i guess it's easier to focus on how i can fix a world that's ultimately broken than it is to focus on how to fix my own life; but then again, maybe i believe that fixing the world would make everything else fall into place. i don't know if it's hope that the world outside me would fall together and make things suddenly and magically work, or a secret hope that if only i were fitter, happier, more productive, maybe things wouldn't be so rocky.