Un éternel jeu de miroir

I like to create art and write short stories, prose, and poetry ~ enjoy.

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Earth Angel

Eating lemon pickle popsicles on my couch After you held me and said you didn’t want to let go Burrowing like you do with your head through my chest

I tried to furrow my eyebrows when I saw you sitting on the stoop And I was mean when I told you ‘what are you doing’ as if I didn’t want you to come home with me

My feet on the balcony railing, going over our relationship And where it could have failed us — watching you tell it another way And listening to us laughing instead of crying in the sun

Making the Best Summer Sandwiches we’ve ever made With all the ingredients we could carry from the Great Market Giggling while you tell me you hate anchovies and capers

You tear up during Kokoroko’s set and I try play it cool Staring at your brown eyes like you’ll always be my person Feeling like everyone around us wants what we have now

Leaning against you in the grass, your body contorting around mine, We talk and people watch like we’re the only ones and  Today you’re not afraid to hold my hand

When I looked to your tall figure in the crowd I had the passing thought Could hear them giggling and running around us in some distant place

But if you won’t be the father of my children one day,  I guess you’ll just have been my earth angel 

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Better Company

The wind plays with the patterns of the leaves Trickling into the room, spotted luminous blooms I could lay here for hours listening to your favourite Bonobo album — the one you’d listen to alone

Too bad you’ve got that thousand-yard stare And the truffle isn’t hitting underneath our tongues And we haven’t gone to Reggae Bus festival like you Wanted-but-then-didn’t-want-to

I kiss your body and lay it flat (on both sides) Ask you what you’re thinking about (doing something) And I start to do what I’m trying to stop doing (fixing) Because it always makes it worse (I’ll ruin it)

Yeah, I’ll end up drinking a beer at a bar you seem to be ok at Tell the lady to keep the drawing and her folded up tenner (That you needed for the bill)

I’ll blurt things out I’ve been thinking sat alone (with you) I’ll regret leaving the house and that moment (why did we have to?) I’ll want to eat but not anything you’re proposing (just can’t tell you what) I’ll get naked and you’ll hold me and get worried (try to join me in the bath)

We’ll argue about whether when I started drawing it meant I didn’t want to talk Or if it was just an attempt at some kind response to your silence And we’ll argue about what I don’t like to eat since I was a kid Or whether I would’ve hypothetically told you off for eating on my bed like you did We’ll argue about a reddit thread I wrote when I was nineteen, some Stupid comment you made about how I should have handled my family We’ll argue about breakfast the following morning, and whether I do What I ask you to do anyways, and how long I made you walk to the café We’ll argue about other things too, like the way I always make things mean You’re not considerate

And on days like this when a conversation feels like a trap When I want to tell you things but it doesn’t come out right On days when I start to walk alone holding my elbows and Try not to look back, when I go home just to cry and stay Still for two whole days, and rack my brain trying to know What I should have said, and on days when I try not to call But still do at 10, I hope you know I’ve been trying to Come back someone else

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The Girl Watching the Bumble Bees

Yellow flowers in the field I wish I was a bumble bee But I’m a human, hungover, And begging you to sit with me

I follow their flight with my eyes You stare at me in silence and Ask me what’s next

All of a sudden you matter less Than the girl watching the bumble bees

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‘Letting Go of Emotional Suffering’

Note its presence, experience it as a wave, Coming and going. Don’t block the emotion, Or push it away, or keep it around, or seek to Increase it like you do sometimes.

Don’t walk around in circles and hyperventilate, Breathe and step back. Get unstuck from the emotion, Even if you have to dunk your face in ice water, or Flick a hairband at the wrist, anything but making fists To bang on your pretty head.

Just be a witness to your emotion, don’t act. Stop trying to call everyone to announce your suffering, Or the helpline to talk to some stranger, or counting The pills underneath the bathroom counter, Remember when you felt different.

Describe your emotion, don’t identify with your emotion, Think of all the other emotions happening alongside this one, Not just the pit of sadness, the frustration and the burning shame. There’s also the part of you that wants to wish all this away, And sometimes another that wants to soothe you But doesn’t know how.

Practice loving your emotion. Don’t judge yourself. Don’t berate yourself. Don’t scrutinise yourself, by God Don’t hurt yourself. Don’t blame yourself. Practice acceptance. Practice willingness with your emotion, practice Respecting your emotion.

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Liguria

The sun bleaches the landscape Cracked painted facades in bric red and Milano yellow Faded signs above a slow Gelateria I blink lazily, squinting at the kaleidoscopic circles Dancing in the folds of my shirt Draped over my face Toes grazing the hot sand Here too the world opens up for us We laugh and I watch her closed eyelids Her gentle fingertips on the towel, and I think of how my body likes to be happy too

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Patricia

A lot more is happening in the world than the inauguration.

A corpse flower called Patricia is blooming in Sydney A tall single leaf opening up into velvet purple, For the first time in five years.

And I am sat typing this poem, and thinking of how I will Read it to you.

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Without Asking

The cherry blossoms are blooming outside of my balcony, Just like they did for my mother and my grandmother, Just like they have for me — and today home is the sound Of the bath running, the pitter patter of my cat’s paws on The parquet, the spotted calathea growing new leaves.

Today home is my lilac grey lived in sofa swallowing my Lean body, my tired hands searching for the TV remote amidst The checkered blanket, the patterned PJs hanging on the Drying rack, the soft blue light from the kitchen pouring Into the hallway.

Little scoop of green tea ice cream melting on my tongue, While I remembered how I so dreamed of something like A home, when I used to lug my tired body to Corinne’s office, My therapist in Canterbury to whom I left a red ink portrait When I graduated.

I don’t know why people want to move around so much When the freedom I’ve found has been in the stillness, the Clicking of these keys typing, being able to wake up and know I’ll be cherished and comforted, to know my street and its Archways, the petals blowing on the tram tracks.

I can dream and create and even have a proper sorrow, when I wake up in a bed I’ve made a week ago, when the light comes Through the blinds at 6h50 in the spring and I can make Tea without asking.

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Too Much

Nighttime blues, my chest heaves on the floor of my bathroom You go on with your day as if it’s alright and I wonder Why must this be all my life

My hand out like a question the puzzled look of an answer My knees to my chest on a chair back to my drawing Cheek resting in my makeshift haven

The loneliness haunts me in my dreams and in your eyes They tell me I believed something too much

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Murmurings

They remind me of you The murmuring of birds in the sky Or of the bamboo leaves outside my Parisian window

I want to plunge into your chest and lay there Or maybe shake you from the outside I want to cry, to brood, to forget you I want to tell you I love you

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How Long

Your love isn’t enough because mine isn’t either Always looked for something beyond myself to connect me to the ether I want to forget I have a body and clothes and a taste in music Forget about the news cycle and my thumb eternally scrolling I want to stop feeling lost like this world doesn’t belong to me

Your love isn’t enough because mine isn’t either At ten I thought I’d want to talk to myself but I couldn’t be there All my selves stuck in a temporality where they bang on the window I want to reach through the boredom and lonely nights Forget all the long moments waiting for someone Forget the pang of grief the counting down of nights and days Forget how long this life seems today

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What Could Have

Recognise the feeling of backing out of what could have Oscillating between going to meet you or staying on this path What’s mutual seems to be how easily doubt overpowers yearning When the curtain closes and you haven’t asked how I’m doing And I’m like a flower with the petals folding in Now you’ll forget about my beauty

I spend nearly every minute trying to undo this tight knot How it can make sense that you’re here but you’ve gone That I can’t function and you’re in your head How tragedy brought us closer but that’s all we had Or how my desire is your fear, and your relief Is my anxiety

I internalise everything — how you only Call me by my given name and hardly hold my face The letter that arrived after you did and the gift you won’t accept The nights you spent away because you don’t like my mattress The films we fight about and how you don’t come and say hi When we’re with our friends

Tell me now, what’s worth wanting If it’s already absent, what’s worth asking for If it’s leaving you wondering

Tell me, am I not enough to be decided on

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Ma Poitrine en Feu

Tu tombes dans la salle de bain. J’entends les cris, pas seulement de douleur, Mais de rage, et je vois pour la première fois Ma mère qui vieillit, fébrile et fâchée contre son sort,

Un corps qui lui fait faillite — Comme moi aussi, sans doute. Elle le chuchote au téléphone dans la nuit À qui et pourquoi, cela m’échappe. Je n’essaye plus de comprendre.

Elle tape le sol comme un enfant, ne pleure pas mais gémit. Me lance des insultes pendant que les vitriers chuchotent dans le couloir En réparant la vitre qu’elle a brisé la semaine dernière. Ils me regardent timidement quand je vais les payer. Ils ont tout entendu et j’essaye de ne pas me sentir humiliée. Elle pose son regard fautif et fuyant sur moi lorsque j’essaye De l’aider à se relever ou d’appeler les docteurs. Je me recroqueville à l’intérieur de moi même Et ressens plus rien apart ma poitrine en feu.

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This Holiday Season

I put the lights in my grandparents vintage Christmas tree. Spruce the branches that smell like stale dust and lost familiarity. Bring down the cardboard box of forgotten ornaments To adorn it on my grandmothers mantle.

When people ask about this holiday season I proudly tell them that I’ll see both my parents In the same month. That’s got to be a record.

I prepare for my father and stack cherished items on his bed: The Brussels guidebook, my favourite chunky sweater. He sees me drink beer and coffee for the first time This holiday season — takes me out for mussels on a Monday And notices Guess How Much I Love You on the nightstand.

I wait for my mother to make the trip from the US with impatient glee And make lists of dishes to make together in my kitchen. She opens her suitcase and out tumble all her purchases: This holiday season — Trader Joe snacks, socks and medication. She wants to clean all my cupboards again.

My dad forgets to take me out for my birthday, this holiday season. I kid about needing a second hand bike, and he doesn’t laugh, But he tells me he loves me for the first time in ten years That’s got to be something, right?

I try to make it through the 24th and 25th, this holiday season. To cook the rabbit in red wine, wait for this outburst to pass. Weave around the broken glass and call the repairman. Make it worthy of being remembered by taking out the champagne, Using old rituals like crutches for something that’s not the same.

I can’t get up on Christmas Day, this holiday season. While my mother mutters to herself from behind the door About how I should find her glasses and the remote control. She tells me she’s convinced I love my cat more than I love her.

There is no snow coating the Brussels rooftops, this holiday season. Perhaps it’s silly to wait for magic to be sprinkled atop this city; For the years to come back as if we never stopped talking Or to want part of it just not what’s broken —  As if things could be split open and I could  Perform some surgery to make things better  Than how they used to be,  This holiday season. 

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I’ll Never Know

I feel unable to talk Stuck in a state of not wanting to disturb The quietness of your mind The still lake it casts over us Calm and suffocating And I wonder where you are when The discomfort inhabits you like a foreign animal That flinches when I touch your hand And freezes when I kiss you I wonder where you are when You start speaking like a stranger That little doubt in your eyes when I make a suggestion Staring out past my conversation into a field I’ll never know