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perfectquote

“To love a person is to see all of their magic, and to remind them of it when they have forgotten.”

— Unknown

weltenwellen

Monologue of Despair Penelope Alegria

weltenwellen

Wait Galway Kinnell

sitting with my feelings in the dark

perfectquote

“Even if you know what’s coming, you’re never prepared for how it feels.”

— Natalie Standiford, How to Say Goodbye in Robot

a-queer-seminarian

From Burning Butch by RB Mertz, 2022

The professor touring with us told us about Saint Francis’s father, a wealthy guy who ran a fabric company—meaning that he provided the wealthiest, most stylish people their clothing. Francis just wanted to go around in rags and help the poor, and this was embarrassing to his father, who threatened to disinherit him if he kept it up.

One day, Francis took off all his clothes in the middle of the street, in the middle of the town, and folded them up, all those fine fabrics that had made his family rich, and handed them back to his father. “My only father is my Father in Heaven,” Francis said, and he stood there, naked in front of the whole town. What a badass.

“From then on, he lived “like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field,” in a complicated, dire, but occasionally blissful poverty. He died naked in the cold winter, on the altar of a church he’d built with his own hands, surrounded by men and women who’d followed him into poverty.

For my confirmation back in eighth grade, we were supposed to pick a patron saint, and I picked Saint Francis because he talked to animals, plants, and planets and called them his brothers and sisters. The lady in charge of confirmation at the church looked uncomfortable, and after class, she pulled me aside and said it was “very strongly suggested” that we pick a saint of our own gender. When I heard that, I instantly picked a female saint so that no one would suspect there was anything amiss about my gender.

Saint Claire and all the women saints cut their hair short as a sign of holiness, but I knew I could never cut my hair short. When I’d tried to get it “short” at the hairdresser as a kid, the lady had given me a Dorothy Hamill bowl cut that I hated. For a while, I thought it might be literally impossible for scissors to cut female hair shorter than a certain length, because people’s reactions made it seem so outlandish when I asked for it, until I stopped asking.

I chose Saint Catherine of Siena, the patron saint of artists, because I wanted to be an artist and because she had a vagina. All over Europe there were statues of dead saints, broken and decayed into new shapes and colors. I imagined the female thing I was encased in chipping away, like giving my clothes back to God.

a-queer-seminarian

From Burning Butch by RB Mertz, 2022

The next night, I got my hair cut short. I closed my eyes and thought of Samson, and how hair was dead skin growing out of you, like memories, and how, in my case, it might give me more strength to shed myself of the past, the dead cells, the broken chargers, the burned bridges. I watched it all fall to the floor around me.

When she was finished, I looked like a boy and a girl. I smiled hello to myself.

“You look good,” the stylist said, playing with the wave of reddish-blonde hair she’d left sticking up in the front. “It looks like a little flame.”

I thought of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down to the first twelve apostles, after Jesus was dead. There were tongues of fire on their foreheads, to show that God was talking through them now, too, not just Jesus. How now, everyone could be a Christ, like every human body was the ears and eyes and lips of God. That was the whole point of it.

She asked if I wanted my neck done like a boy or a girl.

“Boy,” I said.

I walked out of the salon into gray spring. I pulled my green blazer a little tighter, lifted the collar to cover the newly shaved back of my neck. Walking into the Panera for coffee, I caught a glimpse of myself in the window and thought I was someone else. Would Jesus still recognize me? Would he ever come out to defend me, or the idea of me?

mildmayfoxe

1) any stretching is better than no stretching

2) any vegetable is better than no vegetable

3) statistically you will never be the worst person at anything, there is always someone in the world who is worse at stuff than you are

heavensghost

You don’t have to belong everywhere (textile home)

patatoscope

shisasan

a round-shaped interior doorway with an art nouveau design from the 1930’s

two days ago you said you wanted yellow carabao mangoes. you scoured the internet about how there wasn’t any seedlings available in hawaii. you said all you wanted was a mango seed, and that you’d grow it for us, so in 8-10 years, we’d have a mango empire and thrive and always have sweet mangoes in our backyard, wherever it’d be. then i ask you, “but we don’t even know where we’ll live. wouldn’t it be a bad idea to grow it?” and you said “i’d grow it in a pot, and we’ll take it anywhere we go.”

for 8-10 years, if the seed’s grown healthy, we’ll take it wherever we go. it’ll be our family tree. it’ll age with us. it’ll be our most prized possession.

and i stop and think and tell you: “what if they take it away in the airport?” and you say “then they do, but i’m pretty sure they won’t.”

when you set your mind onto something, you really do it. and when you want something, you try your hardest to get it. and all i want it to make you happy and give you parts of the world i could with the little life i’ve had.

and so, you asked me to bring you one from the philippines to japan on our honeymoon in about 2 days time. so my mother went to the market and she bought four mangoes because you wanted a mango seed.

that night, i go downstairs to speculate the mangoes, even hoping there’d be a chance to have them dried in time, and if there was, that airport security wouldn’t take it, and that you’d be able to take it home, and that the seed would be a good seed, enough to grow, and that when it sprouts, the sun wouldn’t be too harsh on it to kill it, and give it just enough light to survive it so in 8-10 years time, we’d have a mango tree of our own, with golden fruit bearing forth every summer, so that we’d have reasons to love hot summers enough to endure them.

upon looking, all four were pale. and the second best thing i love most in this world are sweet carabao mangoes. so the antithesis: i hate sour carabao mangoes. i wouldn’t even want to smell them, because why eat sour mangoes, when you can wait three days, and they’ll be the most perfect, sweet, decadent mangoes you’re ever to have?

but the first best thing i love most about this world, is you.

so i open it and eat the fruit off the seed. and it was just as i suspected it to be. sour and unpleasant.

and i think that’s when i realized what loving a person meant. because no matter how unpleasant it was, all i really hope for now, is see you at the airport gates, and kiss you, and pull out the mango seed from my pocket, and show it to you, and give it to you and have you smiling for joy. my only hope is that in time, this sour mango’s seed will one day grow into a tree, bearing the most perfect, sweet, decadent mangoes you’ll ever eat because you deserve everything good, and nothing less.

and both in our hearts, we just both hope it’ll live enough to make it. and in my own little way, i’d be able to give you part of the world you so badly wanted. and because i love you so much, i'll try enough to try. and i'll try to have faith.

and if you wanted more seeds, I’d eat every sour mango no matter how much i hated it, if it meant a shot at giving you a future of sweetness.