✮ ✮ ✮

terfs dni

[allthecolorsofourlove]

this is young and embarrassing. the thought should mean more than it does in this moment. instead, i stare very blatantly at your mouth while you talk. i do not make any attempt to hide it. it’s harder to watch your perfect teeth hide behind your perfect lips than i thought, because i prefer the way your eyes are squinty at the edges, and i like the color of your irises in the dark early morning. i don’t want to leave. that, too, is young. it’s slightly less embarrassing. instead, i’d like to sit on your floor, thigh to thigh, for a few more hours. eventually you start to move away from me. i notice. i pretend i dont. after you do you make a joke about oral that makes my skin simmer, a brief flash-sear that i’ll think about the next morning and cringe when it leaks out of my sternum. one day this will pass. right now, i do not want it to. occasionally you say something so stupid that i palm your face, push it away from me. as if i could shove you into another time zone with sheer forearm force—away from my erratic pulse, my wayward stare. i remember when you said that girl was weird for liking your teeth. i think it’s one of your sweetest features. did i do a good job of hiding it? of seeming amicable enough to your disgust, when all i wanted to say was me too? eventually i will go home. when i get across the street, i’ll turn around. an impulse. i wish you’d wait outside. the porch is always empty. i want to ask, would it be so bad? to do what i did—try it again, but in reverse, one more time? touching a body like mine? the boyishness of it? hair and angles and sweat? would you like my cologne? would my stubble scare you? you keep going on runs and bragging about shed weight and feeling stupid and feeling worthless. feeling ugly. feeling lost. i try not to picture you with your shirt off. that is mostly just embarrassing, but young too, and younger still that every so often, maybe just once a week, i let myself have the fantasy fully: what you might say, in a quiet room. how gentle you might be. the way your eyes would widen if i moved to settle in your lap. youngest of all, our friends joke about how we took so long grabbing dinner because we were making out downstairs. when the room laughs, i don’t let myself imagine feeling your body under my hands in an alley, because you’re there next to me, and you’re shaking your head, saying, we didn’t make out. we didn’t do that.

[allthecolorsofourlove]

thought about you today, almost crashed my car:

wondered if you still live with your aunt, wondered if you brought your car down south,

wondered if you think about me, even though i know you don’t, you’re

as crisp and white as the collars in your major, a heart bleeding nothing but strategy and red and blue;

wondered if you still smoke, how you take your weed, what you’re doing with that bowl and if you

still take your whiskey neat and cheap, demanding that it’s smooth

when you’ve never even tasted what real liquor can be, buying the shitty stuff to keep

sitting on money you’ll never use for a life you’re too scared to live;

wondered if you’ve got a guy, then quickly decided

not to wonder about that anymore;

wondered if you still wear that blue levi’s crewneck, if you’re still

just a boy pretending to be a man, if you’re still your mother’s son wearing a closet filled with

her choice of shoes and shirts, if you’re still

unable to identify anything about yourself, right down to

floundering for a favorite color. almost crashed my car today, thinking about you,

got so angry that it made me almost want to, just rear-end the guy one car ahead

and prove you right when daddy comes running waving his credit card,

prove right all those things you spat onto the four top booth then topped with your

crumpled cash like a child; almost crashed my car just to

do something with all the things i want to tell you, the jokes that would come easy, all the ways i’d censor

our stories in re-tellings later, ‘cause i don’t have a place for them anymore. thought about you, but just

kept driving.

thought about you. told myself to stop.

[allthecolorsofourlove]

toting all black leather, I ran into your friends tonight——

friendly tone tender curls they looked at me

with such pity, asked me where the hell

i might be going on a Tuesday——foreign friends

in the back chattered, probably karaoke,

and i had nothing to say but a confirmation.

they asked to give me a hug, and i said of course,

despite knowing what they know, tangible

horrors attached to my body, my presence, and

you ask for my touch anyway——

i give it, say happy birthday, miss them all very much.

you miss me too, by context, and

not by much else.

when they say my name, they say it with

the same intonation as a whimpering pound dog’s;

unsalvageable. nothing left to hope for.

i break away the moment i see an opening,

and bike down the street in silence——no headphones

at all

[simena]

VOLNEY ALLAN RICHARDSON

[allthecolorsofourlove]

i. it’s been years,

and i am losing hope in the prayer that there must be a way

to make me into a warm man without cremation: a hearth instead of wildfire personified,

boiling in my body, a child in a public hot tub. no one to keep an eye on me. no one to keep watch.

ii. you said you’re on your way. how close? how close is “i’m close”? close like

sharing a bed or close like sharing my bare skin? close like

private social media, like stashes of letters along my gums, like, “look at me here, and here, and here, before you touch”—— or evacuation warning close? sun flare close? should i be scared of you?

in revisions, i will realize these are not words you understand. try this instead:

when you tilt your head at me, leaning on the jewel-blue futon, you’re an angled clock hand telling the time: yeah, right. despite this, all i want to do is

reach for you.

iii. next time you see him

offering me a shot or reaching his writer’s hands toward

the smallest part of my waist just don’t fucking

say anything unless you’ll do something about

the place i bleed from

“i would never do that” has never sounded more

violent than from your mouth and i am

sick of pretending i don’t think about that car

ride to the airport where that beautiful girl described

my type in men and

i did my best not to applaud her accuracy when

she landed on

any of my favorite things about you which does include

your stark conviction

that driving someone you love to the airport is a

non-issue and you don’t quite

understand what all the fuss is about

around such a trivial task

iv. i know you miss me, but be honest: are you glad there are

no dishes to do? we know you hate people but you seem to love me. reach for the longer hug. with you i want to shotgun

a bong rip that looks like it could kill, which flashes my age, my naivety like a smoking gun, but really

i just think there’s no way to get closer to someone than to

be the air in their lungs. even more plainly? i think i just want

an excuse to kiss you. if we look deeper, still, I’ll confess i don’t know

if it’s a real desire or just the illusion of one. do i just like the way domesticity looks on us?

i think i just finally learned what trust looks like. you’re always warm when i see you. you’re the first friend i’ve had

who doesn’t need to borrow a jacket when we walk through

the woods or the brick square or my new neighborhood, that everyone we know thinks you live in too.

i don’t know what to do with you. i also don’t know what to do without you. i don’t know what that makes us.

you’ve always said it best: can we just not think about that right now?

v. here’s the catch: i already know how to love you. i’ve been pretending

that i don’t know how. now this is how you take it slow: i hope i never tell you

how i feel about you. i have a hundred photos of your hands. i looked through our texts: you’ve said my name

a hundred times too.

[allthecolorsofourlove]

i will sulk downstairs with a look on my face, not quite angry but not quite there,

a vacancy sign, or a forecast for rain. my mother will ask, are you alright? and i will have to say,

just having an off day,

even though there’s nothing off inside of me. every light is on.

the sirens don’t ring anymore because of my medication, but the flashing persists, hot and red,

like blood or pomegranate seeds, unmoored and unshackled from their white pith,

and they will plink to the floor of my hips. i don’t bleed anymore

but i almost feel moody like i should be,

small and hungry and wanting, trying very hard not to be wanting,

texting my friends and getting back; it is a bad idea to be wanting,

but of course i will still love you anyway.

i’m a live wire for no reason. i don’t know what i want and i don’t know what i need,

but i can feel desire threatening to take a meaty bite of me,

wrapping his fingers over my thighs and sinking in.

he’d skin me if i let him and i almost want to let him—

at the only holiday party i went to this year i took ten shots,

woke up drunk the next morning. i’ve got nothing to show for it.

i’ve spent this december trying to press my broken family into diamond,

avoiding sickness, feeling vague. it’s sucking the life from me. i am carrying weight

in places i didn’t used to, and still trying hard to find beauty in the people that raised me,

still trying hard to find hope up north. i’m just so tired, feeling like

there’s nowhere to really belong;

nowhere that i carry no one else’s housekeeping,

doing no labor but my own. yes, there is love abound and

i feel it rubbing against me, butting its head against the door. it’s comforting. it’s terrifying. and it is not enough

this year. i want to succumb to something,

even if i don’t know what. i haven’t decided that yet. i haven’t decided whether

i’d let desire have me. i haven’t yet figured out

what he desires from me in return.

[allthecolorsofourlove]

Summer is charged with something. I don’t know what it is or why, but all those years of summer being the last gasp of a self have given it a beating heart. The cadence matches mine. Its breaking warms my soul. We are growing back together and it feels charged with something too. This is why I stay away from him: put much more than an arms length between us to keep the wanting firmly at bay. But he comes back to me. Every time, he comes back to me. Waits patiently, hugs me drunk. Hugs me drunk again. And again. And again. Slurs, I miss you, we need to hang out, I’m so happy to see you, and then tumbles out onto the patio. I won’t let myself think anything of it. I don’t let myself linger on things you throw at me, pasta on drywall, seeing what sticks. I peel it off and let perseveration die. At least, I try to. You’re shushing me during that show though, where best friends turn to lovers, and kiss in a museum—but when first rejected, the boy says, I’m fundamentally unlovable. He gets told, You care about your friends so loudly. The air thickens. Charged. I’m trying to talk through it. I’m joking about his haircut. I’m mirroring him. He deflects. I do the same. But you’re shushing me. Gasping softly at the way she looks at him. Saying that I truly am the worst person to watch this with. Why? What’s hard about seeing best friends fall in love? Why do you care? The girl says to friends, I’ve just liked him for so long, it hurts. My mouth seals shut. I keep you at arms length. I don’t tell you why I do. And you won’t tell me why you miss me so much, will you? Summer closes her doors on us, just as she has before—over and over and over again, when we shared beds and I’d kiss you on the forehead goodnight, or when you crawled into my lap in that nextdoor parking lot, or now, this time, where I almost think I catch you looking at my lips when I ask when you’re free. I don’t know what to do with you. I don’t know what to do with all this energy.

[allthecolorsofourlove]

Pull my lips back and let it all hang out: white canines, twitching gums. I think when I’m home I’m a worse person. It’s easy to retreat back into what I know. The pack wants what it wants. It’s hard to say no to family. With every day that dies easy and bloodless at the hand of the moon I am dreading my future more and more. I don’t know why existence feels so hard. Isn’t there a diagnosis for that? My ears flatten against my head at the sound of the scrape of metal on metal as the morning is forged in the foothills. I scrabble for purchase on the turning wheels of time and wonder if I hang on to too much. One friend says to me, tenderly, that it makes sense. Another says they’re done giving me advice. My sister says I’m allowed to be upset. My mother wrinkles her nose. It’s aching inside me, all the emptiness, threatening to open its own stinking mouth. I feel like a child again. I feel like a failure again. I feel like, if I really let the valleys and the rolling green of my life sprawl out in front of me, I can pick out every burn scar, every burial site, every broken branch that signifies the places where I am far too much or not nearly enough. I am trying to change so desperately and nothing comes from it. Tomorrow I will wake up early and go for a run and swim laps in the pool and lift measly weights and still no one will love me. I will build this body, hair and whiskers, teeth growing long, brooding their way out of my mouth and into the world, and I will look just as intended. And still it won’t be enough. I’m not the girl I was when I first lay claim to this house. I don’t slide sweetly in between my siblings at my mother’s belly like I once did. And this could be okay, really, if someone loved me. Isn’t that pathetic? Like ribs kicked under the table, this bruise softens me. Betrays me. I don’t need this approval. I don’t need the approval of my family, clearly, so surely I don’t need the approval of a hypothetical lover, wooly and sweet. Despite the logic I do, and I crave it, and I hunger for it. I want to be cotton-mouthed, satiated and full. I want to rip my teeth out and never use them again. I want to rip into someone and have the scars to prove it. Sure, fine—I’ll be pathetic. I’ll hate my family and yearn for false perfection. I’ll pretend that a scratch behind the ears could heal what ails me.

[allthecolorsofourlove]

My family’s garden hasn’t provided fruit this year—not the kind I’d like, anyway. The green beans are velveteen and the squash is bursting and abundant and the parsley is beckoning swallowtail butterflies that can’t help but rest eggs in the crooks of the curly leaves. I’m waiting on tomatoes though. We got some from the farmers market yesterday and my mother said they were the first ones of the season. The flooding this winter ruined their cycle. The sun, it’s just—it’s coming too late. The tomatoes were delicious regardless. We ate them with soft cheese by the pool.

If I think about it I think I’m always waiting. Something is always wrong—the time, the momentum, the feeling. I like to ignore and I like to hold on. Every way you slice it, I’m waiting for something perfect to happen to me—the perfect sign to treat my body kindly, the perfect apology from my family, the perfect internship for my haphazardly planned future. The perfect lover.

Is there a perfect lover? Surely there isn’t, but my brain hasn’t caught up to that yet. I’m waiting for someone who gets it but I look at my family and I look at the way the rest of the world sees my family and I feel paralyzed. Does everyone see me like that too? Could anyone love me with that kind of film on my skin? They are not quite good people. Not bad enough to demand reproach but not good enough to be invited back for dinner. I worry that my self image is so distorted by the people I confide in that I’ll never see what’s wrong with me—and then I’ll never fix it. And then I’ll never be loved.

I try to give myself grace. I am young, like the garden. The sun had disappeared for a few years there. It was dark inside. Now it is not. I am waiting for the perfect fruit, the first sun gold of the season: small, orange cherry tomatoes that burst like a gusher under teeth. Sweet. They carry the sticky, green smell of tomato vines. They remind me of love.

I want to burst love between my teeth. I want to eat my seeded heart out again. I think I’m waiting for someone that doesn’t exist, but I don’t know how to stop. Am I too old in this young body? Like heirloom seeds? Like dirt? Do I demand too much? When I told a friend that I need virtually no reassurance in a relationship she gawked at me. I didn’t know how to explain it. If someone loves me then they love me. I have no doubt. I expect problems to sprout between us, and I trust that we will pull them out. Relationships don’t have to be hard. We don’t have to let them be hard. Love can be easy. Isn’t that what we all deserve? I think it is. I want to give that to someone. I want to take it from them too. We will trellis our vines for strength and clarity, untangle what is complex and scary. Is that too much? I don’t know. I can’t stop asking. I can’t stop wondering. I don’t know if I’ll ever find out.

[simena]

[simena]

[allthecolorsofourlove]

I told you to ignore me and if you’re doing that, thank you.

In any case, I just don’t quit. (Doggedly yours, etc)

You should know this by now.

I don’t think I want anything from you; even if you’re the hole in my chest that I can feel but can’t see. Which is hard and strange to admit, and maybe not true. But it feels mostly true. So I guess I’ll say it anyway.

Frankly, I don’t know why I’m writing at all—I know you’ve made your peace and I know that in most ways I’ve made mine. It’s not easy to feel the gaps between my ribs and know what used to lie there, especially in spring, which used to be my favorite season. It still is, I think, but it just hurts in the way that fall used to.

I feel safe telling you these things because I’m sort of assuming you don’t check the lock on this door anymore. If you do: hello, I’m a little ashamed. To which you would probably reply, hello ashamed, I’m Charlie, and I would smack you upside the head.

Do you think the anniversary effect exists for relationships? I think I miss you because I know we are both twenty this month and I know we once spent that together. I feel stupid talking about you like I didn’t break it off (which was the right choice, inevitably, even if I hate that it was, and even if I still bleed from time to time), or like I haven’t been happy since you. I’ve been so, so happy since then—not because you were gone, but just since. And right now I’m not. It’s been hard, and I am feeling messy and soft. Maybe that’s why I’m reaching towards you. That really sucks if that’s the case.

I want to say I’m sorry and I want to hear it back. I don’t know if I deserve to hear it back. I want to believe I do.

More than anything I think I’m back in that house where you miss the exact thing that was once in your possession; like the way you miss the sun when it’s cold or the rain when it’s hot. I miss being loved by you and I miss loving you but we can never be those people again, and I know that. I know you know that too. I wish we didn’t. Do you ever wish you didn’t know better?

I complain about something missing and not knowing what it is but the something I’m missing is love. Not just yours, but yours was the first I ever really knew. I’ve already said it but a content adulthood looks like that weekend in that apartment, seldom wearing a shirt and having lazy sex and kissing someone I love with the blinds wide open. Thanks for showing me that—opening the blinds on what life could be for me. I appreciate it. I appreciate you.

And I’m sorry. For this, for that, for everything. Both times. I’m sorry.

You don’t like to hear me say it but I’ll always say it to you. Even when I’m mad and even when I feel wronged and even when you’ve made things harder for me, in some ways, I still want to tell you I’m sorry. I think I always will. I feel like I come into your life and pour myself into your hands and then run through your fingers as quickly as I came. I honestly don’t even know if that’s true. I think it just feels like that, to me, especially right now, when I am feeling this dark and hungry. And tired. And aching. I’m back in therapy. I’m finally talking about romance there, which I’ve never done. I’m trying to be better. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, especially if I think you’ll never see it, especially when I know you’re trying to starve me out.

Which is what you should be doing, by the way. I’m just sentimental.

It’s April and I’m sentimental. But I promise I’m letting you go now. I swear it’s the truth.

These are the last dead birds on the porch. It’s April and I’m leaving you one last canary and I swear, I promise you, I’m letting it go. I’m letting us go. I’m letting this go.

[allthecolorsofourlove]

To Whom It May Concern,

I am home the 20th — 24th.

I’m pissed you’ve written me. Subtlety has never been your strong suit and I knew what you meant immediately. Get better, hide better, choose something other than beasts or jackets. Glad you’re still wearing it.

I’m sorry about your roommate by the way. That sounds like shit. I want to ask about it. I won’t.

I hope you’re okay.

I want nothing to do with you and the fact that I miss you makes me want to rip my teeth out, methodically, leave me nothing to wedge in you like a parting gift. Or perhaps leave me no way to hurt you ever again.

I’m home the 20th — 24th, just so you’re aware,

And it makes me furious to miss you at all, frankly, and it makes me even madder to write you back. It’s humiliating, really, and if I was wrong and the idea of enneagrams wasn’t the right motif for me then this is going to be twice as embarrassing and I’d like you to ignore this. Like, really. Fucking ignore it. Pretend I’m as smart as you thought I was when you said I wouldn’t call.

Really, I’m maddest that you’re saying girlfriend online and writing me still, if that is really what you're doing, because I cannot be that intoxicating and she can’t be that divine, if you’re still writing me, and it’s cruel to her too, so this better be good, or your door better be half open even if she has a key. You better be thinking this through. It better be the smell of the ocean or the sound of piano or your old dog, if he’s still around (and I hope he is), and it better not be feeling big, just feeling desperate, if you’re linked to her still, because this would be round two and that would be so, so fucking cruel. You did it with me to the first and then to me with the new girl and you cannot do it to her. I’d hate you, genuinely. Learn to be alone a little bit, for God’s sake. It's not your heart not knowing when to stop. You're just fucking scared of yourself. Breathe with him and learn about him, dude. Christ.

…Once again, I will be home the 20th — 24th.

So happy birthday, early. Because spring makes me soft and stupid. I’m walking through my city and I don’t think about you in yours but my heart hitches when I walk down the street our temporary apartment was on. The cherry blossoms are bursting like rosy sea foam and that pastry place will have their monthly apricot special soon. I’m kissing other mouths and it’s fun and I had other sex and it sucked. I’m making a mess. It feels like your fault even though I know it’s not. That week with the food festival is hazy and sticky sweet in my memory—your hand on my thigh and sharing a Korean corn dog or a joint or something else phallic and feeling like life would never be better than it was right then. Sometimes I think woefully that that feeling was right.

I don’t want to see you and everyone will tell me to run with that but I do want to see you and that makes me realize I’m impulsive and cruel. I have other hands I’m holding but I want you to fuck me and I want you to rub the knots from my back with gentle square hands and I sort of hate that I want that. It’s really pissing me off that I want that and I don’t know how real it is, whether I miss the idea of you or I miss you in reality. After writing this initially I went to bed and had a dream about you, all over me, and it freaked me out. I woke up and stared at the floor. I wanted to go back to sleep. Did you dream about me that night too? Fuck. I sat on this poem for a week. And during that week I dreamed about you twice. I’m 20 this month and I’m deciding that just don’t want to think about any of this that hard, though, because I’m turning fucking 20, and I don’t give a shit anymore, and I shouldn’t, because it’s all stupid. So take anyway. Fuck it. I’m mad. I’m sad. I’m horny. I’m tired. I'm... whatever. It's whatever.

You have to be chill about this by the way. Like, I know this is insane but you’re the one who started it. And at least I’m being honest with mine. I’m being flat and messy and honest. And my honest is saying, I don’t really think I want to date you, but I want to have sex, and I want to kiss you, and lay in your arms, and I miss you when I shouldn’t. I hate missing you. It’s second nature. I don’t know what to do with it. I feel like it’s rare for it to sweep over me in great waves, but when it does, I drown in it. And I’ve accidentally painted a version of you that doesn’t exist, to the people around me, or at least, they never really saw how much it hurt me to cut us in half. I did a good job of playing the strong one. So I just don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. Everyone tells me to move on so I want you for brief stints and then I move on. I try to. I wonder if I cut it off right on time or far too soon. Kitchen scissors always end up in my bathroom for some reason but I have to keep them handy, for some reason. I’m always quick to the jump, so I guess it I’ll never know. Whatever. Whatever.

(Hey, according to you it was right on time, right? I mean, you sure moved on quick. Hah.)

(Sorry. That was mean as shit. Ignore it.)

I’ll be home the 20th — 24th,

Which is weird because my childhood home feels like a prison sometimes, but I’m back for theatre again. My mom called me her son on the phone. I’m breaking down my current kissable escapades because I keep freaking out over how mundane it feels to be a man. Transitioning is easy if I let it be and if I don’t let it be then I’m sobbing in my room over stickers that praise transsexuality and declare the joy of being a faggot. I hope you’re doing okay. I hope surgery prep is okay. I’m looking into mine this month. I have to up my HRT dose, again. Fucking again. I keep getting periods. It’s criminal.

It always sort of felt like you treated me like a woman. That’s stupid to say. I know your dysphoria made sex weird and mine made it weird for me but I didn’t know how to phrase it. But I just felt infantilized sometimes, like it was easier for you to feel secure in your masculinity if you woobified me or made me fragile. It’s probably a me problem. I’m just airing my grievances anyway. If anything happens here, note the time I told you this drunk, and then my best friend whisked me away to bed.

By the way, you have to tell me when the sex is bad, because you never did, and it really fucked with me. Like I feel like I’m doomed to suck forever now. Because you just sort of would take my hands and go “Okay, you’re done,” if you didn’t like what I was doing, and you’d never moan, and I just felt like so embarrassed and weird about it. I have so much shame. Like, before you I had so much shame, and now I have even more. So if you take into account the fact that I am home the 20th — 24th you’re obligated to do the one thing I ask and communicate with me, if the dates that I’m home are something that interest you. At all. I’m just saying.

I know you aren't the only one at fault. I'm not saying that. I'm just howling at the moon. Biting off fleas, which have bothered me for seven months. I'm sure I have been restless and rude and ruthless even, and I'm sure I was back then too. I delayed it when I shouldn't have. I never spoke my mind. I'm sorry for it. I didn't always know how to speak to you—or how to get through to you. You're stubborn as shit, you know? You like to repress. It was easier to run with it and swallow discomfort and I shouldn't have done that. It wasn't fair to either of us. I'm trying to be honest, because I don't know how much I really was last summer. I'm trying to say it. Even when it's mean. Even if I don't know how, and

Even when I don't really want to.

This concludes the bulk of my letter.

Thanks for your interest in my proposal. If you have any at all. But you haven't blocked me and I'm watching you add songs to that playlist again that don't say that I'm the worst in the world or whatever, which are fair to add anyway, but you're just not doing it. I don't know why. (I scream-laughed when you added that Blink-182 song though. God, you're corny.) So I'm guessing you're interested. Once again, I am home the weekend before your 20th birthday. Which I understand you do not want to spend at home. It’s why I’m here that weekend and not the next, cause I really don’t want to spend my own at home.

It’s not lost on me that it’s the same weekend, a year apart. I’m just letting it be. I make a point to not think so hard about themes or narratives sometimes or else I’d lose my mind. But my majors won’t allow it, two versions of the same analysis, so I’m thinking about them, and I’m thinking about you. Which I also try to avoid. But I just don't do it.

Fuck. Fuck me. Jesus. Everyone will tell me that this is a bad idea. But I just thought you’d like to know. You have a car. A train. And a mind of your own. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever.

Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m asking for. I don’t know what seeing you would change or fucking you would change or kissing you would change. Nothing, really. I don’t even know why I’m writing this. Do you know why you wrote yours? Surely, you have to know that rekindling this permanently, seriously, so soon isn’t a good idea? We’re finally both settled in our cities. There’s no way this makes any sense.

Why did you even write in the first place? What… what’s making you come back?

What compelled you? I don’t understand. I thought we had both moved on.

I’m begging for an answer.

Maybe I’ll change my mind. Ask me again just before the aforementioned dates (the 20th — 24th, if you don’t remember). And if I do, change my mind about all this, I mean, let this be all the things I always wanted to say but never did. If nothing else at least it’s closure, right? Real closure. Like, not cloaked in poetry. It’s written alongside. And it’s not being written in the mist of that initial fragile night of, where I poured myself a double dorm margarita (two shots of tequila and organic lemonade) and watched my favorite TV show with friends, and thought I was fine. (For the record, I sort of was, until the end of October. Shit hit the fan after that. You really don’t want to know. I’m still cleaning it up. I’m still reeling about it. It's a long story.)

Closure has to count for something. …Right?

But right now I’m aching. And I’m seething. It’s 1am and 2pm and fucking midnight, and I hate missing you—I can’t get it to stop. Maybe I’ll quench it, somehow. Maybe I won’t. I still want to tell you these things anyway.

If I’m wrong, destroy this message immediately. Have fun with her and your dog tattoo (I actually, seriously mean it. I’d rather you be happy with her, even if I’m feeling whipped up and hungry, on occasion, because it’s truly better for both of us that way.)

(… Even if it’s fucked up to steal my motifs for your own tattoo, and I laughed when I saw you punch the string of my own pulled teeth into her skin, because I still remember that you were going to get that on yourself in my city.)

(Sorry. That’s mean.)

(I’m trying to be nicer... I’m trying to be clean. I’m trying to mop my mess up and tuck my corners in. I don’t want to keep hurting others, or myself, but I can’t quit it. Whatever I’m trying to do, it’s clearly not working. Or else I'd never write this message.)

Best wishes (sincerely—I really, really mean it, no matter what you do),

S. V.

[virtual-art-museum]

Richard S. Johnson Ariana - 30 x 24 Giclee on Canvas

[allthecolorsofourlove]

i.

i am finding myself with a newfound clarity that i don’t think i’ve ever had before; in other words—

more poetic words—the words i want to use, pull from me like dandelions, push seeds out into the sky—i am

focusing binoculars on the ship on the horizon: i am twisting the microscope’s knobs, zeroing in on the boy in the petridish. honing in, like a missile or a hound, on someone who makes the right choices and

studies what he loves—someone with a future that is both wet and dry, a person whose lives that feel so split and casually divided don’t feel that way anymore. there’s a balance, and a mirror, and a haircut that makes me tip my chin up,

just a fraction of an inch. it makes all the difference.

ii.

i’m formulaic, i think,

more logical than i realize: find it harder and harder to react in ways that don’t just fall flat. i want to do things without passion,

touch a body without meaning anything by it,

but i find that the part of me that builds mud houses in the roots of trees is too caught up on the norms of it, the way that sex escapes a place of convention makes my stomach turn,

and i have no way to know whether or not i’m playing the role of human right when someone is six inches inside me. i wish, not for the first time,

that my mouth was not only full of canines.

iii.

they played Fleetwood Mac, not for me, just in front of me—and the way they bumped to the tune, bass in hand under gentle fingers, made my heart turn in my chest. i haven’t felt that sort of feeling since i was 15. i don’t remember

what it is to like someone from afar with no guarantee of reciprocation. i don’t know what to do with my hands. i wonder if they ever noticed the scratching stop when i froze,

warming,

sketchbook open on their bed, just to watch them play. i do really like them. i do hope this is something good. she tells me to go for it. she tells me to say something. in therapy, last month, my therapist asks me what i want in a relationship and why i get into one. i freeze, chest tight—and stutter when i finally answer; something

half-hearted about being able to take care of and be cared for. i think i just like to feel special. i think i still don’t have an answer for him.

iv.

when we fuck he asks me if i like to have my chest touched, and something in me compels me to say no, even though it isn’t necessarily true. i think my body

knows the answer to this question that chases me better than i do—i want to listen to it, but the whispers i catch through a quarter of a joint scare the shit out of me. i know where i will end up inevitably and where i am now do not necessarily line up, but i don’t think i want

to live in the now. i want to skip to

wearing makeup again and wearing skirts without wanting to throw up. i want to skip the hard part. i don’t think i’m allowed to.

v.

i’m finding these beats in my life stick with me, linger beside me in a way that i find hard to shake. there are the binoculars, there is his apartment, dark and warm, there are their sneakers on my floor, lopsided in their rain-stains from the way they walk.

they drive us to mcdonalds and i let them take a bite of my mcchicken in the drivers seat. he passes me two fries even though i broke his heart. we are friends and we are exes, in his mind, even if it’s not in mine, but the other is a perfect mirror of me in my head, just less white and maybe a little more traumatized. there is the way,

hours before this, that they text me across a not-so-crowded room for support. there is the way they

sit close to me, right against the wall, and grab my hand before the opening credits even begin. there is the way they are, and the way i am, and how

these things meet.

i love this life, the one i am building, and it’s difficult to remember how i could’ve ever wanted any of this to end. there will be days where i wish

i was not here, or wish i had done something differently. but more often than that there will be hours, days, weeks, of this life,

where i will dance with the campus coyotes against the din of the city and smoke next to the fountain before taking a flash photo of my shoes. and of all of these beats,

more important than anything, there is the way that this life breathes, and

this world means something very dear to me. and there is the way

that yes, it’s true: i missed the first red sunset of the year. but there will be more. another. and another. and another.

+ vi.

there’s also the way that i bumped his nose before turning my head to kiss his lips the other way. i am confessing that to you and for once i honestly don’t mean anything by it. it sort of broke my heart when i realized, finally sober the next morning, what i had done. it was also deeply embarrassing to know that i did something so tender during my first one night stand. if i think about it too much i feel mildly sick.

it also relieved me when i realized you have truly moved on. it made me feel relieved again to know that you have done to me exactly what you did to her, the thing that made me so nervous about you, and i am not particularly sure what to make of that feeling. but i am proud of both of us, and i mean that. i miss you deeply and i do not miss you at all. it feels particularly naked to tell you these things sober. i think i am going to do it anyways. i think that’s a part of the new me: i think this is a part of the change.

[simena]

Wilhelm Nagel

[allthecolorsofourlove]

up to my elbows in paint, i find it harder and harder to mix color without muddying the pot;

there’s a piece inside of me that’s fighting its way out—some masterpiece, magnum opus, pinnacle of 19 years of loving—12 months of change:

here lies before you a version of myself, splayed out on drop cloths, flecked with pigment;

and here is the canvas, sheepskin of the flesh, scraped down to the quick of a boy unclean;

and here is the hole punched through: 13 fists in metaphor, unlucky at best and cursed at worst—the accumulation of an existence,

a singular year whittled into a cadmium white flag.

stare into the face of the last year of teenage boredom, make your final excuses for teenage love:

in the studio, i’m laying naked on plastic fucking with someone who doesn’t care about me, and all i can think of is the way i want to be wanted: i’m trying to make art out of the worst of things

because the cup is overflowing with blue-black ink, water from dirty brushes / stained fingers / dirty hands that grabbed my body when i thought i knew what was best

and i don’t know how to tell them that this won’t just end if i give it another year, even when i know it’s true: trust the process, echoed faintly,

breathed through me like a prayer, whispered through the wind when the paper shuffles against my walls;

it’s like gospel, or knight’s code, and i know it, right around that hole through myself,

i know that it’s true;

so i’ll trust it—or at least try to—and

step back when i have to—and

mix color, even when the white runs grey.

in my head i look down at my chest / at that canvas, and all that runs out of that gaping wound is gold: bright and clear as the sky—

that brassy-colored ring around my own pupils, when the light hits just right