b.e.fitzgerald

your art is what you defeat

[befitzgeraldwriting]

Like this sea. I am. Foamy mouth and rope knot knuckles. Nothing is quite in me. A roar. A cry. A dying deers' bellow. Your lungs full of my blood. I am more than anything you have ever dreamed. Teaming, brimming, bursting. I am the best girl you will never sing to sleep. Drunk in your arms, but still powerful. Pocket knife in my back pocket. No one will ever overtake this tide. No one will ever sleep soundly by my side. Try. Lover, try.

b.e.fitzgerald (No Home in Me)

[befitzgeraldwriting]

I don’t know if there is a god or if god is just all of my relatives forming a nebula far past earth that one day I will collide with. Honest, all of my ghost stories are just stories. And angels are nothing but dust dancing in front of open windows these days. I don’t think I want to believe in divine right or divine mothers or divine vaginas. Do not tell me serial killers can become saints if they pillow talk the right way. We are all bastards and broken but there is no hope in that; only sick solidarity. Mary, please tell me you thought of running away too. Sister, keep this a secret, these days I’m starting to understand Judas. I am a deserter too. And I’m not sure if it’s fear not sure if it’s anger, not sure if it’s seeing bombings and refugees but no answers. Sleeping is getting hard again, even little-dippered next to you. I don’t think melatonin or prayer is gonna fix this. If anything though I know that love is not finite. I know that long after My body becomes a cadaver, after the rats use my limbs as winter home, this love will remain. The way you hold me at 3am after another nightmare will still radiate through these walls hundreds of tenants past us. One day, another couple will sleep in this same apartment and make up lies to explain why the floorboards creek in a rhythm. They will not know, can not know, that it is still our bodies touching. Still us fucking. Still us trying to prove that people can take each other in. That we. That this. That us. That earth. That orgasm. That god is something we can summon if we lay hands on each other in the right way. Honey, I am home. Car crash or pearly gates did not bring me here. It was your voice singing: “You’re gonna be Okay. Okay. Okay.” That echo is gonna last through the eons. We’re gonna last until god runs out.

b.e.fitzgerald (my best proof)

[befitzgeraldwriting]

don't steal art.

[befitzgeraldwriting]

It is impossible to rid myself of myself. I can not fillet the tattoos from my skin. There is no market for this meat; for me. Freckled, pink permanence. My drain will only show traces: dead hair, some blood, and spit. I can not be washed away. Trust me, I have tried. There will be a coffin in the cemetery full forever. No decay. All white. My chest never to collapse. Girls will lay flowers on me in understanding. They will have bones too big for their bodies. Too much too.

b.e.fitzgerald (all of me)

[befitzgeraldwriting]

I feel like your current picture for this blog really captures the emotion of "your art is what you defeat" and I really love it.

Well thank you, sweet friend 💚

[befitzgeraldwriting]

This is honey. This is dripping. This is the bruise on my jaw. We are falling over in the shower, slipping on whiskey and spit. This is is is a miracle sent from a god I do not talk converse with anymore. My last supper was your saliva. My prayer was nothing but quite moans behind lapping waves. Monday, I woke on a boat. I woke to a dream, a man, a miracle snoring in my ear. Let’s go see the dinosaurs, darling. Let’s go see pretty lies, lover. Take me to the museum and show me your favorite skeletons. Take me to the pharmacy, I’ll show you my favorite ghosts. We we we are beating and brittle. I I I am not made to stay. Please, grab my wrists. Please, know my thoughts. I am weak and stubborn but god, your eyes sound like psalms. Your tongue kisses my teeth as though they were rosary beads. Hail Mary. Hail us. After the after, I still hear your laugh down the coast, under my door The gulls can not drown out my favorite song. We are whole and not holy. We are sin and not blessing. You are engraved in my palms. The lines deeper each day. We have always been in the crevices of my skin. Waiting. Lurking. Feeling. My feet are cold again. You sent me a picture of Lake Ontario at 9:20pm. I want to tape it on my fridge. I want to sit you at my kitchen table. I want. I need. I pray to blackholes. Ask for their magic; their escape to Kingdom. Maybe we will disappear in dust together. Maybe that houseboat was our only hope. Rock me to sleep, current. Sing me his siren song. Pull me down. Drowning is falling asleep slowly. Loving is sinking in cement shoes with open eyes.

b.e.fitzgerald (fables for feelers)

[befitzgeraldwriting]

Witching hour is only real when I am alone. The floor breathes in in your absence. It is 3:32. I wait.

b.e.fitzgerald (The 11th Tenant)

[befitzgeraldwriting]

The night I noticed you there were only two plans: to start a fight or kiss a stranger. My unscarred fists thank you. In memory, it is all poorly lit. Reduced to blurred photos: a selfie in the bathroom, a watered down glass of vodka, you walking in the middle of the abandoned street. Drunk is a good way to fall, a good way to jump, a good way to make it seem as though you are not so sad. I was all crooked teeth and fake laughter as you pulled me back from my joke/my cry. We were the only two on the bridge that night. My uncracked neck thanks you. I bit your lip, too hard by accident, I remember that. “This is just a kiss good night.” Romance is saved for those that do not want it, for those who do not welcome it into their beds. You walked ten blocks home. I did not think of you the next day or the next month. This mind of mine does not believe in fate. Never again. Too old. Too tired. But February brought me back to that bar, back to your taste. Not destiny, not design. We just both happened to be thirsty on the same night. And now my parched lips thank you again and again and again.

b.e.fitzgerald (back to you)

[befitzgeraldwriting]

It was the first night of spring and I was out in the stubborn cold on a swing set stubbornly praying. Praying for Stay, for a miracle that would only matter to me. Cold doesn't last in March and I'm not sure if you will either. But last night it was real. I saw it on the walk over, melting on the couch, flickering through the open window beside your bed. I saw it reflected in your eyes. But not everything lasts, not everything lives forever. Straighten your back, child. Spring is here to take everything that drew close to you in the hearth of winter. The snow melted by the morning. Witnessed but gone.

b.e.fitzgerald (permanence & resilience)

[befitzgeraldwriting]

FACTS ABOUT MY LIFE THAT FEEL MORE LIKE FABELS: 1.) I live in a boardinghouse with three men I do not know. I have named them Jeff, John, and Markus in my underbreaths. None of their mothers taught them how to do the dishes. None of their lovers invited them to live in their houses. Sometimes, I hear them snoring through the floorboards and wonder if I sound just like them when I sleep. 2.) Two days ago, I took the morning-after pill with a bottle of warm water and no real feelings. Now, all I feel are my insides compressing. I guess, to make sure there if no room left within me. I picture God or the stars must be sad. But I am grateful not guilty. I take up too much space already. 3.) You are leaving in thirteen days. Sweaty and sore you say: We’ll get through it when we get there. I still not not have a drivers license. I don’t know how I’ll get there at all. Syracuse is another planet. I am a UFO. Crash is my only option. 4.) The ducks came back. My father thought last winter took them. I cried when I saw their picture on my phone. Lost things are not dead. Lost things are not dead. I am not dead. I hope I can come back too.

b.e.fitzgerald

[befitzgeraldwriting]

The river is flooding; churning. You make me melt. I was shaking last night in your car; past tense. He never loved my mother. The neighbors must have heard me scream. Staircases echo in the worst way. That was all five minutes ago. You are a new timeline. You you you are the thaw. We are still in your car. I am still child of divorces one, two, and three even though I don't wear them. Even though you don't know. I am not here to make sense for you, not here to be a storyteller. Just a girl. Just girl. Girl. All girl. All growl. All filth from you on my face, don't dare wipe it away. If I cut my hair into a pixie would you still love me? Would you call me murderer? Or call me muse? You'll call me anything but my full name. I am not here to make sense of the world for you. The riving is flooding. Not gonna drown this time.

b.e.fitzgerald (second coming of the daughter)

[befitzgeraldwriting]

America will be the name of my first daughter. She will be the only thing I ever follow blindly. Her: the anthem before every first pitch. Her: the underdog in every movie. Her: the face on each dollar bill. Everything. She will not love me back. She will call me cancer, a leach. She will be all of my worst fears broadcasted live on Fox News. All gunshots and backwards blame. But I will always love her, relentlessly hoping. My blood. My womb. My world. My America.

b.e.fitzgerald (Meri)

[befitzgeraldwriting]

And then sometimes there is nothing. Just blackness. Just starless. Just nothing. Just your messy house and the faint smell of mold that you should probably care about but don't. It's back again. Was always there. You call him to confess it. Silence. You ask him if he loves her Dial tone. You are only bitterness built up like the filth at the rim of a toilet. Stop. Don't do this again. Romanticizing shit does not make you an artist. You need to know that. Wearing the same bra for two weeks and telling yourself no one will notice is just pathetic. That's it. Some stories are just sad. Bury it.

b.e.fitzgerald (when poetry ends)

[befitzgeraldwriting]

I can't write to you anymore. My tonsils still taste like the last time we were together. Mental becomes physical becomes too much to handle. I am choking. I am coughing. I am trying so hard to hold it down. Your carcass is stuck in the back of my throat. I can't give it up. Even though it's rotten. Even though it's all mold; all memory. I gave up eating meat six years ago when I met you, and that was a vow. This is all I have left. The last chunk hidden behind my molars. You are the size of the Grand Canyon. You are all my mother ever wanted. You are are are. You are something I can never finish. Because I promised. I can't write about you anymore. I can't breathe anymore. Count to ten. Like you told me. Breathe. 1... 2... 3... 4... I know she reads your texts. "You don't understand." I can't write to you anymore. My love is not an apology.

b.e.fitzgerald (so this is)

[befitzgeraldwriting]

please release a book. your work as a tactile thing would make my life so much better. your writing is marvelous, even if it's hard to see from your perspective. it might not have a lasting impact on the world for hundreds of years, but its having an impact now.

Publishing a book would require a publisher to think my writing is worth taking a risk for. Self publishing does not agree with my wallet and crowdfunding doesn't sit well with me. But thank you thank you thank you. You can always find me here.

[befitzgeraldwriting]

but now it's winter // b.e.fitzgerald

[befitzgeraldwriting]

Slamming tonight. Maybe send posi vibes?