the stars have voices, too.

Paola F. Dreamer, wanderer, come-home-er. Wielder of poetic and photographic chisels (caelum) with which to carve the world (verse). Currently sharing time between my loyal footholds in New York and Boston, USA. ALL WORKS & IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHTED Paola F. © 2013-2018 // all rights reserved

[caelumverse]

i did not bite my tongue because i never do, not with you. i did not bite my tongue and you sunk your teeth in. i did not give you what you wanted and you snapped, twig under my heel, sharpness where there had been none. i’m sorry and i’m not, if you wanted a liar then you should  have let this sleeping lion  lie. if you want this then you want the scratches too.

[caelumverse]

My mother took one look at you and knew. ‘If you wanted it,’ she told me, ‘he would bring you the moon.’

journal excerpt 29 sep ‘18.

[caelumverse]

You undid me, grinned, and ran.

left wanting - six word story #25 (p.f.)

[caelumverse]

i have been thinking about youth, mine. something of it still hangs on me, hoping, smallest sibling waiting to be seen.

i am scared i did not give it enough;  never picked it up and ran with it into the street,  screaming, joyous, screaming, i was never sit-on-the-roof-talking young, never tip-the-bottle-skyward young, never unlatch-the-window, let-the-boy-in, drive-across-the-state-border-and-back-in-one-night young.

that is the never-young in which i cared too much.  but then there is the other, newer, steel-hard:

the youth that lingers on me, overripe, trash in the street in new york summer, sweet and sickly— youth gone to rot, gone to waste. look, i tell myself, look what the others are doing,  taking great sweeping steps and great savage bites,  they gleam with their youth.

they are planting new trees and feasting, and you, you drifted.  dropped.  withered at the rind.

that is the second never-youth, the one in which i did not care enough.

and with birdfeet starting to trample my eyes, i cannot see which i’d rather have sacrificed.

[caelumverse]

don't you blame the match when you're the one who dropped it. you live for the flames.

excuses to ashes - haiku #23 (p.f.)

[caelumverse]

i can’t stop thinking maybe  maybe i am not meant for loving.

i can’t sleep in the middle of the bed— no, not can’t, just won’t, i am always curled in on one side, on myself, wolf cub huddled, hiding from a cruel, preying city  that is always cold as winter, waiting for someone to fill the space, bring warmth, but  they don’t.

i can’t stop thinking about my father telling me he worries (of course he always worries,  but this is different, deeper, ocean-floor fear): he says he worries he and mama tore me in two,  blocked the sun, turned me into  something growing crooked, cold, afraid,  something broken—

but what if I was never whole 

to begin with

[caelumverse]

I want to leave. There is such daily brutality here that I wake marked by it in the morning, so much selfishness I only see myself in others’ reflections. Everything here costs you dearly, from coffee to confessions, and I have given so much I don’t know what is left.

I want to leave, except when I don’t. Sometimes the light blooms purple and grey over the tops of buildings, so soft I want to fall in, and something in my chest collapses inward and I think, oh, that, oh, you.

I want to leave. Chart a new course. But here I am already a map: People ask, where’s that jazz bar, where’s a good place to eat, and I know. I know. And this city may not be good to me but she knows me, at least. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?

I want to leave. I think I do. I’m just not sure I know how.

—journal excerpt 30 mar ‘18.

[caelumverse]

Remember the sunrise? Remember the precariousness of it, soft tangerine, blue so sharp it stung. Remember the gut wrench when the wheels wrenched from the tarmac, the heady rush of running? It didn't seem like running away if there was something to run to, did it? Remember when the running stopped. Remember 'it can wait' and 'but does it make sense?' Remember head down and chin up and should? Always should. Should stay, work, wait. Remember time is to take, not to worry over wasting. Is yours. Remember the loudest choice, too, should be yours. Remember what you had in mind. 

— journal excerpt 22 march ‘18.

[caelumverse]

Mama tells me it’s okay to feel depressed sometimes. She says she sees herself in me: we are quiet girls who left home because they ached for something bigger, who gave themselves to the city and it swallowed them whole. I don’t talk about that, she says, je garde cette porte fermée, I keep that door closed, pour ton bien, for your sake. She searches my eyes with hers, wine and earth to my seafoam. But it’s okay. To feel that way sometimes.

She is trying so hard and I want to weep and kiss her for it, but I don’t know how to tell her that it isn’t sometimes, it’s all the time. I feel the sky falling, shards breaking over my head, all the time. I feel the walls turning grey, closing in, all the time. I don’t know how to tell the truth and not break her heart.

—journal excerpt 17 february ‘18.

[caelumverse]

seven and three-quarters underwater, lungs still tender no breath, nothing left to sound the alarm

but my mama knew, the way they do— she turned and saw and dove missile fully clothed i still remember her dress, sopping shade of wild rose

sixteen swimming seasons later i still feel it the water never stops coming for me my mama says i should talk to someone spit out the dark before i choke and i feel salty fingers at my throat

she thinks she saved her girl, plunging in but a liquid noose is no more forgiving i’ve been drifting i’ve been drowning ever since

[caelumverse]

sweet boy, ripe-peach boy, boy with the hope rolling off you  in waves, hot sugar on carnival air

i think i read somewhere that the fields near Maracay are in good part sugarcane— it must have seeped into your blood along the way

you smile and it is the brown sugar cube i used to steal from my mother’s coffee you ask me to dance and i swear i taste honey

so sweet it hurts my teeth— i’m sorry i wish i still had that craving, i want to give you what you want but i look at you and see the kind of thing i used to eat the kind of thing that, once i got it,

slowly ate away at me

p.f.

[caelumverse]

whatever binds us, it's thicker than blood, beyond kin. you carry me.

the ones you choose - haiku #22 (p.f.)

[caelumverse]

I want so badly to be good. I want to open my shoulder blades and give myself room. I want to think, it's all right not to do everything I mean to today, and mean that at least. I want to be soft. I've waited so long to be okay with being soft, and slow, and... to just be.

4 June 2017, journal excerpt. p.f.

[caelumverse]

lucid

morning is broken, i am  holding the pink and blues together with my eyelids. your palm  and fingers reach me through ether thumb brushing woodland path  from jaw to lip and back.

i do not bloom or bend  or change.  i do none of the things  they say are done to us by touch.

i breathe.  this is only real in the grey (until we leave this bed,  until we don’t speak of this)

i want to ask you, why? were you fumbling  in half sleep? i want to ask

were you looking? i want to ask what did you see?

[caelumverse]

i have never had someone treat me like hunger, like i am holy.

breaking fast - haiku #21 (p.f.)

[caelumverse]

PRESENT ARMS

my father likes to tell a story  from his military school days:  something about a dozen guns  atop outstretched arms  and the hot, hot sun. 

this is not a proud story. it is not a story full of moxie, or spunk,  or the next new chin-buck-up.  because after half an hour  in the hot, hot sun and his hot, hot uniform,  my father swoons to the concrete  all the softness they tried to muscle out of him.

my father laughs when he tells this story. it ends in slapstick, icy water and relief bucketed across his face, a gruff pat on the back.

i am trying not to be soft.  i am fighting to keep my eyes open until the story ends.  i am not my father, but i am tired.

our hearts are hoarse with the same honey-fire and we’re certain no one can hear the screaming  under all the skin and skeleton. 

how do you make them listen?

[nosebleedclub]

Discussion 4/8/16

1. What makes a community great? 2. Accessibility (in literature, art, etc.) 3. Mediterranean 4. Current Project 5. Selfhood

[caelumverse]

1. Strength in sinew, in the face of slow-burn pain, rather than in numbers. 2. Maybe the old world had violent gods, but at least then everyone knew. In this age, children sit in sterile rooms translating truth through a veil. I know. I was one of them. 3. Half of my blood-salt is stinging my skin again. 4. If Aristotle says every story has a beginning, middle, and end, I am not wholly written. 5. I order the same drink every Wednesday noon.  I smiled and spoke sunlight to a girl I’d never met yesterday.  This, I know, is evolution.