gleamingly; senescent
A rock covered in moss, the base weight of gravity in a cool dark pond The Luckiest photons refract through algae strands Darkness as warmth, a womb to retrance through To find and lose, only grasping in moments Forgetting to breath, remembering oldest patterns Of Prehistoric rock on stone, stone to tool, tool to body A coolness for blood, a stillness in drips Paint dries, mud cracks, shovels break Deny sustenance, chase hedonism Forever pushing the pedal down, To metal to asphalt, To meet the next thing To Climb the next hill, descend the next valley Every peak that lasts forever, frozen in time, wind in hair eyes of sun And the crevices that stretch to eternity in a present, blood rushing cortisols In the morning it will be different, in the morning it could be worse, it could be understood I fear the moments when clarity shoots straight into my eyes, ricocheting down my spine As if god’s itself finger rests abruptly upon me, shrapnel cutting through delusion a smack on the ass at the back of a dream, Antlers mounted on a crooked nail Like a moss, i maximalize surface area Increases coalescence of water droplets Armor of wet dew to protect the thousands of microscopic microbial beings Hiding under my leaflets and between my green hairs I don’t know who they all are, i won’t know what the give and what they take What they demand and how they decompose
I crave magnificence, gleamingly electric green, rhizomatically spreading over bark, spongiest and softest and wettest, sending sporophytes up tall, brazenly alive, a sexual reproduction of the self
I avoid handing you the truth, what becomes when the climate dries, how it shrinks and crusts, flaking apart in dormancy.
By fighting to have it all, does that leave what it is, senescent?
To encounter geographies of memories in a suddenly concrete state of finality
Its unnecessarily destabilizing, confronting moments I haven't reflected on
Reminisced and retold and reprocessed and relived
In lifetimes. There are lifetimes between the body of me and the me of the body, almost ten years shallower. I feel so different and removed. I feel so intertwined, a protective web of wet shame, convoluted. I believed in so much, and knew so little. I still fall for the same schemes. I still chase the same manic highs. I never thought about a future in this city, where i would consistently encounter new connections to this same building, often to other they/thems with j names. I never thought that one day i’d go to a house show there and know so many people, continuously locking eyes with new friends. That i would inhabit a unique ability to piece together a trace of a history, an ebbing of aesthetics and shifting of values, to have connections with so many iterationions, and have the esteemed stature of one who was sixteen in a collective house of twenty year olds. To leave the final night with a painting of the building that has been on the wall and in my heart for ten years.
I remember learning to roll joints on the couch. I remember first understanding how penises can be beautiful. I remember tattooing myself on the roof. Casting spells on facetime with my dad. Gathering goldenrod and mugwort and aster for a dusty late summer alter below my mirror. When i first experienced the essential week of indian summer that graces us in the fall, the saving grace for my southern heat wave homesickness. I remember the neighbors’ cat being let into our apartment by strangers walking past. I remember finding pleasure within myself. I remember not being able to sleep next to the boy who unconsensually took my virginity. I remember the brief fistfight between roommates, the slamming doors, the struggles of consensus decision making, weaponized nonviolent communication. The bountiful breakfasts and dumpster’d pizzas. I remember being a lonely dumb teenager, putting dish soap in the dishwasher. Sleeping in my hammock all summer long. Smoking so much weed yes still somehow retaining youtube history lessons. Ever aching for my home, ever discovering newness. Extensive journaling, extensive documentation. A raccoon climbing through my window as i sat and screamed. I remember finding out that a bottle of wine fits perfectly in my favorite water bottle. How to shove jump rings in my nose to get into age restricted concerts. I remember taking a nap during a party. I remember watching sunsets from my mom’s bed, light reflected on glass across the street. Cutting too many shirts into crop tops. the feeling of finding a denim exoskeleton in my eva b jacket, living within it. Covertly fighting with my mom. Running away from men seemingly following me home and forgetting my keys in the lock, dangling outside like the fresh meat i was. I remember building a map in my head of bus routes and bike lanes, a map i still rely on today. I remember despising authority so much i was a consistent face in early morning detention, my bag full of every library book on wicca one can find in the city. When my mom would play hooky with me to bike off the island, and visiting the verdun shoreline for the first time. My roommate teaching me trigonometry, and another of entropy. I remember listening to a lot of grimes, and discovering new wave post riot grrrl. Tattooing ‘fish’ on my fingers and protecting it with holographic bandaids. I remember laying on the living room floor with my best friend, almost lip to lip, listening to lcd soundsystem. The same dirty wood floor that i watch a band of new friends grow and fluoresce.
To age is to grieve all the past iterations of the self, all the lifelines passed over, the unknowingly consequentiality of decisions that falls into one’s lap as a sixteen year old. How they chase and follow and guide you through the rest of your life, how I continue to build a table of contents with ink in my skin. There are few things I regret in my past. I like to think of fate in this way, bad things happen to lay the ground work, the top soil i scrape out of my truck, that will be the nutrient rich home for the good things that grow from life, the blooming of relationships and understandings and further self determination. I found so much beauty in this house, i have encountered so much pain. It will forever be with me, that salmon colored building on the border of the mile end, a place of legend making.
