corbin @corbinacage - Tumblr Blog

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grief sneaks up on me like a thief to a house or a cough caught in my chest tumbling into my throat. i choke on it and it scalds my esophagus. calm one moment and calamity the next, glittering wetness adorning my cheeks and sliding into my mouth. salt water, an ocean of it, swallowed back into that swirling lake between my ribs.

there are seventy photos in my phone of a sunset above a freeway seen through windshield glass. the motion tunnels me forward even when i have no idea where i am going. i see a mountaintop, an imposingly tall evergreen, the draping curtains of a willow tree. i eat dust so chalky my lungs are full of it and i can't spit around it. there is a thickness in the wind whipping through my hair, a pressure in the invisible hand forcing down my nose and my gaping mouth. the smell of tall yellow grass and cow manure and rain soaking into the earth punctures my nostrils.

i'm speeding in five different cars belonging to five different lifetimes and sitting beside me is my best friend morphing into my lover and morphing into a friend turned stranger. nobody knows my heart anymore but my high school best friend who knows everything about me is laughing so hard i can see her back molars, and her black hair is long again, and it hasn't been long for six long years because she's captain of her triathlon team.

the blurry smudge spinning across my window is a tree, a buck, a crow, a falcon, a plastic bag, a tire. a reaching with too many branching fingertips all pressing on the inside of my sternum, maybe they are playing me, an instrument to their song.

maybe you will see beauty in asymmetry or maybe one day you will wake up and decide that you no longer want to be loved unequally. i find a special kind of cruelty in being told i love you too closely. after everything we shared in our fear of abandonment -- how could you? define your freedom and cut me out of the text; i refuse to pour into an overflowing glass. i will take the shape out of the vessel, flow like rainwater. how unfair that you beg me not to leave while asking me to loosen my adoration. the poeticism you once loved now marred by your fear. you may not know what you have asked: for me to alter my love of the world just to love you a little less fervently. and then you tell me never to change myself and the way i love. i don't know what to do with all of this, where to put it. you've left me uncomfortably aware of my intensity, with none of the appreciation of it. i can withdraw myself and my existing, compress into a lesser being. or i can continue as i am, unsettling both of us, seizmically unstable.

i would not love you any less if you were 10,000 miles away. i would not stop thinking of you if we stopped talking for a week, or a month. i would still see your hair in the sunlight and your eyes in the sky just as i see blood in the poppies in these California hillsides. i would not stop feeling the ghost of your fingers on my fingers on the strings of my guitar, just as i cannot stop feeling the tickling legs of the white moth which alighted on the palm of my hand. the moth never asks me how and why i love it so; but i think it knows. why else would it keep following me, even across state lines? the moth simply exists and by existing remains brilliant. the moth will live an entire lifetime guided by spectacularly tranquil things like breezes and stars. you are a part of this universal harmony and i love you as i love the white moth, as i love the trees and the sky. is that not enough for you?

or worse, is that too much for you?

achingly hollow and jealous of fragility. wolf who wishes to be lamb. sharpened claws which cannot sheathe, weapons i no longer need, teeth i cannot hide my salivating tongue between, teeth which craves the softness of flesh and the metallic tang of blood. curling toes and low swishing tail and ears bent back pressed to the side of my head. i smell fear on the air, do not know if my own or yours. i smell weakness, stand firm, every inch of ground i've ripped and chewed off for myself, every freedom a demand i made of my body and stole from those around me. what do you know of freedom little lamb? you curl, writhe, shiver. coat of snow. pathetic bleating. it's pathetic, it's disgusting, i'm contemptuous. soft so soft the softest pelt and flesh and smallest twitching nose you are the softest little creature i've ever met. soft like the den like the freshly fallen snow. despite myself. i am stepping towards you. your warmth hums in the air, i can feel the electricity sparking off your pelt. step closer, put my twitching nose to yours, feel your softness and your flesh and you are so so sweet. despite myself. raise my paw, which is so clawed and sharp, place one foot in front of the other, stalking closer, ears back, tail stiff and unmoving. despite myself. full round eyes and urgent need and softness so soft. despite myself. i lay my body down, curl it around yours. rest my muzzle on your back, smell the sweetness, bathe in it. despite myself. my tongue, it flicks between my teeth, licks you clean. your bleating soothes, quiets. my bigger body shielding your softness from this clawing whistling wind. my clawed paws a pillow for your soft, light head. my tongue between my teeth.

my suffering is not sacred

driven by a selfish sort of greed on a sunny afternoon, i count my wounds and add them up to my moral character. i tell you my suffering is sacred (though i don't believe that, not really) and weighs more than yours. i name the orange trees and blue skies "Healing," though i haven't brushed my teeth in a week. assign meaning to the flickering dance of a flaming candle on my desk. when the fire leaps tall and strong i picture the burn across my fingertips a thousand times (yet i never dare to touch it). so it goes, the weeks passing into months. i wake up with a sinking realization of who i am, returning to my flesh and telling myself i'm condemned to this because my body is holy. allowing my tangible reality to refamiliarize with my limbs and mind, as one might recall a rather disappointing mole in an oft-unseen place.

magical wonders can be found in the most mundane places, like the skittering little lizard i spotted on the trunk of a tree outside my home. the same, for the most heart-wrenching disappointments. a plastic-wrapped package of red envelopes and folded-in moon festival lanterns seem to grow knifelike points, to thrust between my ribs. this is no severe loss because these things were never mine to begin with. oh but how i would trade every memory of my birthdays (especially the sixteenth, that glorious horse-riding, hot animal breath and flesh and hair and sunset tainted by my mother's self-insistence and my tears) for one more minute jumping to catch red lanterns with my cousin. these days i see a father first, a man second, and an empty space third. these days i see an empty space, fill it with bubbling champagne, color it with grenadine.

the little mannerisms in which my friend's aunts laugh, slapping each other on the arm with hands clad in chunky silver rings. remind me of all the people i've lost long ago. this kohl-lined eye, this silvering black-grey hair, the curvature of this lip and the lines on this round moonlike face are as known to me as the back of my hand. when they tell stories they speak of the gods i was raised with. when they speak of death they are as visited by him as i, as knowing of him as i. in this practical, almost casual absolving of grief i can feel a tension in my throat release.

so i allow myself to choose between two feelings, hold this delicate balance between my hands and adopt my friend's generational wealth of stories and experiences into my own skin. how selfless of her to share with me on a sunny afternoon. we sit at tables graced by generations, wood chairs carved and graced by tradition (like my own grandparents' in china a lifetime ago), giving thanks. my friend's sister throws her head back to laugh and the sound bubbles out of her throat, buoyant in refreshing autumn air. she tells me welcome to this craziness, that the whole family is always this eccentric. she does not know their humor strikes me so deeply because it is mine too. my friend's mom tells me come back whenever in need of a warm place to stay, a home-cooked meal, or a laundry machine. she does not know these are the things i've been searching for my whole life.

red lines your face and washes through the contours of your browbone, the roundness of your cheeks. stoplights and taillights. i stare at you during these earthly pauses, when even soil and leaves don't breathe. hovering, withheld, tensioned. the lingering of a gaze, the reaching of a finger, the anticipation that befriends expectation. in a moment more you will feel it, the tracing path of my eyes across your lashes, the ridge of your nose; you'll turn and meet my eyes with your own. but for just this most sacred brevity of time, i can indulge in the presence of you unperceived. shielded by red, symbolic through mundane things, like traffic lights and the turnover leaves and kissing under bridges. like an underlying bleeding rage for all your eyes and mind have seen or conjured; for all your pearl-pallor skin has endured; for all the fiery heat your gold-woven threads of hair have bleached beneath.

eyes are a tunnel i fall into, and yours lie in the shadow beneath your brows. untouched by red light. at first a grey fog which, as skies are oft to after rain, softens into a shade of blue. i've meticulously color-matched this tone to paint samples at the hardware store, ever-changing and multifaceted. a maze of milky lines, nettles of green like summertime fern, and most of all flooding through my lungs an azure teal tide. stealing my breath and buoying my limbs. coercing me to swim. i read your eyes as scholars scrutinize ancient texts, with a fervorous obsession i can't rid myself. which might be soothed by the words lining your forehead and caught by your tongue. someday sometime they'll escape between your teeth, those words, passing between your cupid's bow lips. I'll feel a whispered breeze rushing through my ears, blue flooding my veins until i cough, choke, burn with the color. pulsing with heart-wrenching blueness.

dear mom,

how do i tell you that you are not invited to my graduation?

that i still can't watch videos of parents doing nice things for their children because it makes me cry,

that i still feel a jolt of fear when i hear the ice cream truck pass by?

how do i tell you that almost every night,

i am still watching a kitchen knife

fly

past my face, dropping onto the carpet right

in front of my feet? and i look at my weed and i consider getting high

so that i won't have to cope with this aching hollowness inside

my chest one more time?

i wish somebody loved me ardently enough to read through my tumblr just because, without being shown or asked to.

it's my greatest form of self expression, my proudest work of writing, and my most vulnerable narrative of being alive.

sometimes i spend so long consuming somebody else's art that i wonder what it would be like to be the muse, obsessed over, for once.

a meandering exploration through my many lives as i am the cracks in the pavement, the uke in the dojo, the puppet of the puppeteer, the bird with broken wings, the fallen telephone pole, and the spider in the home.

i hate to see the weakness in my armor. like the cracks running down cement pavement, gathering pools of rain. in the world of walking down a street, small green weeds plant themselves with unfounded determination and grow inside those cracks. pools of water nourish clovers underfoot. i fear my tears won't nourish me.

when i find things to be hard, i wonder why. how come i can't do this thing, which others do regularly and even find peace in? tell me, how do you do the laundry? i find it a thousand times easier to spar in the dojo against a bigger man, a million times easier to force my ambling limbs to push against the greater force of a hand shoving my jaw into the mat. easier to bite my lip and bruise my leg; easier to hurt, all over, sweet remainder of my flesh and bone.

you need me to tell you what i want, but i've never been asked to have an opinion before. i'm not indecisive; i'm undecidable, a puppet to the puppeteer who i've finally broken free of. unstrung and limp, made to please the masses. so goes the long-asked question: what is a puppet without its puppeteer?

i'll tell you. i'm a bird with broken wings, shambling through the streets. hopping on talons not made to bear the force of walking. i'm the fallen telephone pole, once useful now sizzling in potential, electrically lethal if someone walks into my force field.

i'm a spider in a home. a girl in her twenties will either drown me down the drain or home me in a terrarium. in either situation i am helpless against a much larger, more powerful entity. that, my dear, is the world. does a spider know he is a spider? no. he simply strings his web, unknowing as to why webbing seems so difficult.

death of a daughter

how to tell you - no, show you - the world.

i am your daughter first, and your son second, and thirdly you will never know the second. so i do my daughter's duty: to forget what i know and to hide myself.

how do i show you: the glint of the kitchen knife, which i was surely too far to see. the sharpness of the blade, the old varnish on the wooden handle peeling and yellowed by use. how you were chopping chicken for dinner, a docile and homely labor. one you commit, as though paying sweat for kindness and trading thoughtfulness for your harshness. you always told me you were hard on me because you loved me. but i was studying your effort with admiration, mom, drawn to the knife and its utility. how was i supposed to know that in your hands a tool could turn so quickly into a weapon?

your worn weathered brown hands, scarred with burns from the shitty chinese restaurants you would take any and all odd jobs at, from waitressing to cooking to washing up. i cried for them, for your coughs and your reddening joints the doctors called arthritis. i burned through my intestines and up my ribs, i swear i could set my throat on bitter fire as you halfheartedly threw your money at the joint relief cold gel sold over the counter at CVS. i saw everything, mom, even the things you thought you hid from me. how when the weather changed, your bones would drag you into the earth, as though into an early grave. how desperately you needed to sit in front of our space heater, the one you would buy when the seasons changed, just to return it when the sun warmed our city again. i hated what the world had done to you, mom. why won't you believe me when i say that? it's not your fault, mom. please, be better than what they showed you. be better than what they made you.

that afternoon the sunlight streamed in white through the blinds. there was no atmosphere to it, no dramatic golden flare. just the shrillness of your scream, the edge to your anger i could never unpack. the normalcy of our living room in comparison, the peace contained in the apartment walls. the piercing beadiness of your eyes when you looked at me, as though somehow you always knew i would be a son, as though you saw my father taunting you inside my skin. how your knuckles moved, the pull of tendons under your skin as your fingers flexed, gripping the knife. you pulled your arm back, holding it aloft, and i didn't believe you. didn't think you could do such a thing. even held midair, always glinting in my memory, your arm sinewy with muscle, even then i didn't think that knife which belonged so solely to you could ever leave your hand.

once, you let me browse your collection of old books. i don't know where you found them but i know you couldn't read most of them. there is a surrealist novel about a girl who is raped. her family puts her through electrotherapy, then gaslights her, telling her that her memories actually happened to her nonexistent dead older sister. she loses track of time, of her life and her memories. the girl grows up to fall in love with and marry her rapist, then discovers what her parents (and her fiance) had done. i was at that age where i thirsted to know everything and could consume color and memory merely through words, and so i learned how to hurt before my body ever grew into itself. i knew in my mind the touch of men's fingers and the push of men's penises in parts of my body i hardly understood. i knew, furthermore, the helplessness of being pinned down by an immovable weight. you only hurt me because you loved me so i hurt all over, touched by invisible hands, bitten and bruised as i slept. and i wept. there was another book, paperback with a blue cover. a large graphic of a thermometer filled to the top, and the words "ANGER MANAGEMENT."

i don't know if you meant to, guess i'll never find out. the knife fled from your fingertips with a life of its own, and i watched it arc across the air at me. i could not move, could not think, in that instant. the pit of my stomach tumbled out from under me, dropping between my shaking knees. i was suddenly cold, so cold all over as though jumping barefoot and naked into the pool in winter. frozen by fear, a fear i swore i would never allow to freeze me again. the knife landed with a thud on the carpeted floor, too far from me to be of any real danger. i knew in that moment you had no intention of stabbing me with it, had meant only to scare me. but the knife, from your hands, had been thrown. and i was frozen.

it was like that afternoon with the lemon, do you remember? the living room flooded a dim sort of yellow because our walls were painted beige. you were screaming and i was crying which made you scream louder for me to shut up. and then the lemon, god, why were you holding it? the yellowness of it, projecting all my joy. the irony of that, you staining my symbol with pain. the refreshing fruit after a hot summer's day which lent me breath, now taking it away. the lemon flew through the air at me (always, these objects turned projectiles with a life of their own and never assigned to you nor your hand). and i didn't know the moments between standing on the stairs, facing you, trying to talk - and laying on the floor, staring dazed at the white popcorn ceiling, wondering how i ended up there. i folded over like a wet napkin and then i was laying there and i could not breathe, could not even tell you that i could not breathe. just lay there flattened, a weight pressing on my sternum just below my breasts. a weight that would not leave, that i fought; i was pinned down by an immovable weight. you became me, became my dad, you who was my mother became the man you swore you were trying to protect me from. you who threw the lemon, you who threw the knife.

and still, mom, still i would not tell the police a word. why don't you believe me, my doglike loyalty? you tasted my love and spat it back at me like i was trying to poison you. mom, i tried to love you every day and even when i knew i would never love you again still i keep trying to love you. keep turning over the things you did to me like maybe i could cure you by knowing you. like maybe if i go to college and get a degree i'll find the right drugs to give you, or the right therapist you will trust and listen to. mom, i know what you did to me isn't new or original but i'm the author i'm reading, i'm a writer and a son and a queer. i'm injecting myself with testosterone every week and the needle glints like your knife. mom, i don't want you at my graduation like how i don't want you at my funeral. they'll call my name, and you won't recognize it on your tongue. you don't know how you've slowly caused it and you won't know how to understand or accept it, the death of a daughter.

it's all new to you. love. you spent a whole life wrestling with two ideas in opposition: of being unlovable and of finding true love, the kind you think we have. there, i said it: the kind you think we have. i'm sorry, i don't want it to hurt you (my uncertainty). like a snake in the grass, writhing and hissing- how can you love a forlorn thing like that? i'm sorry, because i still remember how it feels to fall in love for the very first time. sweeter than morning dew, and delusional. it feels like the entire world settling into place, or the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle: catastrophically immense, infinitesimally still. how much you will discover, how much you still don't know. like how much of the love you feel comes from you and will return to you. regardless of if it's me or someone else, you would still love like it's your first love and i would still feel sorry.

i'm a little sad for you. that you love someone so achingly alarmed and think they're perfect for you. i don't believe you (refuse to, even). and that disenchantment feeds into my worry for us. you do everything right and i fall pathetically short in every way you come up better. i've never loved someone who saw enough in me as i am before. i don't know how to tell you you're wrong, i'm not good for you. (you told me that's not my decision to make). there's a difference between knowing we only accept the love we think we deserve and learning to deserve more. i'm a kleptomaniac, i just take and take everything i see. there's no deserving when i've always kept the spare change. i do what i need to do, collect the pieces that belong to someone else and piece them together into a life for myself. the world in precise detail fills my small minded mannerisms, my adoration of freckled skin like on your arm or the apple's. you are the one who brings me the apples. the fruit is sweet and fills me with knowledge. the juice drips down my fingers like permission. i am not just the snake in the grass; i am the serpent.

they would not let us into heaven or they would spare us the whole kingdom. i do not know. i fear i've found heaven here on earth, in the lingering softness of your fingers through my hair and your arms around my waist. heaven in the seam of a tent like the gold-spun thread of your hair in the sun. heaven in the blackest sky filling every inch of my vision. in the beam of light that shot through, ending in a brilliant flare of blue-green. like your eyes. heaven found in the color of your eyes. i take it all, drinking it in like the thief i know myself to be, claiming the things i don't think i deserve. building a life out of fragments and never studying the whole. in this way i am able to keep running instead of spooking still, self-imposed blinders on the little appaloosa.

backstock pt. 2

for everything i meant to say that is unrelated to love but actually fully inspired by love. for everyone i passed.

#corbinposting

backstock

an ode to the love which comes from me, for someone who could never have loved me in the same way. when i didn't know anything about love but i thought i did. when it hurt to care but i did.

#corbinposting

yaoi summer ~

our tensioned guitar-string bodies coiled around each other, the space of each breath you take filling the room and emptying my lungs. i looked inside your longing eyes and found the immensity of the ocean in their blue-grey depths, found the surf in pale cream lines drifting through your irises. in that moment i could have recalled every birthright, betrayal, and belief in your lifetime. your history already taking root inside of me. i don't remember what i said, something about taking time to see other people and not waiting on each other. something vague and noncommittal. but i remember how you leaned in close, breath hot on my cheek. "those are situationship words, and i thought we agreed we're not doing that." oh, what to do with you. the lingering warmth of your scent washed over my senses and then i couldn't think, i couldn't say i'd never date again. this is how you overcame my guard. easily, with a fast heartbeat and steady breath. i rested two fingers on your skin where your jawline meets your neck, just past your ear. where i could feel the evidence of your existence, drumming out the rhythm of my tangled feelings. like your fingers tapping on my wrist in the car, our music crescendoing through my ribcage. . . .

my fingers trailed across the hillside of your vertebrae, each ridge of your rib another reason to find you so raw and thus gorgeous. the blue of your shirt matched the blue of my blahaj and my blanket. streetlights filtering past my blinds gilded the tip of your nose and the edge of your cheekbone with gold. i held your face in my hands like you were a wild animal, a wide-eyed rabbit with twitching pelt and big eyes. and i whispered "you're so fucking beautiful." that was the first time i told you that. you told me later no one had ever said that to you before. in between flashes in my mind of your bare arm strumming under moonlight, your veins and knuckles and the constellation of freckles that sprinkled your skin, i couldn't begin to figure out why. how could anyone know you and not fall madly in love with you? i thought i would be able to stop myself just shy of the cliff edge. little did i know i had long begun my descent. and you held me through it, coaxing, convincing. with the softness of your smile and the ease of your words, with the promise that we would focus on building our bond. we laid on my bed with our faces so close, nose to nose sometimes touching. and one night you asked, "can i kiss you?" with the same longing in your eyes i'd always return to. i felt your whole body come perfectly still for the seconds i hesitated. you had promised that nothing would be broken if we fell apart, only changed. that our love for each other was real enough to be worth a try. so i said "yes." . . .

you murmured into my hair. like if it was quiet enough it would never come true. "i'm worried you'll convince yourself you don't deserve a love this good. or that you'll decide i deserve something different, something somehow better than what you can give me." and in each shuddering breath between: you are enough, you are enough. in the way you lightly traced my knee with your fingertips: don't make that choice for me, don't you dare. in the darkness of the night, my fears loomed as tall as the shadows around us. i didn't think i could survive whatever came next, some admittance or lack thereof. i clung to our undefined ambiguity, hoping the connection would last forever if i never put a name to it. and i tried, so hard, to pull apart the threads; to untangle the pieces i knew to be myself from the tapestry of us. i tried to think of every reason not to love you, but there was only one collapsing into itself over and over. that i would not suffice, and damaged as i was, i'd injure you too. you wrapped your arms tight around my shoulders, pressing me to your chest. "don't do this," you said, "don't pull yourself away." and just like that i knew you knew and i couldn't do it anymore, couldn't hold myself to my own unkindness. you made me believe in healing. you told me over and over again that you hoped one day i'd love myself the same way i loved others. i looked into your open, vulnerable face and promised you i would give you my best try. i knew then we would become something more than i was ready for. but i knew i'd spend every day learning to become ready. . . .

several meters off the ground in that lifeguard tower, i felt the condensation soaking into my ripped jeans and studied the matching soles of our two pairs of converses. my head tucked neatly under your chin, your breath on my ear and your arms wrapped around my waist. this is how we wound together, like gears in a clock, simple and elegant. my knee rested on your thigh, our bodies learning the shapes of each other as newly unwrapped puzzle pieces. we looked out at the endless expanse of the ocean, so dark as to be black in the night and only the paleness of the surf glowing to give any indication of its movement. your eyes traversed my eyes, my nose, down to my lips though i pretended not to notice. then back up to the stars, to the alleged meteor shower. i felt a gasp tumble out of your body when you saw a flash of light, the shooting stars faintly prophetic despite my skepticism. you gave it several long minutes, just soaking up the thrumming potential of us. your voice so low and quiet: "let me just rip the bandaid off. i want you so fucking bad." and it was everything i wanted and everything i was scared of all hurling through my body at once. and i became the meteor, barreling towards the earth, unknowing and bracing for impact. i told you i didn't want to ask you to wait, that it would be unfair. but you grasped my shoulders tight in your hands and told me there was nobody else. no one you would rather date, no one you could think of being with instead. and suddenly i realized that was all i ever needed: your own belief in us, feeding into mine. your certainty which coincided so deeply with mine. . . .

i threw my leg over your hips slowly, giving you time to get used to the feeling, or to move away. your hands came to my waist and you looked at me like i was the slice of heaven you gave up when you left the church. i shifted my weight over, straddling you, head brushing the ceiling of your car, hands cradling the base of your neck to tangle into your hair. we learned each other by touch, by glimpses of skin and the slow rocking movement of our bodies as we kissed. i held your lip between my teeth, bit down gentle and heard you groan against my breath. that day you learned you liked a little bit of pain, and i realized how much i love exploring your body. love hearing your breathing grow shallow and rapid, until you're panting against my neck and trembling under my hands. until you put your face into the dip between my neck and my collarbone, quivering for air. you told me last night, you said i play you like an instrument. well you're the only instrument i'm any good at, though i hope you'll keep teaching me guitar. you asked if i wanted you to take off your shirt and you meant that you wanted to and it was everything, everything to let my fingers wander across your bare body. you wanted to be touched everywhere, not sexually, just to be known. and i never got tired of it, learning the curvatures and crevices and your little gasps as i got to your stomach or the side of your torso. i wandered back again and again and again, infinite nights stretching into mornings at Denny's. i don't know where we'll go next but when i said "what are we gonna do about us" with my head in my hands for the third time you said "what do you mean" and looked into my eyes and told me we should date, eventually. when i'm ready. and i could finally admit it without feeling guilty, that i would date you.

on being touched tenderly, for the first time

i remember that when i started doing whatever this is again (late night drinking & hot skin pressed together) that being grabbed feels the same no matter who does it. the same hands squeeze my breasts and ass and i pretend to like it. performing this duty like breathing, habitually, i move my body as a machine to manipulate. last night you did not grab me but touched me so tenderly i almost cried. i laid as still as i possibly could. i felt my skin trembling like a loose spring leaf and wondered if i could cleanse the night off my flesh, awaken into dawn and soft light. your fingers trailed across my arm, my knee, soft and gentle and desirous in a way that didn't feel hungry. you dropped your slender fingers into my hair and ran them down my back: a cool creak waterstream flowing through my blood. i thought about leith ross and never wanted to have sex ever again but when i went to the bathroom i was wet and bewildered. when i told you i wasnt what you needed, you said you could introduce me to your friend who also did therapy with you, and i thought how silly of you to care so much for me you would lay yourself down and bring me to somebody else. i am not interested in somebody else; i can barely comprehend the two of us together but i want to i want to. clinging to your bones your shoulderblade and your leg thrown over my hip as if i were rock climbing again, you the steady mountain against my life loose rocks shifting and crumbling around me. holding me so close as the tears filled and drained contained within my eyes, you assured me i would be okay and i believed you as easily as my endless heartbeat.

on once thinking i loved someone that i was infatuated with

you texted me again after i-don't-know-how-long.

this time you wrote me an apology, but it somehow meant nothing.

i realized that all you did without consent was assault.

i have finally blocked you (and your friend, who is not my friend).

on loving somebody who i met 4 days ago, in a new way

so you don't want to be a novel, sparkly person and you think that people will stop caring for you once you aren't. but what if you are? i can't answer that for you because i can't answer that for myself. i've met so many people, had so many late-night conversations in the car. so why are you the first one who's made me really say something i haven't told anyone else? how did you do that besides just being yourself- open, honest, and mature? i can't tell you what it meant to me, having someone understand me so thoroughly. and worst of all, i can't promise you that you aren't just a shiny new person to me, center of my life one moment and fading into obscurity the next.

but you are nothing like anyone i've met before. you are impossible to stereotype, yet i can pin you down- to your base beliefs and past traumas. you are not someone i would want to share the rest of my life with, and yet i think you are the only one i've shared my life with. you are neither natural disaster nor an anchor, neither chaos nor calm, just something with depth and ready for anything in between. you told me no one has ever listened to you like this before, but i've heard that so many times before. you know what's crazy to me? no one's drawn these words from my lips before. the un-thought-out ones, the ones i didn't carefully prepare to meet your vulnerability with a small dose of my own.

i don't know what to do with you, but when you reached across the console to hug me (gangly, awkward) and we didn't fit together (every other fit-together puzzle piece i've had), i almost breathed a sigh of relief. sitting in the car i was wondering, what was i brought into your life to do? it's always something, some kind of healing that others needed. but for once maybe you were brought into my life, to help me. for once maybe i'm not the lifeline, i'm the ship. and you, another ship, sailing into my waters.

you are like me; you don't want these simple good things to end. we sit and talk way past your bedtime, and the first time you stayed until the sun rose. does it mean something? i don't want it to. i like how loosely we're knotted together, like an intricate tapestry that will fall apart with the slightest tug in the right place. i like how little and how intensely i know you. will these things change? inevitably. but i think you are the first person i've talked to like this since high school with the man who broke my heart, and the only person who could pull it out of me. i think you are the first person i've cared so much about, who i can't help but write simply for, because you are not made to be re-interpreted into poetry. your existence, as is, has been enough.

you give me the simple sense that life is worth living. you remind me that happiness can be an achievable goal. you make me want to keep pursuing life experiences and you, like me, see the suffering as a part of the joy. we grew up so similarly and yet i learn something new from you every time i see you (twice, admittedly). i don't know what else to say about you. i hope you write a song about me.

#writing #prose #poetry #love notes #vent

on loving someone just to grow in different directions and feel that love fade

i carry a bruise from the blood pooled behind my eyelid that you dont notice because you dont look at my face when you hold it and kiss it. i carry a cut on my hand that he noticed because he studies the things that he can't touch. you tell me you miss me and love me every day but i get the impression you're talking about someone that doesn't exist anymore and maybe never did. because i can never seem to pinpoint what you miss, because i won't share my life with you who won't ask and won't share your own. because everything i make seems to receive more attention than me and everything i say seems to pass over you like the weather, unabsorbed rainfall. because i cannot give this brilliance of light to the shallowest of shadows, which will either stifle and lessen me or become absorbed and absolved by me. what is it you love? a fraction of a whole. a passed soul to the twin still alive.

i like to know people's birthdays and astrology signs, favorite colors and pasttimes. i memorize the belongings of people i love because my memory is the only place they live for most of the year, and to know is to keep them alive. a metaphorical sort of cpr as they fade, not die. i am only looking for someone who will do the same. dance weightlessly, without carrying the world's eyes. sing joyously, without carrying the world's voices. climb fearlessly, without carrying the world's weight. you fail in the fundamental grit i greet the waves with. you would sit ashore and watch me run into the surf again and again until i swim past the break line. maybe one day i will not find it in myself to let go and allow the tide to carry me back to shore. maybe one day i will swim on and on and on.

im sorry that you struggle to understand me in the same breath i've understood you over and over again. ive worn down all your edges with how much i run my fingers over them, and you're still trying to figure out my shape. one day you will reach a crevice of me and claim i have changed, become someone different. in the same moment i will have loved you and let you go a hundred lifetimes.

#prose #poetry #rambles #writing #vent

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