Alphabet In Motion

this is where the words move

[quietmydear]

two years in qathet and I still quake

I can’t get away from them. I feel the ragged scratch against my nerves each time I scroll through their blog,see pictures of them in each s

[myalphabetinmotion]

the squelch of wet sand between toes

the ground is ice cold but I’m doing it because I can

hunch and amble away from the shoreline

rocks digging in

sole flat and leather and frozen.

silence.

I am paralyzed by the feeling that I have done something

irredeemable. get dragged back into tidal waves of

‘can’t trust them’. I have to anticipate and analyze every ‘real’ meaning and again,

somehow, I’ve done it Wrong.

the imprint of your body against me. the warm exhale. you saying, ‘I can feel you

relaxing’ me thinking, ‘I didn’t know I

could do this’, unclench where I have always

held.

silence.

[myalphabetinmotion]

close the loop.

Dream of me, and I'll dream of you.

Dream of me

tell me what it was like to love Joyce and I'll tell you that was my grandmother's name. the good one. close the loop.

I'll dream of you

tell you what it was like to crawl after Emily and you'll tell me how regenerative they've been for you close the loop.

Dream of me

wandering through an airport trying to find whatever it is we've both lost. YVR, YYZ, LAX, AMS. where have you been? I've been there. close the loop

I'll dream of you

climbing the stairs in my grandmother's house. green carpet, dark wood. you've never been there, as far as i know close the loop

Dream of me

tell me about the first time you starved and how you rationalized it to yourself

I'll dream of you closing that loop.

I'll tell you about the ways that I still trace my shape against the mirror with the clouds on top and maybe you can

Dream of me closing that loop.

I'm not one for manifesting or maybe I have been but there's something about the way we meet when we need something.

we meet in the places we don't meet anyone. close the loop.

[myalphabetinmotion]

Reminder I’m still offering custom poems/ letters/ scrolls/ lil words of wisdom for the holigays!  Just sent me a message! Sliding scale prices based on length/ content/ what’s doable for you.  I need an excuse to write. I also need $, but mostly the writing thing.

[myalphabetinmotion]

homeless

sometimes being at work makes me wish I had come here when I was a teen. i walk towards one of them with a bowl full of KD, watch them sheepishly accept it, on edge until the bowl is sitting in front

feeling viscerally the sense of "i should be doing this for myself" the discomfort of "i owe them something".

when i was fifteen all the places i went that weren't home kept trying to teach me how to be responsible. be responsible. self reliant. adult.

never how to accept support from someone who Was Responsible For Me.

sometimes being at work makes me feel anxious to love them each as i wasnt. as though bringing them a bowl of pasta for lunch is the same as my mom finally acknowledging that she was the parent and i, a child.

i think of my ex-boyfriends mom's house where i slept on the cat-piss couch and hauled myself around for months. pulled expired noodles out of the cupboard and microwaved them anyway, because I was hungry. feeling viscerally the sense of a blurred film between me and the rest of the world.  the comfort of “I don’t belong anywhere, so I must belong here”.

[myalphabetinmotion]

crush injury

this weekend felt like i was wading through a tunnel.

the heavy rains and the cloud-cover. floods washed over the mountains, rendering them invisible.

we laid in bed, silent. her, sleeping. me, running around touching walls looking for secret doors inside myself, of course.

it's sunny today but my body is still cramped too tight. eyes sore. joints clicking.

the floods rendered half the city un-useable but the news is saying, 'at least it's stopped raining!'

my friend's father died of COVID a month ago but my dentist said, 'at least things are getting back to normal!'

sometimes i feel wisps (whips?) of anger that then settle down onto thick layers of grief. as though any of us are anywhere close to ready.

as though any of us should come out of anything like this quickly.

[myalphabetinmotion]

the worst fight we ever had was when i washed their non-stick pan.

i sit on the couch and the unwashed dishes catch at the corner of my eye. stomach lurches. remember the days of silence; of porcelain against the metal sink, waiting

of them, avoiding my eyes and going to bed early. of me, seething in shame.

remember what my treatment team told me to do once when i was showing up to group panicked: leave the dishes unwashed. repeat to yourself, "they do not hate me because i left the dishes unwashed".

remember that the team never met them, didn't know that I was drowning for six months with the faucet down my throat, resentment thumping. thumping. thumping.

i run my fingers along all the places that she has poured only love into me. berate my self for even considering that this, these jars in the sink would be the thing that would make them stop.

i lace my boots and walk out the door to tell her I'm not going to do the dishes today, babe. i love you. i love me. i'll do them tomorrow.

[myalphabetinmotion]

i don’t want to, but i still get the urge.

that itch. the kid is hunched over clutching his tinfoil, i am rushing forward with the syringe. i am standing at the foot of her bed and i am painting wide stripes of white against a brick wall. the dog is running in circles around my feet and i am watching them walk down the aisle.

that itch. there is a smell of noodles and salt and cum, i am curled up and clenched under thick blankets. the church is dark and fogged and i am touching the legs of chairs, my fingers in the nooks of the wood. the air is stale and i am breathing out.

that itch. the brother of my friend is texting me from his room downstairs and i am sending photos of myself in bed. i am covering and uncovering my stomach so that the skin peeks through, i am counting and subtracting our ages on fingers. there is a voice that carries from the bottom of the stairs and I

sit at the top and listen. that itch.

[myalphabetinmotion]

living across the street from a big park, at night.

something about 3am in that house. all that dry heat, the orange of the street lamp against the red of those trees. for you, a mustard couch draped in dog fur. for me, an empty ledge with my face pressed against the window to cool it down (my skin, my rage, my silent, deafening shrieks for something else). I wondered, then, if you could feel me crawling across the floor in agony while you sat. Happy. I think of all the times waves of someone else have knocked me out while I was sitting nearby. Maybe we wake up in the middle of the night to feel our own grief. similar. heightened. or maybe it’s theirs.

[myalphabetinmotion]

this doesnt do anything justice

I have dreams of you. I rarely dream of them. I am so tired of thinking about whether or not you know what happened and what you must think of me if you don’t.

I have dreams of you- in our old apartment, photos on the walls and tiles stacked into the kitchen. Last year, you were running a bath when I walked through rain to get there and you offered me a bed. Just take it, you said.

Last night we were walking along cherry beach in opposite directions locked eyes across a cement bar. I meet you across the street from climbing gyms I’ve never been to, and suddenly I’m at home on Bowen Island and you’re grabbing coffee from my favourite spot

I feel like I know you better than I ever knew them. And we’ve never met. I’m so tired of thinking about this. I’m so tired of the way they still seep into my skin.

Two years of being wound up ugly and then tossed out blind. Therapy sessions that still end with me whispering ‘wait, are you sure that was real?’

I don’t know how to feel this connection to you without also feeling rage because I know that I can’t feel that fear. It’s taken me so long to get away from their voice,

to get here.

[myalphabetinmotion]

oct 21, again

every year I wonder if I should say anything. I say my day’s been going well because what else do you say, you know? it’s been eight years and I still wake up in the middle of the night around that time and he and I have had our reckonings, our late-night coffees at jj bean on commercial and our mid-day texts just to roll each detail around and around between each other until I felt… something. but it keeps feeling like closure is temporary. sometimes I barely consider him and then I close my eyes in mid October and I can feel his chest and his hands and it’s all there again. Open wound. A blanket of grief. I just typed and erased ‘but it’s not that big of a deal’ I can’t believe I still feel like I should rationalize it. He raped me, and I am still the one that carries it.

[myalphabetinmotion]

fall

I remember it all. My body shakes me awake all through October no matter how much I try to pad the edges.

It's the month of achy womb. Of sore, anxious hips. The leaves fall, and the rain starts, and all the things that have sunk into my pelvis start to pulse.

I usually forget until halfway through. Wonder, annoyed, at how tired I've been. Blame late nights, blame mercury.

I startle awake at 2:43am. It's been eight years since the last one- was it the last one? If i think about it i can still feel the contractions of

No. Get Out. No. Get Out.

but those memories sink deep like molasses now, cover me in a smooth and heavy grief. I sigh, I think of him. I weep, I let her arms wrap around me and I go back to sleep.

[myalphabetinmotion]

Holy shit. My girlfriend and I just became poly and your last poem has helped me in big ways. THank you thank you thank you

Oof I'm so glad it was helpful!!!! I'm super happy to chat about polyamory anytime! I'm new to it too (my partner isn't as new), and replacing that guilty-feelings track in my mind with this poem has been helpful!

[myalphabetinmotion]

Bigger.

You can have all of what you imagine. You don’t have to dull yourself down, you aren’t selfish for wanting more for wanting other for wanting You aren’t ungrateful for loving and then loving more and loving infinitely. You can want and you can receive. You can let yourself have. You can let yourself be given to You can. and when the doubt rears up  and your mother’s jesus pops into your head and says that you are not worthy, that you are greedy Remember the table fit twelve disciples. Let your arms open wide enough for that.

[myalphabetinmotion]

growing older among my memories

in my dreams i'm weaving through my grandmother's basement and her attic. they are the same room and i am the size i am now, clambering up the wooden steps and staring at junk from decades of only keeping what's important.

when I meet my grandmother we're in the upstairs bathroom and it smells like baby powder and I have chicken pox and our toothbrushes are lined beneath the mirror in a crystal jar with old paste caked on the edges.

I am the size i am now and I can't think of anything to ask her so she fades away. it's just me and the purple wicker basket with the laundry inside. the clawfoot tub. the generations of rushing through bedtime baths and lipstick drawn gingerly across lips.

in my dreams i'm looking for the towel i left on the floor hoping to hang it up finally. i don't find anything. i don't ever look down. i blink and blink and the room changes each time until i'm standing at the screen door looking out from halfway up and not knowing

there's a world out there. i am the size i was then and i hear my brother crying, my mother crying, my cousin crying my father silent with a deck of cards at lap level. my grandfather silent with a cigarette and the tv remote.

in my dreams i don't know yet that it's another life- one of many- that i'll only ever remember like this. snippets of memories (some real, some exaggerated) and the smells of stale smoke and banana muffins

first thing in the morning.

[myalphabetinmotion]

transitions

the meditation asks me to scan for all of the other places I am. I find myself sitting in my highschool hallway, call her home from fifteen where fifteen still stings in the chest.

together, we find ourself on the night our dad died holding hands with elli and barely alive. ask if she wants to stand up yet- walk somberly away when she says she still needs to cry for a while.

we find ourself in a handful of bathrooms, close the lid.

we find ourself hiding in our bedroom, under the bed, in the hall closet, in the woods outside with our ears covered and eyes closed. take our own small hand and say, 'come with us, she isn't where we're going'.

I find myself in the thousand dreams I've had since our break, pacing through our home, restless at night and angry, hollow when awake. I sit with myself at the kitchen table, ask patiently, 'are you ready to leave?'

hear quietly, 'I'm afraid to'.

[myalphabetinmotion]

unlearning. unearthing.

I was young and I was queer. I was young and I was sexual. sensual. full. I was young and I was bursting at the seams. Emotional. Wild. Curious.

I was young and I was ushered into shame, so trusting, without knowing that I'd be tethered there. I was young and I was shy. nervous. quiet. I was young and I was shriveling inside myself. Smaller. Less. Camouflaged.

there were moments and rooms where I'd flare- briefly, brightly- before shame would catch at my edges. I'd yell and everyone would turn to look at my too-much-ness. the pews were lined with older, wiser, correct. my skin was lined with younger, tempting, in need of correction.

I am older and I am queer. I am older and I am sexual, sensual, fuller than I was but not yet bursting at the seams. I am older and I am training my fingers to untie the knots. I am learning that untethered does not mean 'to float into hell' but perhaps

to be willing to go wherever my young self would choose.