#artistsandwriters

[writerraines]

Checkmark

You think of me as a checkmark,

a box to tick and leave behind.

You don’t consider me the way you think you do.

I was a niche for you to explore,

a category to brag about,

a story to savor for later—like an obscure dish

described by better-traveled friends.

You still tell yourself you’re better.

You deserve better.

You covet it.

Yet you never improved yourself for better.

You assumed the world was unworthy,

even as you couldn’t keep anyone

for more than three to six seasons.

I knew you were seasonal from the start.

I knew I was practice.

I let you believe me oblivious.

With age comes experience,

but yours has not taught you.

You still believe yourself better

by nature of existing.

That arrogance has left you wanting.

Your resentment is a coating you cannot hide;

it reflects back at you.

That’s why you pivot, pointing out flaws in others

whenever you see the glare.

You’re angry they never wanted you at your age.

They didn’t want you younger.

Now you’re older, and still,

you cannot grasp what you crave.

The crisis is here, but you’re flailing,

refusing surrender.

Age brings humility to those who earn wisdom.

Surrender is the passage; it heals the pain

of perpetual dissatisfaction.

Eventually, we learn to be satisfied.

But how can you,

when you’ve never let another’s uneven breath

fall upon your own uneven clavicle?

Never let flawed skin sink against yours?

You’ll never admit it, but you have stretch marks, too.

You’ve forgotten: flaws connect us

in the only real way possible.

You were seduced by a perfection

you could never hold.

g.m. Raines

[writerraines]

I laid you down

in the moonlight,

traced sigils on your ribs,

outlining each rose.

Mangled dreams

slipped between the seams

of your sighs.

You said you’d felt something real—

for the first time in forever.

But it was over

before it began.

I told you this was nothing new,

at least not for me.

You said that made you sad.

I asked why?

You had no answer.

And after that,

not many words remained—

only your apology.

I didn’t understand why you were sorry.

This was life.

This was normal

for people like me.

Not many can sit in the pauses,

when a writer craves words

over shared wine,

solitude over shared air.

I think you were one of the few

who understood.

But you had other realms to haunt,

no more time for mine.

So you laid yourself down—

one last drink,

one last time.

[writerraines]

There’s a certain surrender that takes over every August in the Mojave. An eery acceptance that comes after days upon days of unrelenting heat–triple digit temperatures before mid-morning. It’s mind-numbing. There are no gentle greetings from the sun, only a brutal insistence, yet I still drink my coffee hot.

Then the monsoons come. But first, they tease. Clouds teeter on the horizon, swelling into complex layers, only to deflate over the mountains and deflate your own hope of relief. Extreme temperatures flirt with triple the usual humidity, and no electrolyte on earth can counteract that. Humans weren’t built to live in such extremes–yet we do.

The morning commute reads 118 on the dash. Sometimes it’s better if you don’t look.

Batteries give out in July; by August, air conditioners give up the ghost. But it’s almost autumn, so you give up yourself.

You quit fighting. You let the sun bake your skin into the seat, layer on your sunscreen and thrifted linen, and grimace every time you catch a whiff of sweat-salted polyester. Deodorant becomes non-negotiable–even the hippies give in.

You let the heat strip away any inkling of ego.

We’re all survivors here.

The desert will expose you in ways you couldn’t fathom. Die, or evolve–those are your options.

And every summer, the Mojave takes her offerings without remorse. Remorse is a human condition, one we rarely make good use of.

Our history books scream to us from the archives; online, we don’t hear them anymore.

But I can still hear the cicadas. They learned long ago the wisdom of seeking shelter in stable ground when the surface no longer feeds them. Yet the ground grows more unstable, and still, we build up. We build up and spread out, everyone claiming their right to a white vaulted ceiling, spreading our pestilence across the land and cursing it for its alleged hostility.

Late at night when the evening winds offer a fleeting respite, you’ll lay awake asking yourself why we’re the only species who seems never to learn not to work against nature.

But nature has its own way of helping us remember our history.

[writerraines]

Levees–

To feel anything is to feel everything at once.

The levees have failed.

There is nothing to hold back

the rising flood.

It is the artist’s plight,

and also our power.

If only we could learn to channel this water,

instead of spending our lives

building walls against it.

But to create is to surrender.

to be the flood itself–

untamed, unboxed,

unbridled.

g.m. Raines

[writerraines]

Black Roses–

I laid you down

in the moonlight,

traced sigils on your ribs,

outlining each rose.

Mangled dreams

slipped between the seams

of your sighs.

You said you’d felt something real—

for the first time in forever.

But it was over

before it began.

I told you this was nothing new,

at least not for me.

You said that made you sad.

I asked why?

You had no answer.

And after that,

not many words remained—

only your apology.

I didn’t understand why you were sorry.

This was life.

This was normal

for people like me.

Not many can sit in the pauses,

when a writer craves words

over shared wine,

solitude over shared air.

I think you were one of the few

who understood.

But you had other realms to haunt,

no more time for mine.

So you laid yourself down—

one last drink,

one last time.

–g.m. Raines

[writerraines]

Lady Washington–

These were the days of paper maps

and lost car keys.

We gathered our change for a bus ticket

to nowhere,

though it was somewhere to us.

The smell of drugstore cologne left its mark.

Maps.

Mirrors.

And makeshift excuses.

Purple ink on postcards,

time-worn, yellowed, with ripped edges.

Love had become a dying art.

Promises were penned with a careful madness,

trusting we’d find the way.

Together we’d navigate our destination—

trees versus sun,

desert against rainforest.

Somehow, we’d find the surface.

A sharp bend:

Lady Washington, stalwart in the harbor,

the jagged evergreens stood apart in reverence.

We were sinking years before

she became the Black Pearl.

I could still feel you reaching for my hand.

My feet were unsteady against the unruly Washington beaches—

driftwood, glossy grey rocks, the scattered remains of crabs.

I kept falling.

I was still falling back home.

Hands reaching beyond depths previously unknown.

Uncharted, shipwrecked navigators.

Paper maps.

Melted mirrors.

Every imagined excuse, tossed from the Greyhound bus window.

Donner Pass.

A shared fascination with death, life, and the in-between.

Your cologne was still on my throat.

[writerraines]

[writerraines]

There are moments with most desert terrain where we come to the same unsettling realization of our humanness.

Absorbing the full magnitude of our frail weakness.

Our pathetic neediness for water.

For shade and respite.

For real relief.

Yet we trudge on - carried alive by the rabid wanderlust within our primal core.

It can take a few hours to finally walk away from our societal urges for proper meal and rest times.

For proper care of our appearance as our sweat and sand baked bodies give in to the horizon.

We travel onward with new eyes.

New vision despite the piercing sun’s rays.

We carry on seeking waterfalls and rest.

Renewal and hope in the promised hidden oasis.

It’s the surrender that gives us new light.

It’s the wonder that keeps us true to our core spirit.

It is our pain that keeps us grounded and grateful for each of our bones.

Our hearts and our lungs.

Oh our precious lungs.

How often we see what we do to those when we assume that we’ll alway have time.

That we’ll always have air.

It’s the very definition of absurdity how we fight against the elements of our nature seeking reprieve in the form of that high that never quite qualifies as the vista that our legs currently climb.

@writerraines