#unedited shit

[off-the-wall-with-luin]

In the midst of a war that is now being called the “Clone Wars,” the Masters of the Jedi Council convened in the Council Chamber to discuss important matters.

"The Senate and the public wants eyes on what's happening on the warfront,” Mace Windu said as he leaned forward in his chair. “However, there is a shortage of people who are willing to follow the clones and the Jedi into a warzone."

"Especially after what happened the last time," added Adi Gallia with a small smile on her face.

Master Yoda sighed, "Unfortunate, that was.”

Ki-Adi-Mundi nodded and said, "The Senate would like to prevent it from happening again and the Chancellor had suggested that a Jedi would be suited for this job-"

"Somehow, that does not surprise me," Obi-wan muttered as he crossed his arms.

"-since a Jedi would not need much protection compared to a normal citizen."

"Fortunately, we know just the right person for the job." Mace revealed as he activated the holoprojector to show a profile of a petite young woman with dark colored hair and green colored eyes.

“She’ll do.”

[teacupsandmayhem]

“Dormouse, you ok-

Oh.”

[directingourvision-blog]

Solid Ground

i'll love you until there's no till, until the farmers at their plows stop their churning, stop carving into the clumped dirt, until the blue sky is released and caught back in its bell jar seventeen times. when god catches his sunday in that jar, the fabric snags as it slips away, leaves little flower-shaped blue glimmering in the dark backdrop. i'll love you until the play ends, until after the actors take off their wigs from their aching heads and wipe the make-up off with kleenex that used to be used for crying, now used for removing themselves, for returning to themselves. until we return to ourselves, a second time, you: a busser in a small town cafe, me: an orca whale, the best of both worlds, a white smile with black arms. they say dark things love stronger. my arms love the strongest, they can carry us anywhere. i will love you until every droplet of that ocean water turns to salt, until children on the street laugh and say what the hell was that? when rain comes. when rain does not come. when our hands are filthy so we wash them with dirt from our backyards. dirt makes me feel like i belong somewhere, here on my faded jeans are the particles of home, home, home with a long m for how you make me feel when all the rest of this entire world feels black and empty. i think light is holy, but you are afraid to love me, to love light. you catch me, your first sight, catching clumps of blue sky in my grandmother's mason jars. like praying mantises they hold themselves, devour each other, lay eggs in the heads of lovers in the hopes that they will survive to next summer, to next light. only two to a jar, you whisper to me. only two because light loves its mirror but nothing more.

[directingourvision-blog]

she speaks like meat being tenderized by hand. you know how some people look like a bright yellow submarine galloping out through waves and waves of green-blue ocean, well she is nothing like that. she is all clammed up; she is the oxygenated chamber below the periscope where people climb the 57 steps to peer out in the green green-blue, she is round and hard when she sleeps, not soft and yellow like the leftover paint inside the abandoned paint cans on the harbor. i sleep beside her and dream of placing my hands either side of her flushed neck. i know she dreams that there are eddies in her head, green-blue ocean vertices slamming against the internal side of her face, coral reefs of her mouth, chipped teeth and algae red gums. i dream that i touch her like i touched that yellow submarine washed onto shore in the summer of 97. the sun baked the sand and the sand baked my feet and that yellow body sung when i beat my forearms against it, when i climbed up the side with my sticky feet and peered in through the shattered porthole. i wondered if there was oxygen within. i press my mouth to her skin and try to pull the green-blue ocean out of her, try to resuscitate her, try to peel the salt from our  bed sheets like thin layers of sun-burnt skin. i reach out and touch her then, when the roaring of the ocean fades beneath her open eyes, and my hands come away glistening with fresh yellow paint. 

[directingourvision-blog]

your guitar wails from its rooftop thirty feet above. feral cats prowl the tops of our neighbor's fences, a tabby manx pauses near 10B and laps at the rusted water-heater pipes. in the morning, their pawprints are visible in the snow, stillborn ghosts. the kids down the street bang on trash can lids for a sense of rhymth; i hear you singing, 30 feet up, fishing for a morsel of music from the riot three blocks away. tear gas clouds explode in a blinding white mist; the rain pours down in a gunshot. i sit at my window and listen to the screams, worse than the previous, the kids wailing with their faces toward the sky, the yellow bus of dried teargas running down their faces. a young woman, does her color matter to her anger?, stops and starts bullets with her mouth, a great hungry orb. young men bang their hands against police shields, and you, you try and write what is true. the red migraine dripping, dripping from that girls chin onto the snow.

[directingourvision-blog]

We read Ovid on your bed at midnight.

The covers are made, pulled taut as plastic wrap,

tucked in at all the edges. 

I translate superlatives and imagine you sliding 

in under your comforter like a sly little squirrel.

I imagine you clicking your phone on under the blankets,

the dazzling light which will light up your sleepy eyes,

the soft champagne bubble of your sigh

tired and waiting for your lover.

We slouch at either end of the bed.

I could reach out and touch your leg with mine

if I wanted,

I could say I was offering you a cigarette but

I would really just be placing my hand over my heart

and kissing your lips and smiling at the next person

who asked if I was happy.

And I'd say no.

I'd say no to marrying you if you asked;

I'd say no to car trips or lunch dates

or walking to class because I know what an idiot I am.

I know that letting your name enter my mouth

like an orgasm was enough;

I know I breathe too heavily when I think about fire alarms,

that when you wear that jacket I touch my hand to my

neck 

because I do not know what this feeling is.

When we made eye contact in the dark entrance

and the fire alarms were ringing and I saw you

and knew your name was Michael.

From the moment I met you,

you were Michael.

It's the feeling I get when I touch the doorknob

after you, and I hold on.

I hold on and slow my steps 

and imagine your fingers pushing back against mine,

slow slow.

Our pages turn,

your lips pull up slightly at the corners

and I touch my hand to my neck.

I realize I have never heard you speak,

never heard you say "Michael" like it is yours.

Michael,

Michael,

[directingourvision-blog]

For Virginia

I wanted to tell you a story without myself in it:

Sam in the kitchen, hands in the kitchen cabinets,

Sam rolling up the rugs, shaking loose the leaves and hair 

and dust onto the porch,

Sam sitting on the porch, her hands in her lap, rocking,

standing, her lap somewhere far away, four doors down

where a colicky baby cries for days.

I wanted to tell you where the letters go when I erase them,

my ex's and why's, my to's and for's and hyphenations,

how they blow off in the autumn breeze like 

leaves under the wheels of the post office man,

or when my pencil snaps and they surge out

in a shuddering earthquake.

I think about these things when I am sleeping alone.

I always sleep alone. My bed, my home was made for one.

When I have guests over they have to wash the spoon

after each bite.

I've perfected the art of lighting cigarettes with my teeth,

using my hands to shield it from the wind.

My teeth are the color of matches.

Sometimes I dream that I'm eight years old and swigging

nail polish remover straight from the bottle;

I'm afraid to swallow fire in case

my stomach suddenly decides its an atom bomb.

We kiss sometimes, you and I,

and I feel the scratching of our tongues,

your tongue hot and white surging against 

the back of my throat,

catching, catching.

The aroma of gasoline follows us.

You take my hand under the bathroom stall door 

and whisper "fire, fire, fire" until we panic together,

our white fingers like fire alarms.

I wanted to tell you that I don't know if pistachios know they're dying

when you crack the shells with your back teeth,

but I do know that you jumping into the ravine

fucked me up, eternally.

You dislocated your limbs and folded up all nice and pretty

like a pink flamingo

and I don't know where I was when it happened,

but I was probably writing you a love poem.

Fuck me.

Picture Sam, casting her hand through her hair,

casting her hand through her hair,

casting her hand through her hair,

then ripping out a chunk at the side,

sitting, staring at it, laughing.

Fuck me.

Virginia,

I never knew I could fuck a woman;

I didn't know I had it in me to buy milk by

the gallon or get undressed with the lights off

and your ghostly frame back-lit against the window,

or to smile like I was the fucking king,

but it was you.

You placed your hand against my stomach

and recited the script,

whispering

"strike me, strike me, strike me,"

the match in my mouth

tasting like a casket and christmas eve.

Virginia,

the script.

I wanted to tell you I wrote a story without myself in it,

think tellanovella and historical fiction mix,

think pop culture references and dewey decimal system,

think sand and hong kong and someone else lips

painted peach.

Picture Sam, laying on her floor with band-aids all over the place,

Sam with ivy growing over the door frame,

Sam her hands around the neck of a bottle.

My hands around your neck, painted purple,

our eyelids sad like sleepless nights can make us.

The two of us, drinking nail polish remover and nyquil,

eating from the same spoon.

Virginia,

my lipstick looked good on you.

[primordial-rust]

Era una noche oscura y lluviosa y Carolina no se sentía bien. Desde aquel día en el que todo su pelo se había caído por puñados, ya no se sentía como un ser humano. Sin tener pestañas que adornaran sus ojos, el delineador solo servía para acentuar una cara delgada y cenicienta y todo el mundo confundía sus estados de ánimo, sin cejas el mundo es un lugar inhóspito y violento, la falta de pelo te quita femineidad y todo el mundo se siente con derecho a aconsejarte, lo quieras o no. El computador que estaba usando dejó un lugar tibio entre la colcha y sus piernas, y sin lentes, todo adoptaba una cualidad difusa, oscura, casi como si el mundo perdiera sus bordes y se transformara en solo materia. En este lugar, su calvicie no importa; solo importa el golpeteo de su corazón contra su caja toracica, recordandole que a pesar de todo, sigue siendo ella, sigue viviendo y sintiendose toda una mujer, alguien que a pesar de la cicatriz a la izquierda de su corazón sigue siendo mas que la suma de sus partes. La mujer se coloca los lentes y sale de la cama, con bastante agilidad si se considera todo lo pasado, y camina hacia el baño, sintiendo la helada cerámica bajo los pies. En la oscuridad del baño, puede pretender que es la que era antes y si se lo imagina bien, puede sentir el peso de su pelo, la forma de sus cejas, el suave vello facial. Pero toma un respiro profundo y prende la luz, sabe que ella no es quien se imagina, que el pelo crece pero que la autoestima no, con dedos temblorosos toma el kit de maquillaje que compró en internet despues de ver decenas de tutoriales en internet; toma un lápiz para cejas. Y si, con cada trazo se siente mejor, se siente mas real, mas presente en este plano, y sonríe cuando se mira al espejo con la cara llena de maquillaje, simulando ser una modelo mas con piel perfecta, ojos grandes y labios carnosos. Ella sonríe por que sabe que este reflejo, como anuncio de revista, no es quien es de verdad. Ella sonríe por que se sabe fuerte. Ella sonríe por que se sabe valiente, por que mientras que el cancer de mama le pudo haber quitado la mama izquierda, no le quitó corazón, no le quitó belleza, no le quitó brillo a la vida, si no que todo lo contrario. "Es tiempo de mirar la vida de frente, y enfrentar lo que venga, que ya me enfrenté a lo peor y gané. Yo soy una mujer, y lo puedo hacer todo." Sonriendo, toma una toallita humeda, y se borra el labial, se borra el colorete, y se borra las cejas, sube las escaleras y se sienta en la cama, mirando hacia el vacío, pensando en que es lo que hará ahora que tiene el resto de su vida adelante de ella, y esa noche, todos sus sueños no son fantasías, son vidas vividas. Son metas.