The von Essence

poetry. prose. photography.

[thevonessence]

PINOT GRICIO HOROSCOPES

Tonight I drank over six glasses of wine  and then broke the seventh,  which splintered all across the floor of my shower at 2 AM,  and even as I swore under my breath and cursed myself for a fool,  as I brushed the tiny shards into my hand I dared them to slice me open,  burrow in deep,  because blood and glass is manageable but this pain shuddering deep  in my chest is something  that can’t be healed with Neosporin and Band-aids. 

Tonight we had a conversation  about the ways that things  had changed;  I was crying  and you  were calm  when I had hoped you would be  anything but.

I cup the shards of pinot grigio-steeped glass in my hand  and it’s like I’m back in  seventh grade, reading life and heart lines in the creases of my palm,  freshman year of college studying the rune stones tumbled across the carpet, sophomore year gulping down tea and then trying to read the leaves like a prophecy,  and now I’m here,  seeing the  past, present, and future in  flesh and glass and wine,  and even though there’s no  punctures I still feel like I  am bleeding. 

/ /  A.v.E.  (Nov 2021) 

[thevonessence]

“joy” is a digital photography project meant to encapsulate the fear, sadness, loneliness, and anxiety that so many of us felt during the holiday season of 2020, when many of us were isolated from our holiday traditions and our loved ones due to the pandemic. 

I was living 300+ miles away from my family at the time, working a retail job, and going to in-person college classes. I hadn’t gotten to see my parents or any of my friends in-person in over a year due to both distance and the risk of me carrying COVID-19 as someone who interacted with dozens of strangers every day for work and school. 

My heart goes out to everyone who is still separated from their loved ones due to COVID, as well as everyone who has lost someone to it. 

[thevonessence]

HOSPITAL POEM NO. 1

Some nights I lay awake

probing the inside of my chest with  clumsy shaking fingers searching for a place where you  could live.

When you are here I wonder where you will settle today and my hands tremble at the thought of you taking up residence in the open lot between my ribs;  what if  it’s not been renovated enough? 

/ /  A.v.E.  (Sept. 2019) 

[thevonessence]

nostalgia “smoke clouds the space between you and it’s almost like neither of you are really there at all, and in a moment it’s gone, like a shared hallucination, like our breath in the winter air, you exhale and it’s already fading.” 

No. 2 in my “Visual Poetry” series; made with a single Pilot G2 pen and paper. Colors inverted digitally.  / /  A.v.E.  

[thevonessence]

stars aligned

Twice in my life I have met a stranger’s eyes and felt flowers bloom in the wide space between us: 

flowering like phosphenes across our open eyes, sprouting like the galaxies  of infinite possibility  once a void of uncertainty  that gapes between people when they first exchange  names

electricity  serendipity  syzygy

the simultaneous,  almost-audible alignment  of all the stars and planets spinning around us humming between  our ears 

when we touched for the first time; legs brushing, elbows bumping, hands tangling celestial bodies  colliding irreparably altering one another’s orbits cosmic dust filling our mouths with honey  words steeped in starlight and swirling with milky tranquility.

shooting stars have fallen more leisurely  and the moon never forgets who touches her;  my skin still bears craters at every site your eyes landed upon me

I still draw constellations between them.

/ /  A.v.E. (2018)

[thevonessence]

Pages 2 & 3 of AN OPEN LETTER TO FUNCTIONAL PEOPLE EVERYWHERE, which is part of a larger collection titled “THIS CONDITION IS TERMINAL”. These images were composed primarily of black gouache paint and a felt-tip pen.  / /  A.v.E. (2019) 

[thevonessence]

point-and-click

It has taken me years to realize that not everybody wakes every morning without opening their eyes, sleepwalking through the dark days of winter with a gritty mouth, dragging feet and rapidly dwindling resolution— spend so much time dreaming that i can’t fucking sleep, head so high in the clouds that i forget to watch where i’m putting my feet, end up lost on the street corner of a city that i know but don’t recognize, shuffling straight into the pitfall of thinking too much and forgetting to actually live; glide through the world like the cursor of a computer mouse, mind clicking on the end destination and feet pointing in the proper direction, legs on autopilot, brain on Venus, eyes open without seeing a thing— i get where i’m going without remembering the journey at all, life passing me by as quickly as a fast driver on a New Jersey highway; i know i’m going too slowly but i’m too afraid to press on the gas.

/ /  A.v.E. (2018)

[thevonessence]

love “you said your love would last as long as ink, but you were gone before the first pen ran dry”

No. 1 in my “Visual Poetry” series; made with a single Pilot G2 pen and paper.  / /  A.v.E.  

[thevonessence]

I’ve always wondered why you’ve never asked to read my poetry. Maybe it’s because you’re afraid of what you might find. 

/ /  A.v.E. (2019) 

[thevonessence]

burn

Shot with 35mm Ilford HP5 Plus film. /  /  A.v.E. 

[thevonessence]

Pages 1 & 2 of AN OPEN LETTER TO FUNCTIONAL PEOPLE EVERYWHERE, which is part of a larger collection titled “THIS CONDITION IS TERMINAL”. These images were composed primarily of black gouache paint and a felt-tip pen.  / /  A.v.E. (2019) 

[thevonessence]

The Chills

do you hear the creak of the stairs the rustle of shifting limbs, the quiet wheeze of exhaling breath on the back of your neck? Listen:

for footsteps pattering down an empty hallway; for dry whispers bleeding out from the crack beneath the closet door like an open wound: if you can hear them, they can see you.

even if the glitter of eyes peering out of the air vents is dulled by the bedside lamp you left on, the light will not quiet the tapping of long fingers scratching inside the walls.

/ /  A.v.E. (2018) 

[thevonessence]

ghosting

Shot with 35mm Ilford HP5 Plus film. Distorted by moving the print as it was being exposed.  /  /  A.v.E.

[thevonessence]

Party Trick

Tie me in knots with your mouth like I’m a cherry stem; pull me out of your jar of broken hearts with a few sly words and a wink like, “look what I can do with my tongue in thirty seconds”;   turn this straight edge into an indistinct horizon between your teeth, grind me into dust and remember me in the ache of your jaw when you wake up alone on cold mornings.

/ /  A.v.E. (2018) 

[thevonessence]

Late Night Poem #3

uncurl your fingers like flowers;  the sunlight opens slits in your wrists,  you bleed warm light and summer afternoons there is a moon in your chest where a heart should beat and a wolf in your toes, howling;  you fell in love with the blue skies in your veins and the song your blood sings to the open air you don’t know how to build lighthouses on the backs of your eyelids or sailboats out of white pills and loops of rope  but you don’t have to  because your fingers are flowers and your blood is warm light and summer afternoons 

/ /  A.v.E. (Feb 2015) 

[thevonessence]

missing you feels a lot like hating myself

Perfume drips like blood down her wrists and stains the sheets with the smell of her;  and you’ll try but you’ll never be able to get it out  no matter how many times you wash them 

you should just throw them away but you don’t because you love the smell of hurting yourself, and it’s a whole lot like the smell of your face in her hair,  your hand on her hip as she sleeps, and the twist of her lips as she smiles. 

/ /  A.v.E. (Dec 2014) 

[thevonessence]

haunted

Shot with 35mm Ilford HP5 Plus film. Distorted by splashing and painting the developer onto the exposed print.  /  /  A.v.E.