sometimes i think i moved here just to make a ton of money and move back, richer.
if you think leaving cross country in a car that had no heat with a partner that maybe mildly hated me at the time in the middle of a polar vortex, january, to move to kensington didn’t mark some part of my soul and steal something from me, i intend to prove to you, without blame or fault, how fucked up this journey has made me.
i begin to draw my plans back to colorado which i never thought was possible. i wake up with a full savings account and everything worth leaving. i tried. i made some mark. i learned a lot. i wanted to help, the city is gray and full of trash and i feel nothing for it now.
this next section is inspired by Midsommar.
it’s called grief.
it is just me furiously writing and crying and not telling anyone
maybe you’re only one or the other,
the doer or the writer.
writers, it’s been done to them.
i wish i had pursued art earlier,
modeling too.
i was convinced that my modeling
was an act of betrayal
to women,
i was encouraged
but i never felt that i would make it
at anything.
and i was always broke.
ive never been good at makeup.
my life is just one revolving door
of ghost stories.
i am a writer. the world has been done to me.
i make confession.
im suddenly angry and
crying, i cant stand the way
things turned out.
i am free.
i lived an insular, classified life
that no one ever saw and
no one ever validated
and every struggle i had
came with the parable
that it is indeed very
lonely at the top.
you are the epitome of
head so heavy from the
crown.
i have culture, have expanded,
am eager to self bandage.
i am a smile that is
bereft and breath that
is bated, waiting, holding
like i understand my own
precocity
75,000 miles deep.
like i understand the depth
of me.
you are talking to someone
who taped a mirror so she
couldn’t see her aging face,
the way i never learned to line
the top of my lids,
the way i gorge on lust
and cake.
i am free of vanity,
not mistake.
i do not care.
i do not care.
i get my hands back.
when they ask why you are crying
at the ground full of straws,
don’t bother answering.
look at your hands and praise
them. leave your sad
face alone.
i sit in the dark
wishing i was touching the face
of a person.
i am sitting still.
i no longer narrate my steps.
when i take baths,
i no longer pretend anyone is here.
better to feel it.
spell the word compassion
in a red bath tablet.
everything about me is curated to
shine sun.
there are miles between me and
anyone i know.
i’m not lonely,
i’m devastated and alone.
i have friends and family both
distant.
we are not the same.
i am alone, you see,
in the middle of a trail
in the middle of winter
walking and i am being flanked
by hungry ghouls.
the year is 2020
and i spend winter
not telling anyone
of my thoughts.
jump off the bridge, catarina
I saw this once in a vision.
it was 2017.
i was wrong about some things.
i begin the slow walk through the woods,
counting time, drawing hearts,
remembering every little detail
of my holy squandered life.
if all i can do is just write, i will just write then.
i dont know what to do without the straw. i hate it. and im here, present. awake in south philadelphia, tumor in my neck shrinking. me, growing and for what? i mean for whom? i mean i still have a strong drive to sabotage anything left between us. i want to tell you what a bad person i am, i want to tell you to run.
- my body craves vegetables.
- i no longer derive any joy from the straw.
- i wish you could meet me now instead.
daturamoon.com 