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keys,
a shuffle,
my half smile directed at a
windowsill and a forced
dulcet pause to
wrap a throw around bare shoulders,
strapless bra     i’m mussed enough
to form new creases,
stretch my tousled jaw
into a long yawn.


I can see your long trail of spit
glisten lightly like snow
from elbow to the scar
above my wrist when I was
really hitting the wine.
wipe it on the pillowcase.
my lips are sand dry,
knuckles crack a bit when they reach and
my toes are curled for a different reason
this time,     I am emptied.
your shadow’s growing larger:
an elongated feeling that stretched and stretched
and stopped right before
it got to mine,
bit back,
ran.

toss a look over brawn shoulder.
i’m no feast, you know,
but you wait like March hunger
for full spring, so close
yet still light blizzard,
you want that
hot spot to hit the ground
but snow lingers   you want
that drizzle then moist
and green,  some sunflowers,
a tomato plant and bees
offer their honey from the bottoms of their
black bellies.
sniff a tulip,
take all you can get.
feast on cool breezes of
me
when I’ll have it.

I cough or sneeze
and  make no motion to ever
be haunted;
to ever be eaten,
to ever grow something from the arm
you licked that used to hold little butter knives
threateningly
towards him, towards me,
us     hold scissors and
think about it,
hold shot glasses to not;
where I used to force myself to hug my brother
at Christmas
and nights, nowadays
any holiday,
etch his name everywhere it fits;

where you watched the sun
shadowplay with branches on my olive skin
and you mistook them for
fingers to grab,
hold,
where I stretched myself,
a bored tiger and lifted my once
impaled bones, my once river bones,
        (wet for it every time)
up, held my hand up,
nails long and dry,
held your gaze,
waved without change in
expression and
your back is to the door.

i’m sitting up in a fetal position.
my profile is reflected in the
dusty whites of your eyes.
I have developed a new shade:
smudged green eyeliner and
the rest some kind of
lovely barren.

.“beds”

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I did not want to throw up. I’d only thrown up once in Santa Fe when I took a strong and high dose but my best friend was there. she was very supportive of me throwing up and I was able to lean on a tree. she was able to calmly say let the tree hold you. and there was no fuss about it. now, I was alone and resolutely said no! out loud. fearing I’d choke to death due to recent medical problems with my throat and swallowing, having almost choked to death three times in a year.  I would not even entertain the idea of vomiting ever.  I laid back down. it was like this. the come up.

 the coming up is hard and the coming down. at two intersections, your balance will be the most challenged. first in the body, then in the mind. this was brown jasper. I was staring at the pillar next to the framed black fox melting down white paper; his body containing a black and white dotting of a forest at night. these are my idols. that also soothed me but the mirror next to it didn’t and I had to look away. I had to take the pressure off. I laid down. even with weed, you have to periodically remind yourself you have ingested a substance and there is a reason at times that you are mocked by something in your house. this was true purpose.  when you ease the tension. when you ease up on yourself,  I am on drugs, you are actually able to let go of the thoughts better because they are inherently flawed. they are in a new untested equillibrium.  the come up is resolving the equilibrium and the thoughts in the come up are sneakier; not as sensational but can be insidious. charming and hidden, depending on your character. me? I’m a snake. because they are so closely related to the thoughts you were having before you dove deep, but now intensified, they are unabashedly louder than ever. 

the pandemic is the perfect time to live in delusion and memory but I have chosen presence as a display of servitude to my deities who have gifted me with vision. I am deified here on my cross, my orange quilt, my loose way with everything and everyone. and the truth was i’d been dodging life in an effort to sit down and type and this felt like the best first way to do this. to actually cave and give in and to start by allowing yourself to be taken by something that you have little control over once you ingest. to surrender to commitment. to commit to time. to commit to something. loyalty. loyalty is madness, love in a form, a manifestation, is loyalty. love is loyalty. true love is madness. I wasn’t thinking of my  parents so much as being subsumed by them. every time a thought of my father passed I wanted to get up. how to sit. you cannot outrun this. what I value: loyalty, first to self and today was the day I would prove it. 

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What is more concerning, he was thinking, was the space between us and our religion which governs us.. He was setting the votives carefully along the stairs and praying quietly. A sense of mania surrounding him but it was muted, almost invisible. Like an electric fence. Daydreaming again.

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Together, they marched but separate, each in their own quiet obsession.  Catarina was counting hours. Catarina was reviewing lists. Catarina had practiced this walk, had a deep resolve, a spine made of knife and her knees were going to buckle but she knew what adrenaline can do. She drew hearts on her hand with each passing hour. The only time she pulled down the glove. Pockets devoid of cell phones, only a sharpie and some protein bars, there was no cell service here. She had advised Leana to keep her cell phone in the car so she didn’t lose it. Pliant for show only, Cat reassured her.

“I have a metronomic heart, you know. I can always tell the time”

Leana trudged behind her, adjusting her parka and getting ready for the first small incline.

“Cat..”

This was hours ago, when they were friends. She turned, bright, dawning, her auspicious eight am self: well fed, hydrated, head covered but face still exposed. She smiled to show her teeth.

“You’re full of shit.”

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“do not seek closure here.
endings have all passed.
you are synthesizing. Girl,
you are just beginning.”

–responses from God during meditation, Wed 11:01 pm

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I spent a week
cleaning out the bookshelf
and trying to decide what toread in the short
time I had left with
his books.
I was also debating
how I should present
myself next:
wholly, or
with my rigid cuts.
things that I remember:

painting my toenails blue
outside under a clear sky
and a very bright crescent moon.
we sat in front of each other
on a bench outside of the supermarket,
and you were amused
that I asked if we could
stop walking so I can paint my toes.
“that way I can stay out later,”
I said.
when you said
you wanted to see me more.

I make myself recite
love is patient
from Corinthians daily,
however, I let too much time
pass and I always have to go
back to the first line as
I am learning it but
today we are at
does not dishonor others
lucky you,
I think.

I’ve been reading some
leftover Anne Waldman
and your Eastern philosophy,
lucky you,
today I eschew making
myself a porcupine
and then making things brittle
enough to break
  and
just chewing the inside
of my cheeks
as you pick up the boxes,
leave the antique china
cabinet you promised
you’d keep.

“the bookshelf”

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when we met, I was
inching my way back
to my robust self  having
established myself as a
case manager. having
scraped my savings to
buy an oil leaking car
that almost caught on fire
in the first week of work
back in August.
I then borrowed money
to buy a car that didn’t.
I had paid rent for three months
without much to do.
I was high on repayments,
seeing I could repay,
in fact,  and

adding cookies back into my diet,
unworried about my teeth
for seconds at a time.
the party had vegan brownies and
I made sure to get plenty.
still I  could touch my ribs
and almost wrap my hands
completely around my waist.
a measure of security.
I often squeeze my ribs to
see if I’m still thin.

when we met,
I had freshly chopped
pixie hair and clear skin,
green eyeshadow to make my
brown eyes pop.
limited eyeliner and a shy
way about scooting next to
you, feeling contagious.

when we met, I had a wardrobe
that consisted of colorful
and flowy items,
hand me downs,
and a reticent entrance.
I was seeking incorporeal
thrills via touch and
you were
(too tired to change seats)
freshly
out of love. 

“the rebound”

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I was staring at my dresser, at the framed picture of the fox and a little ways past that to a mirror that felt warmer. my brother’s ashes which didn’t cause any alarm or overwhelming grief so much as the polaroid of my dad next to a backdrop of a dark woods so the two blended. I looked back up and sat back up. opening the notebook again. it’s hard to focus on anything. it’s best to comfort yourself too. “tail wraps inward for Virgo, outward for Scorpio.” I’m on my south node journey. . I’m simply observing the process of what I noted and what I’m noting now as I’m reifying my old words into the alchemy. I am looking around my room a lot. not in alarm, it is safe here. no one has been in this room but a couple people and no one has ever slept in this bed with me, or fucked me. not in this room on this mattress.that thought is soothing.

“no one had ever fucked me in this bed,” I say aloud again. 

I was really watching the picture of the fox but also noticing the table. all my furniture is heavy antique wood, scratched but really what I crave. cumbersome and a chore to carry up the stairs. a secret joy at watching veins in men’s heads pop as they lift these things up and down. I only have wooden furniture. you can burn it all.  but then I wanted it gone. rolled down the stairs. push it away so that I have more room in here. I wanted a dresser gone and the table and the mirror and the antique chest full of costumes and drapes, tablecloths, glitter. things that I have used to make space, gone. get rid of everything. there’s too much stuff. the blank white room filled with antique tables and notes, superstitious things. I begin to rearrange the fox and the glass ball next to it, a gift– black glass and brown jasper, solid and fun to hold. then  the brown jasper pillar next to it. I wanted all three facing me as I lied down so I can look at them. I have these flashes of Midsommar and my dad and my mom. even though it is close to the anniversary of my brother’s death and my walks have been flocked by cardinals, I haven’t been thinking of him that way. I’ve been thinking of him alive a bit as a kid. there is no harm between us. my family and I really loved each other. I’ve been thinking of my parents dying. the house rotting with all the mold and moisture and crickets. me having to go clean it out, afraid of the cockroaches. me wishing my brother was here. me grieving the future and the loss of my yearbooks, our garage. having to bury my parents alone. the pandemic is close. no it’s here. grief is transformative. 

I was laying down again. I felt overstimulated by the room. I enjoyed color and art so my room was full of any number of things to settle on but I needed nothing. the blank white room. the bed felt safe and I sunk in it a bit. I began to rub my hands all over my head. I’m just trying not to touch my face. I began to pull at my temples to uncrease them and then rub my thumbs downward, pausing at the congestion area above my lips. mild acupressure. ten seconds, release. I rub my hands back up and squeeze my temples. I place each index finger by jaw and forcibly, yet slowly, unclench it and massage it. I have to take the pressure off. it’s mounting in my head. this is a common practice of mine but not utilized enough. I rubbed my jaw and along my neck and moved my neck over the mattress in a serpentine way to release any tension. and breathed. I was breathing again. it was elation contained. you have to take the pressure off, (redacted). I sat for the chorus. it was my voice but deeper. my voice but further. in repetition. and also sounded multiplied, like there may be a few people also chanting that it was time to take the pressure off. you have to take the pressure off, (redacted). over and over and in threes and my voice but deeper. I was hunched over slightly but breathing. I wanted to throw up. I see the golden heart on my hand.  I’m on drugs, I  reminded myself. I always remind myself on my drugs.

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