in fact,
resilience is sometimes the
only consolation.
so hold that tight
at night
like flesh.
11.
I believe in wormwood,
dried root,
my brother’s ashes
in a silver heart,
a ceramic urn,
a chant, a poem.
datura when the time
is right.
sometimes I do ceremony,
sometimes I just let things pass.
we do that for others:
carry our grief quietly,
we bury things deep
within ourselves.
but sometimes in a fit,
I spill over,
tell you everything.
you said
I like to swim
so I am braised with razor;,
become a carnation lake
at your feet and
you said rain,
I like gardens.
so I condensed and
waited to show off my new arms
lined in fresh alyssum.
my cycle: I always meet them in
winter where my only
light is moon.
my flowers blossom
under the chilled night:
drip a dark nectar and
I am thirsty and
you already know,
I believe in
altar.
I believe in overflowing
chalice. you believe in holding
space for growl,
holding me with
distance.
you watch me lay the
dill in bowl, line the bed
with tourmaline.
run the bath with
chamomile and yarrow.
I am full of tincture now.
I can move like a jaguar:
slow and black and
hungry.
I am hard to see that way.
you said
I am game.
you’ve been watching
jaguars move,
you’ve been memorizing motion,
you said
I’ll be around
and I drape myself in constellation
so you can better see me,
storm so you can better feel
me and I traipse across the forest
floor waiting to be found.
my tonsils growing
chelicerae,
my rib cage growing legs,
my bottom becoming fat
with thread and
I know what you like
and I know that
you are game.
you are writhing
game in tiny, tiny
snowflake threads
hung far above the
ground.
I said let’s switch places
and I know you said
my name. I become the woods
encircling your howl and
you become the kicking,
screaming, young and
drowned.
in winter,
it is long and dark
and hard to contain my
grief. I
am gorged with nectar
and hidden by
the wind.
sometimes we do that for
others: hide our
spines.
you watch me prey;
sip the drip of
the effulgent crescent
bulb I worship
and become the
nightmare you fear.
you become the shivering
deer, caught fly,
gutted bunny on my
jaw.
I become the bath
of blood.
you were right:
we’re the same.
rewind to the night you asked
if I would ever kill someone
if I knew I could get away with
it. the butterfly effect
demands a death.
we become the woods
in dream and you become
my game.
“datura moon”
“Everything has happened.”
–Sylvia Plath
I need it gone,
please, it can’t stay,
I am speaking out loud without
realizing suddenly snap back to present
in the middle of a dark prayer,
in the middle of washing the dishes
contemplating when and where
and how to do it;
just jubilant yesterday that is what
disease does, it festers
and pokes you when you’re
good, when you have a taste of
joy on your tongue and you’re
ready to sing and the next thing I know
I’m saying:
I’m going to kill myself soon.
if not today, tomorrow
and I look at my cats
and I make the motions of crying
and remember the end of the poem
I read: think, on the brink of
your death, I am asking you
to think.
it always strikes during my domesticity.
whenever I am practicing chores,
I feel it.
I put the straw down to use my hands
and I feel it:
the interminable prison of head,
of daydream, of coma
that I laugh about in public
but it’s twisting me
in crooked shapes
and I have held the ineffable,
or rather it held me.
an arm around my stomach
near a window,
my mind was blank.
I suffer from chronic suicidal ideation
and I haven’t cried in years,
I begin to the invisible audience.
I’m starting to pace,
lie down plan ways to face
it or fashion the rope
or grab the blade or jump
the bridge or anything at all
to speed up the ending and
I asked if I could please get help
without telling anyone this time
and then I choked on a cherry pit
causing a panic attack causing a
light cessation of breathing.
you don’t know you value yourself
until you are faced with two options:
let it or fight.
but I called 911
and the EMT took me to the crisis center
when I told them I can’t quite
tell the difference between
fantasy and reality.
the way men think I lie,
they’re right.
I never tell them how many
plans I’ve drawn for suicide.
today, I dropped the straw,
started crying.
and you don’t believe anything I say,
but there is no time to coddle you.
everything has happened.
the thirteenth draft was suicide,
but I didn’t know it yet
and people really do try.
God won’t let me.
feelings subside.
the way some watched me
suffer, I forgave it all.
the way I sobbed
in the hospital.
the way they said:
it’s not clean, you’re right.
the way the pit lodged.
the way I had been picturing the woman
grinding the cherry
seeds to make cyanide earlier
in the afternoon.
the way I was seeking adjectives
for distant unconditional love.
the way I told someone over dinner
it’s called “The Woman Who
Saw Her Own Death.”
the way endings can change
without warning.
the way I quit my job.
the way it’s so unlinear.
the way God’s sweeping
fingers cradle you in darkness
and something says:
yes, that was the way it was
then, but now we begin
again.
how quickly I grabbed
the phone in terror
implies commitment to staying
here; there is no one
here to comfort
but I hold that
tight at night
like flesh.
12.
it hurt
but not as much
as memory;
not as much as looking back.
death reversed,
they called it.
and not as much as hearing it
on the bridge.
I told you so
not as much as living long
enough to see you go and
slip and live frozen
underneath the giant
white sheaths of ice
where I leave you to unravel
in a dream.
where I leave
you
for the last time.
a spider said to
write it
that was rule number two.
you can call it the
act of taming things.
they’ll think it’s about you.
get them to read it out loud
and curse themselves.
when I danced with her night
that night,
she whispered,
say my name
and you are mine
I woke up in silk
and horns and you were
flying: a bright, blue butterfly
right into my arms,
my web of lines.
“switched places”
I’m a martyr
so I like my last lines to
linger chill you;
bring you back here
to finish me.
I’m hanging over your bed at night
like a decaying canopy
causing some coughs,
some fits of temperature,
a rotten synopsis of my
irrationalization;
my constant adieu in drama and boot heels
clicking further from you.
my lips in the rearview:
red as fresh hell,
soft like fresh pain,
your new lover is plain
wrapped in old sheets where I used to explode,
an improvised painting:
billowing carnality drawn open to reveal
a euphonious home, soldier heart;
sparked and smoldered from the start,
glossy eyes and reaching fingers and I’m
cracking at the edges when I hear
your name.
a broken backbone replete with
your ex lover’s stain,
unnatural twist,
unnatural bow towards your new lover’s
place.
unslept, unkept, unkempt bangs and sweat,
breasts heave, fall, beg for response
and your lips once returned the question mark with a
declaration, a finality,
laconic exclamation mark and charged fuzz
nesting on my lap.
can she feel the lake I was for you?
you, a sly river stone, sinking to the the bottom of
the nearest wet bed.
I’m dry now but
slippery like a seraphic harpoon
catching you on good days;
Saturdays in the park watching the clouds rewrite the sky
and her and I’m stuck
to your dick,
grip you hard and lit like a cosmic albatross
shadowing you nightly.
Sunday night when you’re resting with loss,
American Spirits and a cat who can’t cut it,
I’m hovering all week
you’re brainstorming ways to save the world at work,
and I’m in your coffee mug.
you’re choking on my suitor’s dried intentions:
guzmenias, spider plants, handful of daisies,
calendula, roses from the uninspired,
whatever I ask for.
watered down apologies, post it notes reminding me
where they will be
(forever haunting beds)
and shrinking cocks recoiling at the sight of such
rehearsed malignance.
I want my parting to be
harder than us:
a seizure in your stomach,
a rift in your lungs
where I used to rest my hands to feel the songs
you had for me
but your honeyed lips too thick with
other people’s crusted blood
to talk about it;
about us.
a zephyr in your hair that tickles,
sticks to your crown and moans loudly;
the way I sound when I come:
a saint dying at your altar tongue.
a parade on your timeline,
the last firework,
the first thunderstorm,
the first time someone hints at
love
and the interminable door slams
shut.
me, I’m self effacing only in lines,
only in verse.
humbled by stark correction,
a closed fist perhaps,
a silent light that sets you on fire,
drowning in self,
an ocean as well,
insides rocking
tidal laments that implode in quiet, wild
violence,
stalking the world’s line,
biding mine with letters
and blades my time;
stifled, I’m waiting
for that envelope
you promised
reminding me I was
right about time and
space is the price.
“space”
the boys I rescued
and turned to saints;
their features outlined in
filthy thoughts I
let them touch me with
rinsed fingertips,
watch them take great pleasure
in stroking the arches of my bare feet;
my callouses holding proof
of the miles I have walked
to hug the west.
better than my own docile traces
of lust pressed against them;
my own famished touch
as I dip into my cleft and whimper
because I can’t come big enough.
that sweaty heart of male violence,
male wants,
eroticized guns,
learn the art of being
enthroned in your
sex.
those biceped tongues,
those blue black nights where I fuck to get the
battle out so they don’t
accidentally drown a garden
they were supposed to love.
other nights I do it hard,
grip the keys and shout sometimes;
let the room fill with copper, lick myself
from the chain,
taste my own
domination;
my submission to myself and
let you understand the dangers of
eroticized pain;
the art of being bled
for your sex.
smudged lip gloss
on their bare cheeks,
hosts
my undoing.
teach me how to love like war
my persistent
bleating
inner child,
hands out and
crawling to you,
barely fed, swallowed by
red lonesome and
under you,
next to you,
over you,
overdone,
over the moon
but yet still a shadow
at your nightstand
waning in your rising
sun.
“the martyr”
one dangling finger pointing
to her skin to remind you
how she feels
at night;
smooth like soft-shelled
murder.
“the photograph”
when I was a kid
my dad played this game:
he would ball his fists and
stick his arms in front
of us
start turning them over;
one over the other in a circular
motion like a machine; the way
gears turn round
and round and he would repeat
the phrase
perpetual motion.
we would start to laugh;
those secret games
only family gets.
he would say go ahead, Sarah,
you can’t stop it;
it’s perpetual motion,
go ahead, go ahead
in his thick New Jersey accent;
Wild Irish Rose on his breath,
and a pack of Merits nearby
one burning in the ashtray.
my brother pinching or
poking me to distract me.
I was so small.
I would reach for his arms but
he used his might and
kept turning them like
he was churning something.
the dog was usually howling
and I would be overcome by a fit
of giggling listening to Matt’s
sarcastic comments, watch the smoke
drift from the table and my
mom somewhere near smiling
and he was right:
I couldn’t stop it.
I was too young
and weak.
he would just roll his arms,
his hands clenched and say
perpetual motion
perpetual motion
sarah sarah it’s perpetual
motion.
I would scream and
jump on top of his forearms
to prove him wrong
but everyone agreed that was cheating.
it was the emptiness
I couldn’t take;
the space from the post to
my side and the absence of
words between that.
and also the unbridled
mood swings.
the way no one saw me
or heard me or checked
in.
I would spend hours
pacing the small corridor, the
tiny living room and saying things
out loud to myself:
I can make it
it’s fine
I can make it here
or I would turn it up
as loud as it would go and
vacillate between the pacing and
jumping up and down, twisting
a necklace or straw
in my hand
and I would picture only one thing:
breakfast or dinner
with a man it wasn’t
the man, it was the nourishment
I craved, the nutrition
I lacked and the double security
of food and laughter.
it always took place over a meal.
I reached for it every time I felt
anxious, every time I had a
major transition–the savior returned;
the reverie of an unconditional
ear, someone placing their hand on
the small of my back,
handing me water,
congratulating me on completing
a piece and asking me
the question.
I rarely pictured the warmth
in sex that wasn’t what
I lacked. it was the question I wanted.
he always held space for
the long version.
taking a bite with my fork,
it was cooked or take out
or restaurant, it didn’t matter.
it was warm and filling
and good.
he would say
tell me again
and I would begin the story
where it began:
January 5, 2014,
I arrived in
Kensington to awake
from the middle of a
perpetual daydream.
no, the thing
about your brother
“Sarah,” she paused, getting my attention again.
“You were going to tell me more
about your brother,”
my therapist repeated.
it’s Thursday, I’m between worlds
again and we are finally
opening it.
“synchronicity”
you want to ask about inspiration
without asking what’s become of
the ones before you
and I want to get to the bottom
of it.
imagine me
walking
in perfect rhythm
with the moon:
industrial moods unsteady like
my block; a concrete cell lined with
glock teeth,
warehouses lined with
broken windows thirsting like plants
for a peek of the sun
and I’m bouncing with the
tremors of the train I barely caught
while I pause to fix my brow, bun
lips and the
other ones;
mud on my boots,
snow on my tongue,
those white whispers
like tiny quivers of attrition
eating me alive.
slurp the finality of requited love.
my voracious stomach is
prowling to the vibration of
your brawn, breaking chest
opening in some quiet place
to let me,
your hungry little ghost,
back in and then
right back out.
the lines of my veins
are blue-red and
flushed
with other people’s
last thoughts,
last heads on pillows,
shared stories, tea, beds,
and the repeated
click
of a door unabashedly
slamming shut
in my face instead
of an invitation.
my spasmodic heart
hurriedly smooths
the creases in her butcher skirt.
you want to know and I can’t
anymore:
the fastest way to get
between two points
is a straight lie but
forgive me and try to
imagine me alive,
walking in perfect rhythm
to the cracks I made
in us searching for
some light.
9.
(Boulder, Colorado, Fall 2013)
where I am laying currently as this
is happening
my chest is a bright, blue door
standing slightly ajar.
I felt like I was floating:
not on a lake or an ocean,
or a stream or my beloved mountain creek but
just lying on top of a big puddle of water in the air
that existed for no explicable reason, much like
all the grief that took me by the tendrils
and dipped me
in the center of the canyon-deep flood that took place
in the core of a six year old girl
who grew up to be giant and made of tinted glass
and a grand total of
no one.
I looked up to see a white flower billowing
above and for once in my life,
I appreciated it’s grace and splendor choosing
to pass by it without disturbance.
I wanted to leave it right where it was;
an illusion of life and growth and flying flora in the sky.
when she touched my heart, I felt a green electrical charge
shoot through my spine
and then,
I became a swaddled baby rocking
on a river of God.
it was the vision that mattered and
some parts I had forgotten, I don’t
write everything down:
I was standing under the moon near a lake and some trees
and miles and miles of stars–he and I both.
suddenly a large white bird fell from the sky, swooped fast to stand and
then lay like it’s prey, floundering on solid sand
just praying to die.
I looked at life through those bird’s eyes
and saw a family before me:
a husband, a woman and child: all me and mine.
I felt myself age; withering skin that turned into tiny wells
of wisdom cut deep in my cheeks,
brows and crown of gray storms, and lips that
kissed only dusty picture frames and hard candy,
and saw myself mourn my own passing.
I was clothed in all white with lilies in my hair
before I sank to the bottom of a lake.
everything was blue.
everything was silent.
everything was moving away from me.
I used to be a sound;
a loud wailing of a door
slamming shut with every one of
my yelps
until I fell back into myself,
until I remembered this vision
and it’s bright, blue current of
wild and divine help:
the bird suddenly came
back to life and flew away
and out came dozens of
blue birds.
“reiki” or “death reversed”
and
“The Woman Who Saw Her Own Death”
Part 1:
daturamoon.com 