 2017:
Send me skyward, to parts unknown, to paths feet have yet wandered, to prayers I have muttered. Send me onward. Though my shoes long to stay cement glued to the ground, send me forward. Away, to countrysides and skylines, to parched lands and endless seas, to scorching heat and biting cold. I will follow: open armed, eagle spread willing. I will go: backpack ready, shoes on when I sleep. I’ve learned what it looks like to stay static, always fighting time and space and God. I’ve learned what it looks like to play with fire, taunting flames until one of us gets burned. Most often, the victim is me. I’ve learned what stars look like from the wrong side of the earth. I’ve learned reckless hymns, sung to justify my wrongs. I’ve learned the path of least resistance. I’ve learned contempt. Send me forward, and I’ll learn to want better things: the steady turning of gears, a well oiled machine. Send me onward, and I’ll learn how to steer past pirate ships. I’ll learn how to keep dreams in my pocket, tend them quietly until they grow into realities. Send me patients, and I’ll learn how to love them. Send me typewriters, and I’ll learn to write again. Send me more, God, and teach me to have more faith again. Send me skyward, and I’ll grow wings again. I’ll learn all the flying I’ve forgotten.
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There were sea lions and whales here last summer... I taught my younger cousins to call them blubber nuggets.  One : Honey drenched lips, speak
my name in morse code memories I can’t remember anymore. Two : Rough hands scrape against smooth shoulders, and I doe flinch—even stags run from danger. Three : Echo familiar names, syllables I once ballerina turned to. Now, I am roundhouse kick solid stance ready for a fight. Three : Fairy dust fiction, and I still Peter Pan believe stupid things. Four : Character arc un- predictable: weather forecasts sun, but it storms beneath pale arched eyebrows and long pitch black lashes. Five : Make sense of these lines I bridal veil hide behind, pull me apart. God knows you want to. Excerpt from letters I've been writing to strangers about friends I once knew, and the people they could have been.  Five thousand steps from where I lay, there’s a boy with blistered feet. His shoes two sizes too big, passed down one year too soon. On Mondays, he walks east, and we meet—peripherally. Incidentally. The way seagulls note the presence of fishermen as both parties attempt to catch fish.
On Mondays, his feet blister from shoes he tries too hard to fill in an attempt to pacify beasts in his chest fed by the cloud heavy lie of his head: “Never enough, Never enough,” Soundless noise whispers in his ears. It is so loud he misses my greeting, so distracting he misses me entirely. Two thousand steps from where I lay, he steps on beds of sands in shoes that fit. Size ten. On Tuesdays, he shakes of his beast, and he is himself again—feet nimble and quick, Meleager besting Atalanta. Without the tricks. On Wednesdays, his burden presses against his breast, and his shoulders sag beneath the weight again. He feeds the beast lies, believes them to be true in the process, and when made aware of their falsehood, continues to believe them anyway. From where I lay, I pray to God for telescope vision, or needlepoint fingers to pry the monster from his frame. From where I lay, he is no longer visible: feet too weary to prop legs up, legs too heavy to stand. He does not hear me when I ask him: whisper your secrets so I may Atlas-carry your burden. My shoulders tuck neatly beneath your arm for you to crutch-lean upon me for support, but still he pushes up at burdens. Pushes me away. Like I said, we meet peripherally—Winter and Spring, our feet never bringing us close enough. Below is what a hippocampus ought not look like. You have been warned.  My hippocampus has classified you between
remember and forget, has synapsed intermittently undedided. You had spiked up hair then, now, it lays flat under pressure: stuffed information we try to trap in to porous jars flowing outward. You plan a couple of years down the line, indirectly ask me if we can walk this road together—still, I classify you as intermittent, between transient and permanent—still daring you to say it, to spell out the letters I read in between the lines you left me to find. I’m working on a hypothesis: eternity never ends, keeps going within bounded time you give me. I think I’ve found it: cosmic burst happiness you break me. I think I believe in fate again. I've been on hiatus–nothing you couldn't have deduce from my archive history–for a couple of months in pursuit of my education. The short of it: I am learning to suffer. The long of it I shall attempt to type out soon. On another completely unrelated note: hence forth, consider my title capitalisation literary blasphemy or a reference to E. E. Cummings decapitalisation of i's. Truth be told, the sharp edges of title capitalisation bothers me. I have no idea why. Perhaps I am compensating for... something... Clinical psychiatry may answer that question... Or I'm simply rambling and all this is a distraction. Well, go on, poem down below.  The clicking of typewriter keys
have faded, and the ledger scribbling ceased, and the sound of laughter muted by heavy textbooks and headphones tuning the rest of the world out lest I decide this isn’t worth pursuing anymore. This is my life now: stethoscope amplifying your heartbeat while tuning out what makes your heart beat faster. I am trying, convincing myself, spitting theories of delayed gratification, consoling my weary heart wants out, wants anything but this, but the heart is treacherous if it is consulted for anything but its beating. This is my life now: white coat wrap dreams from reality’s biting cold, orphan leave them on empty doorsteps, and ring the bell. Someday, I will be back for you when you have grown aware of your worth, reject the birthright of my arms when I finally have enough strength to hold you. You have the right to. |
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