puddled

In the shower. Red hair sits hatched over my wrists, the strands like opened veins. Draped perfectly to demonstrate my anatomy, or at least as imagined; an indication of where my head would like to be: swimming swirling down the drain with the water dirtied by my skin. So much of me has slid down the drain in my lifetime. You could probably produce a life-sized sculpture from the parts of my body that have evaded me - my hair, my eyelashes, my skin flakes, pimple pus. My saliva into others' mouths.

I recall your forearms; their huge, vertical carvings that wield memories of your best friend running two kilometers to the beach to find you in fully-fledged panic. I had only just met you both and had no idea how to help. I probably couldn't have done anything to help. I sat at home bewildered. I tried to cry and couldn't.

Eighteen months ago I walked into Levin town, and thought how easy it would be to become part of the train. I could press myself into the steel and leave traces of me on the tracks, leaving no trace. I didn't feel like a person. I didn't feel like myself. I wasn't myself. I was the insides of you, a part of your organs and their revolting chaos - subject to your self-abuse and adopting it myself. As if I hadn't already swallowed enough into my own lungs.

Sometimes when I'm driving, I think of setting my route to chance. Especially on the motorway. But I worry I'd only sit again, this time forever, and that would be worse. I'm not sure if that idea floats around my head because you suggested it when I was sixteen. Before I had my licence, I berated you for it. And now I am it.

When I'm in high places, I feel like I could jump off them and my body would never touch the ground. I told you this on Friday night as we leaned off the building without barriers. I think there's a term for this feeling but I can't remember it.

One time, I said out loud that suicide is something everyone must have thought about at some stage. Not necessarily seriously wanted, but considered the possibility of. You said it had never crossed your mind. I felt like someone had prised my eyelids wide apart with their fingernails.

jigsaw

what's
sticking
in my mind
is that
you couldn't
get over
how soft my hair was

like you'd forgotten the feel of it
(in two weeks only)
just
newly washed,
that's all -
nothing
special

and still, delight
in this
for me.

then, the usual
overwhelming sadness
(I still don't understand it. It's
like some foreign, in-hiding
part of me)

and then, the usual
vine-limbs tangling
turning into
heads pressed together
turning into
lips softly searching in the darkness
turning into
me finding your collarbones
turning into
you
turning yourself
into me

and myself and yourself
turning ourselves
inside
out
together

'love'

Of course
there's some
sad irony
in the fact that I feel small

but then
when I see you
wondering
at your
semi-neighbour's door
excited for something
(though you don't 
feel excited
- about anything -
anymore)
I know that in fact
I am tall
the tallest I will ever be, in my youth,

tall like only those
before the post-teen barrier
who have already surpassed me
and know without superiority
that they have long surpassed me
and this wants for keeping and
holding
etcetera

like all my thoughts that are of myself at 18, 19
that have jumped ahead of me,
through my fingertips
right now ('15)
and are holding the 'successful' 30-yr old me
to ransom
(I can feel myself shaking in fear, laughter
or maybe
it's just
vindictiveness)

so right to say
"it's as if everything changes"
and so right to say
- as I did -
"I wish".

triangle

all those fragments that shot through so fast
into some perfect formation of language
and then
snuffed out the other side
knowing they existed, now
in a place that is not
beyond, but
under
my consciousness

having spent the longest
seconds and
inches of hours with me
and knowing all of me
like some fast-forward future
intellect system
with the same principle as me
though slightly less
blood
in both veins, hands and sink

(I keep imagining the door opens, but
I suppose that's
what I
wish would
happen - like some old ritual before I
fell off the stage)

and like you'd wind deeper and deeper into your computer made colours
I can traverse forever
into the curves of my own words

like everything at 23 it
goes before I get to have it

and I suppose - like you said
why would you have some skin
when you can have walls and her
and fate

ava

between me
is leaking -
not for cycle, but nuisance

my shame
guilt
fear -
my femaleness -
dripping, gluggily, steadily
out of me

I went to the doctor
but as usual, I'm a mystery
can't figure myself out
so why should someone
else
?

6h 28m

what an awful
/ typical paradox

that the weeks I'm in my own place
I'm 'coping', yet at yours I
love for two days
and then
forget myself, for you, I
reduce like some sad atom

and you, in our opposites
supposedly love me
there but
suffer the distance
the minute I am gone

just be here
just be
be here
You know I'd share
all of it.

and to make matters worse
(here comes the self-pity)
the words have fallen out of me
I've fallen out of myself
out of my body
my head
my eyes have fallen out
all fell out when I fell
(or seemingly so - maybe that's another
blame trick...)

and back up again -
again
there's no time to back up
back up, but
I forgot
how to
walk

trying to love backwards
across, over, out
I'm all out -
I'm all out.
I'm all out
but not finished

daisies

I've never been to places

where daisies are 

at night

but tonight I 

went, and they were all

closed up. 

let's just pretened
that that ankle doesn't have that incision in it
that I can dance like it's 21.12.13
that we are free and summer-ing

that there's no time or place
except for this week

that there's only coffee and yahtzee
or else sunsets and lakes
and vans parked in places without mirrors

"

you're afraid of lying down with me and never wanting to get up again.

that scares me too.

comfort

that consumes you.

"

(Thanks to Jahra Rager for sharing.)

things I realized while walking the dog

eye in hand of hand's eye

and I, and 

by and by

bylines and by-sights, by chance

(sharks in both sleep and swimming)

two lines of time, sign of concentration, beautiful edge

mark the other eye:

number three --

three with three and twice three,

the third three mine

and now -- in time -- yours too...

threes in signs and avian divinations

"sign of the times" he says, says she

but three deliberates

three's unsure

three necessitates thought

eye gravitates towards the hesitating; hesitation being

the crux in which feeling fluctuates

in and out of time; the

eye opens and closes, flutters it's lashes

voraciously against the hand, occasionally

lashing out in love but still will

retract and sigh, the eye

skyward as if we should all 

gaze upward

but little occurs there,

mostly it's all here with the

Earth

nesting in the valleys

sleeping at lake edges

restlessly meandering

certain of chance and change.