July & August, 2025

not the one that you need

august 31st, 2025

it is easy to forgive yourself for the life you have forgotten to live; so that one day you will know the one that you want to live in. i feel close to my god when i am at the precipice of finishing all of my great tasks, when i am writing and respecting myself for it and listening to no one about it despite their praise, when i am meditating early in the morning and yawning early at night, and when my phone is across the room so i do not have to think of what it means that i do these things. i know that i am not close to god when i am having to remind myself of why i do them. today i am sorry for being distracted and not helping enough around the house. for being all together a little lousier. i am looking forward to the end of these exams, when i feel i have accomplished something, and when i am packing for my holiday to palau. i will put things into a bag and imagine myself using the items there. that is always how i remember what i need to bring. i think of a day in said place, and imagine what i will use to get through it; a tooth-brush, a notebook and pen, one good nail polish

but then i suppose it’s not so much forgetting of this life as it is detaching from it. you detach from the ideals of yourself; that you will be be a sister and daughter forever and a hopefully good friend, life-long student, mentor. this means you do not need to consider the rest of what will happen to you. the mother, the writer, the permanent tea-drinker is most often the permanent tea-maker; boiler-of-the-kettle; buyer-of-the-tea-bags. you do not think of these things because they worry you. enough said. shut your eyes early and listen to dull hum of existence, which is not a cat drinking milk from a saucer—it never has been

firelighter friend

august 30th, 2025

what do you say to difficulty in the family? ignorance or ambition is certain. it is such a shame to sit in places you know you should be happy in but only think of what a shame, what a shame. i know you have felt this. if you look up long enough, you will feel it too. look up without distraction, no flickering candle, no music, no magic, and see nothing in the objects you bought once, the toe you were scratching against the edge of the sofa, the hair on your chin you couldn’t be bothered to fix, the shine on the edge of the apple in the fruit-bowl, the swinging of fairy lights tussled in curtain that billow despite closed windows. perhaps i do not want to make money after all. i am not looking for a job. i am not looking to be any happier. i don’t think so, anyway. i am looking for praise, and that would make me happier, but i am looking really to be told something. it is just a bonus if i accept it. but i do not want to sit at the dinner table any longer and feel i am floating because i cannot see the reality in staying. why stay? there is the world by your palm, by your quivering thumb. i do remember walking up the road, picking the petals off. i said that you were my friend but i counted it up in my head. one hundred and three he-needs-me, and now i see. now i see it

‘til the end of time

august 29th, 2025

i shall always find the time to tell you about my evenings, my late-time acquaintances with myself are what i get such a kick out of in life. who is this now? oh, yes, me waiting for you in a beautiful shirt and baggy jeans, having done such a thing with my day as laugh and count my blessings after. laughing is for jesters. jesters in jeans

i shall never yell at you. i shall never repent for anticipation even when it attempts to mangle my soul; i shall only whisper to it that it’s friday, i’m in love, i’m in shackles but i’m in love and they are each other as totally as we are. it’s worth the pain of admitting weakness. it’s worth the pain of being friendly. it’s worth the pain of losing days to remember your kindness when it is not there

counting with my fingers

august 28th, 2025

i have taken the school day off and am at home in bed, watching marvel movies. i want to be nowhere else. this is a safe, simple place. rain pours outside. i drink a cup of chai and regard my curls with the eye of someone i know; yes. this one. this suffices. i shift and change but i am here beneath it all, much the same. giddy at a chance to be slow, steady, real. i have new music to listen to and while i am sick, i am also happy to have been forced into a recession. i was getting tired of holding a loaded gun and trying to be charming all day. now i can get used to myself. now i can listen. that is the sweet sound of hope, of knowing there is something other than this. while it is not good, it is not evil. it is life, claw-footed, nine-legged, a witch to be reckoned with. i will do it as i do everything. i will wield a pen like it is a knife. i will scrawl out across my floor and respond to you. i will mail you my woes. i will return indignant, deceitful, but never inauthentic. i am destined for death like you, so we should walk on our heels and revel in it. what is the other choice?

conditions of absolute reality

august 27th, 2025

i woke up early this morning to a sore, hoarse throat and running nose. i came into the kitchen and my mother was awake and she gave me panadol, tea, and toast. i fell back asleep for three hours. i have taken the morning off to rest in bed. now i am under my blanket and it has been raining—i’ve been watching a video on the different adaptions of the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson. i will shower and since i am feeling better, go to the last two lessons of school today. i will not go to french; i’ll take it easy. i am feeling sorry about my schoolwork; it’s unclear how i will get it all done. somehow i manage. but will it be good? it always seems there is infinitely more by the hour. more to think about, more to do. but i am happy to be going to bed early every night, even if i don’t actually fall sleep until many hours later. it’s nice to have time to watch my mind. i am learning the tricks of engaging, disengaging. the rain is nice and spring is coming. spring is coming. this coming tomorrow a year ago i left to go to france. today this time this year i am in bed and i am writing, writing, writing. churning through words like breakfast. i am writing with busy fingers and thinking about my girlfriend, getting paradise rot back from [redacted] and getting her thoughts on it, how lucky i am, my sickness and if it’s passing, how grateful i am to have a moment where i can breathe through the nose, and i am thinking about the weather. like i said, change is on it’s way. yesterday morning i walked the dogs in their coats and blossom lined the streets like snow

i yield to exhaustion

august 26th, 2025

feeling miserable after school; i left class early to come home and work but i’ve done nothing. i am happy i came home but i am sorry i left. today we planted succulents and mine is sitting on my desk in a little elephant pot. i love you, i love you. difficult with all of the steps one has to take to arrive where they were this morning, but you’ve heard it before; shower, brush teeth, eat, write, stretch, drink, meditate, dress, undress, re-dress, leave the house, speak, listen, learn, watch, interpret, read, sleep. the monotony is exciting in it’s own right; it’s a beautiful thing to anticipate what will happen just as it is beautiful to know for certain. i know for certain that you love me, and that is exciting. i know for certain that i will sleep, and that is exciting. i don’t know how long either of those things will apply, or matter, and that is exciting

i will water the succulents we made together and leave them somewhere where they will get enough sun. i will not do homework tonight like i said but i will put my laptop down in time to be in bed on time. mars and virgo are a brutish bunch and they’ve been at it like rabbits; interbreeding routine, newness, saying like a father to brush your hair and be on time to everything. there’s no more waiting around, but there is time, so use it. i take a piece out of your fine paperwork and it matters. it matters. i reap the reward of your labor. i will sleep tonight. i will think of all the good things that have happened to me today, and life will not be so disgusting; so repellent. i can be yielding and not give into everything

small boy with an umbrella

august 25th, 2025

imagine all that could’ve happened if i’d been less exhausted by spending time with people or love. love’s all the same, just try not to make a noise. it’s not so much as a mask as it is a face; i am not in hiding. this is who i am and yet there is no response, no recall, no resounding violence. how silver is my pride that i am torn between seeking and sedating? both seem equal distance. sometimes one is up the hill looking at me fondly it is the same as when i turn my head to find the other on the ground weeping. just great deals of pity. i sure would like to have a drink with some friends from my shitty job sometime. if that’d be fine. i could make use of this space i’ve paved the way for, headlights blaring. this is not a place to rest in, but recollect why? collect your reasons. why do they behave in such a dull and sick hesitancy? a manner of speaking is a nice way of saying, saying, saying, make the thickness die on your thumbs and the heaviness will breathe in the slurping of soup, it’s almost nice but not quite. not quite

august, laughing out loud; make my dream come true

august 24th, 2025

everyone in my family is doomed. yesterday at the wine-tasting we all got drunk and my mum said that time is just as everyone says it is. it’s going to outrun you, so just keep chipping away. that’s what she said, anyway. and my dad turned and looked at the hill where they decided on my name and said, “i’m going to walk up that hill now, wanna join?” and that was that. it’s not that we don’t have the best of times; but we’re all workaholics and it’s simple. we’ll all die and say to our loved ones who are more engaged, more brilliant, more vivacious than us, “i wish i’d looked away more and seen the other-world,” and that will be it. the other world is a place and it’s reached only through meditative reasoning, italian music and fiddling with small beads on bracelets, hacking away at food you dislike but breathing deeply through it, being drunk and hot in the face, and kissing people in bathrooms; being banged up against a rattling cubicle door as someone comes in and giving a bristling, “quiet, quiet” but your vivacious other doesn’t know about that; quietude, solace, relenting unsuspecting fear about eyeballs and what they can do. my mum says that when she’s retired she’ll lie down on a beach somewhere and look into the sun and think about writing a book. i do not know what matters more than that

but to get back on track, we’re all cursed. my tooth with the filling will fall out any day as i chomp on corn-chips and feel for signs of the severed thing, and i’m not taking care of my body like i used to. unshaven, chilly, shrieking to hurt my vocal cords, never peeing, zits all up on over my upper-lip. it’s winter; sue me. i’d rather go to the uni i want and be miserable than have the best year of my life in puerto rico dancing with strangers and work it out after; find something better. i need structure, there. i need entertainment that’s measured, a dosage of fictitious future but with the past in mind, phone a friend so you don’t make that dumb mistake again. i’m soul but i’m bruising on, i’m sitting across the living room looking at what’s to come and i’m not deserting it; i’m just asking about moving on from people, from here to the moon—my brother will answer it, my brother will know soon. i’ll come to you, i’ll be such a fool and we’ll lap it up, lap it up like the kitten’s milk in a bowl if they even do that! i’ll know how to dance then in your tiny place that’s yours and although you’re no stranger, you’ve never been one, you’re the kind that’s willing to pretend

convince the choir then

august 23rd, 2025

you cannot always win at everything. you can’t be happy all the time or in love with who you’re meant to be in love with all the time; note your habits with pockets and cold fingers. why wriggle around? why wrestle until you’re ready to come out? you can’t be the best at making art and being serious. the singer is ever the sadist, they need you to cry so they make that money, that cash they crave like we all do, you can’t rock back on your chair and expect the legs won’t give out at least once in your life. if they never do, how will you know about limits? wasn’t it desires and limits. if you know nothing about the world stopping for you because you over-shot your mark, you will be a hamster, and they die very quickly

so don’t be a hamster. keep telling me what to do. i like you a lot, don’t let it confuse you. we’ll go to the beach. you’ll see. life’ll treat us better than any other lover for the meantime. make it all up as we go along, that seems to be how it goes. it’s a playlist on repeat you don’t clock until the third or forth re-listen. i’m so happy to have been here today even if it was a downright miserable feeling. what good can come from good? it’s almost always a strenuous climbing-up out of near-death to find a generous bird at the window who is willing, ready to keep quiet if you can conduct your own orchestra. i am not better at typing when i am drunk

between 1:11 and 57 seconds

august 22nd, 2025

on the road. three lanes of traffic at hell-speed and one coming towards me. separated by god knows, do you? loud music i don’t know the lyrics to. going fast then slow, fast then slow. don’t know the lyrics. headache and tense uterus, intense discussion about nothing. sorry you’re going blind. taste of saliva and teeth. really aware of my mouth; everything going on in there; my tongue on the roof. i know why you’re worried about me. i’ve been at school all friday and now it’s a laugh that it’s done. at science fair we took the star tests. what direction am i going? my wrist in the mirror distracts me; that flicking, that flossing. is this what empty space looks like? anyways. the weekend’s ahead of me. the pimples will go away. i’ll be beautiful again one day. i’m going to take a bath and get well because of the fresh air and the time on my hands. could’ve fixed your watch. could’ve tried. sometimes these things don’t work out

letter on the way in the mail it’s a journey and a half, the you is ever-the-same as we all knew before i did. apparently it’s easier to pay people to stay away than to make money and build a fortress, but it’s really all up to you. i’m not healed yet. i’m finding it. watch out, i’m finding it. way down here i’m at the gas station picking out food and crying. all these packaged goods

ooh are your eyelids closed??

august 21st, 2025

how unbelievable, i can’t expose you. i have tried. it’s not an easy task, nor do i need to do it and yet it’s one of the world’s requirements. weddings. getting pregnant. whatever, you want none of. this is not a newspaper and i cannot cry about missing you, heaven help me. but if i cannot do it here, where? maybe i am not ready yet for you to be sure about me. i used to yell at people who took too long on their phones showing me pictures and now i want to look through your camera roll so i can see more of you; i don’t care what i find. just pick a card without tickling the basin of all things i’ve said the most; the least. the most is a footnote this-long titled to you and twisted up like our spines in the trashcan, and i’d like you to read through it anyway. learn to breathe and then take it out and click it better, the remote controller; me into place falling easy, close to the end. i wish i’d written something surprising like i wish i was listening to your voice in these songs instead of hers but i get the sense you would open a thing like that and try to feel bad, try to smile and try to feel you’d done the wrong thing out of the both of us, try to imagine you’d sung the wrong note and that i was the reason why. i expect too much. i know i’ll be miserable all weekend. i took choir through primary school so i waited for this testimony. but you don’t see it so easily as i do, it took years; the vision of impossibly big headachy moments of glee, mad waves i can control the beat to. all of new york holds out hope but i just miss you and what’s happening here. what are your fingers are up to and are your eyelids closed. i am falling in love with you. i don’t have to give it up if i pretend i’m being mocked by god; don’t charter me away into a gaze i can’t soften for

phenomenal flesh

august 20th, 2025

my distractions are welcome. i’d sing so much norah jones in the blue bedroom, i’d say i painted that stripe. just think of the kinds of things i could do with a cherry blossom and a cloudy day and a mop of hair like that; i’d be unstoppable. can’t spend too much time thinking about what needs to be done about the other one; i don’t think she knows who she is nor do i entirely. in any case she’ll be gone soon enough and we’ll be left. you and i, i mean. it’s all wrong, i get it. we’re not making anyone jealous, we’re in no rush. i’m sorry for leaving. i’m sorry for not calling back. for being being crushed in this blurry haze, blessing and safe in your room. safe in my room probably. i don’t know; it’s not your fault; stop asking me. i’ve written so much nothing here. i’ve given you so many chances. i’ve given myself more. i’ve not been honest so here’s a taste of what i can do: i can’t hide, i need to make money, i wish i were less sad about my life before it had happened

all day i’ve had this phenomenal weight in my chest that can’t come to terms with itself. there’s no time to speak. i only care about two things and my meds wear off early and life’s running away. normal feelings. normal gratitude. normal grace. getting my bearings. need to pack tonight but i won’t. your body is elsewhere. why not here? you’re somewhere so why not be here? i will pack tomorrow night once this magic has worn off and i’m finally flesh again

the runner, the chaser

august 19th, 2025

[redacted] and i are unstoppable. it’s crazy, all of these words that unbind before me because i have lost my nerve. nothing i do will coax them. i’m over-sedated. i’m trying to collect them so just give me a second to bounce back. today was better than yesterday by a landslide and it will only continue to get better; that’s what i’m saying. witnesses will say i was well-behaved and my posture wasn’t slumped. i was willful. we’re approaching new moon and i’ve got nothing to say other than all my old excuses; i’m sick and tired of this shit being so damn hard to gather. i intend to stay far away from the business. this is none of mine. i should stick to word-searches and cohesive rhyme-schemes, i ought to pry to get what i found last year. sort of felt like peace but had you asked me at the time, i would’ve said it was loneliness. isn’t that always the way

it’s monday and i’m already here

august 18th, 2025

trying to break my new docs in so i've been walking weird all day. [redacted] wasn't at school and i kept my hopes up for some silly reason anyway that in some class or the other she'd come around to surprise me, say a kind thing or sorry yeah, right. just got a message from her, but i’m wondering. i spent recess and lunch with [redacted] so it doesn't matter as much because the love is still there regardless of who shows it to me. i’m saying that anyhow. off-brand angel is the descriptor of the day; i want reassurance but why? i need to go silent for a while like a monk; yoga tonight will help. walk the dogs without a phone and weep in child’s pose. everything seems hard and my french teacher got angry with us all today about not completing our questions. i thought it was fair enough but i also thought i wanted to cry, and i didn't have [redacted] to look at to reassure me. why do i want that? don’t tell me i’m in love! that can’t be what all the fuss is about with taking it slow, all those warnings i don’t believe in

i need a signal that i can send out for when living is impossible because today i would send it and maybe you’d reply and i’d cross my fingers anyway but please come on, come on over already. living is not impossible, so why does it blow like this? living is hard, sure, writing is easy. writing is easy. if it’s monday, why am i already here? one day i’ll know, maybe even tomorrow if i wait extra good and patient and with my hands tied. would it kill you to say something though? i really like it when you call me, so please do that the next time you think of it. that’d be enough to save me from whatever this feels like. if i’m the writer and i don’t have the words, what are you feeling? is it better or worse not knowing it’s name?

one day you’re gonna miss this drowsy drowning feeling

august 17th, 2025

can’t weasel my way out of this one feeling, so fuck it i’m on my way to surrender. whatever that looks like; writing, relentless whining, wasting away here. but each time i do nobody will take me, no lover or special god or family member. they don’t see my questions to them like a cry for help. when have i ever asked? as i go to hand in my license for love once and for all because thank god i’ve been caught, the officer shakes his head and says, you’re making it off with a fine this time. and i beg, i plead, i say officer, please i’ve been caught way over speed limit, i’ve been unnecessarily slow, i’ve driven drunk, i’ve been cautious for no clear reason, i’ve been without destination going for hours without sleep or kisses and i need you to take me home now so i don’t do something i regret and get hurt. i just wanted to be sure i’d make it back to school without my parents’ receiving a call like, sorry to tell you this, i know it’s late. and no, no, it’s a little early, really, for this. it’s a little early in the evening for me to be so sure of anything when i am so sure of my history with poor decision making, but fuck it i’m on my way anyway. anyway, i’m scared. scared, yeah! i’m going to do my homework and not drink tonight. i really love it when you text me and call me, please keep doing that. please keep looking forward to all the things we’re going to do together. don’t get bored of me. i am really an exciting kind of person; i wish you’d seen me on the stairs, one leg folded and one hand in my hair. i want to be wrapped in a sheer curtain with you, i don’t want to be rid of anything unpleasant as long as it ties us, binds us. i don’t want to fix it. i want you to feel it and be brave and not run from it. i feel unpleasant and i need you but how do i tell you without making a fool of myself? i want you to be my mother and to look after me but you’ve got too much going on. why do i still feel you haven’t noticed me being here for you. it matters to me, that you mean it. sometimes i don’t believe it. wow, i just realized a pattern in myself. still, good that nice things happen anyway. even if i can’t recover the rot. found a cockroach on my desk this morning beneath a book and i think i haven’t recovered the rot yet

your love on me, lying down

august 16th, 2025

please do not underestimate my love for you. please do not hurt me. please take what i give you in it’s full, sheer strength and i am sorry if it melts to cover you. you rumbled today with the force of beauty. they know you and i’m scared. i lay down on the train tracks because it is easier than looking at you on stage but when i find you are screaming at me to stop i will stop. anyone else and it would not be so easy. just scream and i will stop. but it is better than your silence, your insecurity; please deal with me as if i were cards. like tarot on my floor, it’ll be special soon. i can’t wait for us baby. like you said, i can’t wait for us. you are everything special to me. you are busy but you are still here and i will be here for you. please call me when you want to lay down on the train tracks. i am sorry for all the times i have had to hang up the phone. when i know, i know. sometimes i like the drawl of your tone but it also works me up to being something evil. i could penetrate the surface of you but i’d have to wade all the way home with you swarming. a hundred flies and i am their lord. you never read that book but i pay it no mind; i love you, i love you. do not underestimate my love for you

exactly the kind of thing that could be wrong with that

august 15th, 2025

i am sorry for being mean to you; i wasn’t sure what to do so i said nothing and looked sad and i didn’t mean it, please forgive me. please forgive me. i am sorry for what i’ve been doing lately; not saying what i mean and love-dumping after, staying up late and lying come morning, getting pronouns wrong and not clocking it until later, being unpleasant about everything. anything, just to say something. i’m sorry for being a cry-baby, for not crying like i should’ve because i know it will come worse tonight and i didn’t mean it. i’m sorry now for making you into the villain; i am the one who couldn’t take your taking me on like an adult. i am sorry i am more food in your mouth you’ve got to learn to chew; i swear i’ll get my act together tomorrow

but i did the right thing and we know that. we pity that about me, and you forgave me before anticipating what i’d do. now i am sure you’re restless and i will come to say i’m sorry. after i hand in my assignments tonight, be a good girlfriend and see the chiropractor, make myself lemon tea if we have any and tell myself you’ll be okay three times in the mirror to summon some kind of demon; bloody mary, bloody mary, bloody mary. i’d kill for that kind of origin story. i’d kill to be the thing that scares you in the mirror on monday morning. but i am sitting where it all started. muscle memory at the circle seat in the courtyard where i wanted to lay in your lap a million times but never did. one day, one day, one day. one day when i’ve turned all my assignments in i’ll get my act together and it’ll be like none of this ever happened; like i never made up my mind about our fights before they happened

advice for after you’ve done something and loved it

august 14th, 2025

i am such a lucky girl. people come up to me and hug me and tell me they are proud of me; i did good. all the while i am speaking at the same time i am looking at them. i want to know if i am saying the right thing, but i am going anyway; i say things i shouldn’t say and i go anyway, and they love me. i want to know if i should stick to writing, if i am getting a headache. if i am allowed to be here. all of this they should tell me directly. but all night people come up to me anyway and tell me i am just like their daughter; they see me. i want to scream into a pillow but i’ll rouse the spirits. all the parents are excited for a chance to ask me about their babies and we look at each other in the eyes and it’s a moment of truth, and total conviction. i am real and i spoke and i was listened-to, and i passed you in line and here you are. this is the reward, it was all worth it. i am good at this. there are people and places that suit us. if only writing was so immediate. i wait and wait, and i love it, and yearn to do it, but i am radiating—i’m a lover. i’m quiet but i am so good at being loud when i have a chance to say what i mean aloud. i do not think about it and move on. move on through life, and love it anyway. i imagine the faces and be happy, keep smiling, keep thinking. i keep holding. remove and hold on but walk away; remember, remember. talk about it. remember, write—they are the same thing

impermanence

august 13th, 2025

can’t get around such hard questions about what the hell i’m going to do when my life is around the next bend; i’m never going to learnt to drive and i know that now. if i make my mind up about something, maybe it is more likely that the opposite will prove itself so i better stop guessing at all. i’m too psychic for this shit. i overslept again today and everyone hates me except my mum probably. nothing’s going to change. life is going to be this slow and unlikely forever; impossible like my tiny white dog getting up on my huge tall bed but she always does it. she knows this place, it was the first place she ever slept the night. it is always going to feel like a truck will run me over whenever i cross the road. it is always going to feel like i am the angriest person in the world when in reality rage is immeasurable sorrow, uncaged and unreasonable bargaining. tried so hard to find that word, but i bargained. bargained my life away like trading souls for a sentiment. what’s the point? i can hide away from it but i can’t forgive you. today showed me that i am incapable of everything except for what i do; i enjoy being human. i enjoy my form. who, by god, will answer for my face? will you own up to it? will you stare back into it? it’s a beautiful face, and it’s going to be gone soon. the words are here forever, the memories are plain and real and that is here forever as are others’ stories untold, but my face? but my face?

love radiates, vindicates me; stillness breeding

august 12th, 2025

how to express love if it is not written on your forearm? homework. be good. don’t forget. just like on the fridge door. can’t say it over the phone, sure, but in glaciers melting and the refraction of light i make up for; i am you, i am you for goodness sake, i am madness in cloaked gold but with you the veil is briefly lifted, barely but the unsalted butter is here to lower my cholesterol; i want to live for longer and see your babies if i can’t be your only one. i want to smoke in the park with you and show you who i am now. smart and small, and eating enough. you’re not being impolite, i want you to text me in the middle of the night with a glass in-hand, just like your skirt in the morning. yes, i love it, yes, i’ll say so. smog of love casts me in undulating white whit and vindicated silence, though not with the lover, a role i fill like syrup on the silk sheets, unstick me from the frying pan pillow i cried at the counter for over an hour about all sorts of math problems i didn’t understand, no one could teach me i had to roll right out the room wrapped-up in the rug; but babe you unfurl me joyfully. i once carved the red-brick road out of sand from your favourite beach, clay from the monumental motel door-frame you stood in while completely naked, stroking the inside of your calf, and i watched your hands lay them for me, one by one it was so intimate; built this home i get to live in and wait for you to swallow me, and all i could think about was the mold; the making; the masochistic man i bellowed whole for despite you. i am all yours now

period day 3

august 11th, 2025

my brother’s in the kitchen talking about how hard his classes are and i nearly chewed my own tongue out at dinner. back’s lurching and period day three. this that, this that. oh well, it’s not forever. just today. just tomorrow. gonna cut my ears off so my hair stops tickling them. brightness turn it down but it’s not a phone-screen, it’s daylight. closet shut it’s door, the man hiding in there can see me coughing, so we’d do well to shut it up. felt happy today a lot of times, but also bitter and mortified; like changing spots, wriggling out and shifting. like not belonging or saying dumb things, using words that were too big. i don’t think i’m more clever than you, i’m just waiting. so much waiting in myself i get uncomfortable. happy birthday baby, i’m sorry your present is late but i have to put my seaweed into a variables table; it’ll be worth it when it finally comes—short, but worth it. thanks for hugging me, kissing me in front of a crowd, thanks for teaching me love like you really believed i’d get the hang of it, didn’t just stare at me blank and hope i burnt out one day. if icarus can’t make it to the sun, then bring the sun to icarus. it took work to get here but we put in those hours. now look who can drive!

blab my way out of this

august 10th, 2025

so useless so useless i say i am going to useful but i never can do the kinds of things i promised; the hair-braiding, the crying, the being honest, the not being desperate, the parallel parking, the length in my spine, the brittle kisses on the back of your neck—i need to eat everything in the house before it burns down because i tried to light a candle but i’m the most flammable object we own. before i turn the oven off and bend down to take out the cake, i say, let them eat it. i’m a shell and nobody’s died yet. you can laugh at that. how could nobody have died yet? i really don’t know. if you see this, i’m not happy. that should come as no surprise but i am definitely listening hard for your ringtone at the end of my silence. i’m not going to be the one, but if i were the one it would really be something, and that’s of comfort at least. you’d find me here. if life is a telephone then i am fingering the cord, sitting with one leg folded over and the night is bleeding into a day. it’s always been this way and i should expect nothing less, nothing more. bed-ridden basket case; god love her

full moon feeding: hello

august 9th, 2025

had such a busy day and it’s still going. saw people i love and studied in the library for five hours. schoolwork fears me and i am a fashion icon; the party scene’s gonna love me and i bring the joy, the best most underrated kind of conversation, you know? i’m a youngest child. i’m gonna get you guys through the night. i can come home at whatever time. you know? it’s full moon and i got my period finally, after two and a half months of thinking i wasn’t gonna have a daughter; the moon’s listening so good to my soul. i’m listening back, peeling back the flesh in the form of a fur coat. i’m excited. i’m full of energy, merrily trashed. i’m caffeinated and i haven’t been for months. i’m gonna say hello or something to people i haven’t spoken to in ages. i’m gonna get you through the night and even if we cry together it’s gonna be worth it, just for the experience. it’s just for the experience of being with you. we’re growing up. i’m a dog with a bone and a frog with a tongue, chasing and licking you. i’m so gonna get you back for all the awful things you made me do. but not tonight; tonight it’s a wonderful life and i’m abundant underneath all the light

let it work out please thanks

august 8th, 2025

in a couple years time i am going to regret turning that down to get high in my room and write about seaweed, but now is now and i’m good with it. i’ve got it. tomorrow i am going to get a bus into the city and get my jeanette winterson books from my bookstore guy, buy the whole lot i guess, then i’ll go into the library and study. then come home and wallow, get ready for star wars with dad and theo, and the party [redacted] invited me to at her boyfriend’s place. i’ve gotta wear the same outfit for both, since i’m gonna go straight there i think when the film ends. too exhausted to try and think about that or what i feel about that; going to the party i mean. exhausted, you hear it. having to get dropped off and having to show my face and having to be there and having to come home again. tired, guilty, ashamed, tender, like i’m making a horrible fruitless mistake, excited to see people, worried, real anxious and frightful, angry, looking forward to it. so, you know, all the normal full range of human emotions in a matter of minutes except no prefrontal cortex to help me process them; good old weed and something to write on will do the trick. what a first world problem. nice friendly blockage who is going to help me separate self and situation; here i am, clever and good at talking to people, and i am doing the thing, the standing around with a bottle of wine acting clever and trying to be good at talking to people as i stomach my own intoxication, the awkward gossip i’m not part of or happy to go along with, the bad alcohol and boys yelling, the obviously upset friend i care about but have no reason to believe isn’t just drunk and i don’t want to make a fool of myself by asking so i won’t, i don’t, i shut up but say enough i’m not irrelevant and they’re waiting for a bit of evidence to prove that, trying not to get excited about coming home and being in bed again which i am always excited to leave, just trying to have a good time, trying to have a good time, why am i in this person’s house? am i drunk enough for this? do people like me? do i care? why didn’t i write today? are they having fun? why? how come? what am i missing? and in no time i’ll have a good time too. i’ll be sad but fine to leave. i’ll be a good drunk. i won’t care what’s happening around me. that’s how it’s meant to work anyway

weaken your light

august 7th, 2025

jingle-jangle, the fox approaches me with her ball of yarn and twisted legs and she sits down, fiddles. it’s pale, unsaturated my art teacher says to say so i say unsaturated. naturally i am pretty easy-going. but the people in my life are good; i’ve got nice loving people who support me and do not see through me, even if it feels that way they hug me tight. they see of me if not the space beyond me and that’s more than anybody could ask for. it’s easy to think clearly when memory occupies so little of your waking mind—i don’t want to believe in anything that exists in the past. but clarity is not realistic. there is no life i’ll live that has a beginning, middle, and end if i cannot see it’s beginnings too. the other day i remembered about the glow-in-the-dark stars on my brother’s bedroom ceiling when we were little kids, but who peeled them off?

it is irreversible now

august 6th, 2025

things i am grateful for: walking the dogs in the rain and seeing the droplets hanging off the leaves—tapping them with the top of my umbrella and watching them slide right off onto the pavement. having the patience to be understanding. knowing that i have done the best i could’ve, and it is irreversible now

it’s no fun anymore. i am looking at the fish and want to take a break. they are coming to the top of the clear water, but why? they do not need breath. not like i do. i need subsistence. i need cleaning. i need rational thought. is it embarrassing to say i love you? no, no. i will not regret it when the baby is born. when the lover is dead. when these things happen is something i say every day. when i am being paid for what i do. all i think about is money, kids, and getting married. life is a horrible disease and i want to be close to you all the time in case i get ill

i eat your kiss off my lips as i walk away. i love you more like i always do but what do you mean? what do you mean?

the race

august 5th, 2025

it wasn’t as simple as they said it would be, when i finally got myself together and paid the money and moved my body and undressed my mind it just so happened all that was different was that i had no money. my hand did not shake when i gave it to you, sure. that was this morning. the house was empty and i had to play the mouse, the mayfly, the maggot; the man. it was such a morning because it just rolled off my back, i had to lay the bricks. something you’d be interested in knowing is that i feel horrible when i do horrible things, but i do them anyway. i do not poison people or prank them, but i pull harder on my dogs’ leads on their walk when i’ve made us late and i’m going to miss my bus, and they look at me and they are helpless and i cannot help it. i cannot help it. i say sarcastic, mean things quietly so you won’t think they’re very mean, just careless mistakes, like that sounds like you. and nobody tells me off, and i do it because i like it in the moment. after, i regret it. i want to apologize and i get scared that the person will die and i will never get a chance. i want to dump my own body in the ocean to save face. i don’t want to wait for anything. i’m horrible with time-management and think someone’s going to throw me out of my house every time i watch an episode of television instead of taking a shower or doing my homework. what am i running on? what does anybody run on? what are all these people thinking about? i mean, adults, certainly are thinking of things to keep them going. but these teenagers? all we have to live for is what hasn’t happened to us yet, or won’t ever. it’s embarrassing. yes, here i am, and i get out of bed so that one day you’ll come to my house and apologize to me and by then i’ll have a baby in my arms which will make you feel bad, for sure, and you’ll find out it has your middle name and you’ll look at me like i’m impossible. i am impossible, thanks for acknowledging it. sometimes i get out of bed to put on pretty underwear though. most of the time it’s because i’m one day closer to something i don’t know about. i know i should enjoy this pit of fire of life where people care about where i’m going and what i’m doing and i live with people who want me to get out of bed but i am so looking forward to not knowing how to do anything, and having to teach myself how to do it all over again

i am over you

august 4th, 2025

i am so locked-in. all of tonight’s homework finished; four hours down. school done. dinner eaten. in bed writing. going to watch a sitcom i’ve found. is this all we need to feel orderly? to not matter whatever room we are in?

answer this one day when you know

august 3rd, 2025

questions for me in five years: does it get easier? do you find the root of the problem and tear it out of the ground and is it your fault? do i actually like reading? is there a beautiful person in your life who you don’t fear and who will hold you? do i get good grades in year 12? do i get into the school i want to get into? are you and [redacted] still talking? did you give your apologies and did you give your letters out? do you have enough money to buy people birthday presents? do you have a paying job? do you still write every day? do you still look the same? have you learnt how to do crow pose in yoga? do you still do yoga and dream of the time to meditate? do you love my face? is alcohol the problem? can i live without creating a reason to suffer all the time? am i bad person or a good one?

i know it’s ridiculous to think you’ll know all these things in five years but i hold onto a bright and shiny sliver of hope that you will have all the answers and this way i can find sleep at night. i know that i am self-obsessed and i am hideous at apologies but i am sorry for having been so caught up in myself that i forgot to look around at the people i had, all those people i miss now, regardless of their goodness, and forgot to thank them and tell them that i love them and want good things for them. i do, i do, i do. i love you, please read it. please look after the fear and please hold it in your palm and squeeze it. it’s different now but you don’t know what you’re asking for, what you didn’t know was possible i have and have lost. time and time again. i don’t know what to look for, hope or evidence of my own disbelief? one day when you know you will tell me and the world will rotate, like a dead bug i will lie on my back wriggling my legs as the sun blows up and showers me in hot kisses, stars falling all around

i’m sorry

august 2nd, 2025

getting on where i last left off, perhaps a day ahead; i am ready for your apology. please spare me mine. i am so sick of telling you that i am scared of being alone. if you know this, why don’t you call already? if i check my phone, will you have called? you told me ten minutes. i wasted time thinking of you in my grandparents’ retirement home, thinking that i’d call you to ask if you’d see me and if we could be together like we were three weeks ago, and when i did, you told me you were busy and you had things to do. i always say that it’s all right. but i murmured on the phone, i wanted you to know it’s always fine. i’ll find something better than you to pursue, but where? i always thought i’d never find it when it was you, when it was the one before you, and now that it’s not you it is still you i am looking for; do i have to let you go? to give myself some reprieve. i don’t know, lots of things to reconsider. i was so drunk when i had my shower that i can’t remember it, but i must have shaved my legs because they are smooth. i used to shave the nights before i slept at your house in case we had wild sex. i am sorry to tell you that but i am never sorry about the truth and you know that. i will try not to be sorry because i am sick and tired of telling your face that i hate it. that i am good for it or bad for it or that i want to see you half-naked because i want to know you’d be okay if i knew or that i wanted you to be better than me so i didn’t have to go there or that i wanted you to have children and marry a man for me that i wanted you to be me maybe all because that way i didn’t have to be; i am ready for that now. i’m safe in that. i am sitting in front of the place you told me you’d wait forever in but you’re not here and you haven’t been, you haven’t been, you’ve maybe never been, how long has it been? not that you’re thinking of me. save me the face to decide about. save me the distraction. i’ll turn up every day angry at you until you say something of substance, which will be never for the reason i hate; not because you are bitter but because you are busy

really silly questions i sulk about

august 1st, 2025

it’s the first again, without reason for it. i slept like a baby last night, had the worst dreams. wasn’t even the melatonin. had some whisky and lemon cello at my brother’s place. well, his girlfriend’s place, where he is staying at the moment to house-sit while the family roams around across europe. i am jealous, and also happy. we watched sleepy hollow. anyway, maybe it was the alcohol that put me out so easily. i slept for ten hours straight, texted people, got responses, don’t want to text back yet. no energy to wait again for responses. i am bored with myself maybe. not really? want a reason to be bored so that i distract from my boredom. if i put my face down on this table then people will look at me funny and ask what’s wrong but nothing is wrong. i look like there’s something wrong, though. i am definitely about to get my period. i cried thinking about ryan gosling building that house for rachel mcadams in the notebook, so i am definitely about to bleed

when it came to you asking silly questions i guess i never was so good at not entertaining shit like that. i just wanted to make you happy but instead you looked the other way, you thought i was dumb. i didn’t know what i was doing, i was a teenager, i wore plastic bands around my wrist to tie my hair up and i never did, two lasted me three months, only needed forty something to last me my teenage years. what counts though? i thought you did but it’s old news now and i don’t care. not about numbers. i don’t care; that’s why i’m out here. i dodge silly questions now like bullets, your mouth was locked and loaded, it hurts now to see your jaw move. i watch you fumble and make the same mistakes and grow down again. i want to help but at the same time it helps to know that you weren’t playing dumb, you just are. sorry, i know that’s a mean thing to say. you’re the smartest person i thought that i knew, but now you can’t keep up with me. do what you love and forget the rest. charge the mountain but forget, forget about me! so i’m forgetting too whatever happened between us because your jaw is broken. because to look at you like that is a pathetic kind of rational, it looks ugly and it makes me seem stupid, like you’re the kind of person i’d kill for. you are; but i’m learning from it

nothing’s true

july 31st, 2025

wonder why i am always the one bouncing off the walls. i will not always live in this house, in my bedroom, thinking things are so still and pleasant, or that they are ugly and strange to me. one day i will feel ugly and pleasant still in a different room, in a bedroom that exists to me in the future. oh, i am so unwell to think about that. i don’t want to know my hands anymore. i am not ready to die but some part of me wonders what i am still doing here if i am not writing all the time. it’s answered for me: homework, people, family. i’m tired of pretending as if it’s all not good. it all is to some capacity as long as i am honest about it, and i swear to you i’m getting better at that. all these things that i am but most of all i am stubborn and antsy, let me have all that i have and more, more. is that greed? would you call it that, or nervousness? i am nervous i am not god. that there really is someone letting me and not letting me have things. can’t you see now that i am in need? i am on my knees, for goodness sake. i have not been bad to you. i cannot rewrite this dance between future and past, but i want to. that’s what my hands are doing, anyway. next weekend, the party won’t matter, or the one after that, or the love i make, or the splendor i don’t have, the books i don’t read. it’s a long scream i don’t reply to

here are my hands, same as ever. let them show you a rich want, a radical in the way of the blizzard; this light that keeps blinding. i wave to the highway but it keeps on keeping. how the hell did i get here?

rehashing it over

july 30th, 2025

i am supposed to be in my first class at this moment, the minutes are ticking by but i am sitting at the bus stop alone counting the cars that go by. i saw the white cat today, the white cat. once in a new moon he comes out of the driveway and sits on the hood of the car and i want to pat him but he runs from me. today i just passed by, i was in a rush and i told him that. i couldn’t fall asleep last night, i was busy thinking, and then busy writing, then busy walking back through the closed cavities of my mind’s eye. thinking. got to sleep, though, eventually, and stayed that way for five hours hopefully, if not it is more like four. it’s better this way and i’m going to have a good day, damn it

but i’ll have it be known it never really was my intention to be this way. whatever this is, some cusp between self-serious independent and over-attached parasite. everybody here thinks something different about me. what does my girlfriend think and am i trying to scare people? am i trying to be mean or am i mean or am i making it up? what do i mean, anyhow? do you think i know what the hell i’m doing here? boy, i better take my meds before i lose it. not that i’ve got it anymore anyway. there are new people here and the old are being shuffled out. we’re no closer than two pieces of hair on top of a head, and i was here first. the world is cruel and organized that way. i wish it were different so it could just be you and me, and i’d not feel this way. this aloneness, perpetual

feeding the monster at home

july 29th, 2025

it didn’t make me feel good so i stopped. is this the mantra of every other sane person in the room? what have i learnt from listening so hard to this conversation between good and evil in my mind? that everything has to happen for whatever reason. impulses are not a lack of control but they are also not a lack of being in-control, they are autonomy and freedom in the name of the unconscious mind. “i do not want to watch a movie on my laptop right now with the fan on full-blast at two in the morning when i should be sleeping so why am i?” is this conversation, and this is not an impulse, i know, but it is also not a habit for me, it is not natural, though it is not exactly unnatural to us now even though it is for the body, for the brain, but it is not a bad or good thing, it is just something i do sometimes. it does not feed me. although the same thing can be argued about the good things, too, the reading i did, the homework i did, the praying i did, the dancing and singing i did. and same goes for all the other bad things; the beating myself up, the thinking it is worth nothing, the not being able to take a win, the wondering why i cannot stay on the phone with someone i love, the not being able to look at my family members when we’re eating dinner together, the staying up, the crying convulsively. is all something i do, and it doesn’t feed me. so what does? real food. i should stop looking for concepts to remind me of my humanity, it is in the logic; the food i swallow, the water i drink, the hand-holding and speaking to each other, the movement of my body and calmness of my mind. this is reality and it is fine, it makes-do a lot of the time, but what about the other things, then? the sitting and writing in bed, propped up on a giant pillow, angry at my mother for taking over the bathroom but she just wanted to relax and can she feel my anger from the bedroom as it reverberates and kills versions of me in a laptop screen? why don’t i just get up off the bed and follow my breath; i could always do that. but i cannot always do everything and that’s the point, otherwise it would be possible, and nothing else is possible but what you’ve already chosen for yourself—the path is neat and clear for you, whether or not you see or choose not to see or are blind or are some other fine alternative, it is there. it is in front of you exactly as it will be, not because god designed it that way but because you have no other choice. you are as trapped as you ever will be and have been, and this is an impulse

all i’ve got

july 28th, 2025

beautiful people all around the place and i’m happy to think of them or trying to be. it doesn’t matter so much. i am listening to the music playing in my room and that matters. i am trying to write something; that matters. i am inviting you to read it and find it tasteful. so anyway. today i sat down and was having a hard day. i didn’t panic and life went on. i got out of that classroom and i stared at my knuckles on the bus and i listened to the music playing in my room, in my ears, the music of other people being kind or trying to be kind to each other. kindness, oh boy, oh boy, do i know you. i know the fuck out of you. quiet language, loud and deep, impending, drag it into your bloodstream, a chain on your neck i pull and pull. you get it now, don’t you? it was ending and i had to save it. the headache is festering, i’ve had it all day. we went to yoga and i could’ve slept in until noon but i had to settle for seven thirty in the morning, drag up like i said and down the halls. i am a witch, a wicked kind of person who settles for seven thirty instead. it’s all good. there is no hate like this kind. it’s easy to be thankful when you are trying so hard to pay so little attention to the things that could make a person mad, i just say to myself i am thankful for whatever this is, and that’s all i’ve got. ladies and gentle sweet kind men

great whites in the arcade

july 27th, 2025

i wonder if i saw the sun would it be any different? difficult to tell you, sure. there’s a breakage in the cracks i slip through to make you mad; you’re happy about me being glad to serve you but let me tell you something—it’s lonely out here. made cookies today with the batter you left and they taste good. now i know what she meant about the leftovers. it’s always these days i struggle the most to write anything close to god, because i have not seen him in action for much longer than a shred of doubt, a period of starvation brings me closer to him. what is it called when after you don’t see your friends for a while, you realize you could survive without them, but after you see them again you realize that this is all you’re meant for, and is life with surviving if you do not have them all the time? but you survive life for these moments, and you survive it the same to prove it wrong; to shame death and silence it for a second. so that the shred of doubt is really just a fortitude of grief, a moment to recognize that nothing is going to change, and life will fuck you up anyway. life will do whatever it wants to you, regardless of what he says. pride succeeds humility, and god knows the universe infinitely; they were probably lovers once but that’s history now and all they’ve got is eternity, literally. whatever comes. i hope this is one of the better times they’ve spent together

three of you

july 26th, 2025

what are you doing right now? yes you. there are three of you

you who is reading. you are someone and something, and you have a behind and a beyond, a before the thing that you became. i am interested in it. more than i am interested in myself, i am interested in where you are sitting, or lying down, or standing. who you have spoken to and what moves them. is it a very tall thin tower bending over you? is it a man? is it a woman? does nothing move you? do words? do hands? i don’t know what you are or what you want. please me with your newness. i have no news. new feelings, but what is that? settling into an old one. this anger, this cursing, this fault i cannot forgive; i am repulsive, loathsome. i am good at my job. but what is that? writing i guess. writing for you, somehow. in the future i am writing to you. in the past i am writing ahead of time to get to you, the you who finds and reads this. what a mystery that would be. in the shower while i was burning someone was sending me instagram reels on the bus and someone else was shutting the front door for them and going back downstairs before dinner to not cry, or maybe cry. hopefully cry. i want you to put me out of my misery, and do it quickly

to the you who i aspire to writing for always; is it okay? i cannot comfort you. i cannot give it all to you. i’m empty of thanks. i cannot inscribe every sentence or letter to you. you are always changing. i dream of making you know what i can’t. i am at capacity and can’t take any more on than i am right now. mum told me to say that instead of “i’m busy at the moment”

and the other you, i have nothing for. you know it all by now. i wish you could let me know how it goes so i didn’t dread it all so much. you could just say, “it works out. just enjoy the bad moments”, instead of me taking all the bad moments as a sign of it not working out

my times tables

july 25th, 2025

walking through the world and i am trying to be helpful, one classroom at a time. trying to tell someone something that makes them believe i know my times tables. time’s bitch, i am. you bet i’ll still be here, churning through the system’s belly as you wreak havoc on the rest of the white void. i’m going to move to the city when this is all over. i’m going to watch people through the windows and i am going to write, damn it, something good. something relevant, real, like the flesh i tear through to make the wires reach far enough, over the legs of the desk, the wagon on wheels, i will wheel myself to victory; you’ll wait on me. it won’t be you and me anymore, touching knuckles on the train-ride to the end. it’ll be you and me, yeah, but you here and me there. it’ll feel good until it doesn’t. until i am here and you’re elsewhere. it’ll become ugly. wretched kind of world i walk through. but then again who am i to sell the dream in a packet and shelf it? this is good. this is worth the time it takes, the time it takes, the time. what is it again?

a girl in a pale blue summer dress

july 24th, 2025

on my own. it’s cold out here but i don’t want to go inside yet. the wind isn’t so cold. it’s just that there’s so much of it. no break. i remember writing something so good out here that i cried, and panicked. and i remember that but i don’t remember the day. what day was it now? it was probably march sometime. time marched on without me, unmatched. people answered my own messages for me. i was busy i guess. i’m sitting in the same spot that i saw a year twelve sitting in when i was in year eight on the oval, trying to hit a ball, and i wanted to be her so badly. she was sunbathing like a cat in her pale blue summer dress and her corded headphones and she lay down on her back. i have never wanted to be somebody more so passively. it was summer and she had her eyes shut. the sun was hitting her through the trees. i don’t remember anything else about her but i remember that. i remember hoping to have one chance in my life to look anything like that at least once. once in my life. good lord had i known. had i known i’d be so, so…. you know. like this

i don’t even want to know where you are. it’d mean nothing now anyways. i don’t have any good jokes left and i’m still feeling bitter about all my bad days. particularly this one. it’s only thursday. one thursday into my entire life. head is a burning palace. you’ve forgotten me. i know this feeling. if you’re going to be like that then so be it. you didn’t consider it. you didn’t work me up that much. i know you saw me today but things have changed since then

take two

july 23rd, 2025

cigarette at the park with you. smell like smoke in class. it’s worth it though, i love you. what is it about you rhyming so well with you? you won’t be here next year to make it right. at least a little less left of the bend, anyway. it was my fault, obviously. for making you late, for not showing up at all. it always kind of is. then again, i’m doing things differently this year. i’d like to one time show up at the door with flowers for you. i’m going to be king of the island before i depart, king of mankind maybe, if i can make it to the plane before it disembarks and leaves me here, stranded. kind of. straddled with words. tip of my tongue, tulips in hand. don’t worry about that, though. just remember: be alive. be good at what you do. and i just want some quiet music that makes me feel happy. it doesn’t have to have a beat, it just has to string along sentences, make me feel not to blue and alone. i’m getting on the bus early again to go to french this afternoon, to the city and then getting another bus nearby, since mum’s car’s not repaired yet. but dad will pick me up. i’ll get to go home and work on my poetry and work on my fingernails and work on other things too. i’ll take my meds so that i stay upright and so my tongue doesn’t fall out of my mouth. it’s not bad at all. i’ve felt pretty good all day, but i’m getting to the end and it’s always writing that reminds me i’m lucky to be sad

mum said something to me in the car yesterday and i remembered that i am just like her, if not even more helpless

a little less than a suicide

july 22nd, 2025

i had a dream last night that i had signed up to a program similar to euthanasia but it would decide on it’s own terms when to end my life, and i wouldn’t know at what moment, but that i could expect it to take place in a couple of weeks or a month. at the time me and my family were holidaying on a little tropical place and i came to the breakfast table to eat with them. that night i met with one of my friends and we rolled around on the beach together, mouthing each other off and kissing at the same time. i remember not feeling very uncomfortable. then i got off the beach to walk home. my bikini was coming off and i lifted up the strap to tighten it, and i accidentally slipped on the road home while i was walking. a tiny little scrape was on my forehead the next time i sat down with my mum on the couch. i wasn’t aware of it until she pointed it out. and then my mum told me about some books that were being released. it was part of the eragon series, the inheritance cycle books i believe they are called, by christopher paolini, except they were written by a woman. my mother told me that there was a new book coming out. i remember thinking that this time i would read them, and then i became very sad. i was thinking about how i would not read them because i would be dead it was such a grim dream and in the morning when i finally woke up the feeling lingered. i slept through my alarm and had thirty minutes to get ready. but i lay there for a while thinking about it all, and it took me a few seconds to remember that it was just a dream, and that i wasn’t going to die

writing is the only time that i feel truly human and real, and i begin to unravel who i am and what it is that dreams at night. i wonder, what did it take for my mother to burn all of her journals? i wonder, what would i find in them if she hadn’t? i wonder, would i understand it? would i understand it more than i can understand her ridding herself of that humanity? or my father giving it up? who are you? do you care? have you found it through something else? is it more beautiful than this? tell me about it please

dun, dun, da-dun

july 21st, 2025

back to the wall and listening, sliding down it. engaging with people. engaging them. it’s a funny lovely day, dragging people down with nothing. maybe maybe. it’s going on through the motions. wake up and shower, wash the hair, the eyeballs. school; fraternize with the enemies, the cowboys, the showgirls, the playmates. whatever they call them anymore. remember to eat. eat it up. drink enough water. don’t get cottonmouth, get a cotton swab and wipe your under-eyes before it’s too late. before you look like a clown with an agenda. it never meant much being funny; just dying to tell you about the jazz music down the avenue. had a good day today. came home and kept working. felt i wouldn’t make it but i did and it was cut-throat, this business i conduct. you like a survey, note-taking. watching blood-line, and coming into the kitchen for a glass of water. remember to drink. drinking it up. spit into the sink and there’s no blood. not shedding yet, just the lining. just this living thing that you are; remember to take care of it

a voice

july 20th, 2025

the airplane makes me turn on, the jets, the propellers, the fan just becomes a spinning blade; you heard it here first, the best of the folktales. i don’t want to do that anymore. be unkind to the people i love because i am busy staring out the window at the view, the wing i want to dance on, busy filling my head with lines that i’m tired of and coming home to you

i’m tired of it, your jokes, your being able to love me instead of the other thing. but it’s all right. i breathe in deep. my ankles are here. i’m back to the best of lighting up the room, the best of your child, your mother, your screw the police screw the cap back on it’s head. spin the ballpoint pen on it’s page, drag it through mud and rinse it and rake it for contents; what else is left of you? your treasures. your body. your ashes. spilling here across the floor i have walked on forever. one day you will know about it. you will walk about it too. if i could move into my bedroom in the future and stroke the curtains and hear the world sing i am sure that it would say; it’s okay, i’ve been watching you grow up in spite—malgré tout you did things i couldn’t do. or something like that, probably a little less than that. i doubt the world has much to say to me. maybe it would tell me to get out of this mess i’ve made. then i’d tell it that i am not the world, i am not ends meat, ends meeting; making it home to you cold turkey. i am not that because you will never text me to come over. i’d rather you did the talking anyway and i just hang up the fairy lights. you will be there, won’t you

pregnant with language

july 19th, 2025

back at home, listening to dad cook up a storm in the kitchen and mum complain about my incense smelling like old man urine. sweet home, i’ve missed you. tense car ride that nobody else felt but i swallowed it all down in the backseat. mum’s laugh like on a loudspeaker. talked over the top of it, felt like i wouldn’t say anything at all to get everyone back, but that never does me any good. wanted to be quiet but universe said be loud. rory stretching in my doorway now, looking at me curiously, maybe with love? we used to be much closer when she would sleep in here every night but it was no good for her or for me. on my bed now, soft and nestling in close. white fluff. i will miss you. i am sad that [redacted] couldn’t come over but there’s no use thinking about that; it wasn’t even a plan, just a pipe dream. i am too fixated. i’ve felt worse. i am handling it better than other times. on the plane i didn’t feel like watching a film so i sat and wrote instead, and read some of my book. it was desperate on that plane, i could feel how the people were so small and quick and dumb. i am not short of inspiration for writing poetry at the moment. this is the longest i have felt so able to produce without slightest hesitancy. frustration comes but it doesn’t stay longer than the click of a pen or a sigh out loud. my mind is clear somehow, only in this state. it seems to just pour right out of me, all words and richness, and it is easier now that i have begun to treat poetry as a practice rather than an exercise. i look forward to moments more now that i let it live through me, not just in me somewhere lucid and waiting to approach. get you like nobody else. i feel words in rooms in my mind reaching for me and only me. like spirits who have no other body to inhabit but mine. i do not need to tell anyone. i sit here and try not to let it overwhelm me. i shake my leg, i listen. i cry. i am sad to never get it all down. i look for uncertainties to unpack them, dissect their voices, but sometimes it is better to write about what is known instead. that’s the stuff everyone loves, anyway. that’s the stuff that makes money. love and death and family. things about mothers and lovers and dogs and nature; i’ve written about that before but all the stuff i like ends up conglomerate and intensely conscious, to a point i do not know it’s meaning. i just know it has a beautiful sound, an internal meter untouchable, these words next to each other produce something lethargic and deranged and deeply human. sometimes a phrase or string of words comes to my mind in a random moment—like the plane or the dining table or the classroom—and it is so good, so sweet that i have to cry. or try to. the sound of it in my body is such a beautiful thing; how could i have given birth to this?

how to stop screaming?

july 18th, 2025

man am i vain. it's raining outside today and i am wearing all black. let me tell you about it. it’s my favourite topic at the moment. what i look like. how it makes me feel. black velvet scarf, thin and wrapped tight around the neck, one long limb out across my chest and dangling at my knees, and the other behind me, trailing long. a black and grey striped boat neck david lawrence shirt with sleeves that end at my elbows and a cinched waist, baggy elsewhere, a black pleated skirt, sheer patterned black tights, my boots, and my deep purple gloves. i am obsessed with my hair. i have cut the bangs perfectly. i remember three nights ago after i first cut it how nervous i was, and how i couldn’t stop thinking about it and what a mistake i had made. now i think i will have this forever. last night we went to the theatre and i felt beautiful while we were standing, waiting for the tram. the musical was hilarious but i stopped feeling the effects of the alcohol in the second act and i didn’t enjoy it as much. then i thought about that and got even sadder. i love this city but it makes me intense. i cannot just look at it and admire it; i have to look at it and feel myself inside of it, being swallowed whole or chewed slowly or nestled-in perfectly and i do not know which one it is

moment-to-moment i have imagined a big and spectacular life for myself, one where i wake up and do not know what is ahead of me, and so that then i might imagine a series of realities in just a week, but now i know that this is all i have. nothing is certain but i know that i will write now, but i might not do anything else. i may finish school and say goodbye and then travel and live elsewhere and get a degree i like and make wonderful friends and have moments of humanity and drink and cry and undress in front of a large window and i may even have children i may dare to be in love but my life will never be as good as it is right now and i should hug my dad more. i want to tell him that every moment is the next and i have just slipped out of the cracks of time a newborn baby but amazingly old and i want to ask, “what then?” i want him to have the answers, but i can never ask the right questions. i wonder how do adults do it? how do they not lie awake at night rattled with terror for everything, even though it might be good. it could be. so how do their lives not make them sick? with all the coulds, shoulds, mights, fucking waking and trying to fall asleep. good or bad, it is still a life. we all do it. it’s compulsive, irresistible, natural; whoever could look at their life in the face and decide they do not want it so badly they take the nearest flight out to wherever are braver than i am, because i am addicted to moments when life tries so hard. life tries so hard to be good in certain places, but like anything it is timid when you scream at it. one day i will learn to shut up

give me your hand, i’ll give you my mind; it’s a fair exchange

july 17th, 2025

this is not a work of fiction. there have been moments in this short life where the warping of existence feels so natural that i could sleep in it’s delusions as if it were a hammock. a gentle swaying in the breeze of clean oceanfront, lifting the back of you. all i see is what my eyes show me, except it’s not just that. i am told, i am placed, i am spent. the mind tells me that i am like money. i am your credit card. show me any expense, and i will pay the cost. i am diligent and mean. i want to kiss you. i don’t care for you at all. word is out that the money’s down the drain so i’m taking the nearest train back to you cause i thought i heard you call. once. back to the backseat of the taxi, your sleepy face and thinking for the first time you are just like dad. back to the back of your head as the river that has always been there lapped by our sides, the boat, and while we were gagged at the water buffalo i was thinking for the first time i will remember the back of your head. back to being asleep beside you in bed, not me but you, you were asleep, i was syncing our breath and i was thinking this is going to be everything. i’ll do anything to have you. i will love you: watch me. back to blissful blindness, the breakdown of all defences because we were so magnetic—body, breasts—and it was summer then of course, those things tend to happen when it’s hot and pleasant, cold dreams, my toes bent into the bridge between carpet and couch and your torso, my god your torso moved like an ocean, like a beast. i put my face to you and think. and think and think. and think. and now i think i’ll take a break, have my breakfast and try for a breakthrough while in the meantime i’m busy breaking up with you, walking down the street, writing, waking up, reliving the worst week of my life, getting my hopes up, losing, loving, leeching onto lives that are deeper than mine like the livestock—what a thing to be born and bread and beaten and boiled, and all while to think i am your backwash, you are bigger than me; i love you, i slave for you, i give away children to you, i live with you. but in the end i am your backwash

sydney, i’m coming for you

july 16th, 2025

on the way to the airport with one dying pen and two journals to last me four days. you have no idea what i’m capable of. slept for two hours last night and i am excited. the sky is grey and brooding, nothing to it. stores are opening and the backlights of cars are blaring, red in the blue outdoors. i am listening to elliott smith’s ballad of big nothing. i washed my hair this morning and am wearing a brown turtleneck jumper that i wore in france all the time. my leather jacket is in my lap. just ate a tiny dried apricot from my brother’s hand, and i am raring. sydney, im coming for you. let that be some sort of warning. i’m a new person. i’m made of spinning steel and a three minute detour in the backseat, imagination that i cannot escape. it’s a beautiful thing to be this honest again. i am sensitive again. i am learning it all over red-rover, tag you’re it & don’t you stub your toe, don’t you shout and cry at the gates. you’re it, you’ve gotta be, it’s only fair

it’s hard to believe that i may live here, but now i sit at the desk by the large window perched and overlooking the city; the skyscrapers and the strange prisms and the seagulls and the harbor all frown but welcome me. i know i could be something here. it’s a nice hollow being. it’s good to be somewhere different. it’s good to be here. i can imagine writing here. i am just not sure about all the living that i have to do to write

what other people are doing

july 15th, 2025

leaving for sydney tomorrow, will explore the university and hopefully pick myself up from this rut. it’s useless to distract myself but even non-distractions make me feel anxious and down. i spent all day doing homework today, took breaks and felt proud of the work, albeit still a little upset about the workload and self-depreciating thinking about how much time i’ve spent putting it off. on top of the other feelings of isolation and sadness it’s clear that even a normal dosage of self-hatred is setting me over the edge. but i am trying to open my shell, clear the pathway with my bare hands, look for thorns first, be careful. being careful is not a ploy sometimes. in winter being careful is not a ploy. there are not things to do here. i don’t have a job because i would have a nervous breakdown if i had that to deal with on top of my other commitments. in the holidays i have no extra-curriculars. i have no school, lots of schoolwork though with no teachers sending me angry reminders, just me. i have no random time slots during the day which all i can think to do is write. i am just always able to. and yet at the same time i am confined. i cannot go outside whenever i want to, nor do i want to. i don’t look forward to walking the dogs or doing yoga or to it raining. it wasn’t long ago that i did look forward to all of those things, so it feels like the rug has been swept up from underneath me and i have flown against the wall and i am in little pieces

but it is not as dramatic as that. i’m just on my bed with the tealight candles going and my back aches a little bit, my bones feel brittle and i am weak, my face is dry, my mouth is always funny and like i haven’t brushed my teeth in centuries, i am always not eating which i find amazing because it’s all i seem to do, i am wondering about what other people are doing to not feel like this, i am wondering about what other people are doing. there must be something wrong

i bear no ill will

july 14th, 2025

well i have played by the rules but here i still am, writing to tell you about what a misery it is to have a mind, what a pleasure it is to have a body, but how when one fails the other naturally follows. let me unpack; let me show you my baggage. the rules are that if i behave with sensitivity, with a focus on reality and use of present-tense and i talk sweet and intelligent and am calm when i pick myself up, if i write only to tell you about my days, and if i tell people that i love them and don’t think about drinking or staying up all night and i see the loved ones i care about and i am doing generally all right; moving my body, stroking my mind with love poems and song lyrics and if i make my bed, then the world will reward me. how will it reward me? with joy, for god’s sake; for going outside, for waking up early and going to sleep on-time, for writing, for reading long books in a weekend, for saying something and waiting patiently in-line, for singing and dancing and playing and stretching my spine, for not having a heart attack every time i use my phone, but here i still am

look up here, i’m in heaven

july 13th, 2025

we walk up an entire street without saying a word to each other. i’ve got a headache and it’s going to rain and i’ve lost weight—my big jeans are falling off my hips and i’ve got to pull pull pull them up—look at you, nothing, not a word, keep walking, not angry, not happy, finished eating, not hungry, what was it for, so much homework, so much homework, i am not a good person when you’re around, i’m not me, when will i be. called my girlfriend in the bed this morning. she called me. she was on the way to work. wanted her bad. wanted her to be here. she wasn’t. felt angry. felt flat. felt smooth. felt uncomfortable. writhed. couldn’t do that in front of you. wanted to scream. couldn’t. came back here and a day is gone. where do i go to get my mind back?

lighting my candles you said you got deja-vu and my headache came back, i got deja-vu from being in france and the first time i heard anyone say, “est-ce que t’as déjà-vu ça film?”

winter has got me

july 12th, 2025

feeling lonely and dull. probably because i am not seeing anyone or going outside these holidays. but what else can i do in winter, when i am anxious and tired and obsessed? i am doing other things. my seaweed sampling. family time. crying. reading. writing lots. staying alive. homework. homework. fucking homework. there are a few people i have seen but i don’t feel satisfied. i see people online reposting old photos from summer when they were with friends and i feel sort of relieved that it is not me just trying to convince myself moments i wanted to spend time with people and did spend time with people were real, but on the other hand i am also having a hard time with being bitter. i am mostly happy and if i think slightly harder about it, it doesn’t come from a place of jealousy. when i am at school with these girls i could not care to think twice about them. but it is just because i have no additional distraction that i feel a sense of dissatisfaction with my own life, but then again, also my dad asking me if i have plans every night and replying no is not helping

i will call you

july 11th, 2025

last day of writing workshop this morning. didn’t sleep last night and in the car i was watching the trees and the road and my phone was in my lap. i was waiting for my psychiatrist to call me. i was hoping my mum liked the song i was playing. she said, “i love this song.” i feel so nervous all the time. feel so anxious all the time. i could pass out. i collected my seaweed today and i will get drunk tonight. no more crying for me. i will get off the bed and walk into the living room and get drunk tonight with my mother on the couch, watching yellowjackets. i will turn off david bowie. i will call you. i will fucking rejoice

noises from the kitchen

july 10th, 2025

so hungover today. slept weirdly last night. weird dreams. mind wanted to implode but i didn’t let it. i sort of let it. i wrote for three hours today, maybe more. i felt guilty and my eyes were sore and i needed to pee and i didn’t let myself. i wrote propped up in bed, feet underneath thighs, hips screaming. i thought about some things i needed to do but i didn’t do any of them. every day is the same, every day i listen to the kitchen and the noises that come from it; the dishwasher clunking, mother putting cutlery into the sink, the microwave whirring, calming itself down, the kettle boiling, conversations like lightning, footing lost as exiting, sighing, slamming cupboards, heels clacking. sometimes i get out of bed and i go outside and i leave but always i come home. and i listen to my head aching. i listen to the droning, and i splash my face with cold water until it could be possible that i’m alive. light candles. feel cold, so put on clothes, get so warm i de-clothe. i wait for the same people to text me so i can wonder if i’ll message them back. i am a liar. i don’t know where to look for my sensitive skin. i used to have it on my back; that’s for sure. it had my back. when did i have it’s back? no, i can remember times. i used to cry and i wanted to feel it. now i cry and i hope nothing come’s of it. it’s just good relief afterwards. thank god something happened

pity me or don’t

july 9th, 2025

i eat alone i sleep alone i bathe alone, today i thought i’d bathe with the door open so i did just that, and i hoped someone would come in and find me, look at me, but nobody. and i acknowledge the presence of both good and evil are of equal proportion, not always, but today. today. today they look at me with the same glare and it’s not a bad thing. it’s not an unusual thing. it’s natural. it’s easy for me. maybe i am only pretending to cry when it gets me. the claws of the thing. the monster. though i am sure it is real. i am sure that it is real. i sit on the ground and i talk to myself in tongues, cross-legged, and i would pray but i don’t know any prayers. i know blessings. i tell myself that i am good to others, and they are good to me, and i am loved, and i will be happy. i offer myself grace. and these are not lies. but there is always you thrown into the mix. you tell me that is not usual, not normal, to hate the music, to not be able to stand because of the noise. sometimes i feel as if i am going to die because of how loud it is. all that helps is to stare, aimlessly. i have no list i have no answer. i am tired of my own questions. i am tired of believing in the purpose of evil. if there is good, there is evil. vice versa. i am tired of the balancing act. i am tired of the libra’s scales. i am tired of walking home in the wet with the scale heavy on my forearms, gripping the air and asking, and receiving honest, dumb answers

damaged goods

july 8th, 2025

finished mostly powering through the shit we started yesterday and the day before; moving furniture and the like. i played the sims 4 for two hours today. should’ve been reading but i haven’t even started a book in months. am i damaged goods? we need ice cream, that’s right. it wasn’t voluntary—fighting you, i mean. i’m sorry for that. i’m sorry, i mean it. bought yoghurt today and we are going out for dad’s birthday tomorrow night. celebrating. who else is scared? i am only okay when i get to see you. please, don’t fight me on this. you know that. i’ve got to be more independent. i’ve got to be okay with what i am, what’s left anyway without you; a workaholic, an independent slut or a business-woman. don’t need others, i’ll do it my way to avoid the highway forever. i’ve always liked that saying. they won’t let me on the roads regardless of my mantra, i’m good and i won’t hurt anyone. i’m good and i won’t hurt anyone

sure, it is not very upbeat; but i have never been successful at anything i wasn’t born a natural at other than the truth, and even then i don’t always tell it, or else i’d be the king of this place. and the monarchy’s ruled out. that’d just be another thing to add to the list of where i’m not allowed to leave, or to be; your front porch at the door-step, my backyard for too long, your bed under the sheets, the school hallways, the foot of the court watching you play and cheering, and now the throne; although that’s less surprising, i’m assured. but i am good and won’t hurt anyone. i have learnt how to do that; i stay good so that i hurt no one, and i hurt no one so that i stay good. simple enough. what could be wrong with that?

vacant

july 7th, 2025

i woke up tired today. last night felt longer than usual. i lay in bed trying to sleep for two hours before [redacted] finally texted me, and i sprung up instinctively from my sheets and powered over to see what she’d said, but it was nothing good and i felt sad, but also relieved. after yesterday, mum and i continued on our errands and house rearrangements this morning, but now that we are home from op-shopping i have been hit with dread and anxiety. i am in my bed-sheets with two rugs over me and my medications to the left. the lights are on and the heater is on, but my hands are cold. when we first got home i lay on my floor for five minutes and listed things off out loud in the vacant house about my sensations. tightness between my shoulder blades, ringing of my forehead, intensity around my jaw and cheek bones, fullness of my bladder. i told myself that i would give permission to be alive, and so i am trying to do that. it’s not that i don’t feel well, but i am tired of it. i am restless about [redacted]. i want her to message and come over and i want things to be good between us, as i am willing. it is so difficult to tell you about the difficulties without making them up. i know they exist because i feel them. i would like for things to be good between us. i want for her to message me and to talk with me and then i will feel much better. then i will give myself permission to relax

beautiful, sweet things

july 6th, 2025

i have not broken-in all day i’ve been too terrified, so here it is; me being brave now. listening to sylvia plath say dirty girl and recount a fever. every time i hear her poems, read her, i think i must have discovered her. i get this feeling that nobody else has heard of who she is, and i want to show everyone. i want to say, “i am afraid but she’s not and this is what i have been trying to tell you”. mostly i want to stroke her words and cry into them. i could care less about others. i fold the crackling recording like sourdough now, and i am sitting on the bed. i have rearranged my bedroom and it is beautiful to be here

last night we had a wonderful time. i arrived and we sat in bed, nuzzled into each other, our temples close as we wrapped around the other’s body, and i could smell you and i could feel your breath as it came and went, warm and less warm, and heard your voice, and it was nice. it was intimate and not surprising. it feels like i am depressed when i am not with you, but it can’t be that. when i am with you i move through myself so sweetly. i want to write again when i am with you and i have so many beautiful things to say about life. you make me an optimist. we talked about things and i cried there because it was safe. it’s a bit like heaven. you were going to cry too but you didn’t. it’s simply surreal to be with you. i want you to know that. i have told you before but i will say it again, i do not imagine a world with you gone because it would be too painful. thinking of you in this reality too, squeezing oranges and softening your face into a lover’s palm, feeling and wanting things, is the only thing that keeps me sane and alive. you are so good to me. we sat on the floor, ate pasta, and played with slime. there was nothing we could have done better. it is not something i consider. i am so happy that you are alive and i think that things are going to be okay because we have found each other. i am comforted by the thought of infinite moments ahead of us, and i am astounded by our past

something to happen

july 5th, 2025

i remember how we showered together when you came this time last year. it was cold outside and i wore a skirt and we stripped off in the bathroom. we climbed into the shower and we looked at one another. it wasn’t frightening. i thought something would happen between us, but it never did. you came to my house today and at the front door i spun on my heels away from you and marched on. i needed someone to save me. i tried for a bit but god it was relentless. what did you want from me? it was nicer on the bed. lying there, saying little to nothing. sometimes you’d be bold and ask me a question and that was a nice change, but it was difficult to tell you anything. it’s been so long and i feel old and different. i have a new body now and i don’t know if you’d recognize it. but what does it matter? what does it matter anyway? i was happy to see you today and there will be times. times when i can call you and ask things, and hopefully you will know by then how to be honest on the phone. i will probably never cry in front of you, i will never hope for something to happen between us again

sometimes it feels like the more i do, the less i feel as if i am doing anything

people (and art) are all we have

july 4th, 2025

just watched civil war. i’ve got that good movie rush, post-dinner, pyjamas and lying on my stomach on the bed. the adrenaline and the buzz and the feeling like you’re a completely different, how it vibrates in your ankles and your abdomen and your elbows, knowing what a slightly worse and slightly better person you could be for letting art take you into that dark place. i watched it in one sitting, completely immersed, needing nothing else to concentrate on. phone in bedroom, waiting, listening to me sob in the other room. furniture is very good at looking at you when you are afraid. the feeling was in my bones. i could hear it in my knee-caps. it has been a long time since i have watched a movie that made me feel like that. a rush even though you know it’s wrong, i tell myself to let yourself have it. that’s what i’ve been doing all day. all week, really. trying to fend for myself as always. nothing new. trying to hold my bladder and mouth and my own hand, failing. requiring assistance

i am reminded that people are all we have and i feel resentment for it. it’s difficult to know that. it is only sinking in that it is not just a trait to dislike being around others, but i really feel a lot of the time a powerful, overbearing sense of discontentment or wastefulness when i am inserting myself into others’ lives. it feels unnecessary. i don’t understand it. i sit in large groups and think i’m ready to be alone now. i don’t care about any one of you past this point in time. just get home safe but don’t text me about it. i won’t reply. there are few moments i get a break to breathe and remember that when i leave [redacted]’s home there is a glow in my chest; i am whole again and she is very much special and complete to me. i know too that one day i will look up to find a whole room of people who i cherish and it will probably look nothing like the one i am currently in. i cannot even imagine it. that’s a good thing, though. i am excited. i take a deep breath. i remember i can do things. i can write my life away

direct follow-up

july 3rd, 2025

a hundred thousand days later and i’m still waiting for the bus or just for someone to come and pick me up from this awful place of pining, desperately needing you or thinking that i need you in place of the worse thing, knowing i would probably jump off the farthest reaches of the war-torn world for you just to end nowhere, to do nothing at all. yes, all is eternal length. stretching in the black hole in a tree pose. only to hope by then i’ll feel some form of satiation, be forced to join you in the fight to be happy. but oh god is that not me? what is left then? if i am not you? or some fragmented part of you? such an eye-opening time; they think i am figured out about life and its secrets. i am barely on the cusp of asphyxiation, though. i’d be lucky to have to pound on my own chest until aliveness visited for a bit of afternoon affection. tea followed by champagne. that’s all, though. i don’t have a clue about borrowed time. i pay a lot of money to be this simple-minded. i’m selfish and i prefer snobbery to being humble. it takes nothing to admit that. why should i not have the best of you? the best i can do of you? the parts of you that are softer than me, ignorant to abbreviations, rattled by guilt, shaken by grief and elation of all things, and most importantly, the part of you that wants to be understood by me—i promise you that i can step up to the plate and do it. so why should i not drink you up like a spirit? like bliss in words, short dispatches of goodnight i love you and have never asked for more. but people are not like that. why should i instead settle for the half of you which appears on mars, afflicted and placed here by two people you hate? choice-less but you are not a mistake: don’t forget that. i love you. you are a placeholder in my life for the most important reason; i am a child. you help me to act one. act the part: lower my voice, soften into your sympathy, condone your anger. here i steadily focus on the parts of you that i don’t have access to. your physicality. i thought all was said and done but every day it takes nothing for me to want you even more. speckles of you on the kitchen floor or the restaurant or the dingy hallway and i want it all. maybe it will be like this forever. it makes no sense to me that i should never get over you and yet here i am. i would like for you to pick me up and rock me

anticipatory pining & aloneness

july 2nd, 2025

baby i’d wait for you in weather far worse than this. i sure should’ve pissed before i left home today but i’ll sit here just shaking my leg rampantly for however long it takes. a half hour max and you know that, but… i’d let them. that’s what i’m saying. and that’s a big enough deal. it makes the difference. i’m never angry with you about it. because i know that the wait is worth it. i’m growing. i’m watching eyes on the bus with a book in my lap, my apple bobbing between my teeth. i will not succumb to the need to be clever. i will maybe succumb to the need to be close to something huge. god doesn’t count. but the earth does. your warmth counts for something. together it levels the playing field; my ridges don’t feel as rough and i am ready to take you on. to be honest. to see you move and feel no judgment. i am not a leopard either. i too used to stuff my face full of candy and wish i was dead and buried. but i am not tired of being alone. i am not tired of being with you. my mouth is funny when i’m with you; it is dry and featherless. kiss here please

be lucky enough to get lost

july 1st, 2025

my baby loves me! and i love her. wish i were with her right now and we didn’t have to be here for people to know where we’d gone; won’t give them that yet. influx of rational thinking for no reason, so is it really just irrational? watched a video last night about how to be the master of my thoughts, my mind and stuff, was feeling a little edgy and couldn’t sleep, but the whole concept didn’t seem so good to me as when people say it simply. you’ve got to always check your mind, watch it, be steady. that can’t be quiet, can it? i like to argue in there, it’s a roundabout. it’s only not fun when it’s not fun. can anybody see anything neutrally when it is only seen by them, and how does that make you feel? freakish? good, it should. you’re just you somewhere out in the cosmos and i’m here for now, writing late at night and feeling poor, feeling like i could stroke your spine if you were let out of the house they act like is a cage for once! it’s not your fault, i’m good at this, you’ll see. i’m good at being me in front of you. i’ll prove it to all of us so i don’t have to control my mind. just want everyone to say for once wow, that’s a nice mind with a solid grasp on reality but you can’t have your cake and eat it too apparently