Don’t know how or why, but I knew when. When I waited for the subway, hoping no one would push me or throw peanuts at my arms. What if I was allergic?? I mean I am, allergic to this feeling, my body hates it, hates you. A lie, of course, that’s all I want right now. To talk, sigh, tired because you’ve become a normal part of my life. So much so that I can be bored, am allowed the privilege of boredom. Making mistakes by taking time for granted, no longer able to remember when you weren’t constantly around. In the end that’s all I want. To send you pictures, texts, my thoughts, my days and nights. How funny, I barely know you, but want you know everything about me.   

If you look at rats for a while, squirrels start to look really big.

Somewhere along the way, underground, flaming hot doritos fell on our heads while waiting for the 1 in times square. I thought it was confetti, or fall leaves, or something. But when peanuts were chucked at us, felt one land hard against my arm, I knew it wasn’t. It was chips, bright orange. How strange. Why? Like actually why? I will hunt you down. Throw doritos at you and shove peanut butter down your throat. And you’ll ask why and I’ll say because. Because I wanted to and you did so then I did and now we’re in a perpetual cycle of nothing good. So we left the strange orange squares on the ground, crushed by boots, onto the subway. 

Everything, I like to imagine, was done with intention. I doubt it though, I doubt it ever meant anything at all. Another day for him, another morning, another girl ordering toast.

Face my legs and the striped skirt 

Ocean floor burn.

…leans down through the doorway and looks into the car, into my chest, but doesn’t find the whole truth.

The shape of your back and the way you talk are now familiar. How insanely cool is that??

I felt my body relax and sink into itself, dust on the concrete steps of the garden, facing the moon and the man with wings. Holding my orange tea, folding around it to get warm, the burning, too hot but good for my sore throat. Am I sick? Allergies? Frat flu? Not covid, I just took a test. Thank god. But I felt warm and the trees were still green and the church loomed east, in a comforting way, though I’m not religious, spiritual maybe. The sun setting, pinkish clouds and blue-gray sky. Until we kindly got kicked out at 6:00 by someone with a set of loud and overflowing keys. Walked through the grocery store with my olives, did you not like them? Did you not like the bread and pistachios? I do, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Our fault maybe, we’re transitioning everything over. Over? Over to what. Over over its over silly. So sorry I’ll keep my eye out, in the 1000s, yes? Not your fault. Yes. Name? How long ago? No idea. No clue, maybe not ever but I didn’t want to believe that. Didn’t want to admit I was there purely out of hope, a sad, pitiful kind. Because I shouldn’t anymore. So instead, I constructed my own reality, lying to the man for my mind’s sake, saying umm maybe __(insert period of time)__.

See, then you think too much about it and it’s already gone. A fleeting icy second! Too bad, to bad baby. It’s in hott hot milliseconds that flash by so hot they become cold. OOO jumpy. Like a blue fire, so hot it’s cold. So hot I’m cold. So hot that my heart is stone. Kidding not hot. But to myself? Yes, yes of course what else would you expect? I love being with myself and alone. She says, repeating until she believes it enough to be the half truth, half serious.  But am I a better person for it, yes I reside to myself yes. Yes of course. I taught me, you taught me, you taught me not to care later and that was good too. 

Fate fate fate. Pulls me down and brings me to sit comfortably, legs crossed on an old dirty pillow. I can feel the dust against my thighs. I look down and twist my foot, stepping on whatever I hate and despise, trying to mush it into the ground. But my shoes only get dirtier. And the worms decide to crawl through and become my shoelaces. My leg hair is roots poking out of the dirt and my veins are branches that break concrete. Bugs crawl in and out of my eyes and ears, to my fingers, fly away and come back. I could crush them in my palm but I don’t want to, seems wrong. Feel the pop of a caterpillar between maple leaves, something that left fingerprints for 10 years. It rains and the worms come to the surface of my pores and leave blindly, some drown, some dry up on the sidewalk, some make it to the dirt. There it is, left breathing, just staring up at the sky, not dead but not really alive either. Just resting until I sink into the ground and become grass again.

AND I WAKE UP mourning the loss of someone I never knew and never had…they existed in my head, in my sleep. The thing is though the face is known, so, see?? it’s a whole mindfuck

It’s been a month or so. There’s people playing in the park again. A bluegrass kind of thing. The leaves are starting to change and the acorn caps are on the ground which reminds me of the walk we took where I showed you how to whistle with one. Didn’t seem too impressed but here I am anyways. There’s a short trail here, a minute or so walk, a second safe haven, that feels like home. Uneven ground felt familiar, the spontaneousness was known, unlike the consistency of sidewalks (having their own time and place). I looked at the dirt and ground and cried because it felt familiar in a place where so much is unknown. And the leaves were crunchy and I slipped kind of as I walked down the hill, shoes rolling with these weird circular seed pods.

The sun feels really nice in my face. Spotty through the leaves like the light that reflects off my silver shoes. 

Light that smells like leaves, feels like their color and the irregular shapes left in between. Blank negative space that shifts for the sun to come through. 

And sycamore trees 

And a 60 year old man shadow boxing, gloves 🧤 on the side 

I am religious, devout to whatever this is.

You get a taste, taste like the raspberry jam filled cookie. Hums of voices low vibrations very very very chipped edges of tables. Who had to knock on wood too many times? What child ran headfirst into the corner of the table. Maybe the one the woman in line is holding though they probably can’t walk yet. Many pieces of paper layered up over each other ohhh like the rock in Michigan with layers and layers of paint. I wonder where the paint ends and the rock begins. Or is it all just paint now. Or has the paint itself formed into a rock, solid? Metamorphic or sedimentary. IGNEOUS. ingenious. I’m very tempted to eat the leftovers in front of me that the past people left. To wrap my finger around the inside of a used mug, getting what’s left of stale coffee foam.

It smells like the color gray and dust and sweat and smoke and I remember for a second so I sit about it later 

Sit with my hands under my legs so they can’t move or make weird sounds

Sit so my fingerprints press into my thighs and I brand myself with curls and waves 

My brother, I could see his eyes were red when he walked through the door and turned away. Stoppp, stopp, cover your face and hide your head between your hands. But let them do shameless things too. Let them wear silver rings and get bug bites and itch and scratch and chew your fingernails to their beds. Let them hurt and carry and hold and be held.

With the smells and the pictures and the do nothing no good of boots and sweaty shirts 

And time down the sidewalk well spent on wondering what if 

50 times my eyes hovered closing through sleep and 50 times I tried to wake up again

Eating chocolate cake until I get a headache

Hmmmmm what else

Time to move on!

So complicated and strung out what are their stories? I would listen for hours. Cat speaks with silence and a strained high soft voice. Floats away and under the doorway onto the street and underground or up.

So right now I have to trust and learn and believe in good soft things. Warm things that I can hold after I slide a lighter into the pocket of my gloves. I must regrow towards the sun like some plants do, or all plants? Fuck me I should know. But just because I am a human doesn’t mean I know everything about myself like how I work in the greenhouse and don’t know everything about plants. No one ever could because there’s too much to learn. I need to trust when she says she feels whimsical around me and know that it is the truth. I must give in to the familiarity and knowing and wanting to be around. I forgot to some extent that friendship could be like this. Or maybe I never even knew. 

I think they carry too much. I think they’re sad, heavy, but won’t admit it. Only with offhand comments or I’m better nows. I want to hold them until it heals, feels even a bit lighter, to tell them it's okay. But I can’t. So I stand in silence, waiting.  

When I saw the lines that ran back home I stood still standing for too long in one place

my face its red and roses pink circles.

Ash run wild around frames. Not to be seen since the world doesn’t rotate that fast.

Tough words through tough thick skin so thick I can walk on gravel now.

Because this can’t all be explained rationally with fact and I don’t want it to. 

12 hertz of immovable and incomprehensible force. 12 hertz far beyond what we see and stand on. 12 hertz being our body's limit, the end, but the beginning of everything beneath. Trust, these images say, that things will continue to move. Trust that the Earth’s life will extend far beyond you and your concept of time. Trust the deep forces only known through your feet. Know that when you look at rock, you look at a world of pasts and depths unknown, existing in their own energy, their own time, with vast creations ahead of them. 

Some fuck ass fleeting sense of solidity that quickly becomes nothing but blaming your thoughts 

A wet plate vs. a dry plate, the idea of “capturing” even while water runs through your fingers and hands. A wet plate of memories, a marsh of thoughts, of sinking mussels and foggy ideals washed away by silver boots. Freeze! Freeze, to freeze and thaw is an act of warmth, of love, an exchange of heat and fragile promises. Fragile like the lace edge of a wave, where two things meet, a point of contact and exchange, a compromise defined by either side.