MIRROR
11.2.20
Page of Cups crossed the Fool.
or did this Fool cross you?
what if I told you, just minutes ago I used these same hands to claw into my calm.
You’d hardly believe peace like this could be so violent. Maybe you can. I’m not catching those looks you keep throwing my way, let them go over my shoulders, and bounce off the walls. Breath expectation in, and breath me out with it. We’re more mirrors than weasels, you and I. There’s beauty in that, I promise.
FOX-HYDE
11.2.20
what if i told you this texture of “composed”, is held together from the blood in our gums?
we’re all holding our lungs today, i can’t tell if i’m scared out breath will come screaming or clock-tickin. So we smoke them in, all in. make them shallower, more spaced apart adding less seconds to the anxious abacus.
of course we have to breath.
we’re fucking human — we find excuses to pant and gasp each breath with strained muscles and blood movement.
me? i’m dancing, feet moving for the touch we’ve missed, synchronizations lost, culture set on shelf collecting dust for “soon”, “someday”, “maybe 2021”. I’m bearing my teeth at the whitest white i can see in you, the college degree, extracurricular activities, sports matches, privatization, opportunity, law school.
when i move; i pin down scholarships ripped from my fingers, jobs i can’t apply for, identities built from nicknames i never wanted, chemicals on brown skin bleaching their blood dead. i pin down guilt and cigarette butts accidentally flying out the car window. cow fiber in my molars, 2,240,000 acres in the amazon gone. i pin down the breath i take for granted, the one absent from 50.6 million people worldwide. i pin down the fear of whatever you see in me. don’t look to close.
SNAKE.S.KIN
11.2.20
color correction, foundation, contour, lipstick
no not that shade. lipstick. better
brows, lashes, liner. liner? shit, liner. it’s okay. bigger lashes.
lash glue as liner? don’t they use coffee in prison? fucking eyeliner.
pants – don’t match the lips. it’s too hot anyway. when will it rain?
i want those shoes, unassuming mustard. they’re seasoned.
that’s click-clack of a woman used to standing on her toes. she doesn’t need to, even if she weren’t working out her calves, she could still
crush you.
fine, no pants, but garter. Maybe her knowing looks need a little help today. wish i had bigger tits, more ass, more hips, less waist. where the fuck is my eyeliner? thank god for latin thighs. now is not the time to be secretly ashamed to be grateful by the fetishism white people place on my thighs. i wish they worshiped our lives the way they worship my ass. that could change. they may change. that has to change. what if it doesn’t? what if white people win again? He’s not white, he’s orange. white people fetish colored skin.
not that lipstick — something deeper, something redder. a shirt that shows my arms, small arms, small body, let them underestimate.
the shoes don’t fucking match the outfit.
MIRROR
11.1.20
What I’ve learned from you, in Death; There is nothing humble about Grief. She struts the refuge of your sanity at her own time, within her bidding, at her calling. Siblings teach you the value of sharing that way.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry, or bitter, not anymore. Grief, after all, is Love’s gentle reminder to not take up too much space. Admittedly, in your case she may have overcharged the noose tax of bearing the unbearable.
Another thing about grief; she’s not without mercy, she’s the first to weep for our original sin. In a way (a completely unpredictable way), that’s how she whispers her presence in our lives. All contraction and expansion. Sometimes present enough to touch, filling up the hole love dug in subterfuge. Still, we have the audacity to call it “empty.” There’s nothing empty about this. When she visits she unpacks lead on our feet, deposits salt in our eyes, and fills fills fills fills until we’re so full, even the starving wouldn’t dare touch another meal. It’s birth, or, rebirth in your case. Labor pains so horrid, they’d make any mother think the outcome of pregnancy is the origin story behind exorcisms.
I thought I’d had grief figured out. But to know grief is to know love, life, death. To know you, but I forgot you. Grief draws me a map to find the bits of you I neglected; I find crossroads and rest stops in songs you liked, books you read, habits you could never really kick. Do you still bite your cuticles?
I made the mistake to treat this sadness like any other meal, humble pie, sugar loaf. Grief is broth to the sick – you can’t separate the marrow from the spoon, and there’s no leaving the table until every last drop is drunk. And drink you must.
Refuse Grief’s medicine, and it will be your marrow’s turn to steep the water.
JAGUAR
10.31.20
Dia De Los Muertos,
This house is haunted and now you know that first hand. Ghosts leave ugly messes here. The type that wake you up with ice-cubes in your belly. No amount of blankets can cover up that chill.
I’m sorry. Truly. I could ramble off excuses about miscalculations and bad timing, but we both know there was intention in flirting with madness. What surprised us all, I think, is when madness started flirting back.
Know what though? I don’t believe there’s a thing we’ve seen we have not first felt. You knew this the moment you could no longer discern adrenaline from oxytocin, fate thinks herself a comedian that way and we’ve both been had on this one. It’s a good thing we have a sense of humor.
So fuck the monsters under the bed, and fuck me too while you’re at it. Let the sounds of our laughter and moans be the sage that smokes out beasts from their hiding places. There’s no music dancing with the dead.
10.30.20
MIRROR
You pull your pen from your pocket and cross out madness
angry, manic lines, pushed and rushed on top the things
that scare you
I know that look; bitterness that resents the moment for showing too much
for showing anything at all
an angry foster shoving ferret thoughts back in their cage
but those words are the perfect punctuation to our chaos
the world needs your madness to exhale
even when they call their in-breath sanity
Once you called my eyes kind. That was morning.
Tonight, you call them thunder; and yeah, I might downpour on your lightning if you let me, that’s what happens when the moon is your only witness, but don’t be fooled to think sunrises will pause for our Autumn.
I can’t tell if you feel seen, or sane with me.
Both answers scare me.
FOX-HYDE
10.29.20
i wonder if everyone else feels the pulls
magnetism moving feet this way and that
so used to the undercurrent of what comes next
half the time i can’t tell whats choice
its subtle that way
plucks words from cavity spaces
the one that refills oils last minute, asks the right questions, makes just enough eye contact
before any choice is made
hands are searching hip creases
and we’re making playlists
with the parts of us neglected by choice
MIRROR
10.26.20
To hell with daylight and its half-harted satisfaction.
Moonlight, you bring me guitar strings, culture, and released rage.
You have that effect one me. On people, I think.
Asking the questions no one dares ask. Chipping at my ice chest to dig for water. I melt on your lips the way ceramics melt on your bat.
You have no idea,
The weight that lifts with
no stone left un-turned.
and im so amethyst in your hands.
BOTANICA
10.25.20
this should feel good
good like Saguaros at dawn.
Good like Ephedra to tired lips, Ocotillo’s feet on short minds, Opuntia to the hungry.
sure, it’s nice:
small showers to thirsty grounds. Enough to tease the ground with “steady” when the roots still ache for “flow”.
to call it rain is an insult to the river, just like to call it love is a disservice to the heart.
you dipped your toes in and called it swimming. But the damn broke; chains turned cages but no one asked the lion where the thorn was. Instead she limped back to skirts and shirts and therapy appointments.
these mountains once danced green, now they scream dry — i meant what i said, but when you heard monsoon i saw mist. mist-ya, friend.
I’m sorry.
MIRROR
10.24.20
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
they kind of suck, you know.
sorry, sorry. That’s not to say you have bad taste.
But you do.
like the time you locked yourself in a bathroom crying at Sundance because the candles were made of beeswax and you couldn’t stop feeling the sting of the deceased.
or that other time you called me selfish for carrying my clothes in plastic.
My only change of clothes.
It was raining.
I don’t mean bad taste as in “it all sounds the same.”
I mean bad taste as in: How dare you think it will stay the same? How dare you not give the world the benefit of the doubt? how dare you not give me the benefit of the doubt? Bad taste like, we’ll never know if you thought yourself too much, or thought us too little.
At least when you were breathing, your voice-box gave us choice. Now you’ve muffled it with un-processed grief and left behind the climax of your disappointment as a legacy.
That’s what happens when you leave in a hurry. You leave things behind.
Unfinished bits waiting for the sailors knot to make them a little less loose, a little more beginning. That baggage stings harder than honey.
I can say this: Your chaos echoed. I found me digging for feeling in strange bodies, looking for catharsis in connection. The one you took, is the same I press against pillows and nothing feels good. Nothing feels good. Nothing feels good. Nothing feels good. Nothing feels good.
And I know, I know. I should be happy for you. You finally got what you wanted. And I know it’s selfish to rest my marrow to the bone and want to call it life, but when you lost your hope — you took a piece of mine with it. Because what good is the world if all the best ones keep on stinging our feet?
I’m angry at you.