thank you.
thank you everyone for your continued support and mostly for being respectful and kind (and sending me cookies!).
i’d like, if possible, to make this room a safe space for everyone. please respect each other’s space.
self expression, i understand, is a luxury. i myself have been struggling to have it, most of the time fighting to keep it.
it’s not easy to look past things that hinder you from being authentic.
as for me, while attempting in doing so, i am trying to be more aware as not to trigger anyone or sending them into places they don’t want to be, places they don’t know they don’t need to be.
i don’t want them to. i never meant to suggest that i do, nor challenge them to.
thanks again and have a nice life.
cheers.
maybe.
and august is too handsome.
salinger.
“Honest writing always makes people nervous, and they’ll think of all kinds of ways to make your life hell. ”
no. just no.
veins beneath the water
Marilyn Monroe took all her sleeping pills
to bed when she was thirty-six, and Marlon Brando’s daughter
hung in the Tahitian bedroom
of her mother’s house,
while Stanley Adams shot himself in the head. Sometimes
you can look at the clouds or the trees
and they look nothing like clouds or trees or the sky or the ground.
The performance artist Kathy Change
set herself on fire while Bing Crosby’s sons shot themselves
out of the music industry forever.
I sometimes wonder about the inner lives of polar bears. The French
philosopher Gilles Deleuze jumped
from an apartment window into the world
and then out of it. Peg Entwistle, an actress with no lead
roles, leaped off the “H” in the hollywoodsign
when everything looked black and white
and David O. Selznick was king, circa 1932. Ernest Hemingway
put a shotgun to his head in Ketchum, Idaho
while his granddaughter, a model and actress, climbed the family tree
and overdosed on phenobarbital. My brother opened
thirteen fentanyl patches and stuck them on his body
until it wasn’t his body anymore. I like
the way geese sound above the river. I like
the little soaps you find in hotel bathrooms because they’re beautiful.
Sarah Kane hanged herself, Harold Pinter
brought her roses when she was still alive,
and Louis Lingg, the German anarchist, lit a cap of dynamite
in his own mouth
though it took six hours for him
to die, 1887. Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned
and so did Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Virginia Woolf. If you are
travelling, you should always bring a book to read, especially
on a train. Andrew Martinez, the nude activist, died
in prison, naked, a bag
around his head, while in 1815 the Polish aristocrat and writer
Jan Potocki shot himself with a silver bullet.
Sara Teasdale swallowed a bottle of blues
after drawing a hot bath,
in which dozens of Roman senators opened their veins beneath the water.
Larry Walters became famous
for flying in a Sears patio chair and forty-five helium-filled
weather balloons. He reached an altitude of 16,000 feet
and then he landed. He was a man who flew.
He shot himself in the heart. In the morning I get out of bed, I brush
my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in the clothes I like best.
I want to be good to myself.
Trouble, Matthew Dickman
i’ve got a cookie thing about you
given the nature of what we do, i shouldn’t be talking to you. you are so far off the food chain i should probably bow a curtsy and call you sir.
or mylord. lol.
what it’s like coming down from the ivory tower, you ask. i feel giddy, disoriented.
damn that smile could send someone into someplace else. my ears are ringing. and all I can think of is how am i going to eat this cookie and can you just go away now.
i blink my eyes into morning, your smile the only one i see.
They told me that I was meant for the cleaner life;
that you would drag me through the mud.
They said that you would tread all over me,
that they could see right through you,
that you were full of hot air;
that I would always be chasing,
always watching you disappear after sleeker models—
that it would be a vicious cycle.
But I know better. I know about your rough edges
and I have seen your perfect curves.
I will fit into whatever spaces you let me.
If loving you means getting dirty, bring on the grime.
I will leave this porcelain home behind. I’m used to
twice-a-day relationships, but with you I’ll take all the time.
And I know we live in different worlds, and we’re always really busy,
but in my dreams you spin around me so fast, I always wake up dizzy.
So maybe one day you’ll grow tired of the road
and roll on back to me.
And when I blink my eyes into morning,
your smile will be the only one I see.
No Matter the Wreckage
Sarah Kay
concerns.
my darling jetter. (2)
Saw him at a party. I saw her too, the pale mannequin he’s with. She’s tall and pretty. He was far, and I didn’t need to come near. I decided to stay away.
But he saw me.
I smiled at him. Happy-for-you smile. As I was happy, for him. He’s alive. And happy. Doesn’t matter if it’s without me.
He raised his glass and nodded, smiling back at me. And with that I let go.
How liberating. To be the bigger person. When you don’t feel like owning anything, anyone, but memories. Only memories.
Life goes on.
conflicted.
craving for achievements, but at the same time resistant to being recognised.
my existence a third degree burn.
that hollow part of your chest.
grief, i’ve learned, is just really love.
it’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. all that unspent love gathers up in the corner of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest.
grief is just love with no place to go.
Jamie Anderson
your life, which so close to my own.
everything about me is.
lemonade.
everytime you come out weary-eyed and pale, a giant hand squeezes my heart with all its might and makes lemonade out of it.
solemnly, ravishingly.
Today I realised that I’ve been thinking of you for almost more than half of my life. For so many years I’ve been thinking of you.
Every single day in that almost more than half of my life, I’ve thought of you, in sadness, in pain, in love and in vain. Every single day of my life since I first met you I have thought of you solemnly, ravishingly.
Happy anniversary, my dearest
I love you with all my heart and soul
i am never not.
the first time in my life, i believe it.
it’s not the pain.
on the ways his music feed is a love poem.
i want the world to be.
heavier than you thought.
there. i think of you there.
i have loved and lost you, now go.
dear camden,
i didn’t see you
again
when i had the chance
i know you’re here
i have your letters
i don’t think i will read them anytime soon
but please if you need a closure, if you happen to come across this in your wandering: i have forgiven you
i have for a long time
it’s okay
we all make mistakes
you don’t need closures as you might think, but if you do, consider this as one.
now go make your mark, you’ve done
a wonderful job making people around you so very happy that you don’t need me or my validation for existence
you were a part of me in such an intimate manner, and that hasn’t changed. i honor and treasure you, now go.
we’re okay.
the thing is.
i’m sorry
dear camden,
i’m sorry for what happened. i’m sorry you have to go through this again and again. and blamed senseless for these things you have no control over.
i’m sorry i didn’t call and say this in person only because i care about you too much to make a shift to this safe distance that we have built so hard so carefully for so long.
but today i am thinking of you and your family and hope that you can move on and heal from this and come out stronger as you always have.
love, me.
like everybody else.
…like everybody else, i want to die someday but not anytime soon. I like dusk just as much as anyone but I think I’m becoming more keen on sunlight, waking up to the sweet & coffee in the kitchen & all those birds. there are plastic spikes on my windowsill to keep the pigeons away & I don’t know what to think about that. things like that fill my whole entire animal heart… thin heat from radiator in the library. frosty fields where I almost died & died again until I forgot what it means to die or stay alive.
it’s November again & most of us are still alive. this make me so glad except for the fact that it has to be said. I look outside & a black flock of birds erupts into something that’s never been described before.
“It’s November Again”, Talin Tahajian
hungry for something it can’t name.
Owen keeps asking what
happens to his body
when he dies, what happens
inside the body,
and I tell him
all your organs slow
down, your lungs and
heart, your liver,
and the blood in your body
stops moving
around your body, until
everything stops
and become quiet and
rests. he wants to know
if it’s the same thing
for birds and when birds
die what happens to their
feathers, if the feathers
stay up in the sky and what
is a wolf, he wants
to know, and can it eat us.
He says that some things
come back after they die
but we don’t want
them to. No, I say,
sometimes that’s all
we want. No matter what.
For someone
we loved to come back
no matter how terrible
or painful it might
be. His older brother,
Hamza, is alone in his room
again, lying very still
on his bed working out
the compass of being
a teenager on his
Nintendo. I want to
take both boys out
into the yard and have
them bathe their feet
in the October grass.
Pull the cold air over
them like a woolen overcoat.
But I need to get dinner
going and I need to
grab the clothes from
the dryer and fold
them. I don’t know
how I will get the house
cleaned up before it’s
time for bed. Before
I became a father my
greatest fear was dying
in a plane crash, the
plane stalling through
a cloud of birds. Now
I sit at a kitchen table
and stare and stare
at the gas bill
like looking out
the window at a car
on fire. Sometimes
I want to be a ghost
or a vampire, a zombie
slowly walking over a hill,
hungry for something
it can’t name but,
with arms outstretched,
begs for anyway.
ALL HALLOW’S EVE, Matthew Dickman
crash. boom. bangg.
Years away now. Years my life without you near. Years in solitude and just like that you came back into my life. No signs, no hunch. No sting in your gut trying to tell you this is the day. This is the day you’re going to again meet the love of your life. You got rid of him and now the universe is giving you a second chance.
What have I done? I set you free. I have set you free.
the world can be so dark, yet you remain.
inside of me.
the pain i don’t say out loud builds a home inside me.
Olivia Gatwood, Life of the Party
a kind of loneliness.
there is a kind of loneliness that comes from being with people. the kind that is more about a recognition of the failure of communication. the gaps. like the other day this woman came over and i served her tea…
the woman told me of her career trajectory, which i have already heard in this same excruciating detail twice before. it involves a broken engagement and an incomplete PhD program. which she considers failure, having come from some ambitious North Shore whatever world. i don’t consider either thing failure at all.
still she speaks to me as if i am her judge, or confessor. i felt so lonely hearing her stories, because i know they are about her and her issues and her judges and have nothing to do with me.
i nod, sip my tea, thinking about how hard it is to really truly connect with another human being.
Suzanne Scanlon, Promising Young Women.
disclaimer.
don’t you people be worried. he will make a public appearance sooner than you’d think. my next piece does not represent in any way his state of well-being.
and if you’d go easy with the death threats (i died inside a long time ago anyway), that’d be great!
thank you.
i believe in you.
enlarged.
i give you six months.
nothing much that happens to us
changes our disposition.
Really, you believe that?
I think so. I read this study
where they followed people
who won the lottery, and people
who had become paraplegic, right.
You’d think that…
you know, one extreme
is gonna make you…
euphoric, and the other suicidal.
But the study shows that
after about 6 months,
Uhum
Right…
As soon as people got used to
their new situation,
they were more or less the same.
The same?
Well, yeah…
Like if they were basically
an optimistic, jovial person,
they’re now an optimistic,
jovial person, in a wheelchair.
If they’re a petty miserable asshole,
ok, they’re a petty miserable asshole
with a new Cadillac, a house and a boat.
So, you now be forever depressed,
no matter what great
things happen in my life?
Definitely!
Great!
No, come on…
Are you depressed now?
Before Sunset. (2004) Dir. Richard Linklater
despite the faults.
You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.
William Faulkner
Robbie Loved You a Bit Too Much Sometimes
She was as I saw her the last time: confident, so sure of herself that she scared me. She was what I was afraid of, the kind of stability that would only suffocate me.
I should have not taken you away from her. I should not have come between the two of you. She was your soulmate and you, hers. You’re so steady with her like you could face everything together. Unlike us where everything was hot and cold and there’s days I didn’t want you, days I spent with people I thought I loved. I didn’t want you and you felt unwanted, abandoned.
One look and she said to me, “Of course you’ll be here.”
What I heard was, “You’ve done enough damage.”
And I imagine you in that bed, alone, where you should not be had you not meet me, probably living your life still, careless and free, alive and not dying.
She said exactly that.
Just imagine if I stayed away just like she told me off once in a bathroom stall a long long time ago.
But I loved you, I loved you! How could I stay away?
But she said I could have and you’d still be standing. She was right and I felt my insides crawling leaving, slowly but surely, seeping away like thin smoke. My insides no longer belonged to my body and I was gone for good.
People talked to me and I heard them faintly but I wasn’t there.
Jetter asked me what she said to me on our way home but honestly I couldn’t remember anything, I only felt like I should undo me.
I know I wrote once after Camden beat you up, you came to see me. You were sweet and I told you, you’re a Daddy now.
But as I lived on in this side of the story, everything got rotten. You were broken. You didn’t wake up the next day, you didn’t come to see me.
Emma Glows at Sunsets
I don’t know her. But I imagine Emma glows at sunsets. She radiates like the sun. Even now as I am writing this, I could see her face smiling at me and it gives me warmth in my stomach. How tender she must have been with you. You smiled differently, you seemed happy. When I saw you with her, I felt peaceful. If you should be with anyone, it should be her.
I imagine all sorts of things about her. How she took her morning coffee. How she sang in the shower. How she glided on stage, singing and chanting her lines. I imagined the crowd inside the theater mesmerized by how she moved, how she spoke, how she shined. She had so much light. She was the light you needed in times of gloom and darkness. I was thankful for her, but only in some hidden parts of me.
To say that Emma is talented is an understatement, but she’s humbling, even more with a star’s qualities. You met her when you were working on music scores for one of her sold out plays. They took it out from Broadway, touring around the globe. You needed a space to forget me, and so you two met.
Joe told me this.
He didn’t mean to set you up with her, you just happened to be there when Joe, Shelly, James, and Emma had a dinner at the Bel Air. You were at the bar, drinking alone yet another night not long after we broke up. Joe dragged you to join their table.
You didn’t even say much, nor did she. But you and beautiful Emma, you two exchanged looks like no one else was there. You loved the way she smiled almost immediately, how enchanting that you couldn’t take your eyes off of her.
She drove you home that night because you were a bit tipsy. You gambled fate by asking her to stay the night and she did.
But she wasn’t me. She didn’t wake you up the way I did. She didn’t make your coffee the way I did (too much sugar!). She didn’t make you breakfast. She went into shower and head off to work. She didn’t say goodbye. She smiled at you from the door as if she knew you weren’t really there.
And just like that she’s gone.
And you were alone (and lonely) again.
But perhaps she did woke you up the way I did. She did make your coffee exactly the way you wanted it, and she made you perfect breakfast: french toast with sprinkled Swiss cheddar, or just a plain old blueberry pop tarts, piled and warmed up, glazed with honey. She kissed you goodbye and said would call for a dinner date, you didn’t have to do anything. She’s perfect and you fell in love head over hills for her.
Only years after I would know you weren’t with her. The whole time I wasn’t there you were lonely, working like a dog, then hopping from one bar to another, drinking.
maia diaries 
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