Things are sweeter when they’re lost. I know–because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, …and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
happy birthday.
i’m sorry.
rest in peace.
fall completely apart, from time to time.
i’m envious of the clouds who can from time to time
fall completely apart & everyone just says, it’s raining…
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities
maybe it has nothing to do with time after all.
I don’t know how to explain this but many a time —and this was when it started to happen more often, I left my body and I went into the blue.
In the blue you felt nothing, be nothing. It was just dark and quiet and you’re gone. Sometimes, you could feel yourself breathing but it was nothing, you became nothing.
And sometimes you came back and you were so shocked for being gone that long that you caught your breaths so erratically that it might cause you, and those around you (if anyone was there at all), to feel panic.
But I was calm this time. When I came back to catch my breath it wasn’t erratic, it was silent like death.
You were there and you too were silent, like death.
Your hand, moving a little bit faster, to clean, to wipe, to wash. To make everything gone, dissolve into the water, the bluest I’ve seen.
And I remember you said, “it’s going to be okay.”
It’s been quiet for a while now.
on earth lately, i’ve been looking at everyone like i love them.
…I walked in the country of letters,
its fields of eyes belonging to my lost sister—
dark eyes that early closed, or forgot
to open. I have not been back in some time,
though often I walk to my office, daydreaming
of that country’s fashions, the clothes of its citizens
like the clothes of my dearest dead or unborn.
In the heaven of letters, I will not walk.
I will not strip the golden clothes from my lover,
…I will stand, stay with the trees before me,
their ancient charisma that cares for me.
Like all scholars in any sort of heaven, I will study
the metaphysics of madness. I will find
that the littler the light, the better it tastes.
On Earth lately, I’ve been looking at everyone
like I love them, & maybe I do. Or maybe I only love
one person, & I’m beaming from it.
Elegy
Chen Chen
where the water bubbles up at the spring
i want to go back
to the beginning
we all do
i think:
hurt won’t be here
but i’m wrong
where the water
bubbles up
at the spring
isn’t that a wound?
Gregory Orr
somewhere in between the slices of your was and am
you’ve found all you need and I’m scared to interrupt your content state of being with my delusional demands of
occasional hi and let’s
as I already see you barely
manage to spread me
somewhere in between
the slices of your was and amthe thinner I am in your thoughts
of becoming a shade/Josie Firze
the more my everything hurts so once more
I become a paper plane and throw myself
against another wall of laters and sorry-nos…
geographic (dis)placement (1)
1997
i was fifteen and my hair was big as cotton candy coming warm out of a spinner, my first
boyfriend played the violin, he was
a baby cute baby, we wrote each other letters with tiny
hearts and songs, i ripped them to shreds. see, i had a thing for the boy with the guitar, it’s complicated
he sang a letter to elise at graduation, i found
his girlfriend’s diary in my locker somehow —he winked
at me from the stage.
(you were eighteen, running and kicking, athletic not yet poetic—-falling in love, breaking apart… the thing goes long for life, i would hear about it one night, late into the evening. my hair not so big then.)
Modern Times Anxiety
he comes fast and early, but lingers longer
he doesn’t know
he could be suave, serene a quietude
he doesn’t know
she’s been writing goodbyes since Christmas
he doesn’t know
he is the writer of this storybook
perhaps he does know
she t(h)reads deep water, they’re never whole
for a while, she knew
she’s been saying never but
it’s too far a stretch
he’s been drawing lines until there’s no more
to draw, she doesn’t mind
for so long they will have to live in the clouds
but for one day, they may not
one day they won’t have to ask, “are you okay?” anymore
they don’t know. not just yet.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again —Sylvia Plath
maia diaries 