you, with your hands splayed out in little decadent arcs. how god sent a bird to cut through my heart. your voice a grand piano. this, a church space. worship; cry out. i saw you and knew i could never find peace.

you watched me undo myself on the beautiful green; angel feathers in my teeth. i suddenly understood the temptation of eve. i wanted your red hair in my hands. i wanted you under me. the kick to the ribs every time we lock eyes, the dip of your chin, that coy smile. you, somehow knowing.

only you. the rest of the world went silent. all of vegas lost power; the congregation silent behind our doors. we sanctify only in the silken dark. just beak and maw. i would have spooled the whole aria of my life through you. undone eden. is it prayer, is it pleading? the soft release of your voice; that gentle way you play me so precise that i rend apart.

was this the worship i lacked? that precious velvet world you render. the way you love me through my suffering. godhood in you. this place outside; this remade holy. you made a garden appear where had only been concrete. the whole hotel burning down behind us; you still sang me to sleep. you belong to the veil. i felt it whisper while you passed your mouth over me.

we have been given so few scraps and been told to enjoy our feast. we spent so much of our time here starving. so much is missing from me. before this, they took my mother and my love and my future. so many girls missing. they grew sick at the idea of us, overwhelmed with disgust. i kept my hands still rather than spoil this world with the broken car window of my heart. and still: you came here, spine straight, smile quiet. the gravedirt gathered around you - secret places you had chosen to plant flowers. wearing the shadows like a gown, sewing it into art. this way you fold our little space and make something new from nothing. this way that your gentle music took a backroom and made it into a steeple.

i want you like a reprieve. i want you like it is both prayer and pleading. i want you like a better memory. my hand in yours, pressed down on satin sheets. our bodies tangled, desperate, thrumming. the sweet blue of night, your breath in a sigh, the curve of melody. the crane of your neck, and how it kills me. like this, i understand the point of the fight. like this, even just standing up seems like victory. like this, the dirt and blood taste like glory.

love her, be in her orbit, feel her like she paints the whole narrative. you joke - no gender. gender of wacky best friend with ultra-specific plot-relevant interests. love her, can’t have her. love her, forgive her when she forgets your birthday so she can be on a date that doesn’t even end well. love her, try to tear her hair out over a boy. cry on her floor and agree she should have him, you’re just there. love her, know you are temporary. she was looking for him. the whole journey, all along. love her, try to coax her out of it, know her mother is saying the exact opposite, know you are a blue haired pronouns epigraph, know she is tuning you out.

love her, watch her get taught to refine herself into flint for his fire. no friends belong in her future. her whole path, beginning to end - seeking, mindless, the one. watch her scald herself raw trying to be perfect and shaved and skinny and smart and patient and motherly. she will hold your hair in her hands and bring you up to her mouth, drink you like a wishing well. she will close the door every time you are over at her house. in the morning she will make the same jokes he makes to her. copycat the wedding dress of her mother and every mother she’s known before.

love her, kiss her on a tuesday, half by accident, feel the way she sighs into your mouth. love her, both of you singing at the top of your lungs to 90’s punk rock. love her, fight by the side of the road, make up in a motel 6. love her, have her keep you as an experiment on the side of her college bed, little peach. your secrets in the air in pink satin. love her, tell her you want her, get told she-wants-you-too, somehow hear the apology before she even says it. it’s not me it’s you. love her, be not enough for her. be in the back corner again. be a funny remark again. be who she calls at 2 and 3 and 4 AM, be who she kisses while drunk again, be hers, because - you hear her laughing to him - she just likes the attention. love her, tell yourself you’re too smart for this. love her, bite your own skin raw. love her, come back to her bed because you were always the weaker one, in the end.

love her, watch her get picked off, rabbit body into his hyena jaw. love her, love her, love her. she posts a picture of the engagement ring. love her, love her, love -

we had like, she says, looping her arms around your neck. a super long kind of … a fling. and the way she says it, in front of all of the others, with this joy and mocking - you hadn’t even known this was a game she was playing, and here is the punchline. this isn’t the book. you weren’t even a character. not a footnote.

you really meant nothing.

we watched portrait of a lady on fire. she’d had a long week, and fell asleep in my lap. i turned the sound down so it wouldn’t wake her, and watched the subtitles in the dark - feeling her heartbeat, hearing her sigh in her sleep, her blonde hair spilled over one pink cheek.

she woke up for a moment while they were discussing euripides. i told her what was happening, and she curled closer to me while i whispered as if we could be heard - he turns to look at her.

the movie, silent, playing through an off-color projector onto her bedroom wall. she curls her fingers into mine and pushes the bridge of her nose deeper into my leg. in a few minutes, her breathing slows again. a little tiara of peace slowly beads over her skin.

i don’t know what happens in the movie, really. i wasn’t looking.

after the credits, she stirs and looks up at me, her hand taking the ends of my dark hair. she says - come, watch the end of my dreams with me.

we couldn’t be friends anymore and i knew because it was in your hands. i had somehow fallen into the arch of your fingerprint, the tender loops of your veins. the tiny scars of childhood; the larger scars with stories linked into the cell membrane. you laugh and hide your hands behind your back, say they’re kind of gnarly, i think -

we couldn’t be friends anymore and i knew because it was in your kneecap. you have a tiny freckle right on the outside of the left one; it trickles in a roadmap of three partnered dots, laughing down the curve of your leg. you always forget to shave a part of it; you’ll point it out while you cross your legs over themselves into my lap. you tell me i have knobbly knees, i think -

we couldn’t be friends anymore and i knew because it was in the hangnail. in the harpchord of your split ends. in the crooked tooth and rushed eyeliner and birthmark over your rib. everything you assured me was a little ugly.

and i stood there with my little uglies and the scar over my left eye from a rusty pole and my horrible crooked nose and weirdly proportioned bones and i just knew, the way all things make sense, suddenly - that a long time ago, i just forgot how to feel pretend around you. i forgot how to feel on-display.

and you showed me all your little uglies in a glorious little parade and it was just looking at you, just-you, and the way you handed me this secret insecurity, and i knew, i just -

maybe there will be untold horrors - there already are. maybe it is foolish to make tiny poems when there are already whole libraries of better writers and smarter scholars. maybe it is insipid to love flowers when there are more beautiful and thoughtful vistas and visions. maybe, maybe.

but i am holding your hand, and you smell like the cupcakes we have been baking, and this is somehow new, isn’t it, the way energy is reconstituted into magic around you. there is a nowhere land you take me to, somehow; a place where a little kindness is big enough to fill the lungs of peace, a place where hope actually knows her name. we will make the bed and sing along to bad music and the way you laugh will be enough. and i am melting for you, stunned suddenly - oh, oh! the answer had always been love.

i looked for you in my chest because that’s where all the good stories start. all the little bones sown into the wildflowers and the grass all up to our knees. come sort the little wounds so we can seal them. this is where the feathers go, right? run down your spine, over the lip of the sun. on the anthem of freedom. this is where we bury the tooth so she can turn back into the earth. this is where we bury the gun so we can’t hurt our future. this is where we melt the wax and bury the curse.

i tell her: this is divine. the altar is already splattered in history. let me kiss your fingertips. we cannot make god until we find him. they will promise us to pray for our bodies; they are praying for us to inhabit different love. the ichor is just us, and your hair, and the desire to run. we can make the meadow. we can make the forever. we can make the myth. they will remove us from our own margins, anyway, let us love like a cliché. like bad poetry. like a museum piece.

we will kiss like pomegranates. we will cry in bronze. we will piece together a quiet life. we will make art in our image and collect creation. reshape surrender. reshape peace. reshape worshipping.

here is holy: they will hate us, and that will not be enough. here is holy: pinky finger. ring finger. middle finger. pointer finger. thumb. here is holy: the sigh of your love.

she asks me: how do i know when i’m over somebody?

think of you when i look at the moon. think of you while making daisy chains. think of you with your fingers around a wine bottle and your laughter under little string lights. think of you with your hair damp and our legs crossed in your bed. think of you setting out tarot cards, think of high places, think of sitting perfectly still so you don’t recognize how much i’m aching.

dog summer. this winter was a marshland. i went so low that god had to pick up the phone and tell me to stop digging. i have given up most ideas and settled on “it’s good enough.” no more poetry. life is just a hard candy and i am bored of it sucking hard-enough.

think of you in class. think of you in the shower, plan my big confession, step out and sing a different hymn. think of you while i choreograph a new life; think of you while planting bigger pictures. think about what i would say if i had a second. maybe gotcha! maybe fuck you too. maybe hope you’re okay.

tell my therapist - i feel better! and i mean that i haven’t died yet. tell my therapist i feel better and mean that i haven’t been sad like a violin. tell my therapist i feel better and mean - actually, that i feel better, a little bit.

think of you and braid my hair different. think of you and apply lipstick. think of you and tell a story where i call you someone i used to hang out with. think of you and write a dumb little poem about it. think of you and say you just know how to kiss different. think of you and be all logical about it, say i know we are different people, and that’s something sacred. think of you and pick up the phone and don’t send the message.

i’m over it, i’m over it, i’m over it. i’m over it like bird overhead. like kite. like scream. i’m not looking for you. i’m not watching out to see when you’re listening. i’m over it. and i’m over thinking.

i. something about girls shines into my eyes too brightly. at seven, i catch myself thinking - let’s figure that out later.

ii. at seventeen, we are both trying on clothing. i’ve known her since she was 11. her boyfriend will storm up to the changing room. not with her - she’s a fucking lesbian.

iii. at 21, i lie on the floor of my boyfriend’s room, watching the ceiling spin. i’ve cleaned his place on my hands and knees and the whole room smells of bleach. i’m drunk on fireball, which feels dangerous and silly. i can tell i’m being immature. being with him feels lonely. i tell him, without thinking - she kissed me. he will laugh into the pillow. who cares? girls don’t count. it’s kind of hot. show me a picture.

iv. i change schools twice. i change careers every thursday. i change in and out of feeling alive. i think i have some kind of curse - each switch i make sends me back to being seven, and unsure. brings me back to arguing with my father. brings me back to but i think i love her. i love change but i hate setting things in motion. i hate being the new kid. i hate stuttering - well, i’m, uh, i’m into uh

v. we sit and watch the bird coast overhead and talk about art and kiss on the roof of a garden. i’m 27, and the gasoline tank is running low. i pick up a feather for her. i feel like i am still unweaving half the things i thought i’d already know. it feels less and less like i am unpacking. more and more like - finding new places to grow.

vi. something about her shines into my hands and spills out over my lap. like gold satin. like shower of sparks. like everglow. i call my father. i tell him - oh, by the way. i’m bringing her home.

// r.i.d // nosebleed prompt 3.20

i. you pour me another glass of water, humming. you push it over before i realize i’m still thirsty.

ii. my mother calls in the winter and asks when was the last time i went dancing. when she says are you eating? she means i love you. i tell her - i don’t know, i’m not really hungry. i mean i love you, but the swimming pool feels empty.

iii. nick says he doesn’t get why it’s called strawberry blonde. it’s not red enough. my dog is strawberry blonde, and i listened to mitski all last summer. that whole august, the tight-jawed hope of escape beat against my breastbone, snarling. i made a zine that never saw the sun. it almost had your honeyed hair. your mouth around a chocolate strawberry, grinning and lush. i worried that what i felt for you would sluice through the words and force you to run.

iv. i jolt awake and think he’s still in my bed. like vertigo. i sit up too quickly and the dog wakes up. in the low light, we stare at each other, surprised. i know what i did, but why does god give dogs nightmares.

v. i have been wearing less makeup. i have my hair up more often. i don’t-care in a way that feels sort of vibrant - less numb, more unburdened. i feed you my words in fistfuls of grass. i go home and scour through pictures of you. i find some of him where i wasn’t expecting it. it makes me laugh, high and catapulting - i tell nick wow, huh? i messed up bad on that front. when i tell steph - we hate that guy, she says, without hesitation: yup.

vi. my mother calls to ask about the doctor appointment. she is mad-on-my-behalf, and i can hear her cutting vegetables through the phone. she liked meeting you. she said she liked your hair. she says are you eating? and she means it’s spring, and i love you. and i say - yeah, actually, i just got back from lunch. and i mean i love you, and i am standing in the sun.

vii. i hold a tub of strawberries and show them to nick. i’m thinking about your lips. i’m thinking about admitting it. i’m thinking about buying them just so when you come over, your favorite fruit can be in the fridge. look, i say, do you think she’ll like it?

// r.i.d /// nosebleed club discussion 12.19.21 //

you learned god and kept him locked in a sonnet. here is the church. here is your head bowed and your hands shaking. here is a sunday without bread. 

here is the steeple. in second grade you write a song about a girl, a spell you create. you sing together a stitched dream - and then you burn it, knowing the problem is too great, for bigger people, for adults. you pocket shame so generously. fistfuls of the stuff.

open the doors, here’s all the people. the flipped and wiggled fingers give you the chills. each finger a person, each line in your hand a branch you will not walk on. you picture each life you could live like a hangnail - choosing only the good-girl, only the right-for-you.

you will not make your grandmother unhappy. you will marry the right man even if he is not right, and you will have his kids even if they are your kids and he is no father to them, and you will live in the small apartment of matrimonial bliss, and he will kiss you with distraction. you will be a good and godly girl and you will hold control in your fist and you will never stray from this.

your mother warns you - don’t get attached to a mistake just because you took a lot of time making it. he is not a mistake, right?

you will not splinter your family. you will not embarrass your parents. you will not be that cousin or that wedding, you will marry this man who cannot remember to call you, and you will be five years down the line still whispering is-this-happy to yourself in the mirror. you will stand in the shower with your long hair and you will know this is just-it and that settling is good and that god will be with you at the altar.

here is the church. you fold your hands in prayer. here is the steeple. your spine like a knife. 

the angel chorus comes back when you meet her. the song of your second grade witch-spell unfolding. she smells like being outside, and candlelight, and home. she feels like you can unsheathe god and wear him like a cloak. she feels like holy fire. what if, you ask your father, hell is actually cold? 

you kneel before the man you will marry since you will stay (this you know, he has broken you so many times and you never actually get up and go) and know this is just it, there’s no better option, you will have to wash her out of you and you will pick the life that is a ring finger and you will never feel anything but scrubbed clean and wrung through and you will hold her name like a brand inside of you and you will be a pillar of the community and pick up after him and tell everyone he’s so good to you. 

here’s all the people. but her smell, and this room. eve in the garden, bringing a sword of flame to you. take this and eat. let the kingdom of forbidden knowledge be an open door to you.

am i afraid of the monster? no. i have been the monster since i was young and drawing curses in the dirt with other little girls. we ate too many blueberries while whispering about nightshade; we buried little doll bodies where our fathers could not reach them. we cut our own hair and drew wolves in the margins of our notebooks. when i loved, did i not love monstrously, all meat of me, all unholy yearning. so wild was my heartbeat, so tender was any girl i touched, so feral in the moon were we. was i ever more alive than holding her hand and howling into the night, singing loudly i exist, i am here beautifully off-key. i have made blood pacts in bus seats and spellcast and kissed her on a hilltop with her hair blowing in the wind and understood the delicious knife of being free. 

am i afraid of the monster? what monster knows better than me? i have had to take and fight and claw my way into lovely. i am already haunting my own skin. all of the witches are just my best friends. i have held her hand on church steps and under tables and shouted her name at each star above me. i have lived through the silver bullet and the holy fire and the furious envy.

and none of it, none of it. could kill the wild of me.

someone asked me how you move on. do they know i still dream about you. waited to see if you’d say anything on my birthday, was kind of hoping for an opening. my mother says you sound different when you talk about her. i hold you like a coal on the back of my tongue. 

how do we move on? i take pictures of flowers, of ferns, of things i think you would like. i brush my teeth and braid my hair and sing badly and nothing echoes good inside of me. i write poems about birds and burns and bleach and they all reek with the absence of you because not-writing about you is still writing about you. in my favorite daydream i come home to you and just kiss you and hold a candle to the dry tinder and propane, call conflict seeing sparks. 

how do we move on? i guess. like this. i eat too many watermelon sourpatch candies because they’re my favorite. it makes my tongue bleed. i can’t taste anything for hours afterwards. i keep chewing long past the hurting. this is how next time i don’t say yes. this is how i light you out of me like a sunburn. this is how i chase out all this sharp white want. i say - okay. just this once. and then we need to walk away. 

okay just this once. okay just this once. okay. just today. and then we move on.

All I can think about is how you make my hands feel magnetic. I am drawn to you in clover patches. Want to unwind under the roof of your sighs. Oh good lord I am undone and while the church says the unholy want of us is causing the criminal skies to fall - let them fall, then. I will kiss you in the ending sun and hear the hark of your hurt like a sparrowbird. I want to live in the forest of pulling you closer, of hands on your thighs, of laughter. I am looking for a bite mark and a future tense and a morning after. I want to sink into the glory of your blue eyes and sigh under your canine teeth. I want to forget how to kneel under your hands and instead just collapse. I have no more words for wanting. Just a summer of yearning, each day with no end and no bottom. How do i ask the right way to get your jaw in my palm. How do I ask the right way for us both to be home.

I dreamt about you again, your curling hair and your lips and Rome burning. So kind a communion I have constructed in the holy arch of your throat. I would suffer to collapse my bird heart under your gentle thumb. The slip of you, the saint. The secret, thoughtful way. A bed as a pyre. Come teach me color. Come unseat the grey.

Honey girl with eyes like a summer storm and that whipfast mind of yours and how if I was to scoop you out of this holy water it would turn to gold to behold you. That laugh and those pink lips. I believe if mermaids sing of temptation it would be your name over and over again in rivers, all lapsing in a prayer, hands frayed for want of holding you. To be scorched earth and to be beneath you and to be greeting the rising sun to say: I rise too. to bend the horizon just to sink into you. Good and good and good as much as I can do.