DISSOLUTION

resonating the past week: if you want me you can have me until the end of time.

it's finals week. it's almost been another year. back to the time of year again where i get panic attacks, feel isolated, lack a schedule and lack purpose--christmas break. i suppose i am one of the few who looks forward to mondays and looks forward to having routine and obligations and reasons to feel okay that day. everything-class, tests, lectures-is a distraction to feel okay. and i understand now how adults work so much; working so much is a better alternative to thinking at all.

i have been thinking about seeing a psychiatrist for awhile now and trying out medication. i think christmas break would be a good time to start medication and see how it affects me (i'll have time to see how it affects me) with limited distractions and more time to think and feel. i guess i should ask my therapist first, but i just sobbed a lot our last session, and before that, i just smiled a lot about leaving for new york. i already booked a flight back to new york in march for spring break. something to look forward to. i'm looking for jobs and housing there as well. another top distraction.

some things making me feel calm and comforted lately: looking for jobs and apartments in other cities, cooking meals with friends, discussing mental health out loud, crowds of people and feeling anonymous, comfortable silences, being in transit (in-between destinations), running.

i finally ordered some books about love addiction (not to be confused with sex addiction) which i heard suggested on mental health podcasts over and over.  i've learned this usually stems from lack of connection with caregivers in early age, i.e. inadequate or inconsistent nurturing, low self-esteem, absence of positive role models for loving relationships. love addicts choose partners who are emotionally unavailable and/or verbally/physically abusive. they choose partners who demand a great deal of attention but who do not meet, or even try to meet, their own emotional or physical needs. they participate in activities that don't interest them or go against personal values in order to please a partner. they give up important interests, beliefs, and friendships to maximize time spent in the relationship.

i have done all of these things. in every relationship. "my fear of abandonment is exceeded only by my terror of intimacy." hoping i can figure some things out.

anyway, i am in no place to be wondering about how a person feels about me or doesn’t feel about me, because i'm not secure about another person’s feelings, i know that i don’t want anything serious at this moment in my life, but something serious is the only thing I can handle emotionally vs being insecure about how another person feels. i feel like relationships right now aren't for the right reasons and that too many people act as an emotional catchall for each other. otherwise it’s not worth it to me, being only partially/sometimes/carelessly invested in each other because it seems like it’s for selfish reasons, like being falsely invested just because i'm lonely and lost.

depression is a blindness and deafness to hope and beauty, but high res and max volume on god damn nothing. if anyone is reading this, don't worry, i'm not suicidal, just deeply sad.

OTHERS, MORE

how could i have expected you to assemble any feeling for me or ever voice any idea of love
when even your orgasm was stifled and numb

"in another universe, you kiss my sunburned shoulders and in another one every gas station is a home and in another one you have your own sun and one of those is a universe where i never speak"

HEAVY/CLOUDED

self-confidence below sea level
i hope all the food i left in your cabinets is moldy

feeling heavy but not knowing where to put all the things making you heavy cause everything’s kinda clouded. i want to feel the weight of you, on top of me, accepting me. just feeling overwhelmingly empty. doing everything but still not feeling enough. just numb. but like numbness that you can feel in a terrible way.

i will be in new york city on friday. i can't stop thinking about paris, sadness, and the horror of inhumane humanity.

I'VE FALLEN SHORT AGAIN

I've been outgrown
hibernate

cloudy bright night 

beauty alone

not painful sad

small feelings abt big things 

we've been outgrown

a tiny spencer statement & vancouver 

PARESIS

1. drinking a bottle of wine before leaving my apartment just to be able to talk (2014)
2.  being social for the first time without needing alcohol to feel comfortable (2015)
3. crying in the middle of the street into the phone to you, and strangers asking me if i was okay when you didn't (2015)
3. eating only a grapefruit for a whole day, two days, and forgetting to eat all together (2011, 2012, 2015)
4. being so afraid to be alone with myself that fucking whoever seems like a better option (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015)
5. giving up on family (don't remember when it started and it hasn't ended)
6. loving someone and then learning who they are (2015)
7. not recognizing what i am (don't remember when it started, and it has gotten worse)
8. when, apparently, you remember nothing you did in an entire year (2013)

ALVER ON YOUR BIRTHDAY

The glow of the present

i wish that i could put the taste of morning coffee, some recent blossom of winter, words spoken yesterday, clean cold air, soft in my room, loudness in my car, runner's high, bloom of night stars, the glow of the present
and send to you the small of life so we could share today

I don't know how to speak love when the heart is a busted cup filling with spit and paste, and the only sexual fantasy I have is busting into the pentagon with a bazooka-sized pen and blowing open the mind of generals


The First Straw
Jeffrey McDaniel

romantic rug burns 

listening to strangers sadnesses hoping to feel less alone. 

human beings are not discrete 

"a view with a grain of sand" wislawa szymborska


we call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand
it does just fine without a name
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect, or apt.

our glance, our touch means nothing to it
it doesn't feel itself seen and touched
and that it fell on the windowsill
is only our experience, not its
for it, it is not different from falling on anything else
with no assurance that it has finished falling
or that it is falling still

the window has a wonderful view of a lake,
but the view doesn't view itself
it exists in this world
colorless, shapeless,
soundless, odorless, and painless.

the lake's floor exists floorlessly,
and its shore exists shorelessly
the water feels itself neither wet nor dry
and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural
they splash deaf to their own noise
on pebbles neither large nor small

and all this beneath a sky by nature skyless
in which the sun sets without setting at all
and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud
the wind ruffles it, its only reason being that it blows

a second passes
a second second
a third
but they're only seconds for us.

time has passed liek courier with urgent news
but that's just our simile
the character is inverted, his hastes make believe,
his news in human

WORDS FOR EMPTY, WORDS FOR FULL

on feeling invisible

the problem with this is that when you are not acknowledged, when you cannot see yourself mirrored in others, when they do not reflect back to you, like answering your questions or laughing at your jokes or responding to your greetings in an appropriate way, if your sense of self is not immensely secure, you
begin
to
lose
it.

LOVING SOMEONE WHO IS EMPTY

empty people love empty things.

i can't wait until i see your face and my brain thinks that it's looking at a stranger
i can't wait until i see your face and my brain feels nothing
i'll feel nothing.

MELATONIN

you gave me happy words, the ability to make eye contact with strangers at age 22, but mostly intense fear of intense feelings. knowing i cant get stuck here

a bomb in free-fall not yet detonated
cant sleep or eat, need something for the physical effects
enskyment.
live for heartfelt truths of the moment.
find the people who would do anything for you, and do everything for them.




i feel like myself again. losing touch with myself and minimizing my opinions and attributes for others makes me feel horrible. one summer lost. future fall next to the sea. snowy cities, metal scraping skies. grad school is fucking me up. clinicals, three exams, presentation, lit review due wednesday. im applying for extern/intern. seattle still feels right. nyc feels right., im calling the hospitals this week

im going to new york city over thanksgiving. i havent seen andrea in three years. i need to get out of here. im writing again, im thinking things again, im in counseling, all of that feels really good ,need someoine who makes me feel more like me. loss sucks, no matter how necessary or predictable.

COME HOME

lately, cant find the inspiration to keep being
would love to be splashing in my grandparents' pool, sneaking cookie dough from the mixer, crinkling the candy wrappers in my grandfather's shirt pocket

singing songs with myself on the front porch, volleyball on the roof, hands and forearms red and bruised, catching frogs, fireflies, not worrying about losing myself

i've always been alone and fine. absurdity is the view society has on solitude. feeling small again.

REALIZATIONS AGAINST PILLOWCASES

Aug 5, 11:49 pm.

realizations against pillowcases 

falling asleep next to your heart sounds for six months now 

heavy, full, lightness, touch 

you follow my movements away from the light, loyally 

your breathing becomes my nighttime soundtrack, your fingers my nighttime touching, your kisses my nighttime longing

the time of nightthoughts is the space where people begin to believe in love

i believe in your breath, your heart sounds, your sleeping fingertips, whispering mouth, warm body, and finding your shoulder as i empty my day into you. 

THERE, GLOWING INTO YOU

reading direction labels on bathroom products, standing under the falling water, washing your curls, making rainbows on your chest
twisted, following your shoulder to the end, knowing that there, i will find your hand, everything is on the tip of my tongue
we are learning how not all people show love in the same ways
finding home in summer gardens, trash-filled alleyways, my parents' sky, male dress codes and cover charges, too spicy mustard, cleaning days, the search for radler, jumping onto the sparkly tiles walking home from downtown.

THE LIGHTING ON THE TOMATOES

My dad's senses go,
manual simulators like batting cages,
bikes swimming through swarms of mosquitos,
black shadows against white and square illuminations,
hair sticking to our skin,
the fountain isn't as deep as my surprised fingers thought
i said i saw elbows falling off into the bushes,
flashlights shone at us through the glass maze on the lawn,
mouths moving but neither of us could decipher anything outside of mumbles,
we decided to leave anyway.

Fruit fly traps,
i found myself lost for an hour filming fireflies on flower banks in the darkness of my parents' home,
i forgot the feeling of conscious in summer here
in terms of blood and treasure
with New Words rolling out of your mouth, i turned to find the scissors in the drawer
you repeated it again, asking if i could stop leaning against your knee like that,
and a third time, tonight, "i can't see."

Wondering in the car, on the way to get bomb pops and tomatoes, how long it had been.

SNEAKING IN/OUT

choking on my own spit
forming habits out of you
and feeling empty because of it

GRANDMA

as i was walking up the stairs
i met a man who wasn't there
he wasn't there again today
i wish i wish he'd stay away

I THINK I'M DONE HERE

i think we're done, here.

WHEN I GET HOME

when i go out
i look for someone like you
so that i can feel hurt again
how can i be angry at somebody loving me
cause that makes no sense
how can i be angry at somebody not loving me
cause that makes no sense



mi mye.

i was so lonely before you
so alone you forget what lonely feels like until you aren't it.

SMALL NOTION

i have found no greater pleasure in my lifetime than to feel wanted.
go, make everyone in your life feel wanted.

I WANT TO REMEMBER THIS

when i knew you less than a month and you made me a map of my favorite place in the world
going in to kiss at the same time; i dont remember where we were, but i remember how my smile made me miss your lips
sweetness in small doses; sweetness in the smallest moments. in the car, i enjoy you, i enjoy you so much, i like you, i really like you.
kissing at harling's between doorframes - oh that was really nice, it had been an hour.
"can i come sit with you?" during the bulls game from your chair, alex melting in the corner
licking my face outside the garage "i guess that means i really really like you" according to your dad's conversation about knowing when a dog loves its person

in these moments you are my person.

THOUGH IT FEELS FAMILIAR

despite a northern reserve

i am falling in love with you 

and i don't feel afraid

something new though it feels familiar

i must repeat that everything has a far stronger effect

the first time it happens than on subsequent occasions

soon it is spring in your eyes

a human sea

we stood awhile and breathed in 

the calculated suburbs, 

exiles among exiles,

and other worlds and phenomena of other proportions

your edges grow uneven

stronger than anyone wants them

a gauge for measuring the passing time

black strands curl into your ears

i long to see them lighten in the summer

golden under the movement of the lake

our bodies drying in the light

your name still special on my tongue

your skin still burning my fingers

the moon grows and glows,

men wait for letters, crush bugs

curse officers, swap dirty stories

all as i recluse into myself

like a dying man

forgetting how to sit in his recliner

i ask your ghost to please get the mail

in the same way that striking a match smells of a birthday party,

loneliness smells like death does

there are men in offices who are dictating potential

sending letters embellished with a stamped signature

igniting the beginning of an end

are we lost or do we still have a chance?

tell me how we aren't just loving because we're lonely

and tell me again how you like me because i make the world soft.

BE HUMAN

find your pulse loud all across your body. fingertips tracing the places where you're alive: wrist, neck, back, chest. there's something worth writing about when i feel so wonderful just making the bed together, writing secret notes for your pockets for you to open later, sharing quiet mornings with you. if i'm loose i find your arms again or settle for kissing your back. zipping up my jacket, picking feathers off my jeans, sharing our solitude, the way our day old hair tangles and sprinkles across the bed.

i'm biting my arms again; appreciating how simple and beautiful it is for someone to share the small and quiet of life with. smiling about the way you move and think - the way the open drawer irritates you just like your top button and collar aligning. loving like i'm learning you as a new language.

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

what ive been thinking about lately
father driving his sons to school, three in the back with their own separate headphones and own separate sounds, the father in silence, presumably quite empty
my friend saying "shhhhh..... i love this song"during our conversation
devouring an entire bottle of whiskey and friends cheering around you, shots until everyone's puking.
losing yourself to your passion for another person.

I LEAVE YOU IN THE MORNING AND FIND YOU IN THE DAY

at first, touching you felt like the residue of lost love
i didnt eat for you
but i wanted to be next to you in every crowded room,
on every full sofa and under blankets with you,
sharing cigarettes, steadying it between your fingers and my mouth,
inhaling for this time alone

days later,
$40 on sushi, emptied plates twice, broken cars and crushed telephone poles and watching from the window at the weather threatening our night
thrifting jackets for friends, drive-thru mozzarella sticks
spin my coat on, spin into you
call the big bed, you aren't close enough to me
the shallow bit of your chest, the underside of the crest of your hip
holding and being held in my favorite place, "me too"

with my face in the bit of space in your back where your shoulders meet,
my mind is on our drive home,
feeling emptier and more alone in this crowded room of stumbling and dumb smiles - "why are you sitting on the floor", wine bottle propped between my knees, passing alex the cigarette and ash filled beer bottle, they're throwing cupcakes and breaking teeth - than ever when i'm alone or with you.
in our beds i still cant understand how perfectly you can hold me. and i can't believe how easy it all feels.

AARONS FLOOR

no sleeps, boots on, conor knows secrets, doesnt buy brunch, drinks coffee
floor doesnt give, blanket doesnt fit
is there any comfortable way to be here, next to you i think
9am and all move up to the bed, close the blinds, rolling pin propping up the window, has anyone slept even an hour?

drives home, rain racing windows, sunken into the seat, shoes off, james blake, keep driving
and sleepovers excused by snowfall

THE BEST WEEK

find the spaces and stillness between each breath. take note of the left temple and the vein that runs across it. tapered and thin fingers. the range of voices and smells of laundry. take the time to fill days with someone because is timing ever good?

DAY OLD HAIR

i want to be able to say it in the obvious glow of late morning, still in bed, whose turn is it to make the coffee? how long can we be content just here finding stillness and safety in melting together? tell me a fairy tale.
as opposed to a drunken and cowardly plead in passing after last call, sloppily sucking on cigarettes, slurring and balancing against the doorframe.

i want to be able to say i love you, so, hard.
as opposed to i love you's sounding more like apologies.

share your
day old hair, night driving, and dreaming with me. metal-tasting tea, sour grapes, and park swings.

GOODBYE FROM THE PART THAT'S STAYING BEHIND

is there a more catastrophic idea than 'you, were, perfect.' i mean that. i mean that in a sense of a burning building before and after. wrecked car, wrecked bodies. lands and coastlines and people devastated by natural disaster. as humans, decaying, as organs become obsolete and useless one by one. flooded homes and lifelong belongings carried off. burned dinner, burned coffee. glasses spilled over once shining floors. moments before the delivery of a fatal diagnosis. moments before the delivery of an unhealthy child. the drive home, noticing that the tree has been cut down and having to wonder 'how long has it been gone this way?'

you, were, perfect.

it is so devastating when a human you know so well becomes unrecognizable by pure accident
you've
always been my you

'to be loved or to be free
die young in the dark, that's poetry.'