When I became lost in the separation of child and mother,
Of myself and the other
When I became lost you became found
You climbed on to the backs of birds and
sailed between land and space for miles
Your back covered in feathers as black as the sky on a moonless night
each freckle an understudy for the veiled stars
prose
Skin of the World /
Do you see it?
The way the land piques beneath us, like your skin, my fingers hovering millimeters above it, anticipating my touch. Touch. The streets are scars and the rivers arteries feeding the body.
Unfinished Prose, Edition 01 /
Are all the heroes dead? Or just ours? Will the melodies ever sound the same, as somber and fixed in time as they are now? Will they stay? Because your voice, when you're playing Nutshell and humming Layne's voice on my parlor guitar, and I'm reminiscing over dreams I stopped having years ago; your voice and your fingers and everything else that I love. They stay in that way; reincarnated. I miss the dreams and am in love with the cause; a quandary, because I see things in dreams. Now I just feel like life stops when I sleep. Like death. In backness and nihility.
Read MoreYou Wanted Her /
You hadn’t looked at me in days. You hadn’t really seen me in years. You saw only the heavy black clouds enclosing me. You didn’t understand me. You didn’t want to. You wanted something easier. You wanted to believe you deserved better. You wanted someone smiling back at you from future days. You wanted to stop cranking your neck backward in hopelessness and exhaustion.
Read MoreYearning for Permanence /
This all just stops. You know that, of course, but do you really truly know that?
I ache, perpetually, at the realization.
You are my container of happiness, my vessel, my iron safe. How could I ever handle more? I fear for the power of whatever could be loved more by me, even if it is our zenith, our culmination of desire and passion and wanting and patience. In truth, I don’t need more keeping me here, begging me to stay, and I would love such a creation so much it would gut me.
Read MoreBe the man /
Be with a man that changes your assumptions about fate,
about destiny and probability.
Be with a man who gives you faith, or takes it,
So long as he affects it.
Of Land and Roots and Belonging /
Sometimes I feel physically ill from the memory of what I left behind and the way that I left it. I am not capable of the acts I committed, the desperation I induced. I am that woman now, capable of such things. How long am I allowed to toil in heartache for the woman I can never again claim to be? Sometimes I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches. I wake up often that way. Feels like every unbearable tension, climbing every root of every molar battling for dominance.
Read MoreBorn Looking for You /
I was born looking for you. I was born in fragments, permeable and porous. I was taught that we are each whole persons, that we are not halves seeking to be made whole, that no other body could complete our own.
Read MoreSeventy Years of Sleep # 4 /
"I think we deservea soft epilogue, my love. We are good people and we’ve suffered enough." —Nikka Ursula
Read MoreThe Burden of Filling the Vacant Spaces /
So many never wake with clenched jaws, with jagged teeth newly softened and smoothed and transformed to powder. So many have never hosted such a civil war in their mouths. They'll never mourn the fatalities, the wounded, the lost. You'll never crush things between your teeth the way you used to. You acknowledge this.
Read MoreAlmost Like God /
Every child wants to know that their parents not only love them but love each other. I have small fuzzy memories of what could have been love between my mother and father: laughter, tickling, pet names, but those small moments had all faded and died before I was out of elementary school. From that point on until my father shot himself, my parents were strangers to each other at their best and bitter enemies at their worst.
Read MoreLike Paintings /
Don't you love photographs that look like paintings? I can hear your heart beating in the trees, baby, they're all pulsing so steadily and in rhythmic unison. Let's crawl under the blanket of snow and hide until the warmth of Spring thaws our frozen grip on each other's necks.
Read MoreHard Flesh /
I'm in love with your soft eyes boring into my hard flesh and I'm in love with your hands, the way your palms rest comfortably against the back of my heart and your fingers enclose it within the pulpy confines of your sturdy fingers, always grasping at the relentless breath escaping my throat.
Read More302//365 /
The city swallowed you whole, but you climbed its walls to spite its fervor, digging your fragile claws into the merciless concrete, yearning to escape and inflate your lungs with the unstained air. Run like wildfire, baby, before they gauge your eyes from their sockets, before the hollowed savages press their sawlike teeth into your penetrable flesh and tear, tear, tear.
Read MoreLiberation and The Normal Wood Creates the Sea /
I've been wanting to shoot this woman naked for years. To quickly capture just a glimpse and solidify her beautiful art-plastered body in photographs for infinitude. Shanna's my tattoo artist and one hell of a chick and I've photographed her before but never was there such tenaciousness in the air.
Read More251//365 /
And I wanna sit outside in the dark except for the light of the distant moon with you and marvel at the perfectly ludicrous idea that men have traveled that far from home. We're both far from home and yet here we are - contently home.
Read More247//365 /
I can't look at the sky and not think of you. I can't look at each and every single drop, every reflection of your eyes in the mirrors of the falling rain. I can't not think of you when the smells of the wet earth conquer my body like an invading army at the battle of I Love You More Than love.
Read More221//365 /
"Come with every wound and every woman you’ve ever loved; every lie you’ve ever told and whatever it is that keeps you up at night. Every mouth you’ve punched in, all the blood you’ve ever tasted. Come with every enemy you’ve ever made and all the family you’ve ever buried and every dirty thing you’ve ever done; every drink that’s burnt your throat and every morning you’ve woken with nothing and no one. Come with all your loss, your regrets, sins, memories, black outs, secrets. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than you." —Warsan Shire
Read MoreHayseed Invasion /
These little girls that rise from corn fields bold & busting at the
seams with hazy expectations unreceptive to the lives &
movements of those growing & dying before them.
Sallys, Emmys, & Maryanns they think they know it all, they
do. Proclamations of youth too ripe to pick but much too
mouthwatering to pass by. Tomorrow’s another day& another
day of bursting skulls and spoiled greens.
You'll Never Live This Life That I Live. /
I'm thinking I really have nowhere else to go. I'm thinking I've become that person. I'm thinking a lot lately about God, a god, another plane of existence, another dimension, an afterlife, everyone we ever loved - now gone. I'm thinking I could die at this very moment and every question I've ever really had could be answered. I'm thinking my bones are aching and you look exhausted. I'm thinking you have dark circles under your eyes and I'm covered in cuts and bruises. I'm thinking everything's always for looks, for appearances, I'm thinking rain always brings out the doubts and hopelessness in me - but I wouldn't give it up for anything else in the world. I'm thinking everyone's moving forward and I'm standing still.
Read More