i’ve never made such a long drive by myself i learned that 
now’s not a good time for me to be alone with my thoughts. i’m not sure 
about the other ones; i never tested it out. 
but today i did. oh boy was it awful. and convivial. it was a party
every moment of this trip that i spent playing another reality—self-inflicted drowning in NPR One, or that ebook on surveillance capitalism; romanticizing my 20 minute cigarette
break at a gas station in southern pennsylvania (ignoring the nausea); throwing my shoulders upwards 
in a dramatic startle each time the sky sent me an SOS, flashes of long, drawn-out white bluntly and briefly revealing the road behind the opaque rain on those last hours of the drive. 

but the self-prescribed dosage-listen of the one song that draws brine across my cheeks and enkindles my primal strength to face utter reality for what feels like running across hot coals on a beach, erroneously perceived infinitely and those other 
moments, the brief intermissions where i’d suddenly and frantically remember the truths, the states of my affair;
(i’m not skilled enough to give those justice in writing)
i did a good job at fending them off, for the most part. out of desire to make it out alive

i have to learn to paint the moments with more muted tones because i don’t want to spend my entire life looking back on them in pain. it always hurts to look back, it’s not a good sign

i can tell how unruly a phase of my life was by the red-hot stamp burned forevermore in my brain 
of the mantra i clung to at the time. ‘don’t want to remember, don’t want to forget’, that was a real bad one. i’m getting that painful nostalgia again, i despise it. i think of the Oasis lyric, ‘don’t look back in anger’ i’d always thought the next line was ‘i know you will’ until i looked up the lyrics a month ago
right now it’s “doors close all the time”, i read that in a kaz moon poem,
im clinging to it tighter than ever before, its a comforting crutch so far but i fear the looming tolerance i will inevitably grow and what i will be obliged to seek out when the time comes

i have this sudden and urgent need for someone to hear me and i never feel this way and frankly it almost concerns me. but then I remember that this too, shall pass
and that doors close all the time 


undefined

heading home (or: too much time to think and too little space to do it)

think of jersey summer think of flying god incarnate as a kite, free 
as a bird but stable as calcite and steadied by a fertile earth of sweat,
tears, certain mainly innocuous over-waterings that form 
a ground
for a love that had grown at last heavy enough to resist volatility, tall enough to yield 
her first fruit; stability. 

when I think of jersey summer and gliding up erie street and down newark ave to the corner of 10th,  zipping and unzipping that grid at a constant pace, a model mouse in a maze that looks like paradise and I recall, there’s a backdrop
to my memories and that’s what it is, I was a kite.
I don’t feel like a kite anymore though, perhaps that’s why 
I think of it so often.

the heights

1. I am a creative person
2. I am intelligent
3. I am very, very curious about the world around me
4. I am never bored (curiosity and creativity induce invaluable amusement)
5. I am a word-lover
6. I am very full of thoughts, which is either my heaviest millstone or my crowning characteristic (it depends on the day)
7. I am a sister
8. I am lost in my own world a lot, but I don’t hate it
9. I am a writer
10. I am oftentimes a perfectionist
11. I am fairly full of self doubt but I think it is normal for my age
12. I am confused about my priorities
13. I am taking things one day at a time
14. I am invariably content to give the benefit of the doubt
15. I am very privileged, in more ways than I’m probably aware of
16. I am unique, just like everyone else!
17. I am very interested in learning about the people in my life and those that I meet
18. I am a very good listener
19. I am uncomfortable when receiving compliments or talking about myself, despite enjoying both of these things
20. I am terrible at keeping in touch and maintaining friendships with people I care for if they aren’t physically and consistently in my everyday life, and I think about this shortcoming of mine quite often.
21. I am trying to strengthen my friendships
22. I am taking a multivitamin every day this year

my friend Daphne asked me to write down 20 “I am”s for her sociology class assignment on categorizing identities. The list ended at \#22, but I wanted to post it without any edits. Thank you daphne!

twenty-two "I am"s

writing about being scared doesn’t make me any less scared but that can’t stop me from wishing and even pretending that it did. even now, I’m tempted to tell myself that this exercise—to get outside, go on a walk, 
keep turning my head so none of the colors or signs of life escape 
from the corner of my eye, to remember that even in the driest time of year this world is abundant 
with life and logically it only follows that so am I, 
to start finding the parts of that life that have been missing so long I keep forgetting they might exist, 
to walk 
on concrete until I find the salt-and-rosemary, littered-with-bottom-white-pine-leaf terrain and listen to the crunch under my feet as I cross it and sit 
and write them down so I can revive them—
is a step in the right direction, but i don’t know that it is. 

Its 35 degrees and the sun has set and my fingers aren’t moving as fast as I need them to anymore and again I’m tempted
this time it’s to say ‘ill finish this later’ so I can wait a beat or a week to come back and scrutinize over these words and risk damaging the most sacred part of this poem (maybe any poem), its candor. twice in a row, I’ve resisted temptation today

declaration, decision, strength, confidence, exercise

exercise

this is what I think every time you plunge your lips in a purse and stack your teeth to throw a “shhh” at me. i think, how do I tell you that my world is filled with noise, that I am filled with noise, that I want to be the speakerphone and the bluetooth radio and the air bouncing from mountain to fog-capped mountain in harmonious chant, the melted sugar of a mother’s voice and
the hyena’s cackle and the tone commanding
your laugh?
that my organs long to echo, my voice alive at their mercy
I’ve been thinking, what is the sound of a smile?
If your eyes are closed and I’m laying underneath 
your breath but I want you to know that I’m smiling then I need you to first hear me
I need you to see that I am never quiet, I’m made
of noise, I hope

thursday evening stream of consciousness

because of the stretches and
crisp corners of a building against a colorless sky and 
every single face caught in the wide cast net
of my gaze, divinely void of similitude but each so richly
familiar and
the neon yellow fast food signs that stir zest in my stomach and 
the tacky clangor of capitalism red which should anger but instead catches my eye and hands
me nostalgia on a marketed platter and
the mere fact of phasmida, beings with such raw trust in their domain 
that they’ve become one
and the same, that proof
of the potency of a faith and
the shape and shadow of a tired eye, the hypnotic swatch of a poorly shaven leg and
the family of jaundiced foam amassing on the pond’s meniscus and 
that the entire world exists 
like a magazine at the doctor’s office: for your viewing pleasure 
and that contrary to hands and legs and eyes and phasmida, this list 
is infinite, and

widen your eyes!

I’ve thieved one night’s molten rest and spread it like butter 
across the past 5 and my pants pinched my tummy when i bought
them but slide today down my hips
as I walk because my belt doesn’t fit either, anymore and I miss loving 
my favorite snacks and eating 
anything other than junk food text messages and I miss concern 
over my red eyes in the morning or my fallen hairs 
making a graveyard of the kitchen, and I miss craving
a good sleep and a well-rested wake, I miss seeing 
the sunrise or more than 6 months without my clothes 
forgetting how to fit and I miss missing
my friends and my yarn and my art and my bed,
I miss missing

I hate that these days, my best words evaporate
my more seductive sentences solidifying only as I walk, urgent and profound 
but melted by the time I reach my destination, although I never really reach 
my destination because there isn’t one;
I’m just walking to think and it feels like these days that’s all I do is 
walk and think and walk and think and walk and nothing changes and nothing stays the same and there’s always a new grief and I’m not allowed to use 
the elevator or eat breakfast or put cream in my coffee, all I have time to do is walk and follow my foolish rules and eat my words and panic over the hours passing like my back, cracked, and
think 
and walk and think and walk and I wonder 
if I ever lived rule-less, if I even could; I’ve never tried

I’m nearing my non-destination, my body lacks resolution.
though I don’t fret, I’ll
loiter for a bit
forget myself for a minute, maybe two
until the space in between comes to me sated, almost glutted, calls me to rise and so 
I’ll rise, walk again and think 
up a new empire and fill it with brand new ways to think about the same old things;
I imagine that’s what they call routine.

routine

I miss when I was a girl and not a goal
When my feelings weren’t firewood but freedom; I am a flame
of womanhood’s angry coal.

I miss the grocery store aisles bending to my stroll
without taunt-rotten mouths striking perversity on my name;
I miss when I was a girl and not a goal.

I am an open book that they stole
they wrote fear and chafed my thighs with it. they make a game
of womanhood’s angry coal.

Before attention’s disease took my mind, burnt holes
of lusting eyes in my skin and the sacred fat off my hips, replaced it with shame;
I miss when I was a girl and not a goal.

the smartest woman I know taught me, in placation lies true control
I grew up watching her shrink. her honor follows me still. for us, I adopt the surname
of womanhood’s angry coal

like my writing hand, like both of my feet, is my soul;
utterly left. But still I stand, for I am nothing if not the proudest, reddest frame
of womanhood’s angry coal.

I’m starting to forget; will you remind me?
was I ever just a girl and not a goal?

I’m starting to forget. can you remind me?

I want to stand strong, single and steady and readily proud of the colors I bear because if a flagpole doesn’t stand proud, believing itself an altar, then is that really a flag? And if 
that really is a flag
then are we truly standing
in a country? Or a mere mass
of land?

untitled

perhaps a maple; built from a sweet heart, seeping with sap swept and swallowed in 
disdain by bowls, buckets, outstretched hands 
of any wandering by until gone
lame and dry.

or perhaps a willow; wise, looming, broad
shouldered and most of all, hollow; fickle-hearted, insides blank save 
for the terrain which hoists it forever swaying, sweeping the ground for a single swallow
of something stable on which to bear its roots

300 feet away, I pray for fall to come and pass like pine bark
aflame and give me spring, so I can go
on a 300-foot walk and spot
the most peculiar pair: A willow set still, hearty branch of wide-toothed leaves protruding;
A maple trunk sap-steeped, lofty limber curtain of green above it

and wonder if I, too, could be completed.

300 feet from my tower stands a blurry little tree

praise for guilty pleasures; like when
our friends invite us for ice cream and she wants to join until I say,
I’m tired, I’ll stay home but you should go
and she doesn’t

for sharp delinquent nails in the summer unleashed
on a bug bite, dead skin slid down skin raw but
eyes rolled up and back
arched

for the occasional healthy narcissism:
friends revealing themselves as lovers,
strangers who remember my name,
men that are creepy
but not quite lethal
all those eyes on my body

for falsities:

like playing a cashier instead of being one
clocking into a new body, 
a new name, accent, back
storied past display for customers arriving
my way

and having friends
our shoulders touching, truth stretched across each one, truth (benevolently)
bent for the girl who sits with us, she’s our friend she really is 
nice, but she’s not invited and she shouldn’t know it and for once I am absolved
of the burden of agency

and all the other lies too
through the teeth, out of the ass, white, black, smoky, woolen, all of them

praise for the propensities of pleasure:
to resist dictation, 
to defend an intensity immutable
by any label; shame simplicity sin guilt or 
some other petty adjective;
praise for this immunity.

for guilty pleasures

20 seconds away from being on time, 10 breaths away from room 212 I stopped
to drink from the water fountain like fate’s will as it stole my punctuality;
forged from iron

bronze and baring 
its veteran teeth at me like a man in a suit, unapologetic
daring me to consider myself on par,
tearing me apart with its rusted eyes alone yet
rearing me as if I’m some sort of child, and suddenly, violently I am

a calf suckling milk from the teat
of my creator, the first sip after a mere night’s rest; Oh how? how can such curt
mundanely regimented few hours of fast bring this incensed craving every morning 
in a shade redder than the last?
I see myself in the back of my mind, hanging
on a dry throat and a prayer

water fountain

I come home from the grocery store and the evening’s grim mouth is 
gagged with anxiety, leaving the air quiet: sunday. 

I put away milk and honey, processed bread, “manager’s choice” turkey 
that will expire tomorrow, black beans and finally, my prize
for  shopping, for working those cursed casino-lit corridors, for taking 
my sister to the orthodontist: raspberries.

just a pint but they are magnificent, vibrant as the pretend ketchup I layer on gas station hot dogs. 
no, vibrant as the blood under my chipped fingernails. 
no, let’s
just say vibrant. 
so I go on, my days now brighter 
with anticipation. I sweep floors, climb walls, hurry 
past the blinding counter with my socks in one hand and soul in the other. I take nights heavy with aching arms, glazed with rest; I take benadryl,
wait. The cracked desert road plateaus, prepares to curve uphill and into raw
refreshing shade: thursday.

on break. happy, or happier. time loiters like asphalt
in a pitch drop.
the clouded plastic reveals berries half melted, adorned in fleecy white and green, pathetically lain in their own decomposition. they look up at me. 

I blink. clench my teeth. extend my hand. let the faint pulse sync with mine for the briefest of moments and then thumb
the slouching bodies down to put them to rest.
press the repulsive, lifeless eyes closed. eyeliner and organs have smudged onto my finger and I look up to find a towel 
but blink again, and see
the counter in front of me now dusted in cobwebs, now sticky with the remains of 
long-forgotten meals, now anything but ashimmer: faith, arrogantly 
mistaken.

so berries rot, hair falls out, shifts are missed but I trust 
in another box on another shining counter on another gloomy day: peace

calendar

A peculiar type of walking. no blinking, no breaking, no breathing, no bliss; anti-stroll

no blinking, lest a face that is mine escape before i can meet its eyes,
and almost every face is one of mine.

As I move, I notice the motion by my ear, by my side
too
see heads, held high 
or brains held heavy held in heads hung low
see lips, turned down or turned up loud, painted or pursed or slack-

jawed and speaking of slack, I see walks too;
athlete-walks, limping with honor and humble hyperbole
invisible-walks, shoulder, finger and foot facing its consort; hoping for implosion 
(but even they can’t hide from me)
runway walks, lusting walks, walks like dealership-display-cars, walks in- and un-
in-terruptible 
	(listen to speed, to the draw of the hip and arms, the angle of the head, you’ll see
what i mean)

and speaking of pursed, I must mention the clothes
the clothes! colors married and colors that fight
(most of the time, its both)

and speaking of colors, speaking of paint, know that I see you, all of you and with glistening strokes
and stolen colors I want to add every single one of you
to my canvas
and though most of you will come out blurry, because you move so fast and I’m not right
handed, 
I can call it what it is: abstract art.

canvas

I’m writing the hands of the clock into ice, into a still image my own,
I want them to stay
still, I want to stay here. my own hands shake as I whittle away
into sculpture, ice sculpture, frozen, still, I’m stuck, I’m frozen in 
wait
Isn’t this what I wanted?

I started taking pictures without looking at the screen, I’m hoping to capture
what my eyes can’t relay

I’m in waiting, I don’t know what for. My words don’t make much sense anymore, neither does the music in my ears or the creases outlining this face in my mirror, this intruder in my shower

temptation wills still-life, gospel commands time-lapse, but fate presses
the pen into my hands. 
tells me, "write the hands of the clock." 
Do I write them forward?

I am the foot of the bed, the hands of the clock, the arms of the microscope the back 
of the lunch line, the legs of the chair in the stack in the corner, a piece of patchwork possibly beautiful but nonetheless reliant on some larger, more concrete entity to confirm—to allow?—it to exist.

like a neglected subaru in a new england winter whose tires haven't been changed, 
I'm drifting about

Hands of the clock

I’m reading a book all cozy in my dorm room bed and I feel free like
Childhood, when you get sent home sick from school and your mother makes you
Lie down and rubs your back so you fall asleep but you don’t;
you steady your breathing, relax your eyelids, let your mouth fall slightly
parted and nearly forget that it’s all for show,
but you don’t, you cling desperately to consciousness until she finally leaves, 
satisfied, perhaps hoping you stay asleep, but ultimately indifferent so long you don’t interrupt her day again and now finally.
you can sit up and read a book with just the 1pm sun climbing through the window, with your phone “taken away” by your mother, as if you were anything other than grateful
to be rid of it.
and you are finally alone in the world. and the cookies from your lunch box
taste so much better in secret
and you could almost stay this way forever.

and i feel like childhood

A lot of cloud cover but the clouds are still covered & I’m still sitting somewhere unenclosed and the breeze still whispers into my skin and the birds still hum along to my music so I guess it isn’t really about the sunset at all. It’s about being here and only here; not stuck in the death grips of my past and all of the previous versions of my life that haunt me.and not paralyzed with anxiety about the colorless future, like cheeks on a strangled face, the realities imagined but incessantly realistic, devastatingly three dimensional, the curse of a good imagination. Realities where I don’t get better, where I am sick forever and the sadness settles in and the eating disorder consumes me and none of my friends ever come
back. no
instead I am here in the present, on the roof where enemies are the concrete, as far away as they can get; my fears as detached as the shoes I kicked off my feet. I can feel a rumble shake the ground where I sit; it must be cars on their way in or out, little people excitedly on their way out of here or reluctantly on their way in (I’d hope the former). The pain has lifted for a moment…I’m trying to savor it, relish rather than demolish it. I’m holding back my hunger in fear that I’ll scare the clarity away. Its worth it.

sitting on craige deck talking to the sunrise

6 am, time’s up
the sun will be too, soon. she 
longs for my return.

Haiku

Sentimental; a 
Feeling, but for me, more of
A state of being

an inherently
negative word, change. if it
were any good, they’d call it
growth instead.

(i wrote this about my roomate/favorite person in the world)

being friends with her is like knowing 
a new peace; of moving to a gloomy and storm-ridden town with the expectation
that your shelter will be rare but that
when you have it,
you will savor it. 
instead, you are surprised to realize two
things. 

one, just how much you adore the rain; how you cherish it, to coexist with 
it, to let it hang on your skin and dilute your worries;
the unexpected discovery of an ultimate, impossible comfort in its presence.

and two, 
the way that it doesn’t rain enough. 
the way that there are too many sunny weekends, days dictated by 
suffocation and nights charged with nerves where the room,
already so humid and dense, 
does not have space for all those
pitch black thoughts and in the heat they ruminate, 
they ripen, the room starts to smell until
the rain is back and like magic,
the air clears. she comes back and
the multitudes of skeletons that carpet the floor are instantly
put to rest. pure sorcery! she must be a witch, there is no other conclusion.

and each time the clouds clear and 
the sidewalk dries, you think you will enjoy this 
much needed 
break, 
a chance to dry off, to be alone;
but you dread it. 
because the rain, you see now, has changed you for 
the better and there is nothing you desire more than to be back in your little 
shelter,
watching some irrelevant t.v. show or microwaving nachos or fixing 
your closet or doing your eyeliner,
and hearing the sound of her precious, rhythmic raindrops in the background.

maybe i don’t mind the rain - January 2023

there are no hippies in new york city
no dirt white knits over hemp starred skirts
and proud exposed bellies
no, not in the manner of bikinis burning on beaches
or sleek shirts cut just short of taut belly buttons;
i went to new york city in december

hippie bellies are exposed in that they are 
shown
shown down shown off never ever shown up
they are round and proud and uncaring
hippie bellies don’t know that they exist
hippie bellies are attached to angled minds preoccupied by
matching patterns with patterns 
with cashew cheese and non-profit thrift stores 
and beads and the long 
line of injustices hoarded by the world
hippie bellies know that they don’t owe no one
an explanation
hippie bellies will fight you and beat you
hippie bellies guide moral compasses sharper than the high 
heels that hippie feet don’t wear and hippie arms will fight you 
and beat you if said compass points them so but alas
there are no hippies in new york city
there are no bellies
in new york city
only stomachs, only abs and ribs and the most occasional tummy
only sleek, vintage tops from shein,
puffy jackets for small waists and h&m girls
only pantsuits, small chunky hoops, short black boots

i wish for more hippies in new york city; they know how to bring 
the sunshine and i hope that one day, I can be a hippie in new york 
city too

i love your extravagant double takes
you love to act, you’ll never admit it,
your eyes lower with a lumber hoping to hide that brazilian 
cherry shine

you work a double with the flu, it's fun to act like you’re fine
you ask me why you have to stay alive, and melt 
coldly into my arms when i answer, it’s me
you hold my head close to your left ear and my neck is strained but you need the song of my desire and i need
to give it to you

you eat milk and broken prepositions and past tenses that break my little brain
you slepted in the train, did you? you ate to much?
you think you can hide your ugly intelligence, how sure you are that you are the best one, the
chosen one, the greatest one
in this room?
i see it, i’ve read your letters and heard your
heated words, even when i know that all you want 
to do is strangle me (pinned against a ford excursion, the target parking lot, remember?)
my little brain absorbs your big lies.

if i didn’t know you, i’d worry that maybe that’s all you are in front of me
an act
that you will disappear like the whispers in the attic when i listen too hard
like the exact shade of lime jello green that once sung these nervous 
hands to sleep

but i don’t know you
i know i don’t
i don’t know if i do, i know how it sounds,
i do

when i met you, you were an actor that hated acting and loved living
i know now that you were just a man who hated living,
but loved acting
oh, i wish i could tell you

ENGL 211 Poetry Workshop, Prompt 3, Untitled - March 2022

I wish to write about how I feel, today, tomorrow, anyday. but the shameful truth is, I don’t know where they went, the feelings. I lost them, abused them so that they
dried up, inflamed like the tender puffs and even lines over my right arm that can never be touched 
again, never graced by lustful hands or graced by spaghetti, tulip, raglan, or cap

under my guidance, obedient, they bore so much that I look to the
stem and find crackle, bitter crackle, so I get to work weeding, for why 
keep what is dead, but find them shackled to a stomach pink, round, soft and so I get to work sawing for why 
eat what is raw but find the stomach strong, tersely veined like artfully cooked chicken and so my eyes start to glisten because I just want them gone, all gone for why 
hold what is heavy only to sharpen futile muscles, 
and then I blink but the tears begin to freeze and the head tilts up to ask where am I, why am I, how am I, 
the knees start to bend and buckle and I crash right into the snow so cold, so deep yet so soft it might be pizza dough risen and fresh from an overzealous fridge but then
the snow turns to sand and my hands turn to gas, so I turn back to my work weeding but the weeds are gone replaced by chains, chains around my wrist wedged deep in the desert and petrified by the sun, I look up again and the sun is blazing my head is hazing my wrists are chafing all I wanted was them back or gone, back or gone, back or gone, but I pushed them away and they left, for why stay where you are undesired? why lose what will keep you alive? why live, if not to feel?

and while I was distracted by dress sleeves,
while I cradled foreign flowers back to life,
the feelings swept from my brain, my heart, my belly, the space between my legs,
collected and stacked neatly, they were sensible and
down they swirled, chaotic, through
the tender puff and open cuts and deep into the core of my earth, locked, stiff, unopenable but sharp, and now here i am trying to write a poem
and I can't.

my blog

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All Posts

1.7.19.2025
heading home (or: too much time to think and too little space to do it)

2.6.07.2025
the heights

3.1.24.2025
twenty-two "I am"s

4.1.12.2025
exercise

5.11.27.2024 (revised 1.12.2024)
thursday evening stream of consciousness

my blog

(click for more crochet)

All Posts

1.7.19.2025heading home (or: too much time to think and too little space to do it)

2.6.07.2025the heights

3.1.24.2025twenty-two "I am"s

4.1.12.2025exercise

5.11.27.2024 (revised 1.12.2024)thursday evening stream of consciousness

1.7.19.2025
heading home (or: too much time to think and too little space to do it)

2.6.07.2025
the heights

3.1.24.2025
twenty-two "I am"s

4.1.12.2025
exercise

5.11.27.2024 (revised 1.12.2024)
thursday evening stream of consciousness