kindness is staggering

I finally raised my mind up, but my fingers destroyed the words:

1. the girl on far.
2. the love for my mother.
3. the world on near.

I remember this—the rest was maybe just chemicals, of the moments we are alone.

So I will forget, and strive in that.

Yesterday was my birthday. and I think of the year, and all of the infant colours borne from its tumult, and the day, bathed in.

Kindness is staggered, and staggering.

When we come together, we are menders, all rush of water and arch of stars—I will never not know this, believe this, keep this.

I wish I could recover the tongues I had put forth—greater than this, tired, lapse, (he thought of strings).

Please love them. Please keep them.

life-ning

how the light runs through, soft.

"This is all I ever wanted from life."

you, before the curvature

(Pause the tape, feet pressed firmly to the wood, the trees to bear you, your breath the match, the scratch, the song.)

You, before the curvature, and lately I have fallen, that I feel like such a liar for it. We create the dark...we cannot stem the shadow while we chew through our own stomachs. I write this without that hunger, with a hand made of pearl, holding sideways, sparkling up like an army carved from chains.

Are you okay? You know you hold such light, don't you? I only write that you might catch when you are splitting up under your axes, your axis bursting as molten clung, with feathers flashing like glass, piercing break of ages.

Are you nursing your greatnesses? Your bold attempts. Your exquisite wreckage? All punched and licked with babbling charm.

Are you shifting now, the comforts of your collected refuse? (that smile scrunched, a small shiver of autumn.)

Are you remembering it? Are you frowning like a joy? Paper birds take from your hands, flickering.

You, are art, are grand, are ruinous, are crawl.

Please know, it is you. You might find yourself so common, crushed, swollen speckled egg. But it is you.

When filled with so much life it corrodes, spat in every breath.

When no one makes your eyes on the train

When love will not remember you.

It is you.

(I ran out of skin to write upon. The tape clicks.)

—Ian William L.

i'm a draft right now, and that's okay. but there was good here, there was simple joy. this weekend was amazing, planets aligning, life cascading through, and it's blinding and hot whichever way you feel, the weight or the soaring, all filtering through.

this isn't everything you are.

have i left again? just a debt to the silence repaid. i'm busy not making words, letting things be nothing.

but i do...

this mirror always hungers, always takes. i stood and saw everything flip to its mad shape, worsened that i remained the same.

so with fear and great lists.

please keep her safe. please, please, please.

and take that and break me down, but please. strike me down that spares her.

i fall in love with the world every afternoon.

wherever you are, i hope it is with them. i hope the dark is short and the love is bright. strike me down that spares her.

loss has its limits and each victory is a campaign.

remember this when time won't shut its eyes.

something

i am forever replaced but always attached.

splinter, thorn, fate.

speak like the quiet, you nerves! but that's no way to approach it, trying to cut myself to their corners. no, i burn up a tremor in my heart, i am raising elegant strings, i am howling and ticking fault lines. i come to say what has or will–but retreat! the familiarity of the aversion, the gull bones, the hung minuteness: would i sooner make for a lion song.

but there is process, the skin always thinking, (the heart!) open up and burst, with tears that take your being.

i think when we cry and cry, when we let go, that is when we keep the most. so the heart is always open and levelling worlds, that love that split you down, naked and burgeoning.

I
I saw this there, with someone else's brain beating in my ears, thinking, thinking, thinking. I fold my newspaper in half, I empty my glass (or do I smash it, or do I see it for a kaleidoscope, an extra way through to the world I never yet saw?) I calm my feet, slick my nose, unfold the newspaper (or a card game or the powdery...what came after I thought it pretty.)

II
Life is great even when I was—maybe I just need a new font.

III
She asked an answer and I gave her all of and every flight of my bravery. I lick my fingers now. I still try to snap my bones back to the dartboard. I still try to fit.

IV
But he takes that chaos and breaks it anew.

but you don't give me a chance. you knot my limbs and dull my heart, you spit your vision and take with lungs. you think me fallen but i am once lord on far. you think me everything without gentle reach of breath.

(This will go on forever. I am pained but without body to wrack.)