Where I Live

The dark lands, the light lands, fascinate me. I’m constantly moving from current to current. I constantly step on them. I hopscotch through their crevices and kiss them when I kneel to get a closer look. In my thoughts, the lands fight like champions to figure out who gets to possess me. In my thoughts. They’ve also sat and caressed each other. I watch the dark lands lurk and slither. I watch the light lands expand wide and selfless. They don’t blend or exist together. A divided space rules this dimension. I've moved between them endlessly. In their realms I am a bird with no South. In their realms I live with my eighteen thousand thoughts.

Dark Water

This is the kitchen floor, the car window and the sofa, sometimes. Turbulence howls from the lightless cave. Guilt lives here. Love is asphyxiated by doubt and slimy tentacles. Unwanted. Living here is torture, every thought seems to be clear and logic; but they all feel so sick. Is this the truth? When I come here I become aware of the thorns that I haven’t found a way to extract. The thorns pierce my torso and move. Who put them there? Relief me. I’m rushing from death to worse and all I feel are my own sacrifices. All strength has been drained off me, all the life has been sucked out of me, so I just lie here with the Devil’s blessing.

Ice

There is something about watching these shoes stomp on the sidewalk. I hadn’t worn them in months and the last time I did, the sidewalk spoke another language. My heart moves to my eyes when I’m crashing in ice couches. Couches that look like king sized beds, couches that look like bunk beds, couches that look like a sinful mattress on the floor. From my eyes down, everything stops. My heart stops pumping. All I have is what I see, with no reaction. My lip hurts, split, so I bite. Does that relief or hurt me? It feels like something. It goes away quickly. So I bite my fingers, and the insides of my mouth; I pick at my skin and I scar it, I crack my back, I burn my lungs. And my heart is still cold. It’s numb. Hypothermic. All I have is what I see, like a movie I’m not a part of. Where am I and why would I come here? Is that blood? What is the name of this street? Is this the way back home? Am I hungry? Or empty? Am I sleepy? Or at death’s door? Do I miss him? Or anyone at all? I have no answers when I’m frozen. I’m just waiting until something pulls me out of here and warms me for a bit. I have no say in when I’n able to escape. I just have to wait until it happens and stare.

Sky

Elation. Divinity. Peace. Breathing. Orgasm. Birth. Ecstasy. Knowledge. Brief like a switch is brief. Never more than a couple of seconds, but so delicious. Like the urge to smile or cry is brief. Like the moment you change your mind is brief. What I’d give to live here forever. So momentary is this forbidden land that I never get to truly know what this place feels like. I can barely remember after I leave. It’s not patient with me. It’s erratic. Always seen through windows of circumstance. I imagine heaven as this, welcoming. I find the sky in snippets of my day. I find it in clever conversation, in chemistry with strangers, in walking past a place with music you can’t help but sing to, in shower vapor, in our bimestrial phone calls that never seem to last more than an hour, in my strength to forgive those who have abandoned me and left me for dead, more than once. In realization. I can’t help but find it in the sea too.

Light Water

From the sand I watched you. On my God, how are you real. You’re literally walking on water using a sail and muscle and I’m in the sand. Is our love so pure and so elevated that it cannot be touched with flesh hands? I could be your daughter, or your sister, or your pet, or your friend. You’re always like this, solid and steady. I’m solid and steady too, unless… unless we’re talking about you. Then I’m seashells, shiny, brittle, tender. We grew up together. I’m taking pictures of you now, they’re for your father because he’s not here. The wind picks you up upon command and places you where you lovingly ask him to. You’ve grown accustomed to this, me. I can feel everything. It’s too much. I feel every grain of sand. I feel the salt on my skin and my hair, I hear the seagull’s plea, I feel you even though you are in deep water, far away. This is my only home, the only one I can remember. It’s not sentimental, it’s grave. It’s my lifeline. But you’re my favourite place. It’s every space that you’re in that becomes the safest place. Be there for me after I die. We’ll meet again and again every time. It’s only right, we’ve done it before