the palo santo latte wishes you well,
and i'm secretly dreading the day that i am newly amused.
morning observations: few things cover the walls of my small bedroom, your handwritten notes and affirmations i forget to recite; my body naturally rests towards the sunrise, waiting for birds to sing and for morning dew to kiss my windows; perhaps i’m not a romantic, simply stubborn.
lately, i cannot write without shedding a tear, shedding my skin and bearing my true and grotesque nature: a person who has never known or learned how to cope with grief.
my living, breathing grief makes me time travel. it takes my hand and guides me through years predating the sound of your voice over the shop phone. that memory is the only one i’m choosing to cling to today, the one that recalls a grounded voice inquiring about the shopkeeping position at a little woo-woo joint down the road, the one that remained faceless for several days.
grief led me to a forest green moleskine i wrote in briefly from 2022 to 2023. free of embellishments, save for the bloody finger painting on 18dec22 and a glossier Generation G kiss preserved on 4feb23. it was in the shade ‘cake.’
my last entry in here detailed how i stumbled into an open mic for the very first time in my life. i wasn’t devoted to my craft back then, wasn’t willing to share with anyone. i remember it being just fine. everyone’s knees were touching, too many white men were plugging their socials and putting up a QR code to tip for their three-minute acoustic performances, or worse, reading anarcho-capitalist poetry they wrote in a composition notebook abandoned back in high school, contained with more blank pages than homework.
26feb23 today i met a man named frank. frank plays guitar and some of this and some of that…quite the peculiar day…frank goes by fox. “not a band, but an experience.”…i told him i’ve been a hermit.
the version of myself archived in the green moleskine harbored a lot of guilt over…nothing. i was twenty-three, approaching twenty-four, and could not rid myself of the shame i felt for spaces i took up that i felt weren’t mine to take. sometimes i had no choice, sometimes i couldn’t help myself. i could’ve lied and absolved myself from any blame i felt responsible for, but that wouldn’t have been my truth. call it catholic guilt, eldest daughter guilt, whatever.
10jan23 if i open my mouth and force my fingers down, i’ll find a note. folded up and covered in saliva. i can pull it out, but it feels safe there. no one knows about it, i can live without mentioning it. besides, i’m scared of the paper cuts in my throat if it ever does leave.
the difference between then and now is that it’s easier to forgive myself. no longer was i putting myself in questionable situations in the name of self-abnegation. no longer doing things for the plot (maybe?). i should be rooting for the character i’ve designed for myself rather than torturing her.
11nov22 i’m at the threshold. there’s a portal right in front of me, it’s only function is to wait for me to pass through. but i have barbed wire shackling my feet. not tight, but enough to leave a trail of my blood in case i forget the road home. the problem is, i wasn’t home when they came about. i don’t know where i was. i don’t know where i am. i'm stalling. if i don’t know, then stepping through makes no difference. i won’t know on the other side either. it’s the caffeine. my mind is still but my body is racing. running away. running to something. i want to stop and smell the roses but someone has already been here before. they burned gardens down. life can’t bloom here. tinder boy looks cute (to me).
15nov22 i may have a date on sunday. he could be nice. i’m boiling the tap water at work. i feel excited. good or bad, it’s an experience either way. and as i slowly ease into it again, i find myself blushing. i’m giving the impression that i’m eating.
my love language is merging together. there is a space where i end and you begin, but that space has made us whole. i used to call it mutual parasitism but now…it’s union (communion). it’s not without fault, however. there are cracks to fill, trusts to build. i look forward to the day that someone and i absorb each other. mutual parasitism (communion). may we devour each others’ bodies and keep our love in prayer. i yearn for the moments to come — the merging (entanglement) (communion).
grief lets go of my hand and tells me she has to go. i’m left staring a blank page and feeling frustrated by the absence of noise. but the green moleskine remains opened. i had a muse before you, i know so because my words remain as waxing poetic as ever. my muse was nameless, faceless, arrogant, fleeting, did not care for my name, or my age, and sometimes it was me. i remember i despised her hopeful thinking at the time, but i admire it now.
i forget that i was preparing for a catastrophe that never happened last spring. my body knew it then, so what happened now?
nothing i do, i do for you. or for anyone, really. and yet i selfishly hope that you’ll watch me and react. simply writing this is a performance. i’m pressing hard into a bruise that formed behind my knee over the weekend. i wonder if you pick at the skin around the matchbox beneath your shoulder, or if you remember how i pretended to strike one and light the candle near your elbow.
last week i held your tooth and had a stern conversation with you. i don’t like grief. amidst my irrational poetics, i wish you well.
26feb23 they closed the show with a eulogy. everything must come to an end. frank the fox’s last words to me were these: “i’ve just given you some good vibes, don’t be selfish with it. spread the love.”
reading: one’s company by ashley hutson [starting my sapphic lit summer prematurely]
watching: whatever has been in my letterboxd watchlist for several months [companion and the iron claw, for starters]
listening:
feeling: like i should let the current take me without resistance [for now]
all my love,
cristina.