ice skating

i saw lightning. now just wind. fulfilled those dumb nicotine prophecies, tried to reclaim what i cannot, tried to claim what i do not want. it’s the feeling that substances kill. it needs a surface like the one in the winter. i am no swimmer.

i was born after i was made, a mistake and a miracle, part of a purpose. the clever, the sharp, climbed above me. i cultivated the shine, the layers of mine. i read the plays, paved the way for the pavement, breathed through thick tar and came the closest i’ve ever come, perfect and pure, snow-white with thick promise.

then the curious error in plot: the demurring of my tiny hands. thank you no, too strange. your best chance is to be the bigger man and say, i’ve been mean to you and this is what happened. this is what happened. we were mistaken in our measuring of trust. the golem you became and i, we were selfish with our morals. we were too slow to do wrong enough. the stars are my firmest friends, my most persistent enemies, tattoos of loneliness, the bitterness. if i have grown my own constellations, they come from an expansion more rapid than elastic. it was my opinion that the world does not deserve you. you and i, we loved you. the others stretched like giants, and i was too strange.

things i like.

giant fish,

poodles eating out of woks,

this thing,

forget-me-nots,

and lots of snow

"things you stole?"

"no."

clairvoyant hysteric

literally--i was just thinking that. then everything went gray.

guitar, guitar, icarus, icarus. the cross i made burned. the bread was heavy.

“i don’t explain often or ever but i know, really. why did you name the syndrome after your city?”

the prefrosh look like giants. they haven’t been shrunk down yet. “their tiny hearts will get crushed. it’s a williams tradition. send them over to the jilted maiden aunts club.” familiarity forced me out of the haze of hatred. which one of these things is not like the others? so maybe she should transfer.

i want to grow a silver tail and slip through fluid without substance. i want to be as light as a dandelion stem and curl up between the pages of the complete works so you will slam it closed and crush me. then you could find me later (when it would matter more) preserved in this most perfect form.

secret chord for the wasted girls

it’s been one week since i severed the tip of my thumb and told you i love you. it’s been the rim of acid on the important organs.

sometimes i think the very act of honesty is a lie. sometimes i think surviving a night like this is a lie. too blunt, too dumb, too blunt. honestly i think i’d try—for my mother i would not succeed but for you i’d try—the observation would be sharp, it’s not good.

i met her eyes across a dark street and we fell into false reality and just stared and stared at each other, turning as we walked to look and look and look and look, her blunt bangs and my slanted, her littleness and my hatred, us pretending we don’t exist: both her and me not existing, or at the very least not existing together--that’s not possible. anyway—she’s better—and i could be more blunt without my cowlicks, but i think if i was more blunt i would be a rock and not a girl.

sleep all you want. i am still searching for any kind of reason to abide—looking the way you look at a requiem or a white wall—looking at something where there is nothing to see, falling into the folds.

but there is the flannel, the culture, my mother. and the bluntness that is killing me and killing me is keeping me alive. so the worrying you aren’t doing is not important.

this wall—it needs a faucet. i think it was her.

boots, cats, ceviche, and that

i can talk to you with my eyes,

barely even nodding.

no one needs to invent my motives.

“i cheapen our relationship to the point where it’s this.”

you just spoke for me.

i had a life before, even if you didn’t know it. now you know it for sure, but it’s a fake life, i’m pretending, this is a happy mask, the only kind of lie i can tell, because it’s my childhood culture, fake-happy lies. you were my closest friend. you wanted me. i thought you wanted me, because i wanted myself. no one wants anyone anymore. only i have time to be pretty. it’s fake prettiness.

across the table i noticed you had written, as i spoke, my name and address, Annie S. Eddy, Williams College, Williamstown, MA. I poured pepper onto it.

(the ocean looks shallow from here.)

traded rilke for cigarettes, holes in my rainboots, lectured, clicked my heels.

fell asleep not alone enough, no sound of rain, burned churches, and thought about dolphins and harpoons and why,

you thought about her, about rainer, about rain, dreamed in german, not about the shark, not about me.

it’s this. it’s this.

march 10

“Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable." –c.s. lewis

this sort of explains it

how not to save a life

hello.

my name is

no answer. i could not,

in bars and smoky scores, i could not

find one. we were born

to be wrong, bred to go astray-

no answer. look at this crown of thorns.

but my hair, my hair.

and so on.

COURAGE!

everything

"everything happens eventually."

"everything?"

"all the stuff you think never happens, it happens. you've just got to be ready for it."

the standard transparency

pastboard edges, grass around

the ridges in the snow, what a good

place to hide, what a

good place. a match, dear king, a match.

this white is thin, it doesn’t hide

a thing about my body

or what i want in it, space

for your knuckles. so it’s like what i say.

for once it doesn’t matter

if you like it. if i don’t make it

through the year, if i don’t make it

through the day, strike it, strike.

plant all these little lights in me, spread me

on hills, bury me in bunny holes.

amanda doesn’t like funerals. i

don’t like umbrellas.

well, now.

"well, now, fallen angel. you, i'd say, are now lost."

it was not only that echo

jennifer nettles

oil poured-out

and pooled, light lines

on tin tubs,

she is. we are

icy vines on panes,

blue shadow veins.

driven deep

beneath the waves

to watch plankton pull

the blood and bone,

the wait for the white noise

to sparkle out of the dark

the deep shivering

breath that it’s now.

with a push the glass rattled,

the windows black,

fire not even warm.

you and i are this.

she sings in the rafters

and wakes the static.

her eyes and flowers