On Listening To Pebbles and Guitars

Should I live for one reason?

Should I die for one reason?

But really, have you ever met a pebble, dear?

They are not precious, dear.

They do not take long, deep breaths

The sort of breaths that exhaust the soul

They do not absorb your remains

But they do fit in the palm of hands

slide into pockets

Must I live for one reason?

Must I die for one reason?

Have you heard laughs in the wood, dear?

Little laughs

sometimes gruff

they will ring in your ears through all your wild and soft walks

Did you hear them again? Or are the leaves simply singing?

Should I live for one reason?

Should I die for one reason?

Wouldn't it be simpler to live by ink and die by pen?

They can burn me with my books

They can feed me to the wolves that slink among the library shelves

insufficient sustenance

Have you ever met a pebble, dear?

I, myself, have met many.

And sometimes the right rock is known to bring me to shivers.

Have you heard a guitar cry, love?

Tears need not be visible to contain moisture

Have you heard it laugh?

Those deep sort of prayers that must be collected by someone up there with heavy arms

Must I live for just one reason?

Must I die for just one reason?

Or may I simply sit here on hard surfaces and listen to pebbles?

In Striving

Find one thing to fall in love with today

as if it was that simple, that sweet

hold it in words

and in the striving it will be enough

in striving to do justice to the light on the mountains

the cold smell and shiver of wind

the gentle upturn of a stranger’s smile

it will be enough

fall in love with somebody or something today

and hold it with words

with your words and your words alone

hold it gently with adjectives and ink

hold it with your words and your words alone

As if it were that simple, that sweet. 

Crisis and Reclaim

There are a million ideas I’ve been playing with, constant state of crisis and reclaim. I’m collecting wreckage and garbage and good, good books. I am picking up bits of stone, adding to others sea glass collections. I am playing with words and coming with ideas that explode and fizzle, and steam. There are all sorts of theatrics here, I’m building a regular theatre workshop. Maybe a candy store, stocked with the strawberry drops and caramels I’ve taken from the little bowls in front of restaurants. 

I am bursting. I just want to curl up with my stuffed seahorse and stare up at the ceiling, with the ugly light. I am a lukewarm fanatic, a quiet radical, a loud shout and burn and scream. My heart is pumping venom, my eyes are red. I am between sheets and over beds and under covers. I am of hot breath and sweat.

I spend times in lavender fields and bury my face in the fur of canines. I have puppy hands. I am spent. I am renewed. I am alive. I am comatose. I am of contradictions and declarative statements. I avoid semi colons like the plague. I use spell check and I have forgotten how to spell. I write stupid comments on posters in class and I buy Canadian things with American cash.

I swell up when I hear the word Israel and I call my mother every day. I write feminist statements and wear too much makeup. I am rising with the sun and sleeping with the moon. I am fire and ice. I am cliche and original. I am on the verge of something, on the verge of absolutely nothing at all. There are a million ideas I’ve been playing with, constant state of crisis and reclaim.

My Kind

Against her bed, fingers tapping, bad pop blasting, this is it. 

This is safe space, a makeshift community. 

Worlds colliding

The girl on my right, our arms touching, she’s who kept me strong through text book breakdowns and walked across the night beach starring up at the lights of San Francisco across the bay. 

At my feet, the girl who shares a wall with me that I knock against to see if she is there,who dances with me in rooms too hot with music too loud. 

3 writers. 

I always find my kind; smart, driven, ink fuelled females. We know our kind. We fall in and out of theatre, dance to strong female anthems, secret and not so secret, Taylor Swift lovers, the conscious consumers. 

We are of bright red lipstick, hawk eyes and excellent at getting lost. We hare differing degrees of tidiness-clothes everywhere to shirts organized in all colours. We hold notebooks clutched against our chest and sometimes leave them on the floors of cars. We grow our roots deep, but we always notice clouds. We are idealistic. But how could we not be, when words run through our veins?

I always find my kind.

We always find our kind.

I Do Not Want To Be A Statement

There are nights when I no longer want to feel female

nights when I sleep in a long shapeless robe

so there are no curves to be seen, my body is soft and shapeless

These are the nights when I have been too reminded of my female form

days where my bra has pulled too tight, left claw marks

parties where boys touch at that which they have no right to

believe they have ownership to the movement of our hips

yelling comments at my beautiful friends, 

afraid of females who value and claim their bodies for themselves and no one else 

I remember how my form is politicized

and I do not want to be a statement tonight

I do not want to be topography

I do not want to align myself with any party, with any megaphone

I do not want to have to be a feminist right now

I do not want to have to be anything.

I just want to be a human, to have a body

These are the nights I sleep in a long shapeless robe

one of the few moments of my life where no one is telling me I need to be anything

where there is no agenda 

besides a human form

where my body is nothing

besides mine

nothing besides a sleeping shape. 

I do not want to be a statement

I do not want to have to be anything tonight

but human

I want my body to be nothing 

but human

but mine

Illustration by Lina Kusaite

Banish The Thought

Banish the thought

banish the thought of

beautiful inaccessible boys

who don’t readily express emotions

and wear their opinions openly

and hold friendships tightly

Banish the thought

banish the thought of

inadequacy and never good enough

and if you were a sun

I’d be a sulking moon

and this stomach is too soft 

Banish the thought

banish the thought of 

constant survival, I keep on

just surviving, deep breaths, deep breaths

when reality is so different

so full of breakthroughs and catalysts

and fierce new ideas

Banish the thought

Banish the thought of 

proving intelligence brashly

cravenly making points

to make my intellectual stand point

HERE I AM WORLD AND I AM INTELLIGENT

Those that you admire most, wear their intelligence quietly

remember this, remember this

Banish the thought

Banish the thought of 

not doing enough, too slow, too inward focused

you were never one to rush and ram 

You will do what you need to do

and more, 

and much, much more.

Banish the thought

Banish the thought

of emotions that are not requited

dreams that are not substantiated

hopes that are hurtful

Banish the thought

Banish the thought of all

that does not honor and love you

that does not come in healing

and mercy and wonder. 

Banish the thought.

Hands

She has the most beautiful hands I believe I have ever seen. They are small, as small as a dolls. And they are not soft hands. They are rough from her hours in the garden. She keeps her fingernails short and clean. She does not use lotion, says it isn’t good for the skin. I have bought her all natural, unscented lotion but she never opened the bottle. She says her hands should speak of the work and the weather, just like God made them to do. I do not argue with her. I stopped as soon as I left my teenage years behind and developed half a mind. She may look like a china doll, but my mother is an iron ox. Once her mind is made up, there is no changing it. But either way, sometimes I can’t help wishing she would take better care of her little hands. 

~~

She had to leave art school because she bought booze for the cute guy next door with her fake I.D. She looked like trouble, shaved hair, belly pierced and undeniably cool. She made horny jokes and wore dark lipstick. She had long lovely legs and she was overtly comfortable with her hips. She was a film student and she was good at it. She had her own camera and she cared it proudly around, slung over her round strong shoulders. You could tell by looking at her that she was into guys...mostly. When she was kicked out none of us were surprised but we still all cried. Especially when we saw her cry. The night she left we watched her film on the wall while sitting on the lawn. It was of hands, hands moving slowly, hands touching and holding and melding, the curves and lines and palms. They pressed and kissed, for yes, hands can kiss. They moved over each other and under each other and I had to turn away, for up to that moment, I had not known that hands could be so sensual, so sexual. But she had, which was why she was the sort of student to be kicked out of art school, while I barely made any friends. 

~~

He likes to pick up my hands, compare sizes. He always has, since he began to grow taller, till I could no longer wrestle him and pin him to the ground. He is in complete marvel of his body, watching his arms and chest strengthen. He takes his shirt off whenever he can, the proud peacock. He struts with the plumage of a teenage boy. And he picks up my hands whenever I sit next to them. He peers at their tininess,wraps his fingers over mine, exclaims in delight every time. His hands are long and thin. His hands help him dribble the balls, carry his surfboard, he hangs car keys from them loosely. My hands serve their purposes too, but they do not reach a scale on a piano and he wonders at this fact, proud of his growing body. He is proud to watch himself tower over me. I try to remain silent to the fact.