You May Kiss Me In The Poetry Section

I’ve always wanted to be kissed in a bookstore, my body gently pressed against the poetry section. Bookstores are the most romantic of places. They are full of ancient history and secrets, brimming with full bodied sentences and the scent of jasmine wafting out from exotic storyscapes. They are places of escape and content, of danger and peace. In book stores, one gets lost and one finds oneself on shelves that are at once unfamiliar yet make perfect sense. Of course parts of you were left in the Mesopotamia section, its only logical. 

I imagine being looked at in the way I look at books after I finish them, with wonder, gratitude, warmth spreading over my skin, a hand placed at the spine. Or with confusion, with puzzlement. Yes, I want that too. Look at me with confusion, with puzzlement. But mostly with wonder, I want to be looked at with wonder. I want to be lead down the aisles of an old winding book store. The sort of book store where books fall off shelves and you have to side step around piles. Pull books down from the dusty shelves and read random snippets of books read out loud to me, the sentences that make you smile. I want to hear you laugh, laugh before you put your hands to my waist, bow your head towards me. Look at me, look at me with wonder. How did you find this novel of a girl, this little slip of a poem, this curious newspaper clipping? Did you find her in the pages of a book, tucked into the binding? You must have, that’s the only sort of place I really reside.

I sometimes sit on the floors of bookstores, and simply read book titles. I run my fingers across them, this is a form of meditation. If enough words sink into my skin, I will be more whole, I will be of better form. So in my curving train of thought, relationships founded among the shelves of books surely have enough ink to flourish. A silly thought? Probably. Write it down dear, it will last longer. Book stores are the homes of all sorts of longing, all sorts of secrets, all sorts of starts. Mine have only been of the ink variety as of yet, but I am not opposed to the meeting of flesh and star blazed eyes, pressed against the poetry section. Our heads bowed, excuse me Emily Sylvia Plath, excuse me Richard Blanco. Having to make those sort of apologies, oh no, I’m not opposed to that at all, dear. 

Which Story Is It?

I know there is a story inside me. But I don’t know which one it is. Have I found it yet? Is it about my two hearted girl, my heart seamstress? Is it the one I wrote lonely, late at night, my hummingbird heart pounding? I wrote it curled in bed, sophomore year, mistranslating my loneliness as a pang for words, for a world balled up inside me, pounding to get out. A mistake I often make, a mistake I never regret. It is hard to be lonely when entire worlds spin inside you, when books whisper the sweetest of secrets. Is it that story, that little novella of fairytale cliches and sugar sweet sentences? It is a story both grandiose and humble, flawed and crystalline. 

Or is the one about a bookstore, the one where people trade in secrets and wishes? Another story about longing, but longing turned to other books. You deposit a secret in the black box, and then you take out a book for your heart ache. Little do you know, your wishes are worming their way into other’s books, into other’s stories. A wild little town, one set by the sea, bright colours. What if revolution really lead to bone deep peace? This story doesn’t belong to one character, though you always thought it did. No, it’s a story of many, a story of a town. A town you call home, turned surreal, turned wild. It has lost its sweet candour. Is this the story I set down to write?

Is it one about the notes scrawled in the margins of a book? A story of madness written alongside one. The Queen of Sheba dressed in blue coats from Gimbel and baked anchovy cookies, while her father painted paint by number masterpieces. 

I know the story inside me wants to blur the lines between faery speak and English. She, for I know she is feminine, wants to dine with doubt, wants to speak with faith. She wants to call her God female, for He has been masculine all her life and she has come to doubt that her God is all that attached to the male pronoun in the first place. She wants her God to be a feminist, to delight in critical theory and have a proper library with leather bound books. Can I write of that God? This God so different from the one I’ve grown up with, I can’t fashion God in my own image. But if I am fashioned in their image I must assume that they aren’t opposed to such ideas. Should I refer to God in my story as they or their, he or her? Will God make an appearance in this story I am trying to write?

Where do I find this story? Do I already have it bundled up, ready to assemble or has it not found its way to me yet? For me, finding a story is like finding a warm ember on a freezing day. I simply hold it, wondrous of its existence, grateful for its presence. But how do I know when it is THE story. The first story, the first novel, Adam and Eve. This is the beginning. How do I know when I have found the beginning of my novel writing days, when I am about to embark on the journey of the lifetime? Do I just have to buy the ticket and hope the journey leads somewhere? I guess so. I’m just having trouble finding the station I leave from. 

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