incoming

1. our bodies are jellyfish at the dawn of time and when we touch it is electric and stings my whole being. I am grateful I do not have a brain. 
2. our bodies are rocks on the ocean floor, miles apart, until the current finally pushes us together, briefly, and then we continue on, moving past each other 
3. it is that first night with you, at the movies. It smells like popcorn and I can’t focus on the screen for wanting to hold your hand so bad. Do you remember how excited I was for the future? 
4. it is 6 years later and for the first time you hold my hand. In my mind I see a circle finally being completed 
5. Megan calls me on the telephone to ask the difference between perpendicular and parallel lines and I break down crying without knowing why. 
6. I am you 
7. gooey chocolate chip cookies, warm blankets, fuzzy socks 
8. loving you was easy until it wasn’t but I still couldn’t stop

do you ever feel afraid to love things?

I get so goddamned afraid sometimes. I don't know where to go. Where do you go when you're afraid and can I follow? These are my hands. I part them so you can grasp them so you can lead me. This is my sadness, it grows like a bird who hatches from an egg who flies away. Lead me into darkness. I'll rip the goddamn sea apart, tear it clean in two, down the seams of white crashing waves and up onto the shores and all the billions upon billions of tiny grains of sand and the trees and the rocks too, and the whole goddamn planet. I will part it like my brother's wet hair, open the world up like a chasm we can each shout secrets into. The year I chopped all my hair off and let them open me up. Some people, they say, come out swinging. I arrived crying, this is what it must feel like to be born, I think. When conductors still their loud hands, the music stops. There is an imperceptible moment of complete and gathered silence between that and the moment applause breaks out. I can't stop thinking about your hands.

my bed is a nest where I am born each morning. give me the scared. the not knowing. the bloodied snow and piercing fingers give me something to feel so deeply it hurts and I beg for mercy or to turn back, a knife to the throat, anything. let the rubies be sacrifices to gods forgotten buried or sleeping unable to awake. sandals and lightning and wet, dark caves. let this be my swan song say yes, and I will grow feathers Then press down and blackness.

i don't want anything.

let the dead not be envious of the living. i can't stop thinking about dirt and worms and how energy is never created or destroyed, only that it changes forms. if i have a chance to hurt you in the next life, i swear to you i won't take it. even now, i feel violently tender towards you and i wish, god, i wish i blamed you. it's like a sword's edge but magnified so strongly that it's as wide as the world and impossible to fall off of.

I was a moon. You were the tides, Sweeping me up like A long dancing dress Across a hardwood floor. All I wanted was you, In every form. I was a shot of whiskey in the parking lot And a tongue between two sets of teeth. You were an alleycat, baby, A yowling mess, A garbage dump. I had to learn to walk away But I didn't have to smile while doing it, In fact I cried. I hope nothing ever makes sense like you did.

in a dream god tried to stop me

i. your dark hair, your dark eyes made even darker, wet, with my blood raining onto the world. when you smile, i don't feel afraid. ii. i tried to stop you once, and here we are again. iii. shake the dust off, drum your fingers on your knee, stop apologizing to flowers and pretending that they're me. iv. Death by Fire v. Death by Water vi. when you pulled your fingers out and they came back bloody, i realized that this, too, is a dream and that we are stars waiting to burn and i feel desperate for everything to end.

Maybe my debt is to love you fiercely and receive small vials in return, which the throat receives with painful longing to drown down in my belly and live in me like a snarling animal in a wet cave.

Maybe my lesson is to love you regardless.

Maybe yours is to learn acceptance, gratitude. and when I carve ‘lovemebacklovemebacklovemeback’ into the ceramic tile of the bathroom with my bare nails I hope you understand why I had to.

Maybe acceptance is my lesson, too.

The Story of My Birth

at seventeen, I was that strange girl who memorized "A Dream Within a Dream" and scraped my knuckles while I walked along the bricked wall. nobody actually cares about you when you're seventeen. when I was 20 I was obsessed with the moon and got drunk a lot and fucked strangers in my flowery wallpapered room. I'm thinking of the mummy of the young woman who tattooed The Name of God on her inner thigh to protect her from men. I'm thinking of how astrophysicists tell us that the universe tastes of raspberries. and I know that smell is the strongest sense tied to memory, but what is the second? Dreaming? Poetry?

titles

I will do to you what you did to me. talking to the moon and eating glass. wings wings wings. Pestilence and railroad spikes. Dust storms. Thirst. There's only me, there's only you. Gasping and hands. his throat working. Frog song.

mother

would i build her a new body: cry my love onto the dirt and sun and sprout a shell easier to stuff her soul into. i am only selfish; i want her longer, longer than anything, longer than a lifetime. billions, eons, rising and falling of civilizations. Long enough for the crystals to cook in the earth, for the sap to turn to stone, animals into monsters. would i become a witch to heal her with spells and potions, fix everything, from the hairs on top of her head to her delicate painted toes. grind herbs and bones with mortar and pestle, say a prayer to whichever god will listen, any god, so long as he can mend her vessel. nobody but me understands how precious she is, which is both a curse and a blessing.

Blackberries, n. To forget.

Part I: Don't step too close to the edge, There are rocks down there. I spent years and years and years hoping she would learn how to get better. Now that I'm no longer a child I understand how it's not a choice, It's a little seed deep in your chest whose roots reach farther than you can fathom. Snip the top and it will keep on growing. Part II: The recommended dose is half that. When the floorboards creak underneath my feet I feel safe, however illogical that is. Pinches on the insides of my wrists, Smiling babies, A can of diet coke. I choose objects or experiences to embed my comfort in so I can bring them with me and draw strength from their presence. I am a sorceress. Part III: It's down the road, not across the street. Mom has to go away for a little while. They're going to brush her hair just the way she likes it. They're going to give her medicine. She'll come back smiling. She'll dive in the pool and eat sundaes and tuck you in again, You'll see. It's just for a little while. Part IV: Water is supposed to feel like concrete from this high up. I got it, too. Whatever she has, I got it too and I still have my whole life in front of me.

On my worst days I am nothing I have nothing I feel nothing I want nothing. I can't eat, my heart beats so hard I get dizzy I can't talk to anyone There is a Pit inside of me that everything in the world falls into. On my good days I water my plants and visit the library and cook lasagna. On my good days I am everybody else at their normal state of being. It's been hard accepting my brain and the things that it does to me, but that is the way things are and time doesn't exist: there is no past. there is no future. all I have is Now. That has also been hard to accept. The Pit struggles against Truth and Light.

I rub myself against the stone until I am no longer. Powder or dust. A jar of potions, chilling advice. They used to burn people like me. Now I am the lantern in the darkness, a monster with no eyes, I will lead you up and out of hell. Remember the dark stains of berry juices on your mouth and how difficult it was to smile. When your hair is wet and cool down your back, feel God thrumming nothingness inside you. Strike the ground with matches and rocks. There are not animals in your throat. If today you see a bird that's not a sparrow, trust that God is the one listening to your thoughts.

My eyes are made of little stars That pop and sizzle And I cut them out with sharp scissors To press into a book about a girl who can lace up her boots and put a little mascara on and drive to the library and get out from underneath the covers. A girl that is not like me. Sometimes the blankets on top of me feel like rubble too heavy to move. I am not very good at being a person. I am always tired, I have nothing inside of me I can't feel most things I am highly attuned to the sensations my body experiences I confuse dreams with reality sometimes But the sun is still golden And I've heard sunlight in outer space boils your blood Even though everything else is very cold And I am fascinated by that contrast in such closeness And I light a sweet candle with matches And listen to the owl who lives somewhere near my house And hope for tomorrow.

Hello new followers! Thanks for all the love. I'll be posting daily during April for NaPoWriMo so keep a look out for new material from me! Hope you're having a lovely day x. Amanda R. La Valley