mourning the innards of what was.

“I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.” 
― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Drink in all this silence. If we are to search out each others’ scientific notations, then it should really be called bellow.

Decide when you want to say goodbye. You lose parts of you all the time. Flakes of skin leave evidence of where you were everyday on every surface.

This hair is deathly, so might as well drench it in the brightest hues to compete with the vitamins found in sun.

What is left behind can also be titled: love letters to the cement of city.

Take a deep breath. Inhale the shards of overwhelm. Step away. Walk back. Trace the outline of shadows steaming open skin. Try not to question the gaps. All that is here is also a part of there.

Sshhhh. Hear that? Keep listening until you can sort through the disconnect and connect what asks to be understood.

 

 

corset.

 

“If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn’t, go for the one with form.”   –Haruki Murakami (Chance Traveler)
Her hips are hard like dinosaur bones. I thought about taking chisel to each side to see what fossils forged their way against her custom-made curves, but I was too nervous. And I had this apple weighing down right pocket and the night was cold and scarf was suddenly too feminine to fondle my neck so I shivered my way in. Slowly. Coffee can be consumed at all hours of the day and into night. Much like the moon, it gives off the scent of paused breath. So we swim tongues into cups of caffeinated evening before collapsing them into each other. The first time is like that moment you learn a new word. The syllables aren’t always stressed correctly and you stumble and you whisper it out. Bodies bake into new shapes when pressed against each other. Her skin is a liquid. And mine is a campsite of burns and bothers. So I dig out farmer’s market fruit. And I unravel the lies that tumbled out of mouth between 7 and 9pm and what would happen if we painted each other’s skin with the reluctance vibrating behind teeth. What color is this. What gender am I with you and how stunning that you make room for my blurry politics. Notice that fountain; someone sucked up all it’s water. I still may jump in because you never know what puddles hide beneath all this city beneath all this tremble.

 

“like the bone of some prehistoric animal on the beach”

“‘Sometimes I have this dream,’ the young man in the wheelchair said. His voice had a strange echo to it, as if it were rising up from the bottom of a cavernous hole. ‘There’s a sharp knife stabbed into the soft part of my head, where the memories lie. It’s stuck deep down inside. It doesn’t hurt or weigh me down– it’s just stuck there. And I’m standing off to one side, looking at this like it’s happening to someone else. I want someone to pull the knife out, but no one knows it’s stuck inside my head. I think about plucking it out myself, but I can’t reach my hands inside my head. It’s the strangest thing. I can stab myself, but I can’t reach the knife to pull it out. And then everything starts to disappear. I start to fade away, too. Only, the knife is always there– the the very end. Like the bone of some prehistoric animal on the beach. That’s the kind of dream I have,’ he said.” 

—-Haruki Murakami (from The Hunting Knife in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman)

 

There is something less threatening when it repeats. When it echoes pink from its blade. When Warhol calls it art and not weaponry. Cast iron can replace analyst for hippocampus sharpener. Where does this persistence derive. Chins carry the most tremble and they house dreams as well as meals for teeth. There is a cherry tree on left hip and gang of macintosh on the right. Blood is less threatening when metaphor’d into fruit montages. What separates memory from me or memo or rome of nucleus. Literature. Long distance love affair with book musk and October audit. Instrumental collapse. Awake.