love in a disemboweled cigarette

Hair in its infinite stages of death can be far more beautiful than any orchid or moonlight or kiss.

This is what I was thinking when I watched the German with long, blond dreadlocks, parading death down his back like frozen stalks of sun, speak to me about getting lost.

We were in the front room of Bob’s Youth hostel located on a street in Amsterdam I still have difficulty pronouncing. I had been staring at him for what felt like hours, burning my hazel into his whole milk skin. I finally got up and sat across from him, asking if he’d write a poem with me.

“Yeah,” he said, “but I don’t really know how.”

“I don’t really either,” I said. “But if you can rummage inside your gut for the words which feel most potent, I think,” I paused, “I think you may find something there.”

So I gave him my tiny red notebook given to me by a lover who I had just started learning how to kiss, given to me to fill up during this two-week trip away from New York.

This was supposed to be an adventure on how to move toward who I was or who I wanted to be. My relationship with a different woman had ended just a few months earlier, one which I thought was the one I might marry, even though I did not believe in such a word.

It was a mourning trip.

I watched as the German, fingers sprinkled with fine commas of bleached hair, pressed his handwriting into the pages.

His dead knots became whispers soaring past his shoulders, for as he wrote, they shook. I wondered how many secrets were hiding in the decease of his hair.

“One must get lost,” he spoke. “Where are you from?” he asked me, handing back my pen and closing the book.

“Brooklyn. Quite a faraway land from here,” I said.

“Leave your maps behind, Brooklyn,” he said to me.

“No need,” I said. “I never carry them around. I get lost even when I do not intend to. But I like your reminder.”

He smiled. He had a tiny chip in his front tooth like the curve of a hammock. I wanted to lay in his mouth and nap beside his ridges.

He told me traveling is about connecting to the land, not the pages that speak about it.

“You’re beautiful,” I spat out. His eyes walked over the length and width of my face. I could feel his lashes even though we were an arm’s distance away from each other.

“Yes,” he said. As though I had asked a question. Or maybe he was answering something that he had heard much earlier. Either way, I enjoyed the oddity of his syllable.

“I’m trying to lose myself here. Bring another version back to New York,” I told him.

“Smoke enough hash and that will happen without trying too hard,” he smiled.

“I am trying to let go of a love. One so big, my heart still has stretchmarks.”

He smiled.

“There is not enough smoke to inhale, which will get rid of that,” he said. “But how about this. Actually…” he paused. I watched him remove the tiny, hand-rolled cigarette between his fat, slightly blush lips. With the tip of two fingers pressed together, he put out the fire on the end. Then, I watched him peel it open, drip the nicotine out and hand me this frail rolling paper, half wet from the spit of his mouth.

“I can see from the rest of your notebook….pardon my snoop,” he interrupted himself, “…that your handwriting is bitty. Write what you want from love on this.”

I held this disemboweled cigarette in the palm of my hand. As though it were a tiny space alien, which had fallen from the sky from a spaceship that our eyes couldn’t quite fathom. With the fingers from my other hand, I poked at it.

“It may not even be words,” he said. “The love you lust may be symbols.”

I thought about every word I ever learned. The ones I kept and the ones I could never quite remember. I wasn’t thinking about limbs; instead, my brain began to conjure up images of smells. Music of taste.

I dropped the cigarette from my palm and grabbed my pen.

The German smiled and I could feel him get up, though never let my eyes wander away from the paper.

I began to finally get lost.

Dear Rebel…

I encountered a disemboweled ice cube between china town and the east village, but it was too expensive to bring home to brooklyn. I can no longer afford old things, because aged goods have increased in price and the new stuff is too much too. So I search for the discards….the free……the treasures in the trash….since that’s all I can achieve with what little I’ve got.

Often, when I find money on the street, I leave it there, knowing even though my wallet is mostly full of love notes and directions, there are others without even that.

An almost-lover I once had mailed me a book without her name attached. I couldn’t figure out who had sent it to me. By the time I realized who it was from, she was no longer accepting my phone calls.

An occasional lover sent me a different book, which I had a difficult time reading, but maybe I’m just not smart enough for Proust; what do you think?

The one I now love collects keys and coins; I collect guilt and memories, bruised like pocketed fruit.

Who should we put on that $10 bill, Rebel? I vote for Lidia Yuknavitch. Or Kathy Acker. Or Audre Lorde. And why stop at the ten dollar bill?

Rebel, I’m thinking about putting my words into melted copper and nickel; then, I can pay with my collection of syllables. As long as I read and collect more words, I will never be poor again. I will horde dictionaries and thesauruses. I will play Scrabble every night to encourage the long and obscurely short words. Then, we can collide again and finally find that yurt and live off the earnings of our speech.

an ode to my dad

 The calendar calls Father’s Day June 21st, but what committee came up with this date and why is it secluded into just this square?

Dear Dad,

I fit you into my suitcase when I traveled to Nebraska, when I searched for myself in Amsterdam, when I relocated to Colorado, when I visited Georgia, and visited Vermont.

Spread your words on the grasslands of Marquette, over the canals near Prisengracht, by the Boulder Creek, in Denver’s Cheesman Park.

You remind me to breathe. To write. To share what I write. To share how I breathe. You tell me that when it rains, it pours, so when it feels like pain is endless, there is always a reprieve. You encourage me to be out. To be kind. To be safe. You tell me not to hold onto gifts–to give things away without reason so they can enjoy things longer. You remind me to eat. To explore. To love.

You live inside my present, instead of reminding me of the ghosts of my past. You do not judge or hate. You welcome and encourage. You create.

We do not pick our fathers. Or our mothers. Or siblings. But I feel by far the luckiest that you’re the one I call Dad. And you’re the one I call friend. And writer. And reader. And everytime I forget how to remain, you’re the one I call to remind me. To stay.

dear rebel (with regards to dressing the dead)

Dear Rebel,

Here is what you asked of me. You asked me to think about love. Then a body without dressing. Then death. Then words to send this person out with.

I think of gauze. The word and the cloth.

I think of a handkerchief to sop up the salt coming from me. Dripping onto the body. Creating a reflection of water one could not possibly swim in, but a lifeguard will still be needed to catch the ones who try.

I think of a zipper. To hold in what tries to flee.

“Be still,” I will say, even though there is nowhere for a body to move when it is no longer living. “Be still as I dictionary your skin.”

[I use this noun as a verb because it feels more like an action to inscribe every word and its meaning onto flesh that may no longer breathe, but it listens. It may no longer respond, but it imprints.]

“Be still,” I repeat once more.

I think of blood. I think of all the blood I extracted from my body. Wasted it onto bandages and hiding places. Now, I can’t even donate what I’ve got; it’s too tarnished and tongue-tied.

I think of that time I went with a friend when she wanted to donate her blood. I was jealous that hers was better than mine. Afterward, she let me eat the cookie and drink the juice they gave to her. I still have that pin, shaped as a drop of blood, that she gave me after giving.

I think of my friend, the oil painter named Lindsay, who asked me what is really meant by “the one” when love is mentioned. She questioned the validity of a soul mate. I think we have many ones….the ones who mate with our souls in that moment. And when they are gone, we change. And when we meet another, they become the one for that time.

I think that some moments last thirty-seven years or just two years or just a few hours.

 

***

Dear Rebel, we are meant to write. We are meant to wake up writing. We are meant to wake up questioning this as well.

When I was in Nebraska, I thought about all the ways I’ve been hiding myself. I took drugs. I had promiscuous sex. I lied. I denounced. I painted my skin in toxicity in order to scare away the ones who wanted to breathe against me. In Nebraska, I tried a different pattern of breathing. In Nebraska, I learned how to play brave. In Nebraska, I dictionary’d my soul.

I also think of music in the key of C minor.

an ode to the flatlands

photo by Raluca Albu

Dear Nebraska,

I coveted your squares. They were unshaky and so green. And brown. And itchy. In New York, I notice the bricks and windows that shield the sky from full-frontal nudity. But your sky was a true nudist.

I inquired about your routine. How you got to be so…flat. I have been pushing myself down for quite awhile now, training my body to be like you (even before I knew you) and when I remove my clothes at night, my curves always come back. How do you keep yourself so smooth, Nebraska?

I wanted to lay in your grassland, but there were the chiggers. And ticks. So I fantasized about your blades of green against my back, tickling my ankles, which I always had covered because….well…..the chiggers & the ticks.

I wanted to tell you that I didn’t think we’d get along, but by the time I left, I wanted to ask if we could be exclusive. I was ready to try monogamy with you. But I never said this because I knew New York would always slip its way into my mind.

I wanted to tell you that I stopped being so afraid of your mites and insects. I stopped fearing heights and loneliness. I gave away some of my secrets. I even let you see me naked. That night in the water with several other planets watching without judgment.

There is still so much I want to say to you. So I write them down and float them toward your flatlands. Toward your birdsongs. Toward the artists.

an affair with fingertips

You count fourteen crime scenes in your fingerprints. Perhaps more, but your eyesight is raw and does not cooperate with squinting or glassware.

On left pointer, a slice from paper. From book about contagious diseases during the mid-80’s.

Thumb is bent; you lose track of the swirl that seems to be slightly off-kilter in comparison to the others.

Your thumb, you conclude, is the rebel of your hands.

Ring finger on left hand is contemplative. It is nude of silver or circles and wonders what it would be like to weigh more.

Right hand is more weathered. Pre-arthritic but preparing for the worst. These are the fingers you are most intimate with. These are the fingers which pull out your language. These are the fingers you balance your imagination on.

You spent eight years ignoring your middle fingers, then gave both away (one at a time) to all the men who stole your spit and soul.

Your mate fondles the callus on finger on right hand. Rubs it like a fortune teller’s glass seeing eye. Says there is enchantment in the hard skin, created by all that you’ve created.

a door, opening

Dear Pen Pal,

They are just shapes. Squares. Angles. Equations. Ninety degrees. Trees turned inside out and shorn of hairy leaves. Decades of breathing taught me they were doors.  

[ dôr ]  :  A sign of entering. A revelation of more. Barrier of protection.

One lover told me I was like one of those metal doors at banks with thousands of coded locks attached. Said I was unapproachable, impossible to open and enter.

This is a lie, pen pal.  I am the one who has called myself this.

Doors can be painted in bright hues, some have awnings above them. Some have stained glass slits of sunshine’d colors coming through.

Doors can be heavy. Some can be see-through screens with aeration.

Doors can be purchased from hardware stores; doors can be made from found wood from backyards or the bush.

All of this is a metaphor for you.

Humans can be doors that upon twisting that knob of language, adventure and magic is born.

Humans are like doors in that they are tall & safe & protective & calm & still.

It was just after 7pm (or so) and a door walked through a door wearing a cap and suspenders and a room that had no meaning suddenly grew grass, acres of hyacinths and wildflowers of impossible colors.

This door was you.

We are surrounded by doors, which are doors. We are surrounded by doors, which are humans. Those who remind us to walk through, to get out, to wander. To explore.

How lucky. How beautiful. That I have fallen in love with the most booming of doors to ever welcome me through.

 

a moment on your mouth.

I was asked to write about the state of your mouth.

(and by asked, I mean, compelled)

I was asked compelled to write about the state of your mouth and the adjectives that arrive are: earth-bound, orchestral, hungry, polite, southern, like a pastry.

I was compelled to write about the state of your mouth as though it is a kingdom. A nation of skin and exhales. A confederation of spit and jaws.

I was compelled to write about the state of your mouth as though it contained rivers, bicoastal oceans, twelve reservoirs and a creek to wade in.

Your mouth is a compilation of love letters.

Your mouth is a completed volume of encyclopedias, the kind delivered to one’s door and full of illuminating photographs and unchartered territories.

Your mouth is an unlocked secret.

Your mouth is a mailbox, delivering care packages full of rice crispy treats and home-baked cookies and licorice and books and black ink pens and decoder rings.

I was compelled.

I was enthralled.

I was deliberate.

When I signed up (without end date) to study the correspondence, the choreography of the movement of you.

an ode to my furrow.

My therapist calls it a crease. As though my forehead has overslept after a night of tossing and turning and now it needs heavy-duty ironing. And yet, I like this noun. Perhaps I can call every fold and fumble on my skin a crease.

When I sit, that is not fat forming around my belly. They are creases. All those scars on my forearms? Creases.

My lover stores poems in my creases. But the noun chosen is furrow. Sometimes it is used as a verb: “Your brow is furrowed and I like this.”

I am unaware of when it happens. This noun of waves or verb of worry.

I furrow on the subway. I furrow when I make love. I furrow when I am in my nude, in the bath or upwards in shower. I furrow when I am eating a meal that steals all my words. I furrow when I am reading. Perhaps this is my resting face/place.

Creases or wrinkles or excess of skin does not have to be a bad thing. In fact, I quite like my folds. Media tells us to be smooth, but I like people to know I’ve lived and continue to do so.

My body tells the story of me when I am too shy to.

My body does not allow me to skip pages. Every inch of me speaks out my history. I like this. It reminds me I have one.

So, I’ve got this furrow that for a brief time was covered due to a poor decision called bangs. 

I was recently asked (by my therapist) to think of a part on me that I can say I like. For over a week, my answer was empty.

Finally, I know.

I like something about me.

My furrow.

fell in love with wood, strings and fingertips

Dear Pancetta,

I purchased the first version of you in a small music shop in Cape Cod. We shared so many walks in Prospect Park where I’d hold you against my chest, which looked a lot different back then. You helped me find a slice of my voice that you harmonized to.

The second one of you was found in an even smaller shop in the west village where I had no idea I’d fall in love with a hybrid of you called banjolele. We had good times. Remember when we met that human peddling a recumbent bicycle in Washington Square Park. He listened to us softly sing together until I grew too shy to form words. He told us about his existence living in a commune in Staten Island and we almost took that ferry the following Friday to join up!

Pancetta #3, you are larger and I often bring you on stages and in bars where, even though you are underage, they still let you in. You’ve become like medicine for me, lifting my breaths to an audible moan when I am sad. You were an impulse buy, but perhaps the others before you were as well. You remind me to wake because you whisper your tunes in my ear. When I combine my fingers with your strings, I forget about all my scars.

Thank you for existing. All three of you and the others out there finding homes all over the world.

Love, Aimee.