home – o sweet home – o

dear brick and streaked wooden / dear ghostly walk-up / dear burnt-up confessional / dear stacked & sturdy studio

Yesterday, I house hunted for a closet called one bedroom and memorized the view of pigeons scooping out their yawns.

Fifteen years ago, I lost hand-carved flip lighter with built in gasoline pump off drunk roof from drunk fingers forcing it to its death.

Six years ago, a grove with fern and paw prints.

Four years ago, composted meals from seeds stuck together like bodies birthing roots.

Two years ago, an addict and his blood replaced paint and refuge. Dripped his skinny breaths into wallets and extracted. Thirty-seven poems stolen and money from an occurrence better left undeclared.

Twenty years ago,  a swimming pool and barbecue and built-in-family before the fracture. A bedroom painted purple where screams suffocated behind hoarded pill bottles and there was blood here too — wiped before it could be unraveled.

Five days ago, I built a callus on my pointer finger from strumming invisible songs. My wrist grew phantoms from the reverberations of rhythm.

Thirty years ago, my words were less ruptured and gender was a word existing decades later in a way that would wind my hair in circulatory patterns & cause my body to feel puzzled and unglued.

Tomorrow, I will twist my ankles like a cursive Q and there may be a teardrop so big and illuminating it resembles a disco ball and yes, it rotates down face and into the first crease it catches.

Right now, all I need is this ink and enough bricks to keep me warm and if closets are big enough to hold my breaths–full-figured and agoraphobic, then I can live here. Amidst the crowd. The graffiti steam. The urine and judgements like chain mail. Window-less views of obstructed earth. I can do this.

dear sun-dried cinder and spikes/ dear brownstone beauty / dear stained glass glare / dear exercise regime of fourth-floor climb / dear new york / dear new jersey / dear borrowed bedrooms/ dear denver / dear nooks where sleep existed beside against and alone / let me know when I am home. 

 

familia

Some things can be explained.

The indentations on cheeks like puddles also called dimples.

Curve of hairline, similar to low tide.

The elongation of your toes.

The intonation of voice. It’s pitch and peaks.

When you are around them, it is easy to assemble where your parts came from. Skin tone. Body type. Strength of shoulders and inclination to laugh during the sad parts of movies. Every root can be labeled and tagged as an offshoot of someone else.

In the morning, when I am alone at my desk– which used to be a piece of scrap wood balanced on plastic crates and has since been replaced by a yellow fold up table purchased at summertimes stoop sale– I think about the parts that cannot be explained. And I search for these parts in lovers too. Because I want to decipher the mannerisms swiped from family tree and the ones which came much later.

We arrive and we watch and we learn as we watch and we do as we watch and our opinions are like a giant garden watered by our parents or guardians. It is difficult to decipher what is chosen, when nothing is its own anymore.

I’ve done some things that were not mentioned at suppertime or holiday gatherings or through school research of family history. I follow the dust, bred from the chalk-marks surrounding these things to figure out its true origins.

Where did all this arrive from?

Youth is something we push away and push and smother with a pillow because we want what the grown-ups have when we can’t have it. We let go of overalls too quickly and imaginary friends and nap time and excitement over snowdays or water-slides. We put on make-up when our faces are colorful and dramatic already or slick our hair back and replace wide-open laughter with brooding glares.

Then when we are real adults (which I am still researching), the bills arrive and suddenly we are judged by our credit score instead of how many U.S state capitols we can memorize. Our status is marked by how many computer friends we have and the latest phone upgrade glowing in our skinny pockets. We surround ourselves with things, similar to when we were young, but our things are plugged in and flashy and everything must match including underwear and whatever happened to those faraway days when life was marked by play-dates and tree climbing?

In the olden days, we played a game on looseleaf paper called MASH. This light-hearted game was like a scratched out fortune teller.

Mansion. Apartment. Shack. House.
What is your fate?

And you have to name who your future husband would be (before we knew we were queer). And what we wanted their job to be (because we control that, right?). And the car we’d drive and the name of our kids and animals and even the place we’d honeymoon (for those of us legally allowed to marry).

I remember even as a kid, I never wanted the mansion and I wasn’t too keen on a house either. For most of my adulthood, I’ve lived in an apartment without a wife or kids, had a perfect pup for some time, and I never dictated my partner’s job but I always wondered when I’d get the one I always hoped for.

When I am around my family, I study them in a way I never did before. I do this in order to understand myself a little more. Someone drilled into my mind and stole so many of my childhood snapshots that many years are blurred. Kind of like how it looks when I take my glasses off….but worse. I don’t remember full years. So I try I try I try to be present now because this moment is loudest and the ink is still wet and the words are at their thickest.

Maybe I should address the calluses on my feet from all the paths I’ve taken. They know where I’ve been, recalling each time I’ve gotten lost. Perhaps all the answers to our selves can be found in the hardened formation of tissue decorating our unseen bones.

Counting Steps in a Different City

28,251 steps. I hitched a ride on my body and chose toes over wheels to guide me from beautiful house on tree-lined street toward downtown Denver.

Men sleep on rocks, which outline the Platte River. I chew on Brooklyn farmer’s market fuji apple as I whisper a poem into the air, in hopes the wind pushes it toward them. I have not seen a pigeon in twenty-four hours and the air smells of grapefruit-suckled roses and freshly cut grass.

A woman stops me on 16th street in the financial district.

“Sister,” she says. “Sister, I’m eight months pregnant.”
And she shows me a belly that could be distended from housed human or intense starvation.
“Sister, do you have anything? Can you give me something, sugar?”
I nod. Apologize. Then, I offer her a granola bar, which she aggressively declines.
The homeless are picky here, I think.

I am wearing black high top converse sneakers. Tall rainbow striped socks reaching just above my knees. Jeans cut into shorts, cuffed. A loose, white t-shirt with various shades of blue and faded lettering. And a black vest. Throughout this walk, I am whistled at and I wonder: Is it the knots of frizz in my hair that turn these men on? The stench of menstruation emitting from inside my purple underwear? The undeclared pattern of scarred incisions on my forearms?

I keep walking. 17th street and Race. St Marks Cafe, home of the best peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie that is like eating a prayer. I opt for a cafe au lait with soy milk and a square shaped raspberry scone. Outside, I sit with first coffee of the day. Notebook gathers words. When all the caffeine has moved from clear mug to pale body, I continue walking.

I head toward Colfax for Tattered Cover bookshop. I search through poetry books, feel disappointed by the lackluster erotica section and move toward gay/lesbian/women studies shelves. Excitement puffs up my body when I recognize names from NYC writers in various anthologies. When we write, we don’t always know where we may be shelved.

A visit to past home on York Street led me to feel sick with sadness. Our garden was replaced with wood chips and impersonal ceramic planters. There was a wreath on our front door. No wind chime.

I used to think: If I turn off the radio, all the music and voices will stop talking. The music will pause until I rotate the dial back on.

Life, unfortunately, doesn’t wait for us to return.

I cross streets I used to cross with black-haired pup by my side; I am alone this time. I am occasionally interrupted by my shadow or a drip of sweat traveling from neck to collarbone. Cars don’t really honk here. Homeowners water their lawns. Garbage remain in cans and off sidewalks. The wind is a meditation, rather than a disruption.

At Cheeseman Park, I search for a bench in the shade. I grab a handful of nuts from the trail mix in my backpack. Suddenly, I am no longer alone. Two squirrels are close enough to pet and I decide to share my almonds. One squirrel turns into two, then three, and suddenly I’m surrounded. I fear being hijacked for my snacks as they hop onto hind paws and move closer.

“You’ve had enough,” I say, in the high-pitched voice I often use with dogs.

They are poor listeners or they speak limited English or they abhor rules and authority. So, I decide to switch benches. The soundtrack here is so subtly peaceful and I never want to leave; sometimes, I wish I never had in the first place.