the time breath forgot itself

“If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.” 
……………………………………….Vera Pavlova.

Dear Rebel,

So much of this is about persistence. Did I tell you about the time I forgot how to breathe. I awoke on a Saturday and my chest was sore like April in mourning. I googled: steps to take when breath is forgotten. Videos and imagery emerged. Yoga poses. Lots and lots of kundalini. Some recipes for tinctures and toxin-reducers. Am I housing foreclosed energies that are tying up my lungs into suffocated pauses?

Name one thing I regret: letting that ring rust away from  my finger. Call out the first sounds I heard this morning: steam and persistence of cold. What happens when we recall: lost time. You called yourself pregnant and I told you about the time(s) I thought I was too. Last year, I miscarried my mind. This year, I may find myself giving birth to a mountain; how many stretchmarks will add themselves to my body from that push.

Rebel, in a room full of poets, I was reduced to a stereotype. In a room full of metaphors and freestyle’d verse, I was called dirty and abused. Sometimes we have no idea who sits beside us and the routes of survival.

I used to desire the wrap-a-round of somebody’s fingers into mine. I used to desire monogamy and breakfast. I used to regret my inability to close doors and keep them locked. Now I desire music and tuned colors. Now I regret not wearing sturdier boots.

Rebel, I still think about that yurt and the ways in which bodies can resemble this portable dwelling. We can airlift our bones anywhere. We can escape this cold and travel toward the moon or dig our way around it. I’ll bring the paper, percussion and manuals on how to breathe. I’m still gathering.

give up on monogamy with another and begin solitary love affair with brain

emicrania cara

1.
you followed me home last night
or more like the early morning
pounding yourself into me

raged and runny
you leaked expired rust throughout
my cerebral cortex

I am phonophobic now so how can I dance
instead I weave into musical notes of traffic
feel the weight of evening
hammer against skull
genetic, you
persist

do I need to file a restraining order, migraine?

2.
depression is organic like
kale &
rice flour

brain wants to know
where it derives from

gather loneliness like exotic lilies
notice the color of sad
bouquet of grey

there is really nothing wrong with calling
lock on front door:
soulmate

3.
I am not in the mood
for a pounding

instead, how about documenting the
alphabetics of lobes:
frontal
occipital
parietal
temporal

4.
at least when you leave me
the rest of me will die too

femalia as a symptom

when all else fails, eat lead.
boils in water may be used as a murder weapon.
her vagina is detachable therefore nothing is left to rob.
russian man has breath of wood chips.
lobsters exchange colour from maroon to cherry post plunge.
day begins when air wafts against lungs like a flying bruise.

illustration by phoebe gloeckner

gender is the symptom.
black butterfly interrupted by yellow is the image.
convince existence to remain one more day is the treatment.

I could purchase runners: the expensive kind, the kind that kids wait for overnight in folding chairs and sleeping bags so that when the store opens they are the first ones to touch them.

I could replace my ink-stained backpack with one slightly more durable, big enough to house my notebook and two pens, extra clothes, an atlas, trail mix.

I could fall in love again and not push it away like an intruder.

I could have a baby, search for a woman with sperm or try to grow some of my own and impregnante myself.

Is there a way to peel off the first fifteen layers of my skin and make room for something else to grow there?

I could move to Canada.

I could eat ice cream for breakfast because that is what my body truly craves.

I could give away all my things so that I don’t have to put them away anymore.

I could unplug myself and see what persistently remains alive.

What would happen if I started walking, forced myself to get lost, cross state lines and comfort zones and begin life in a place where no one knows what a scar means.

I could swallow seeds, water myself until my body is covered in crops, feed the world from my harvested bones.

I could stop making lists and just allow the day to arrive.

I could give up on monogamy with another and begin a solitary love affair with my brain.

/
The manifestation of this grammatical feminine is not found in any of my parts/ Every inch of me is detachable, including these thoughts/ Neutered mind allows room for retranslation of life.living/ Questions are androgynous/ Words are without genitals/ Love is just an angle to faint against.