Have you seen the movie Frances Ha? (Beware tangent ahead)

It’s a collaborative project from Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach from 2013 that follows a 27-year-old woman living in New York City who has no idea what she’s doing in life. A stretch in terms of relatability, right?

Frances is stumbling through the day-to-day with almost no money and a flailing dancing career but at least she has Sophie, her co-dependent best friend and roommate. Until Sophie moves to Tribeca with other friends and gets a boyfriend and suddenly, slightly autistic Frances is on her own.

What transpires next is a journey of self-discovery and self-sufficiency almost too earnest to watch. Frances falls down and gets back up over and over again until she finds her footing. And then achieves some kind of middle ground with Sophie, who—surprise, surprise!—doesn’t have it all figured out either. They need each other, even if it isn’t in the way they did before.

Sorry not sorry for the spoilers. It’s been over a decade since the movie came out.

There’s this scene in the movie that goes viral all the time where Frances is describing the kind of love she wants in her life. I’ll put it here, but really you should watch it in context.

“It’s that thing when you’re with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it... but it’s a party... and you’re both talking to other people, and you’re laughing and shining... and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes... but - but not because you’re possessive, or it’s precisely sexual... but because... that is your person in this life. And it’s funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it’s this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It’s sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don’t have the ability to perceive them. That’s - That’s what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess.”

I won’t spoil the ending of the movie but you can probably guess who she’s talking about, ultimately. And maybe this “person” isn’t always the same person. Maybe we get more than one or we get one for every chapter in our lives. That would be nice!

Anyways, I wrote this poem for the only person to ever live in that other dimension with me. At least, so far.

I saw you today or an overfamiliar pigeon but it felt like you 

something about the way it circled my ankles
perched on the bench next to my head 

I had been thinking about you and here you were 
close by and further than you had ever been and then gone 

and I imagine this is what it feels like 
to touch a flower with awareness instead of your hands 

to catch a whiff of jazz on the wind and not know its source 

to walk by a restaurant that uses a lot of garlic, see a poster for a movie
long after it’s left the theaters, to call and call and call and reach a full mailbox

to see a rainbow and realize you no longer have the ability to recognize miracles.

I look out at the water and ask for a sign
out of habit because that’s what you would do

but the East River is impenetrable so I stand up and re-enter reality

and I still don’t understand gluttony but 
I hope you are in a sunny spot

picking at a discarded Jersey Mike's sandwich

wigs flapping and happy

Share

Subscribe now

I have always been a lover but I have seldom felt loved. This empty yearning, this sacrificial mindset, the girl ready to give everything and get nothing in return has become a central part of how I see myself. At least, romantically. I have only ever felt reciprocity, true equal footing, from one other person. My best friend. And she is very far away now and I am thrown into a new reality.

Who are you without the need to be loved?

I used to ask myself this a lot. I wanted to know, if this yearning went away, if this reaching for validation outside myself was not a part of me, who would I be? I wanted so badly to meet her. The girl for whom love was a passing thought. The girl so completely OK with being alone she hardly noticed it. The girl who didn’t need love to feel complete.

Would she know another language? Would she have more friends? Would her book be on its way to shelves? Would she live somewhere else?

I never stopped to even consider who I would be if the opposite became true. If I finally found the kind of love I always dreamed of.

Who would I be with those needs fulfilled?

I don't want to disappear into you, but I could 
seep into your skin and live under your tongue

I could forget my name
flatten every ridge and bulging problem
I could wash your socks and scare the air
from your lungs as long as you come
for dinner
stay the night
never leave

I could forget

existence

disappear into emptiness
the kind that buries you
the kind that creates more
existence out of nothing

remakes a person 
from nobody

is that what I have been all this time?

I think I am falling in love

and I would like to be a flâneur but I am never
not looking over my shoulder

I am no longer a beggar but
my knees are still sore

Subscribe now

I’ve always wondered if I’ve had it too easy to be a truly great writer. If I haven’t suffered enough. How entirely self-indulgent to turn a relatively happy life into a disadvantage. A task only a truly privileged person could even conceive of. I’m back there, floating along relatively undisturbed, with a blank page in front of me and no complaints to fill it. But couldn’t a truly great writer write about anything?

People think J.D. Salinger was a recluse just because he wrote one book, retreated to New Hampshire and wasn’t a fan of talking to the press. But he was still writing and publishing and getting married and having children and, apparently, exploring Hinduism. So how to fill the time when rocky waters are oddly calm?

I could write about the way his hair curls 
right by the ear, how his face looks like 
an anime character, lines for eyes all teeth
when he laughs, I could write about the 
sunset but there is perhaps enough writing
about the sunset, and enough about the trees
and flowers and breeze and bees buzzing from 
one bloom to another, I could write about a 
family that is not mine, siblings that call each other,
parents that wrap their arms around the waist the way
teenagers do, I could write about carrying a bag of groceries
and the indent on the shoulder or the feeling of waking up with
nowhere to be, the distinct pleasure of clean teeth, the feeling of
falling in love, if I wrote about it maybe I would understand it better,
or space so I could understand it better, or the past, no sense in trying
to write about the future, I could write about long nails, dry lips, a soft cheek,
acting on instinct, skin against skin, and the way a person looks when they are 
trying hard to understand you. If I can get it down while it's fresh. If I remember. 
I could write about it. 

Subscribe now

Or maybe we are all ultimately going through life alone. Maybe all love is conditional once the age of innocence is over. Maybe finding meaning is only fruitful once. Or until it stops making you feel better. Maybe meaning is a word that stops sounding like a word when you say it over and over and over again.

I have always wanted to grow old with someone.

But I watched my parents disappoint each other into irritation

and how did this happen?

this song of not-forgotten rose

love as punishment, as mockery, as cruelty

better the Hortensia of the garden and

a dog licking my foot

but I am a big-eyed waif

who believes in recalling dreams and

death taking a bow, asking to dance

Below all the pinks of the world lurks green

So, This, Is, What, We, Are

something that refuses to exercise

wondering what we should write in our notebooks.

I never know how anything happens but you are yet another student.

I will teach you how to love and send you on your way.

One day, a little girl will ask me if I would go back, change anything?

I spread my hands, ask “Why?”

Look at all I have made.

Subscribe

Anagrams is a novel but really consists of five short stories with the same cast of characters but each in a different reality. In the first chapter, Benna is a lounge singer and Gerard is her neighbor who is weirdly obsessed with her. In the next chapter, Benna is an aerobics instructor and her and Gerard are actually involved. Then, Benna is a community college professor and has a daughter and Gerard is her best friend. I’m leaving out a lot of detail but you get the point. I’ve become kind of obsessed with this idea of telling the same story but changing the details. Benna is always a lost soul in search of identity, leaning on love for meaning, and finding the men in her life to be surprisingly incapable of depth.

As I’ve been reading, underlining and circling and jotting down phrases in a notebook, I’ve been building. Pieces of Lorrie Moore’s world to find my own.

Is he kind?
I am a child who was taught
that love is measured in tolerance.
This is how I would love you
munching about the neck and shoulder
like something is wrong with the car and you're not sure what
I am not trapped in the desert 
I am not thirsty nor starving 
just dragging my feet in the sand and
spending scarlet like a woman
consuming love that could not survive
the slightest reshuffling of letters.
Can you share what's in your heart with him?
a woman somewhere is singing about breath
deep shallow stolen taken in the ear on the back of the neck between thighs sighed
Regardless of how you try to love them, men always return to one another in the end. 

Subscribe now

I have heard the birds sing.
Out the window. 
In the car. 

I have heard them sing in the rain. 
When ash falls from the sky. 
When I come home and 
they are starting 
their day. 

high and bright
low and guttural
energetic and afraid,
they sing not to communicate
they sing for the sound. 

They match pitch with my
tinny speaker they know
music even if it's pushed
through bars and cinder. 

I have heard birds sing 
as the church bells toll 
as the news plays on like 
kids in the street. 

I have heard lies sung from trees
words shredded through layers of meaning
but this is a single drop of water chasing vertebrae. 

I have heard the birds sing.
So I put down my book and listen.   

Today is one of those days that feels a bit backwards. I woke up tired and have gotten progressively more tired and my brain feels like it’s moving through mud. Today, I do not have an opinion. Today, choices are hard. Today, I want to listen to the rain and the squawking of the morning dove on my fire escape at all hours of the day.

I want to put out a shoe box for the cat and watch her investigate, tingle at the crinkle of tissue paper under paw, and sigh as she squeezes her liquid body into its corners. I want to run my big toe along the rough linen of the couch and find the spot where the thread has been pulled. I want to take sips of lukewarm water, savor the slide of it into my throat and eat ice cream. Mostly, I want to eat ice cream.

I took this picture in 2017. I still think it’s pretty good.

Subscribe now

Is it because of how we are raised? Groomed to be unconditional. To give, give, give. To consume media that revolves around a happy ending where a man chooses you. I lay in bed in my weaker moments, eyes leaking, thinking pathetically, “I want someone to choose me. I want to be prioritized. I want to feel love. I want love that isn’t just air.” And as a woman who largely dates men, I’ve begun to ask myself if that truly exists. I have yet to see it with my own eyes. A man so in love, loving the way a woman would.

He will bring you flowers, if you tell him to.
He will rub your feet, if he's wrong. 
He will leave bleach stains
on the laundry and ask for help
with empty hands.

Yes, I love you. 
I love you so much. 
I would follow you over the cliff, yes. 
I would walk on the outside and take the hit
I would do anything for you, I promise. 

What will you look past to be loved? 
How much will you take on the chin?

A soft act of existentialism, that's what we are.
Lonely spoons unafraid of scars. 

This is too much for me. 
I am losing myself inside your size,
that gaping whole of need you've tried to hide. 

One day, he will sit outside and tell your daughter
about a woman. Teach her about regret.

Subscribe now

I’ve climbed mountains like canyons turned inside out. Harsh reality bordered by purple flowers. Vengeful storms have blow through valleys and I have sipped cherry wine and considered falling.

I’ve seen water Ligurian blue, stones deep like eyes. Hot sand has singed the hair from my toes and turned the skin on my shins raw. Delicate clams have kept me company.

And if I come back to a different world, wasn’t that always the plan?

I have smiled up at Tre Cime winking in the sun. I have thought of you where my lungs are most vulnerable, when the goulash burns my tongue, as the bee flies close and chatty.

But when the trees revealed the world to me, I thought only of lineage. I thought of dreams never realized. I saw my reflection in Lake Garda and said “Look, I have touched fingers in the sky.”

Subscribe

jump right in the cold water, wash away the heat, stay under until lungs burn,
kick for the surface, sargassum tangled feet, float

the waves will prop you up and ask for nothing
the ocean rewards the ones who love it, purely

sand and a million little lives beneath each step
I feel their souls, clear jelly-like tongues 
pulling themselves deeper and deeper 
the water crashing at progress
but the shells, they know
only one thing

the way the little blue heron
knows to eat the water-logged beetles 
and the needlefish knows to swim without fins

I often dream of the same lightning whelk
I can tell by the jelly bean shape of it's jaw
the orange and pink striations blanketed 
in a sheer coat of salt-strong algae

Fingers sink into spongey sand
I turn him over in my hand
he greets me with a playful
stream of sea, just to hear
me shriek, it is the nicest 
kind of dream, my whelk

and some people busy themselves with stars

I wanted to try something different and start with the poem this time. I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood. Growing up in a place lends a special kind of connection, especially in a place like Florida. A place so loud and so beautiful, so absolutely belonging to itself, you learn at an early age that you are its observer. Fierce protector, loving witness. Even though I’ve moved away and I’m not sure I’ll ever live in Florida again, it has not released me. I hope only to do it justice. To give life to a god that whispers in thunder, screams in heat.

Subscribe now

But you won’t know that yet. You will wake up at 9 am and write your first poem. You will go work in the garden and write more poems. You will meet your friends at the bar and hunker down for the game and write poems in between White Claws and ad breaks. Here are a few of my favorites from the marathon. And, oh yeah, let’s go Knicks!

Hour 1

I am still waking up but somehow I am out the door 
with nothing that I want and everything I need 
walking down the street and though it is early
people are alive, they are bearing witness
to that precise wonder of another day 
opening your eyes and having another chance
to be a person, another chance
to be a friend, another chance
to have one

Hour 4

he wears one of those sun hats 
cream colored with the metal grommets 
and a t-shirt your mom would buy you from the discount store
something with a cat and a mug and he's the best person you'll ever meet
one of those old men with lots to tell you but in a really nice way, knowledge to share but he is not explaining, he has an audience and he knows when a bird is rare

Hour 9

phone wallet keys
do I have everything i need?
do I have time to come back if I don't?
do you think it'll rain today?
do you think it will get cold?
is it too hot for jeans? 
hey alexa what is the weather like
hey alexa can you tell me if this is too much for a first date 
hey can you text him and say I'm running late? 
hey, just saying hey, to say it 

Hour 15

winning feels so good
and new york city is alive in a way that it hasn't been
in a long time 

and I have never known a love like this truly 
one that gives as much as it takes

I'll write you a letter when I get to Rockaway Beach
I'll sit in the sun and wish you were here 

the way I always do 
but a little less today 

Hour 24

should I let you go on? 
breathing with a pillow over your head 
not the easiest way to live but 
life nonetheless 

should I tell you I don't know what I'm doing? 
I know when you wake up you will smile 
and that may be enough for some 
but not for me 

I need an immediate declaration 
of love I fear

I need to be soothed 
before you brush your teeth

Subscribe now

Share

I sit sometimes and try to remember my childhood and find a blank wall. And every few feet there is a small hole in the wall and I can look through and see a glimpse. A flash of color, a mere hint of what’s going on on the other side. But I often second guess myself. Is this truly a memory or is it a memory of a photograph? A fictionalized version of something I was told happened? A fake altogether?

I want to stop this from happening. I want to lay on the ground and feel where a memory lives in my body and root it from my solar plexus and carve it into the page. I want to embalm my childhood one extraction at a time.

Today I am remembering the neighbor's RV
white like a New Balance tennis shoe
accents of gray and blue along the side
or brown and slate or brown and brown

That was back when we had the old dog
Natty, who had lived most of her life 
before I was born but I loved her
droopy eyes and soft ears and she 

sat too close to the gear shift and I 
remember my father hated driving 
that monstrosity was not very good
at it and would give my mother the wheel

I remember a camp site in a park with 
Spanish moss and that dappling canopy
I remember a picnic table covered by 
a yellow table cloth with blue daisies

I remember a camp fire I think but that's
where things get hazy where my memory
blinks in and out like a child falling asleep
I remember falling in the dirt, scraped knees

Subscribe now

I’m constantly ping-ponging between feeling completely self-assured and feeling utterly lost. Between trusting the path the universe and I have collaborated on and wanting to throw the whole thing away to start anew. I was reminded today that you can never hinge all your hopes and dreams on any one thing. No one milestone or experience or decision is going to get you exactly where you want to be. It is only one piece of the window you shine your light through. One writing course isn’t going to make me a writer, isn’t going to get me published, isn’t going to change my life. But years of hard work and dedication and the refusal to ever give up will.

Today, my teacher asked us to write a list of things we have lost. After a few minutes, I think she gave some other instructions but I didn’t hear them. I just kept writing.

Things I have lost

1. my mind
2. my favorite shirt
3. many single socks
4. hope
5. the cap of my water bottle
6. a friend
7. my phone
8. my time
9. my hair
10. my credit card
11. my parents though they are still alive
12. a cherry tomato under the fridge
13. the desire to become a country folk singer
14. the nail on my left pinky toe
15. an earring back
16. an earring
17. a gray sweat jacket 
18. a beautiful shell
19. my Florida dialect
20. my mother's way of doing things
21. my perfect skin
22. my childhood bedroom
23. my first car
24. my first love
25. my second love
26. the last person I loved
27. the belief that there is one person on this earth for you to love
28. my money
29. my security
30. my faith 
31. my religion
32. language, for sometimes it loses me
33. laughter, that hurts your sides and makes you cry
34. my best friend, though she is still here just in love, just far away
35. myself, but not really, not ever truly, it just feels that way

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

I knew I wanted to participate in a workshop this summer and finding a way to do that without going broke can be challenging. Luckily, I work in administration for a university and was able to secure a spot in a summer program for creative writing. While I won’t be pursuing credits for the course, many participants are undergraduates students who are. I found myself on the first day of class somewhat intimidated. Here I am, one of the oldest among a group of young people, who spend their days entrenched in learning with an eagerness I find difficult to access.

I try to remember what it felt like to be nineteen, twenty or twenty-one, with so much hope for my potential as a writer, taking for granted the opportunities and time I had access to. Now, at twenty-seven and working full-time, there’s a feeling of inevitable resentment. I often wonder if my life would look different if I had really applied myself in undergrad the way these students seem to be doing. I try not to feel put out that some six years later, I seem to be back where I started. I try to tell myself that everybody’s “journey” is different. But it takes a lot of energy.

Sth. I know this woman. 
She used to have longer hair but her face is the same.
She comes from a place where the sun beats down and that is how she became relentless. Or at least she used to be. Before the New England wind
beat the life from her eyes, pushed her towards the edge of a cliff. 

I hear she's been writing still or trying to put thoughts on fake paper
I hear she's gone south again but not very far her bones are still cold
I hear she's a long-loved pillow but still serving her purpose

She's still picky about her coffee and her perfume, still waiting 
for something amazing to happen to her while she sits 
in the garden while she tends the plants while she 
says all in good time, all in good time

I hear her walking towards us now with bells on her heels
I hear her wailing with incompetence, flailing her arms like that might help
keep her on her feet, high up on a beam, with no net beneath her, or between her teeth

I hear her ask for some wisdom, something to send her on her way
I hear her ask for a push, a partner, a reason to stay in the game 
I hear her, I keep walking, I'm so sorry I say 
I am not like you, I have chosen not to play

Share

Subscribe now

I wrote a short story last year that I’m really rather fond of. It’s inspired by true events but aims to serve as a snapshot into the dating and personal worlds of men in their twenties in the current landscape. It digs into the psyche of a so-called “lost boy” and captures the cycle many seem caught in. I took this story to an advanced workshop last summer and revised it after receiving feedback from classmates and my teacher, who told me—with some work—the piece was lit mag material. I then paid for an editor at a small literary press to give me an in-depth feedback letter. I made another round of edits to the piece. And another. And another. It’s so far from where it started and yet hasn’t pierced the publishing veil. No one will bite.

It’s hard when you have a piece so close to your heart like this and you believe in it so intensely, to receive rejection after rejection. Maybe it’s my hubris, but I can’t accept that the story is just not that good. Am I submitting to the wrong places? Is this a story editors just do not care about right now? Is it normal to receive over 20 rejections for one submission?

At what point do I decide to shove off and publish it myself? Or file it away under lessons learned? I’ve thought about publishing it in pieces over the course of a few weeks here on Substack. Because I desperately just want people to read it. So, I’m including the first few paragraphs here this week. Tell me what you think. Tell me it sucks. Tell me you must read the rest.

The Anchor

Ethan had a girl sobbing on his shoulder. Again. And if he had a nickel for every time that had happened in the last year, he would have three nickels. Which wasn’t a lot but felt like too many. Nobody had much use for nickels these days.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Hanna had spent the last hour trying to talk her way out of being dumped. Ethan saw lips and heard words but his attention drifted every five seconds back to the night stand, where his phone sat. How bad would it be to reach over and grab it?

“I don’t really have anything else to say. I told you how I’m feeling, it’s just not working.”

This brought forth a fresh wave of sobs from Hanna. He could feel her devastation seeping through the shoulder. Settling into his skin, itching.

“Here, let me grab you some tissues.”

Ethan stood up from where they were sitting on the end of his bed. He grabbed the box of tissues on his nightstand and slipped his phone into his pocket in the same motion. He returned to his spot and plunked the box in her lap. Hanna grabbed a few in a tight fist and blew heartily. They’d met at a bartending class a few months ago. His dad signed him up for it and paid because he thought it would help Ethan land a job. One that could pay his rent while still giving him time to work on his music. He wasn’t sure why Hanna had been in the class. He never asked. He didn’t ask how old she was either. He kind of just assumed she was at least twenty-one. But no Hanna was eighteen, turns out. It felt a little weird, a twenty-seven-year-old dating someone so young. But the way she looked at him made it easy to ignore.

“I don’t understand. I thought things were going so well.”

And they had been. She was adoring and affectionate. But she didn’t want to do calisthenics with him. And he didn’t want to drink beer and go mudding in Temple Terrace with her friends. He was jealous of her, really. What he wouldn’t give to have all that time. He wouldn’t waste it again, smoking weed and doing too much acid and being depressed. He wanted to turn to her and yell, “You think you have so much time but you don’t!” He felt it bubbling just under the surface. Stomach acid coming back up the wrong way. He rubbed a reassuring hand along her spine …

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

I was talking with a friend recently, someone who also has a dream, whose single-minded commitment to this aim has always astounded me. He asked me, “Are you ok with publishing a book, becoming a New York Times-bestselling author if it means you die alone? If you don’t get your story book ending?” This is a hard question for me, because I have always believed that you can have both. Why should I have to sacrifice a good life for my dream? Why can I not build them simultaneously?

But you think about the writers who have been great. The writers who have their names scratched into the surface of history and it’s hard to think of a single one who had it all. They were their writing. Is that what is necessary? Sacrificing life in order to fulfill a dream? Not falling in love? Not fostering friendships? Not finding balance? Confining myself to a room, driving myself mad, until greatness is thrust upon me?

and for all my trying I am the wet pillow
who has not done enough to hold up the head

I am the bulb who sprouted
but did not yield a flower

the bright gray sky who says he is
the day without the sun

while you are searching for the truth 
it will come knocking

and you will turn it away, say
this is not what I seek

I want an answer for life
that isn't so bleak

I want to be told that you can hold
three hearts in two hands

a gallon of sweet tea in one of those
tiny decorative pitchers

that SPF 30 is enough to keep from
getting burned 

and that dreams can come true 
without being earned

Subscribe now

Marty is a supremely narcissistic asshole. He spends most of the movie running around like a chicken with his head cut off (a Safdie specialty), faces almost no consequences for any of his actions, and yet we’re meant to see him winning an exhibition match (he was meant to throw) as some sort of almighty triumph? Then, he comes home, finally deems to care if the mother of his unborn child has lived or died, and cries at the beauty of being a father. He’s a hard character to like and an even more difficult one to understand. If the film is attempting to give him a growth arc, I think it sorely fails. But enough about Marty. I want to talk about Rachel.

Rachel is similar to Marty in that she’s hard to like. I felt myself wanting to shake her shoulders and say STAND UP. She’s pregnant, married and still all she can think about is helping Marty achieve his dream so that he can return to her. So that they can be together. And she does a lot of crazy things in that pursuit like ransom a dog she doesn’t have and getting kidnapped as a result. Marty resents her for being an anchor and yet he spends a good portion of the movie bailing her out of trouble. I think the most interesting moment in the movie is when Marty figures out she faked her black eye and then follows with a monologue about his “purpose.” He basically tells her that she can’t possibly understand and then he leaves her there.

And I’m staring at Rachel as she realizes he is going to leave her again and again until he achieves his “purpose” and I’m realizing that every stupid thing she’s done has been in pursuit of inclusion. She just wants to be a part of it. She doesn’t care about the baby, really. Getting pregnant has hurt her ability to be included, if anything. She tears down her life and perpetrates the dog scheme without telling Marty because she is hoping that if she helps him get there—get to Japan, get to the championship, get to the end of the motherfucking rainbow—that he will love her. Finally. That he will stay.

I can’t even blame her. I have loved in that way. I have loved a man with a dream and a self-prescribed purpose. I have loved a man who in a lot of ways has only ever thought about himself. I have loved a man who has left me out in the cold with my love, again and again. I have loved and just wanted to be a part of it. I have wanted to pursue our dreams side-by-side and been told it is His journey and I am not a part of it.

For Rachel   

purple blue baby
thrown out with the bath
dingy white towels
hung on the line
this is not a life
this is not a path

are you making it up as you go?
is that a problem?
is that a crime?
you've spent your life reaching
and you've wasted your time

some of us are born to give 
but we learn it from our mothers
give when not wanted
when not asked
and we expect the world
to give back

aren't you tired
purple blue baby
knocked up and shot
living but barely
where is your mother now?
who will hold your hand?

he has dreams to make true
and he is not your man

Subscribe now

I may not know that much about The Signs but I’ve always believed in “signs” and wishing upon a star. On every eyelash. Pulling petals off of flowers and magic 8 balls. And now, in the digital age, maybe that means messages from the universe in the form of explore page serendipity? A depressing thought and likely a misplaced one since algorithms take the spontaneity out of most things on the internet. Still, if some random astrology account wants to tell me that seven years of radical disruption pushing on my sense of control is about to give, I’m inclined to believe. I’m inclined to let some of what I hold so tightly breathe.

still growing like noses 
new vessels to fill 
and no one seems to be 
swallowing the pill 

sleeping through alarms
or puking on the rug
craving apples and bread
and that simple, stupid love

breathe close that sour
sensation-seeking smell
too weak for the jar
too shallow for the well

everyone I know is running
marathons and mountains
I am finding better rhymes
swimming in smaller fountains

waiting for the stars to say
here, have pebbles for today
oatmeal cookies paper cranes
and a cup full of pink lemonade

Subscribe now

Anyways, so I’ve been thinking about alternate universes and paradoxes and holding emotions that are at odds with each other at the same time. It seems these days I have the overwhelming desire to be loved and to be single. To hold someone close and push them away. To fall asleep being held and to spread eagle alone in my bed. And I don’t know what this means. Am I fickle by nature? Is this another trick of the ever-changing hormones coursing through my body? Am I asking for the things that I have always wanted from the wrong person? Am I incapable of allowing myself to be loved? Is the cat in the box even there?

And once my body is exhausted
I can think again
find my way into soft pink veins 
form an alliance with the crowds
that toss me down the stairs
that push me on my way

I kicked a dog in the street the other day
I wasn't looking and it strayed into my lane
and persecution via gasps sounds an awful lot like rain 

and I thought
most villains were most likely not looking
most victims just following a scent
most gods lacking on the other end of the leash 

and though there is a definitive bad and 
a definitive good neither side of the 
domino is unplayable only at the
mercy of loose rules and what a
fool I would be to cuff myself

to the radiator, to sweat out all
my sins so that I can claim to be
clean, to wipe my hands in grass
and not feel the cool gloss of the 
morning, to fall back and find nothing
where there should be ground

and once my body is exhausted
I will write again
about picking the wrong melon
and the soft white of a strangers eyes
and the troubling definitive of mistake
replaced by experience replaced by
regret replaced by a nagging, 
persistent gratitude. 

Subscribe now

The real truth is I’ve been at this consistently for at least six months and I’ve only had two poems published. I have yet to have any success publishing my fiction. And every week I receive another rejection letter. But those two small successes are enough to break through the noise. Enough for me to say, Hey, maybe it’s not a waste of your time. Maybe it’s good you’re not creating in a silo.

My poem CAUTION: STUDENT DRIVER was featured last week on ’ One Poem Only podcast as part of her Write After series for April (National Poetry Month). After she shared my poem, it inspired a few After poems from other writers which in itself felt like the biggest win. I’m inspired by other writers constantly and have never felt like I could be in that company. Which feels major. Listen to Maggie read my poem and read the after poems and other works being featured this month on her substack!

CAUTION: STUDENT DRIVER

I’ve jumped out of the boat
the churning water turns to smoke
my mind is a black sand beach

the world is one of those where time is different
slow, fast, all at once, almost never

if a window doesn’t open, is it a wall?
is it even there?

the cows die all at once and we don’t ask why
we buy sheep instead, not for milk for wool

it is not enough to be called sad and beautiful
remarkable or terrifying

it is not enough to pick up the phone
to text back, to cry on cue

I hover over that plane where one highway
meets another, no one ever taught me to merge

Subscribe now

I feel this loneliness more keenly when I travel. When I spend time around my extended family who all seem to have long-term partners even though it feels like they just broke up with the last one or graduated college or both. I feel it when I have no one to text when I’ve landed safely, except my parents. No one monitoring my long commute back to the city. No one to open the door and say I missed you and I ordered Thai food. I hope you’re hungry.

Don’t get me wrong, I am entirely capable of taking care of myself and grateful for the level of independence I’m able to maintain. I don’t need a partner. And some days I wonder if that is really what I want. If I want the limitations and the responsibility that comes with it. And the answer that I come to is yes. For the right person. And I have to remind myself that loneliness is a semi-permanent returning condition. You can be lonely with the wrong person sitting beside you. You can be lonely in the wrong relationship. And you can be alone and know that, for now, it is the best thing for you.

Today I beg for a bolt of lightning
a crash without a sound
I read and look up the word
sibilant in the dictionary
scoff at my coffee, look around

how often do you see one person?
who is not looking to be found
but has drawn eyes nonetheless 
up from the ground

today, a woman with a sibilant 
cough orange backpack and freckles 
a man with his dark pointed nose
olive green smile, I reckon they saw
my red hair or at least the bright teal
of my jacket and especially my desire
quick to take up space in the aisle

I think they train the flight attendants
to look you in the face like that, say
smokey words that sink through carpet
they see 22D, 8B and 9C, exactly
where you are supposed to be

Subscribe now