I’m gasping and sucking like
some kid’s trout. Last night
the entrance to the hotel pool
Was through my room. Strangers were
Splashing and shouting and milling
Around. I yelled but my voice
Wilted down in the pipes.
My little lungs were two bellows.
I phoned the front desk I said
Give me a new room! But the front desk
just said allo? Madame? and disconnected.
Hot tears leaked all over
in front of my new idiot friends.
They were recreating and having a ball.
Usually my tongue is furred with clay.
I scrape and scrape, flinging
Slip wildly. Can’t peep around all that bulk.
Whoever is talking to me just keeps on talking
And sometimes my teeth wiggle and flutter around.
I’d like to dream of other things. Maybe rivers
Or my dead friend. Or a Russian novel place where
everyone has five different names and I have to take notes.
I’m open. Some people can determine their dreams.
They say let’s fly and they’re flying.
They say hey presto and something
Wonderful shimmers in their hands.
Good for them and their DIY.
Seems a little boring, always getting what you want.
I’m not looking for answers.
I walk around awake all day looking for answers.
I don’t want to go to school when I go to sleep.
I should go somewhere else.
There should be a shuddering light.
There should be shifting planes and lots of rooms.
God should be there and I should wonder why.
He should be so tall. I’ll ask how’s the weather up there?
And he won’t tell me.

I walk to your house at dusk dragging a sword
Scoring my hard line into the earth.
Soon the starlight touches everything
Even the inside of my mouth as I sing
Softly. I don’t want to hurt you
But I want to think about it. Let’s think about it
Together. Let’s smooth it out on
That big wooden table of yours.
I brought a compass and tracing paper.
You are empty-handed and hate surprises.
You don’t want to look at it!
It’s hard to track your own wriggling topography, but
It doesn’t all happen on your watch, kid.
The world grinds out a new revolution every twenty-four hours
Whether you like it or not.
So little is in our control:
The way light falls over a form
The cruelty in ordinary people
Mercy’s scrupulous fingers.
And betrayal is just another word we use for goodbye
Despite its meaner shape.
I’ll never hurt you in a way that matters
You said that for many years
As if violence and love don’t share their summer clothes.
As if there were a perfect yellow field where all the promises are kept.

Room For Heaven

Outside I stoop over the planter boxes.
Pick at the dead and yellow among 
the sweet potato and four o’clocks
You either die or endure 
under an August sun in Texas.
Cicadas drone until the sun 
wheels west and the bullfrogs take over.
Something loud and invisible passes overhead
and I hope it’s an angel 
But in military city there are 
maneuvers to practice. I think about 
the jets dancing out there beyond 
the clouds where I can’t see. 
I hope for so many stupid things
knowing there isn’t always
room for heaven. I know.
The answers aren’t neat and 
they aren’t waiting for me 
That one always hurts. 
It’s good to hurt. It’s good to sweat.
And dirt and effort and 
torn muscle fibers and all that. 
It’s hard to be alive. But it’s 
also no big deal. It blows my mind
that very often, beauty is enough. 
I’d do anything for a bluebird sky
really, for the pink throat fan of
a green anole. Anything
for the warm wind. Sometimes the air
Is so still I sit in the church of it.

Morning Song

Texas is preheating 
There is a sign jammed into a rock bed that says 
Grass Growing, Please Use Sidewalk 
again, jammed into a rock bed sans grass
sans sidewalk
I know everything on this paved mile
I know the stray cats
Funny Face and Long Boy and Orangie
Delia, once a Spanish missionary
her tattered collection of rescue animals 
Buzzballs, greasy paper
Purple passion flower thickening
The smell of piss and green 
Occasional vomit pile, pick a color
any color. Today 
a man someone hired
to chop down a tree in their yard
is taking his time 
he carves at the heart slowly 
with his Husqvarna, you’d be surprised 
how red the meat how wood the smell
He wedges a 4x8 into a groove making a platform
to be close to his patient I wonder 
is the tree really dead or did they just tire of it
at some point he passed a rope over the top of the tree
looped at the end like a noose
A tow truck rattles past 
mobile crucifixion machine I always thought
Imagine they paraded Jesus around on the Dodge Ram Heavy Duty 
the neighbors hollering and spitting 
Cruelty isn’t special of course
and the flayed tree is still standing days later.

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The Big Picture

When you die,
you get taken to a room
and sat in a folding chair.
A projector clicks on
and the lights flick off overhead
and you watch
for the next hour or so
the movie.
It lays it all out on the table:
the meaning of life
when and how humans first emerged
what God did
what God didn’t
the root of all evil, proof of
Atlantis and aliens
angels and ghosts
the answer to every question
the highlights and the spoilers
the big picture
the biggest, everything—
For the very first time you see the story as it was.
As it is.
They give you a minute here
to process the capital T Truth
and you either say wow I was close or
I was so wrong or
I can’t believe I hated like I did or
I’m sorry, let me try again.
You move to stand
but instead stay seated for a while
and take it in
and laugh and laugh and cry and crumple your face into your hands
for a long while before finally getting on your feet.
A moment here
looking at the blank walls and the folding chair.
That’s that, I suppose.
Outside the door there is a glowing field
and tall grasses sway like sea plants
and you run your hands across their softness.
You step through the door
It doesn’t hurt at all.

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Truth be told, I don’t know anything about the World of Real Writing. I don’t know about MFAs, submissions, or literary journals. I don’t know who is In and Cool and who is Undignified and Hated. I submitted some poems to my college literary journal and they said no, thank you! I submitted to some trash Texas anthology where everybody wins. They said yes! and yes! and yes! to everybody, including me. I was thinking about submitting this poem to someone, somewhere, but then I read all the submission guidelines and they said well of course you can submit your stupid poem but make sure its never been published anywhere, including your stupid Substack that 10 people read, we simply cannot have that, your poem is a whore now, sorry, even on its virginal white page, it’s a little harlot, read up and down by tens of people, disgusting really, how you let it happen.

Shut up! God, that’s so boring. So anyway, here’s the poem! Yes, my Memaw actually said that! Love you, mean it!

You Can Put Anything In a Box

There’s a package balancing 
On the cubicle divider 
At the post office
It is behind the postman so
I can’t reach it but 
It’s open, flaps and plastic 
encircled with orange tape stamped
CREMATED REMAINS
It’s open. How strange it is to be
Anything 
A person with a body waiting in line
A bag of dust in an opened box 
And how I thought the soul was your esophagus 
That it might rise like a ghost upon death 
glowing, holy
A fucking tube with wings 
When my grandfather died my mom 
sat bedside as he argued with 
strange angels he told them 
I know, I know, I’m coming 
The funeral home had all the plush caskets on the menu
silk and cedar, but the last option on the list 
was a cardboard box
The funeral lady said it was a solid choice 
Though some families complained 
that the lid rubbed and smashed 
the nose of the dead and 
my mother laughed until she cried 
and chose cremation. 
I made a will last fall when my 
Memaw passed 
it just seemed like 
something I should do 
All of her things in plastic tubs: the salt lamp
and cheap jewelry, the hill country arrowheads
She had her hair and nails done the day before she died
I have an appointment with God she told the receptionist 
and we buried a suitcase with her nice silver hoops and a pair of shoes.
As it turns out you can take it with you
you can put anything in a box 
and hope it gets there  

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I used to really try to explain my poems, either with a preface or inside the poem itself, which isn’t the point of a poem. I don’t need to tack its pieces to a board and label them like a brittle butterfly.

My job is to be a poet. My job is to tell the truth. This writing shit, it’s a kind of alchemy. I’ll be sharing some of the poems from that workshop - some of my strongest work.

The Right Way

When I finally became myself
I went out into the heat 
and planted globe amaranths
You had just informed me that
I don’t love God the right way
not the way that would allow you
to love me
They look like strawberries, you know?
The amaranths
Their studded red flowers 
and curling stalks 
It’s funny cause 
God and me dug in the hot earth 
together that evening
as we often do
I told him how earlier
I’d cut the anthers from the stamens 
Of my white lilies 
They stain!
Gardenguides.com says it’s no big deal
But I felt awful and
I said to God
We hurt each other, don’t we 
and God didn’t say anything 
but he stayed right there with me 
Even as the lilies stared
with their empty sockets 
and I couldn’t close their eyes

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Oh, hey - is this thing on? It’s been a while. I’ve moved house, I’ve worked hard, I’ve been percolating. I turned off all paid subscriptions here a while ago, and I’ve been off social media for almost a year. My profiles are still there, but I am not. I think I’ll archive everything soon, I don’t really want to exist online anymore. It feels brilliant not to engage with social media. Terrifying to reengage. Feels like a rip tide, man. Deprogramming from socials wasn’t easy - it took time. Distancing myself from various apps has been an interesting little experiment. I watched myself struggle with each insidious layer - short-form content, validation for work/self, losing touch with people - fascinated, mouth agape. You can’t understand the psychological depth and breadth of these algorithmic roots until you’re pruning away with a machete. It’s fucking freaky.

So what’s a hopeful Luddite to do when she puts together a new book? I considered not putting it together at all. What’s the point if it’s not marketed on 5 platforms simultaneously? If I don’t regurgitate content about it? If no one sees it in the way we see things today, through a sinister, slim rectangle?

The hopeful Luddite puts it together anyway, because making art is an inside job. It’s the communion of something bigger than me, and me. No one needs to know or care, frankly. It’s my freaky little communion that feeds me. If no one buys a book, it was still deeply important to me to perform the alchemy of transforming something ephemeral - the yearnings of my soggy heart - into a physical object. Art making requires discipline. I enjoy the rigors: the repurchasing and relearning of InDesign to lay the thing out, parsing the chicken-scratch of my handwritten outlines, the (very first!) collaboration on cover art, the editing, the editing; the despair, the despair. The hopeful Luddite also tells you about it regardless, because poetry is important.

A Prayer, A Candle, a Sword is now available for purchase on my website - $20 + shippin’. Like its older sibling, Tenderness, it is a selection of poetry from Feelings, Inc., my (dead) Instagram, and the innards of my Notes app and notebooks. You’ll probably recognize some, though my absence online certainly lends itself to a bit of novelty. I am deeply in love with the cover; I squealed each time I got a batch of designs from the inimitable Erin Yurkinas, my best friend and brilliant artist. I barely gave her direction, and she rooted around in my brain somehow, producing the loveliest and most striking product I could have hoped for. What’s that? You want to see it? Okay, I won’t bury the lede further.

She’s a beaut, no? My main inspiration for this cover was a handsome little sketchbook that looked a bit like a prayerbook - red cover with gold embossing.

As usual, your book purchase comes with a few extras. Each copy is signed and includes custom stickers. It also includes something else, but it’s a surprise. Looks like you’ll just have to buy one and see. It’s not a toy. I wish it was a toy.

Thanks for loving me and my work, always. Thank you for your interest in poetry! Tell your friends there’s a new slim rectangle in town. It ain’t made by Apple! It’s red hot and yearning. It’s for me, but it’s always for you, too. Always. Love you, mean it.

Oh, and Happy New Year =) Year of the Horse! I’m a horse. In real life. Bet you didn’t think horses could write books or type! Joke’s on you.

LINKS!

BUY A PRAYER, A CANDLE, A SWORD

BUY THE “POETRY TWO’FER” - TENDERNESS & A PRAYER, A CANDLE, A SWORD

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All kinds of things are happening. It is spring, after all.

For example, the tiny dirty chihuahua, whom I suspect does have a home but wanders to and fro, whom I hadn’t seen in months, and I thought the worst—the tiny dirty chihuahua wandered into my yard at dusk as I smoked a joint on the stairs. It sniffed lightly, turning and fussing, lifted its back haunches (yes both), and pissed before it squinted at me and tottered out of sight.

and

I’m in line at the grocery store. There isn’t even a line, really - I’m next. My favorite cashier is helping a woman bag her items and their chatter is soft and indistinct. An older gentleman wheels behind me saying where’s the help? Why don’t they call for help? in a voice that’s musical and weathered by the years. I look at the non-line and turn to him, it’s not so busy, I say, I think it’s okay. He nods and says okay and stares at my face, his mouth wide with prominent crooked teeth. Why are you having a good day, he asks. I knit my brows just slightly and turn to him, well, it’s a beautiful day outside. He says that’s not why you’re having a good day so I ask him why am I having a good day? He mumbles a bit and before answering GMS. GMS, I ask? He says because G- God, M- Made, it S-So. God made it so. And I said sure, yes he did. He said you know wherever you go, the weather just is, and it’s okay because God made it so. I study his navy blue vest and wire-rim glasses glinting gold. His long-fingered hands. I said are you having a good day? And he says oh yes, GMS. He says God bless you and I say god bless you, too, before wheeling to the register.

and

A man sweating hard through a grey tracksuit shuffles along the sidewalk in a slow run. I watch as he blesses himself before looking both ways and hoofing it across a residential street.

and

There are four girls in the water, up to their thighs, backs rounded, arms retracted like mantises, hand-fishing. I think of Millet’s The Gleaners. French aristocracy didn’t like the painting much, didn’t like the sympathetic treatment of lowly farm laborers. They stoop to the green glinting fields in heavy skirts, their hands maybe chapped, worker’s hands. A friend once wrung her hands as we talked, my hands aren’t beautiful, they are worker’s hands. Her hands were small and strong and smooth. There is a photo of me at 12, in mime makeup, mime unitard, enormous long-fingered hands on either side of my face. They’ve always been soft, but they’ve always been worker’s hands.

and

Rain finally fell and everything is greening out

and

I saw a tortoise in the woods

and

If you watch, the world will do a funny tap dance, and you can write about and tell your friends or your mom or no one at all. It can be your little secret. But you gotta look for it.

xoxo, hanny

ps, if you’d like to hear me read this right into your lil ears, click play below

Help support Feelings, Inc! We love writing things. We love making things! Your support helps us do more of that. We would love to do more of that! Please consider subscribing, buying the Feelings, Inc publication Tenderness, buying a Tenderness Tee or an It is Beautiful Here print, or sharing a poem or two with someone you love. Or someone you hate, hell—they could use it.

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⚔️❤️ Feelings, Inc is a poetry publication for the world-weary ❤️ ⚔️

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Hi guys,

It’s been a long time. Too long, I know. I started a new job in November; onboarding tons of new information and being on lots of calls every day takes up a lot of space in my brain. After some time, the new knowledge gets properly filed into my memory cabinets, and more space is revealed.

Writing and art-making require interior space. I did most of my writing (here at Feelings, Inc., publication of Tenderness) while I had my labor-intensive property management job. While back-breaking, those jobs support the fertile comings and goings of the mind, allowing the brain to relax while the body sweats. I miss it sometimes. I don’t miss the terrible pay, but I miss the space. I miss working with my hands.

In my last job (ad agency, sales rep), after about 9 months or so, I started to find a little space again. So, I keep the faith that I’ll happen upon a little easement or delta in due time. Sometimes, however, on a clear, warm morning punctuated by birdsong, the words emerge. Here’s how they arranged themselves today.

Loving you always, HW

Oranges

I peel a sumo orange and grimace.
I hate the smell of citrus on my fingers.
Then I work on the pith, diligently.
A disdain for the process doesn’t preclude my penchant for perfection.
O, Achilles heel. Heels.
I just want the perfect, clean orange.
I just want the perfect bluebird sky.
I stand in line at Ulta, mobs of eleven-year-old girls fill their mesh baskets with
retinol, AHA’s, eternal youth.
They have creamy, perfect skin.
No pith in sight.
I’d just really like to know who I am,
I say to no one.
Should love the process more, should center the peel, the reveal.
I think about moving. My next thought:
Wherever you go, there you are.
Yeah, I like to run.
Yeah, I like to think something outside of myself will save me.
Dad says we’re cowboys, us Waters
Hank says he’s a Ramblin’ Man
Yeah, I’m so lonesome I could cry.
Me and this orange, we don’t need anybody.
I eat it, section by section, and it isn’t sweet. The pith I couldn’t tear from the flesh,
drying out.
I eat it all.
I don’t know what I want.
Desperado, why won’t you come to your senses? Climb down from your fences?
Maybe later. Maybe never.
In the meantime, toss up another orange.

I thought I’d read it to you, too. I love reading to people. I think it’s one of the more intimate, caring things one can do.

I have this memory of me and my college boyfriend. I had flown out to Vermont to see him the summer after my freshman year. We went sailing on Lake Champlain with his parents. We were going to stay on the boat for a few nights until I tried staying on the boat the first night - I was hot, sweating, and claustrophobic. Early the next morning, we escaped to the car and drove back to his home. I read to him while we drove, chapters from The Mists of Avalon.

I have this memory of my mother. When I was little, she would read the book Both Sides Now, an illustrated version of the Joni Mitchell song. My sister and I would cram in at her sides to listen to her read it, watching the beautiful illustrations as she turned the pages, and then we’d beg her to do it again, but to please sing it. And she would sing through it a second time.

Here is Oranges, read by me:

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frieeeeends it’s been a few months. Hello hello! I got a new job in November and my brain has been occupied. It’s going well! Here’s a little guy from the fall. love you mean it.

So you smoke a joint and go to the mall it’s very hot but look at all of these people at the mall. You try on some pants and they’re nice but sort of funny-shaped and you’re not sure if you’re Funny Shaped Pants Ready. You tell the dressing room girl as much and she blinks at you and it’s too hot and why is everyone queued up so you go to the other mall and smoke a joint and watch a movie. It is among life’s greatest pleasures, the cinema, the solo movie. You squint when you’re scared because you’re often scared and this movie is no different. When you leave it isn’t as hot and the sky purples and your tacos leak in your hands and it’s good, it’s really good, you know?

Hi. Outside, it is raining—pitifully—but wet nonetheless. It’s been something like 100 days or more since we last saw rain.

I always hesitate to say this… but I think summer is over. I think fall, or the South Texas equivalent is finally making its quiet entrance. Now—don’t everybody look at once! Keep it in your peripheral until we know for sure.

Down here, cooler temperatures are like cats: they’ll come when they want to, if they want to, and will only stay as long as they please, and don’t you try to wrap your arms around it all. If you can stand it, just remain as you are, keep doing as you are doing. Sometimes they stay.

So, I’ll get to the tasks and chores relegated to the weekend 48, but for now, I’m in bed, considering cracking a favorite book (The Exorcist) for the 1093930499th time while I have at least 7 other books half finished. Why shouldn’t I, after all? Life is short. I can reread or half-read or not read whatever I please. I can write a lovesong and tell no one. I can break something precious in my hands. I can apologize. I can wait for nothing and no one in particular at all. For Godot. For spring. For the slanting light.

Welcome to November. I love u, xoxo, hanny

P.S. - The Cure dropped their first album in 16 years. It’s great. It’s called Songs Of A Lost World. All of the songs are very good. I really like And Nothing Is Forever. Thank God for Robert Smith. Go get edified.

to be touched

A bullet of light on the dresser. It hums.
It comes. It goes. 5:35 today. 
Skipping along the wood   glinting in the brass pull. 
Moving like a moon
in a slow arc. I let it crawl over my skin. 
It is warm and I am glad to be touched. 

Help support Feelings, Inc! We love writing things. We love making things! Your support helps us do more of that. We would love to do more of that! Please consider subscribing, buying the first Feelings, Inc publication Tenderness, buying a Tenderness Tee or an It is Beautiful Here print, or sharing a poem or two with someone you love. Or someone you hate, hell—I imagine they need it more!

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Hi, I missed you. I wrote you something.

My Heart at the Bottom of the Lake

It’s colder now that October wanes and the water is choppy and opaque. I swim against it, I love punishment. I take in a mouthful of lake water. A kid back home drank river water on purpose to contract giardia. He said if you get it once you don’t get it again. I wonder it that proved out. I don’t swallow. This time. The sterling sacred heart I wear around my neck glints and tosses light around beneath the churn. Twice the heart has somehow slipped off the chain, though the clasp is finely soldered and the links are solid. I found it in my bra, in my bed—gasped at my heart out place. Will it leave me today, for good? Will it part from its chain, my ghost heart, and pirouette like a maple seed through the water until it nestles among the old trees and soft silt, the ancient riverbed, lightless, lilting? My heart at the bottom of the lake. I should be so lucky to lose it there.

Help support Feelings, Inc! We love writing things. We love making things! Your support helps us do more of that. We would love to do more of that! Please consider subscribing, buying the first Feelings, Inc publication Tenderness, buying a Tenderness Tee or an It is Beautiful Here print, or sharing a poem or two with someone you love. Or someone you hate, hell—I imagine they need it more!

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I’ve been wanting to do interviews on Feelings, Inc., since I started Feelings, Inc. I have so many beautiful and interesting friends and want to extract their brilliance and sit it at the table and give it a glass of wine and amuse bouche and let it drive the conversation. I’m starting with my first and only friend from college, the imitable Sarah Fischer. We met during Colorado College Winter Start freshman orientation and my first thought after hearing her talk was, this girl is super weird, I like her.

Sarah is almost 40 weeks pregnant with her first baby. She is one of the more insightful and tender humans I know and I felt an urgency to interview her about pregnancy and motherhood.

Sometimes Sarah will send me a voice note of her reading one of of my poems. She has an exquisite voice. Sometimes she will ask how my zinnias are doing, or ask if I’m looking at the moon. I haven’t seen her in a little under a decade but there’s a beautifully long and shimmering thread that stretches between our hearts.

Thank you, Sarah, for your time and thoughts and friendship and love. You’re the only person I wanted to kick off the Feelings, Inc. interviews series.

Enjoy! xoxo Hanny

Bones: 206 of ‘em and I made them all

🌱 Pregnancy and Motherhood with Sarah Fischer

a Feelings, Inc. Interview | from September 4th, 2024

🌝 Hi, friend. How are you feeling? Remind me how far along you are - it’s not long now!

At this very moment I am 38 weeks pregnant which is technically full term, meaning baby is fully cooked and could come any day now but more likely will be here in 2-3 weeks.

Physically I’m hanging in there but have officially reached the “I’m uncomfortable and would like to be done soon” phase. My belly is a hard round drum, big as a watermelon, often lopsided depending on how the kiddo is positioned at any given moment. I crave fruit and sweets and down glass after glass of ice water. I’m hot and swollen. My body feels simultaneously tired and restless. I go on long walks until my pelvis and back ache and I ask Zach to press onto it with all his weight. 

My mind is foggy - I just found the peanut butter in the fridge instead of the cabinet and I’m sure I put it there. I often forget what I just said to someone or if we made plans that day. Sometimes it bothers me, but mostly I’m content to float on in this pregnancy induced haze.

Spiritually, I’m feeling so full and at peace. I’m fully embracing these last weeks with this passenger inside of me. I know I’ll miss feeling their movements, even the uncomfortable ones. I know that I’ll miss this past year that we have shared a body. It has been a truly transformative time.

🌸 What have you learned, both about yourself and the world, from pregnancy so far? It’s such a micro/macro experience. Something you have in common with so many women through space and time, and yet—so subjective, I can imagine. 

You hit the nail on its shiny round head, my friend! Pregnancy has been the most micro/macro experience I have ever had. It is the most amazing, wonderful, wild, empowering, challenging thing that I have ever done and it is also one of the most normal everyday things that living creatures do. Reproduction, gestation, and birth are the most remarkable unremarkable things, it blows my mind to think about it. Like, I’m growing bones and a liver and a nervous system and eyes and tooth buds inside of my own body. And this is what my mom did (five times) and her mom, and her mom, and all of the mothers all over the animal kingdom. All underwent this change and it is so singular and magical and special and also so so ordinary. 

⭐ Did you know before you tested? I ask because it can vary, and I find that fascinating. My sister knew for her two boys within a day and two weeks of conception, respectively, and that blew my mind. 

That’s very cool to hear, she must be quite in tune with her cycle. I didn’t know beforehand but I tested when my period was a day late, yielding a very faint but unmistakable positive line. 

📍 I remember speaking to you before you and your partner, Zach, were trying (but knew it was the plan). You were admittedly anxious and a bit scared. When did that change, was there a moment? And did any fears replace it? 

I’ll be honest, after getting that positive line, I completely fell apart. We had been trying for a few cycles and this pregnancy was very much wanted, and yet…I felt like I was falling off a cliff. Despite wanting to get pregnant, my dominant thought was “A baby is going to fuck my life up so much.” 

A lot of the early first trimester revealed attachments that I needed to mourn and then let go of: drugs and alcohol, late nights, independence, my bodily autonomy, and physical appearance (so much body stuff that I needed to let go of). I was acutely aware that for the first time in our 12-year relationship, Zach and I would be on separate journeys, and that deeply scared me.  I feared the isolation in that, in not being able to adequately explain to him what I was feeling or thinking. Especially in those early months, you’re really strapped in for a wild ride hormonally and physically. Sometimes you experience things that you simply have no language for. Lastly, I carried a lot of early anger around to the many sacrifices that I was suddenly asked to make now that I had a minuscule passenger on board.

And then suddenly it was all gone, alchemized into so much love and tenderness toward this steady evolution that I was undergoing. Sure, some fear still swirled, but I could release it more quickly now. That was my first lesson: feel into the grief and it will pass through you and be replaced by something gentler. I am so grateful to have gone to therapy before starting on this journey because I’ve used those tools I learned every step of the way.

✨ How do you think motherhood will shape you? It already has, spiritually, metaphorically, and literally! Incredibly, this long incubation journey is just the start. 

I was telling my friend the other day (who is also pregnant) that I’m grateful for the long ramp-up period of pregnancy because it feels like you get used to the constant change that will be coming your way when your infant is earthside. It’s almost a year of your life that you’re riding the waves of change and growth. Every day I feel like I wake up in a new body and I know that, similarly, every day with our child will feel new.

I think motherhood will reveal to me the essence of what is important to me. If I were to guess, I’d say those things are community, love, nature, and presence. Already I feel like I’ve released so much control and I think that will continue to unfold for me once I am responsible for raising this little human. There’s also an element of leaning on my intuition more than I ever have, trusting that millions of years of carefully honed instinct will show me the path forward when I feel lost.

🐛 There’s a lot of fear-mongering around bringing kids into the world these days—much of which is understandable, but it’s also not helpful. What do you think? How has it affected you, if at all?

There is so much fear-mongering, it’s overwhelming! In my first weeks of pregnancy, I read this article about why millennials dread motherhood that spoke deeply to what I was experiencing. We’re flooded with messages about how hard child rearing is, especially for moms in cis-het relationships. Ezra Klien talks a lot about this in podcast episodes on the declining birth rate. There are so many reasons why choosing to have a kid, especially now, is a crazy decision, and quantitative studies back up scary-sounding outcomes like a shorter lifespan, increased stress, and decreased happiness overall.

But what those studies can’t capture, and what is far less measurable, is the feeling of uncovering a new life purpose, the soul-opening experience of watching someone that you grew, grow up themselves, tapping into a deep well of love “more than you can even imagine” as many a parent tells me. As I’ve continued the slow march towards the threshold, I’ve leaned into those intangible and unknowable truths and trusted that they will hold me in hard times.

🐚 I imagine you’ve experienced some very poignant moments thus far, I mean, a whole tiny universe is burgeoning inside of you! I’d love to hear a few metaphorical snapshots that made you go “woahhhh,” or “AHHHH,” or maybe rendered you speechless. 

🌀 Realizing on a plane ride that there were two heartbeats inside of my body

🌀 Feeling and seeing the baby move just underneath the surface of my skin, a totally alien and yet heartwarming feeling

🌀 Realizing that I’m never alone

🌀 Having others (with permission) touch my belly and the little “ope!” of genuine surprise when they feel a kick or hiccup

🌀 When Zach reads to “us” at night, scootched down in the bed so that his voice is directed at my middle so the baby to hear him better

🌀 Looking in the mirror every day and beholding what my body is capable of. As my good friend told me early on “Bodies are meant to change, that’s why we’re stretchy.”

🎃 Listen… Halloween is coming up. We’ve spent a few together, and I’ve been privy to a Fischer Halloween party or two. You’ll likely have a fresh little human being. Costume ideas? 

We often call the baby “Meatwad, Adventure Time, Fischer Zeidler” So I see a costume like that in our future. One of my sisters is a master costume maker and her firstborn was a chipotle burrito, I feel like we need to top that somehow. 

🍃 Did anyone, or anything guide you along your journey thus far? Books, art, humans, movies - what has spoken to you - AND what have you shared with the baby?

Two books that have guided me on this journey are “Nurture” by Erica Chidi Cohen, a birth and postpartum doula here in LA, and “Nine Golden Months” by Heng Ou, a nutritionist who specializes in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Both books have taught me to slow down and be gentle with myself during this liminal time.

Also, I have been fortunate to have a number of close friends become pregnant around the same time and it has been truly a gift to connect with them even over thousands of miles of distance. They’ve made me feel less alone and able to laugh at challenging moments.

Lastly, a big shout out to the moon (my favorite satellite) for being my reminder of the cyclical nature of all things.

🌚 Last question! You’re one of the most insightful people I know. You’re also deeply creative. I’m asking you to distill this experience, however, that looks, into a haiku. It can be as literal or as loose as you like. This isn’t even a question, I’m just giving you an assignment. Let’s see what you got, Fischer. I love you!

Tiny passenger.
Time completely unravels,
I await your wail.

I love you too buddy, thank you for the opportunity to open my heart on your platform.

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Hello. Rabbit rabbit. Often I don’t write because I’m not sure what tool to use and I feel embarrassed that I use so many tools. Sometimes I write academically, sometimes I fall into punctuation-starved prose, and sometimes the words ask for structure and line breaks and rhyme schemes. Sometimes I want to write a little about a lot of things and mash them together. I don’t know if this is Good or Okay. I always feel the need to ask for permission to break the rules. Then I’ll read something where the rules are disregarded and the product is so good and perfect and otherwordly that I chide myself for wearing my funny blinders. I want to break the rules, too.

This morning I listened to an interview with novelist Bruce Wagner. He spoke gracefully and honestly about the craft of writing but what struck me was a single line about the muse, that ephemeral, shifting motivation that guides the artist. He said he’s always been blessed and never felt a lack of inspiration—his fourteen novels sprang forth, one after the other—the muse was always there, and he never had to hold a gun to her head.

I think I often squat over the muse like an unkind succubus, breathing shallow, anxious breaths, trying to follow her eyes with mine as they might throw the reflected light in such a way as to cause a fire, a fire I could swallow and be subsumed by, a fire that would transform my potential energy into kinetic and the words might flow through me, frictionless, with abandon. Easy. As if writing and making art could even be easy. Most people think that writing is therapeutic, and some forms are, but wrestling with the word, with the incorporeal, like Jacob with the angel, is exhausting and manual labor.

Sometimes the words come and I feel like a mouthpiece for something greater than myself. The lines lay down like heavy ties and the tracks are sure. I look at the page, or the proverbial page as much of my writing is done in the Notes app, and I wonder how this thing lit so neatly upon the surface. It’s full, fleshy, and makes sense insofar as art makes sense. A complete thought. A prayer.

More often, I’m pacing and wondering if the muse is gone for good, knowing damn well that’s not how it works. The artist must never fall for the trap that you should wait until you “feel it” to create. This places the responsibility outside of oneself, outsourcing it to the formless. When the formless does not perform, when it doesn’t deliver what we feel we’re entitled to, we blame it. It’s parasitic behavior when symbiosis should be the goal.

We are not here to consume the muse, we are here to gather the fruits and tend to the soil and water it daily and find the bud that is pushing up through the earth against great odds. The artist’s devotion—even when the crops are dry and the rows barren—liberates the muse. Liberation feeds expansion and expansion makes room and the room breathes with the word and the words ask to be written.

—

A month ago I wanted to go on a walk after work. It was hot as it is in South Texas and I regretted my decision stepping out of the car. I parked near a smoothie shop so I could drink something cold as the air shimmered over the asphalt, as the soles of my shoes grew more malleable. I crossed the street and came upon a white house with a front yard laden with summer flowers. They were delicately colored, each a little different—magenta, beige-blush, mottled pink—the values shifting, the hues growing warmer and cooler, rolling like slow waves in the hot wind. A woman stood with her back to me, deadheading her bounty.

What are these, I asked, are they all the same flower?

Zinnias, she answered, all zinnias, can you believe it? I bought three little bags of seed from Walmart and tossed them around and this is what I got, can you believe it?

We mirrored each other, admiring, arms akimbo, not saying much else. The bees hummed.

I’m piling the deadheads on the ground here, feel free to take as many as you want. Just dry them out and then, she said as she crushed a head between her fingers, these are the little seeds.

I’m gonna grab a smoothie and walk around and then I’ll pick some up before I leave, I said.

Whenever you want, she said, it’s a good time to plant, even now.

Thank you, I said.

The walk didn’t last long given the temperature but I made sure to round the corner and gather a few zinnia heads and wave at the woman again before I took off. I left them in my car for a few days and the heads started falling apart in the floorboard and I figured they were dry enough. Two pots, very damp soil, the easy bit was done. After the sun wrapped around the house in the afternoon I watered. In two weeks tiny green buds made their entrance, thin and wispy. More every day. I don’t know when they’ll bloom, but I admire them in the mornings. I like to mist them with cool water when the sun beats down. I don’t know if I should it just seems like it would probably feel nice as a brave green thing. I’ll take a photo when they bloom and show the lady who gave me a few ordinary miracles on a hot afternoon.

I’ll say, zinnias, all of them. Can you believe it?

xoxo, Hanny

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I’ve been seeing signs lately. Not mysterious signs, not really—though I do look at the clock at 12:34 PM with terrifying regularity and have done so for a few years. Yesterday when leaving the lake I started the car and the time was 12:34. Today I was having some dedicated be bored time and when I finished I tapped my phone and it was 12:34. Google says the angel number 1234 indicates growth and progress. That’s pretty cool. I’m inclined to believe, given that it’s a pretty literal read of 1234. Alas, I’ve been seeing liiteral signs. Outside of businesses. Just this week, I’ve stopped and stared at an amusing sandwich board, a marquee, and a roadside vinyl banner. Where I couldn’t literally stop, because I was driving fast and would have otherwise caused a ruckus, I stopped spiritually. They didn’t stand out because they were flashy or beautiful, but because they were so direct and somewhat sinister and effective. Signs that made me screw my face up and consider. Sometimes signs do that.

1/

I take one of three routes after work depending on what I need to do. One goes home, another goes home but has some easy access to errands, and the other is great during traffic and encompasses most errands. I take the third on the list because it’s after 5 PM and I kinda want some chicken from Mr. Juicy. Amazing chicken. As I’m cruising down the avenue, speed limit 20 mph, I see a sandwich board on the sidewalk outside of an overpriced modern rustic farmhouse decor store. The unenthusiastic chalk scribble announced We sell dreams. Damn, I thought, that’s bold. I’ve been in that store. They sell a lot of overpriced metallic and lucite tchotchkes and unappealing grommeted furniture. The ladies with big hair give you champagne while you shop. Not a terrible tradeoff. Not really a dream. Maybe a kind of dream. But that sign was so strangely sure of itself and seemingly aware of its shortcomings.

2/

I’m leaving work again. I have to bang a left across a busy road every day and I do, stopping shortly at the first red light. Packs of teenagers cross and my eyes float up the the EZ Pawn marquee outside the passenger window. It isn’t missing any letters which is pretty good as far as marquees go, though I like when they start to fall apart and evolve into stranger variations. It says We have the money you need. Huh. I mean, I’ve been there—what can I sell. To make ends meet, to make a buck. Does that feel predatory or does it highlight a valid strategy, depending on the situation? I stared up at it until the light turned green.

These businesses are pulling no punches; the economy is brutal, I guess I get it. I’m not convinced they’re consciously doing it. Regardless, this marketing is attacking the stuff that drives decisions: base human emotions. I’m learning more about this every day working in sales. We’re currently reading Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, former head FBI hostage negotiator. It’s a fascinating book and applies to hostage negotiation, sales, and most human interactions. Among other things, it’s a process of fostering a relationship and building trust. Businesses must do this with their marketing, too: no one buys from a business they’ve never heard of that lacks testimonials or social proof about their potential investment. That’s why these signs gave me such pause—they’re so blatant, like a proposal on the first date. We sell dreams. We have the money you need. In that way, they cut through the noise of every other sign and slogan and bought real estate in my mind. By making me think, what exactly do you mean, you sell dreams? What could you possibly mean by that, home decor store? What are my dreams? You have the money I need, EZ Pawn? You got what I need? Everything is expensive. Tempting. Effective.

3/

The third sign, well, it’s mostly just funny. It didn’t have the same sinister vibes as the others but is a winning sign and an excellent marketing asset in my mind. I’ve seen it many times driving to and from the lake which is nestled up north from San Antonio in the hill country. Tied in front of some shrubby mesquites is a fading vinyl sign that says Half a BEEF!! with a price and phone number below and maybe a photo of a cow? It’s long faded but a ghostly artifact nonetheless. I honestly can’t even remember the price because Half a BEEF!! was so awesome—especially the exclamation points and all-caps BEEF. Would I even like it or notice it if it said Half a COW? Maybe. Would I love it? No. I could never love half a cow. Only half a BEEF!!

Well, folks. That’s my sign story, and I’m stickin’ to it. There are a few places around town that always have excellent signs—not necessarily in a menacing and cosmic marketing sort of way. There’s a German music hall/ bar thing in Southtown that always has hilarious and wordsmithy announcements, so much so that I reached out to them at one point because I wanted to interview whoever writes the signs. I never heard from them :(

You know, I’d like to take pictures of those three signs but I really only see them when I drive. And I don’t feel like pulling over to take pics. I take a nice, high-resolution image with my mind camera and then I write it out using words on Feelings, Inc., so you can see it, too. I could have just shown you a picture, I guess. That would’ve been terribly boring. This isn’t Google images. This is Feelings, Inc, man. We‘re gonna talk about it.

Seen any signs lately? xoxo Hanny

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Hey guys. How’s it going? How’s Sunday, July 14th treating you? It’s been awhile since it was just me talking to you. The Weather has been going strong for some months now, but sometimes, even The Weather takes breaks. If you’re new here, The Weather is a living letter between artist/writer Tyler Hoffart and myself. It usually runs on Sundays, but the thing about these creative endeavors with your friends—that you started because you both wanted another writer friend to spitball with—is that they can’t be hustled. They can’t be cajoled or forced. Then they become the thing you hate. They become a task list instead of a curious wormhole. We have plenty of task lists, plenty of daily life that requires our routine discipline—which isn’t to say that art-making shouldn’t be disciplined—it’s that sometimes you just need a respite that is safe and doesn’t make demands so the art-making may germinate and percolate, breathe and expand. It is good. It is a good space to have. So, sometimes The Weather doesn’t come and I’m glad for it, I’m glad for things that can hang on the line and withstand the breeze. Things that wait.

Art-making happens regardless. I’ve been combing through my Notes app, screenshotting the many artifacts I’ve written and discarded and revised and denounced and forgiven. They’re in the Notes that are dedicated to writing and they’re also woven into the grocery lists, the work reminders, the movie lists. I love to find them in unsuspecting places and mull them over in my mouth and heart. Sometimes I unwittingly leave myself breadcrumbs, though they don’t form a path. They web out like city sprawl and commingle like intersecting ripples. I like to breathe into this web like the shirt of someone I love, to the extent that you can breath in typed text. It helps me remember.

I’ve recently been thinking about applying to some writing residencies. It terrifies me. I used to be so good at applying to things—I still am, paperwork and bureaucracy don’t typically overwhelm me—but now I am afraid. I didn’t study writing in school, I didn’t even take a writing class (all classes at CC were extremely writing heavy regardless), I didn’t get published in the school literary journal (I applied once), I didn’t get published anywhere. A lot of the writing residencies I find presume a lot of this activity, please provide a CV detailing your writing accomplishments: workshops, published works, residencies, etc to be considered for the opportunity. I immediately think, well, that’s not for me. I told a friend as much over voice note and she simply replied, “If you want to do it. Do it.”

Okay, so I’ll do it. What the hell do I have to lose, except self respect? I won’t lose self respect if I apply and don’t make it, no—I’ll lose self respect if I let fear of failure or fear of what others think continue to serve as my North Star. I’m really, really, really weary of that enduring characteristic. I keep a background on my phone that lists the top 5 regrets of the dying so I can remember:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I have stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I’ve been overcome by a religious-type fervor to not have these regrets. Even if everything seems really dire. Even if it feels like the end of what we know the world to be is imminent. Time to live, I’d wager. I want to live. I want to live and live and cry and struggle and witness and share and get sick and love others and make mistakes and look foolish and try again. I don’t want to sell advertising to corporate bros in a weird wealth extraction third space. Am I currently doing just that? Yeah. Sure am. And I’m grateful for it. But I know it ain’t me. And I will use it like a tool until I can pivot into something that doesn’t feel so purposeless and stressful. Sometimes even this strategic oversight feels like a slog. During the slow-ticking minutes of the day? Slogville. In the moments I can make space between myself and the slog? I get a macro view and see its place in my life and vow to never lose track of that buffer between me and the machine. I must grow it until the machine can’t reach me and its cords lay stupid and extended and reaching.

This space looks a lot like Feelings, Inc, The Weather, the artifacts, the shirts, the reels, the notes, the letters, the conversations, the books, the sobbing, the phone calls, the porch sits, the friendships. And I must grow it. Either that, or I must grow into the space that already exists for me. I don’t really know how. But it exists and doesn’t want of me and notices when I notice it and expands when I inhale and somehow doesn’t contract when I exhale.

It waits for me.

Love,

Hanny, your friend and the architect of Feelings, Inc.

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The Weather is a living e-mail thread between artists Tyler Hoffart and Hanna Waters.

Are you lost? Catch up here: Part 1: Introducing the Weather, Part 2: March 24, Part 3: March 30, Part 4: April 7, Part 5: April 14, Part 6: April 21, Part 7: April 28, Part 8: May 5, Part 9: May 12, Part 10: May 19, Part 11: May 26, Part 12: June 9.

Hanna Waters

5:12 PM (2 minutes ago)

to Tyler

Hey dude, 

No need for apologies, ever. This is meant to be a low-pressure situation where writing can come and go naturally, without begging, like the tide. I get it. What big projects are on the horizon, if I might ask? I think you have plenty of company in feeling discontent when there is nothing big to strive towards. The fact is, we are going to die and it all kinda matters. It does and it doesn't. On any given day the small shit is really big, and then some big shit happens, and everything seems really small. A lens focusing and unfocusing forever, never really bringing anything into clear relief. And so we do projects and feel despondent when there are no projects and hate the projects when we're doing them and love the projects when they're done. Something like that. 

The Doug Lifter is an excellent story. I'm glad he has you to sit and listen to him bitch and bite your tongue and help him access some semblance of normalcy, however far removed that looks these days from what it once was. I also love that I know what the HarMar mall is and that I can picture this man wheeling around it. When he could wheel. 

I've been spending my Saturdays at the lake, not unlike you Minnesotan folks. I have to leave pretty early to drive an hour north into the hill country and slip into the park before the rangers close the gate at full occupancy. I've missed it many times and it's fucking depressing. I leave a little before eight and usually hike down to the water by nine. The water is really low at Canyon Lake right now, which is a shame - when the water was high it was clear and brilliantly turquoise. It still is, just less so as the water recedes. Nonetheless, it is delicious and excellent swimming, never terribly crowded what with the occupancy limit. 

Today I had my notebook with me and wrote some incoherent list, as I'm wont to do:

I'm still not as brave or honest as I need to be.

For the most part, people still look up when a plane flies overhead.

We mostly want to listen to music and open to the sun.

I am aware of the mistakes I am making and still I make them.

I can't believe all of this is really here, the rocks the water the starlight. 

I'm acutely aware of my rigidity. It gleams in my periphery like chrome. When no one is looking, I polish it with a soft rag. I do not know slack. 

The first people to successfully cross an ocean. I think about them. Certain of death given prior attempts. Kissing impossible new dirt, breathing it. 

Oh, the dome of heaven.

Help support Feelings, Inc! Please consider subscribing, buying the first Feelings, Inc publication Tenderness, buying a Tenderness Tee or an It is Beautiful Hereprint, or sharing a poem with someone you love. Or someone you hate, hell—I imagine they need it more.

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