Today’s theme is: alone time.

I recently went on a trip that involved taking a flight to another country alone. I was going to visit someone who I care about deeply but who I haven’t known very long. When I got off the flight I, of course, had to talk to a customs agent. He asked me if I was traveling alone, and I said yes.

Why are you alone? He then asked.

It was the sort of question that, decontextualized, is extremely odd to ask a stranger and provided a sort of dizzying effect. I felt unexpectedly panicked. Why was I alone? Who else would I possibly be with? The last time I had traveled out of the country, I had been with an ex-girlfriend, and I was happy that I wasn’t with her.

Because I’m just me, I said.

He didn’t like that answer at all. The phrasing was odd, I’ll give you that. But it was true. I am only one person, and I simply needed to take myself from one place to another.

Why are you coming into the country?

I told him I was coming to visit someone.

Who are you visiting?

Hm, another interesting question! The person I was going to see was a friend in many ways, but we also had slept together and were trying to understand the way that we would ultimately fit into each other’s lives. This had taken the form of many long, emotional, complicated conversations, none of which I could cogently distill in that moment. I decided to tell the agent that I was going to visit a friend, which was true, and seemed like probably all of the information he wanted anyway.

How long have you known this friend?

About four months.

He shook his head. He didn’t like that either. You should know a person longer than four months before you fly to another country to see them I guess, but there was no way for me to change the facts of our relationship. We are always at the mercy of time.

What do you do for work? He asked his next question.

Already nervous, I struggled to answer this as well, but eventually landed on: I am a writer.

What does that mean? He asked.

Another profound question that sent me into a spiral. What does that mean! I sputtered trying to explain my complicated professional life.

I ended up being sent to secondary questioning, where I finally managed to answer questions normally and without existential contemplation–providing concise phrases such as, I’m going on vacation.

We had gotten off on the wrong foot, the customs agent and I. I had failed to answer his first question coherently, Why was I alone?

When I was coming back into the country the next customs agent got stuck on this as well. Why was I traveling alone? Why wasn’t I with someone else? This time instead of restating the fact that I’m just me, I told him I enjoyed traveling by myself which is the truth and also turned out to be a more discernible answer.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why it is troubling or confusing to be alone. After being in a long relationship and then entering into the experience of aloneness, it at first felt extremely odd. But now, more than anytime in my life, I have found it pleasurable to be alone. Shortly after my breakup, I remember walking home from a party, very late at night after having exited quietly and without announcement. I looked up at the sky and had the thought that, for the first time in many years, no one in the whole world knows where I am. I thought I would find this thought scary, but I found it totally delightful and exhilarating. Aloneness, when held correctly, can feel like the most natural thing in the world. I often feel the urge to say to the ~friend that I was visiting, a version of what I first said to the customs agent: “I’m just me and you are just you.” I’m not sure exactly why it feels important to articulate again and again. But it does. We are separate and limited and people. We always will be.

Right after I had both left and returned to the country, I was in a rare situation where I had to have a conversation with a small child. I told him I had just taken a trip, and as part of that trip, I had taken a five hour train ride. I struggle to know what to say to children and assumed that a six year old boy might be interested in this fact. I guessed correctly. His eyes lit up and he told me he loved trains, and that he has always wanted to take one but he hadn’t yet. He told me he really hoped his dad would take him on a train soon.

He asked me who I had taken the train with. I said I had taken the train alone.

You can ride trains alone? He asked.

Yeah, someday you can absolutely take a train alone, I said.

Whoa, he said, looking at me. I didn’t know that.

Poem by me:

IN THE YEAR I WAS A SATELLITE

what was I doing all the way up there

why did I have to be all by myself satellites

are the loneliest creatures they know about

turning and turning but not about family,

holding hands, in the year I was a

satellite the pain was so live in me

I said no one could touch it and it

was true there was a star burning

above my shoulder, I looked through

myself, at the intolerable light, it was all

so bright and worldless

This poem originally appeared in Rejection Letters.

Poem I love by someone else: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Elliot

What I love about the poem:

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

Look, I’m sure you have read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Probably sometime in high school or college. But I revisited the poem this summer for the first time in full in many years. And I think you should too.

I was obsessed with this poem when I was twenty-one and at one point could recite it from memory. I’m sad to report this did not stick in my mind basically at all. Though every time I make myself a cup of coffee, I do say to myself, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

I won’t pretend to have something shocking to say about T. S. Elliot, but what I am saying is that this poem is important to me. It makes me think about aloneness in a very particular way. The poem makes me think about, what can be, the intensity of witnessing other people while you are alone, of allowing yourself to become preoccupied with imagining other people. What might others be saying to each other? What might they be saying about me? The poem quite beautifully and exactly, to me, illustrates the allure and pain of those patterns of thinking. How at what at first can seem to be a thoughtful inquiry of the world, can slip into inaction and self-consciousness. And then from there, ultimately, how aloneness can be as multifaceted as closeness.

Something else I love (that isn’t a poem):

Okay this is an extremely small suggestion but I’m loving writing with no. 2 pencils. I was strictly a pen person for many years. I think this was a preference I developed simply after not being allowed to write with pens in school. It felt more adult and writerly to write with pens and when I was a teenager, these were things that I desperately wanted to feel. But what I was missing out on! Oh, to write gently and softly! Oh to be able to erase and start over! Oh to be able to write in books and have it not bleed over to the next page! The delights are endless when writing with pencils, it turns out. Perhaps everyone knows this already but I’m offering it up anyway, just in case.

Welcome to my little poetry newsletter <3 Today’s theme is: having fun :)

I hope this will be my last Substack where the emotional core is my big fat gay breakup, but honestly, I’m not making any promises.

In May and June, after having a two-year relationship end via FaceTime, I decided that my only goals would be to feel sexy, creative, and delighted. I simply—wanted to try and enjoy myself.

And enjoy myself I did! Probably too much!

At 29, thinking about having fun as a central organizing force in your life may have been a little ridiculous. But I allowed myself that. Breakups are maybe one of the few times in your life where having fun feels not only urgent but essential.

When I would tell people that my main goals were to feel sexy, creative, and delighted, people often didn’t know what to say. Many of my peers are getting engaged or are deep into their corporate careers. Me, well, not so much. I was just cooking up ways to feel sexy, creative, and delighted.

There was so much I learned about myself during this period. Now, I like to think about pleasure as something that can be deeply informative. When I go through a painful experience, I always feel the urge to try and learn something from it. I like to ruminate and try to see what lessons I can gather. But it’s a new impulse to think about pleasure in this way too. What can I learn about myself and the human condition from reflecting on an experience that made me feel joyful?

Now it is July, and it’s time for a new era of life. I’m thinking about productivity, restructuring, and health. The party is over. Thank you to all who attended.

Poem by me:

Poem I love by someone else: Peanut Butter by Eileen Myles

What I love about the poem:

“summer as a / time to do / nothing and make / no money.”

“Accidentally I / read all the / works of Proust.”

I’m not original for loving this poem, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It is a poem to read in the summer.

I’m interested in the attitude that Myles presents in this poem. Two summers ago, I read In Search of Lost Time, and while I enjoyed it, it was definitely and distinctly a labor. I find that there often is something optimistic about Myles’ poetry, despite the content, which feels very tangible in this piece in particular. I think that Myles proposes a really interesting idea in this poem: that pleasure can be accidental, that it will happen throughout the course of a life regardless of your intention. I often think of pain as the unavoidable force of life (re: there is no path without suffering), and pleasure as something that has to be sought out. But I enjoy how Myles relates to effort in this poem, that there can be an ease to joy.

As they write: “ why shouldn’t / something / I have always / known be the / very best there / is.” It’s already all here. It’s summer. Reading Proust is something that could just happen to you. Pleasure is an endless thing that you will experience whether you like it or not.

Something else I love (that isn’t a poem):

Mango Cream Bars from Trader Joes

Look, if you know anything about me, it’s that I freak out for ice cream. I just love the stuff. In the summer, I really have to limit myself to one ice cream a day. And these Mango Bars are truly the real deal. Sweet, creamy, texturally stunning, reasonably priced. It’s like Van Leeuwen do NOT piss me off by charging $9 for some ice cream bars. Anyway, having fun isn’t all about sex and drugs. It’s also about enjoying a wonderful ice cream treat.

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Today’s theme is: crossing through the threshold.

At the end of April, I returned back to New York after a month-long artist residency in rural Maine to find that each aspect of my life was totally different.

My two-year relationship ended while I was away, and I was returning to New York single. The break-up alone would have been jarring enough, but then so many other aspects of my life also shifted.

April in Northeastern Maine was, of course, freezing cold. The day I left Maine, it was still snowing. It had been winter for me, in a long and true way. But when I landed in New York, it was firmly spring. A season had passed in my absence, and my street looked so different. The trees were not only blooming, but had bloomed—fully.

I started a new job the week I got back, and was now working full-time after months of that not being the case.

Suddenly, it was warm, and I was alone, and I was busy. I wonder how many people have had this experience, to face a total inversion of their life. To have left home and then returned to a completely unrecognisable set of circumstances.

My life was so different that there was an ease to the difference, almost. I allowed everything to be different because there was no other way. I didn’t search for the past, because it seemed so clearly to be gone. How could you look for something that you were certain had dissolved. I kept saying to everyone in my life, well, something else is happening to me now. It seemed like the only way to put it. My old life was gone, and now something else was happening to me. I had crossed through the threshold.

Since returning to New York, I’ve had so many experiences that have felt so large and new and surprising. My life has never felt so expansive or so strange. I am on the back of a motorcycle. I am up until 7:00 am. I am surrounded by strangers. I am enjoying being at work. I am buying so many new clothes. I am drinking so much beer. I am dancing and then not dancing. I am spending money. I am sleeping into the afternoon. I am reading all day. I am meditating so much.

Now, even more time has passed, and it’s summer, and everything is surprising me still. I am passing through so many huge doors. The sun is shining. Okay.

Poem by me:

MIDDLE SCHOOL OR SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW

I keep having this dream

where I’m holding myself

as a baby

and I wake up feeling so lonely

it’s never 2007 anymore

my dad was once thirteen

and I’ll be twenty-nine next year

dad says you can have it all

just so you know

a good job

an ugly wife

I always wake up wanting something

having sex in a bright room

chewing on candy

I’ll go back to school in the fall

sometimes the thought of

me is so terrifying

you’ll either start to look

like your parents or there is of course

that huge door

Poem I love by someone else: Turpentine by Emily Skillings

What I love about the poem:

“Psychoanalysts often speak of authenticity, a zone of being I’ve always had trouble inhabiting or conceptualising. My high school English teacher told us to never use the word “being” in our writing. “A lazy word,” she said. Nevertheless, I’d enjoyed its neutrality. I’ve never been able to avoid it. You had fallen asleep.”

Like many people, I freaked out about this poem when it was going around on Instagram a few weeks ago.

I especially love the above passage. The poem makes me think about a few questions. Is it possible, through language, to cross through the threshold of our individual experience? Can we reach past the limits of ourselves into the world of someone else through saying exactly the right thing? And is that even a worthwhile undertaking?

And honestly, idk! But this poem totally stunned me in a way I haven’t felt in a while. It is such a pleasure to have something like this to revisit over and over.

Something else I love (that isn’t a poem): Coucou Intimates Scoop Neck White Pointelle Tank Top.

Look, is it totally ridiculous to spend $56 on a white tank top? Obviously yes. But as we just had the summer solstice and officially crossed through the threshold into summer, I think maybe one of the most urgent things in the world is to feel sexy. And it is just—an extremely flattering tank top.

My first theme is–plants. I’m thinking about how little I write about the natural world. When I write about nature, I often do so just to provide juxtaposition to what I’m actually wanting to write about. When I write about how much I hate the technological oppression of modern life, for example, I’ll reference dirt or trees or birds, to try to express how far we have streamed away from anything resembling truth. But in the new year, I want to experiment with writing some purely nature-based poems. I’ve lived in and around New York my whole adult life, and if you don’t seek it out, it’s easy to have your interaction with the natural world be limited to a wine bar patio. I grew up in Colorado, and it’s crazy to spend a childhood outside and then not think very much about it at all after that.

Poem by me:

LOOK THE SUBCONSCIOUS

mom dreams in black and white

because she grew up watching

black and white television

I grew up watching color television so

I dream in color

before television we dreamt in words and sounds

and before language

our souls manifested wildly

like oranges rolling down the sidewalk

Poem I love by someone else:

“Ben’s Dead” by J. J. Lucyszyn published in the Yale Review.

What I love about the poem: I saw this poem circulating a few years ago on twitter and think about it often. The poem feels immensely tragic to me, but also contains a profound gentleness. The reference to any plant is admittedly small—it only happens in the last line: “Hello my trees.” But what a last line.

Something else I love (that isn’t a poem): Spicy Dill Pickle Blue Diamond Almonds.

What I love about them: They remind me of the strange things we inflict on nature. These are truly so freaky. The flavor is so intense, similar to sour candy, but savory.

COWBOY MR. AT THE END OF THE WORLD 

CowboyMr. can only truly feel sexy when her phone is dying

people try and call her and say, wouldn’t you like to get

lunch? Where will you be next Tuesday?

And she simply responds I don’t know anything about

decomposition

In place of work-lunches, she says, please send

so many flocks of birds

This is the only true way to learn, she says

CowboyMr. is all over it

What is it, exactly?

Raindrops, aggression, tits and ass

She is all about mouthfuls 

When CowboyMr. finds herself 

in a quiet room, she screams extremely loudly 

because she derives pleasure from it

 CowboyMr. does not know how to use

a computer, a landline, a shotgun

when people ask her

to answer emails or kill birds, she calmly reminds them

of the distance between her ears

This poem was originally published by Poetry Online. You can read it on their website here, and listen to a recording of me reading the poem.

IN THE AFTERNOON WHEN YOU DID NOT WANT ME

I wake up and I humiliate myself. Each day I come up with new and innovative ways to humiliate myself. I’m so lame when I eat dinner. You can find anything disgusting if you want to. 

I’m at your apartment. You're massaging kale. I just washed my hair. The fireplace is on. I ask if you might like to do this for the rest of our lives. You remind me it's not a moral failure, to not love someone.

My mother was a clairvoyant. I fail to understand things even after they unfold. Where did you go, you wry creature? Who will I show this crooked heart to? 

You think it’s hilarious that I’m brushing my hair at a time like this. I am going to die someday. You’re not in my apartment even though I want you to be. 

Not this cynical body. No, don't twist away from me. I want to walk through this door. 

In the afternoon when you did not want me you detached sinking through I am shrink wrapping my desire angel angel here don’t leave me

open

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MIDDLE SCHOOL OR SOMETHING

it’s summer and I’m looking at my phone 

she’s uptown and I’m asleep on the couch

I’m in my cheap shoes

it's just a summer cold

I keep having a dream 

where I’m holding myself 

as a baby and

I wake up feeling so lonely 

it’s never 2007 anymore 

my dad was once fifteen 

and I’ll be twenty-eighth next year 

dad says you can have it all

just so you know 

a good job

an ugly wife 

I always wake up wanting something

having sex in a bright room

chewing on candy

I’ll go back to school in the fall

sometimes the thought of

me is so terrifying

you’ll either start to look 

like your parents or there is of course

that huge door

TODAY YOU ARE A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

you woke up full of beauty standard
when the man at the deli says to you,
I want you to be 20 years old
you say, of course, I can be 20 years old
I can be 20 years old any time you like
you are youth-vicious
and temporal
in that, it stops and starts
whenever he pleases

when you meet a man on the bus and he says,
I am covering your head with a blanket
you, of course, are trying to bite his arm
you hope there is something comedic or
graceful about the biting
even though you know if your heart
that it’s not true

when you are walking finally,
and a man shouts at you on the street
and says, today you are a beautiful woman
you shout back, everything I learned about being a woman
I learned watching my mother eat a salad from a tupperware container
in that you mean, it all comes back to containment

This poem was originally published by DREAM POP PRESS.