Twister.

Mouths of broken tongue
collapsed beneath
a bowl poured full of saliva
that tasted the birth
of an anticipation and numbing
said taste my taste buds
cause they’ve been running
under the stream of soft yoghurt
and waves of French
said I know you want me
and Cheshire smiled
moist glint in your eye
flashed, flashed, purred
of struggled inhale
warmth against walls
leaned upon arrows
of tough tug-o-war
and smelt the near flesh
panting, bursting
a volcanic rush
and those lava envelopes
gulped and swallowed
a mouth of running nectar
said taste my
sticky breath, sticky breath
with glue between your teeth
stuck me to you
a handlebar of sugar cocktails
a cavity of delight
a fight of pillow tongue

please be alive

i keep asking strangers "what are you most scared of?" and i've heard (monsters, heights, spiders, clusters of holes, pedophiles, being attacked by a shark, death of parents, storms, enclosed spaces, God, guns, betrayal, love) the end/death, but my loves, none of that scares us. death isn't terrifying, not living is.  

the worst thing

I want to sleep naked, feel bare.

the worse thing I've ever done was when I was on the bus with my friend sitting in front of me, and she had a little bear plush, and I wanted it, so when she tossed it up, I caught it and hid it with me. but it smelt of her and my guilt, so on my walk home I threw it away. that reminds me of today when in the city of San Cristobal, a child tugged at my bag strap and shook necklaces hung from his arm. he spoke Spanish. i didn't, but we didn't need a language. beads clattered like bones collapsing as he shook them until my answer sounded empty like his stomach. the third world tastes devastating. from the limbless man moaning against a wall to the silent women weaving textiles in the market, I heard only exhausted despair. like animals, they cry only for survival. let us eat, drink, rest. let us live. yet equipped with the generosity of my situation, i had my mouth full of labour and bags brimmed with sleepless nights and rough skin on sore hands. i had the 'wants' of a gluttony so fierce I terrified myself. yet there remains poverty, silently suffering, violently struggling, pleading like those dark brown eyes. lo siento, mi amore. less is not more.

from outer space

Listening to this song again and it sounds like it's been singing the words all wrong. (How) The facts are there. The fact is that when people tell you to count, you assume one and one is two, the fact is when you're tired, you  need rest. The fact is distance is an ocean, distance is not a space your feet can comprehend. Distance is being alone. So it seems silly that for a moment you tasted like a birthday party. Silly that for a moment I thought I had found a way to rest within another pair of rib cages. That for a moment I thought one and one could feel like one. And like a drunken person singing terribly gaily (with emphasis on the 'terribly'), I sunk in and out of the wine that was you. 

i'm sorry i ever walked close because distance knows me more than closeness does

what is this?
what would you call it? 

an "ascension"
but even then we couldn't define what 'more' would be, and we would never have slammed the brakes though we saw the signs, and the traffic lights flashed red like hearts under attack. and your sour aftertaste was the taste of grapes that hadn't ripened, and i wanted your flesh to be sweet even if not for my own mouth. 

so i'm sorry (for the audacity)
i never meant any of the year that has passed us by
of text messages left waiting, and stories i couldn't find an ear for
of a together i couldn't be there for
what comes next i do not know but you can't bend my reality
i've got a fire in me that can't afford the price tag of waiting
and what we wished couldn't be conceived
so burn through and create what you now can
because i didn't grant you that chance,
you did

P.S

(mermaids never kick, because mermaids know how to swim)

free things are good.

I have a red plastic cup 

left in my room by a friend

and in it, rain moistened dirt

scooped with a twig

from the chilly courtyard

of stephens-whitney

and in it, incense

gifted as samples 

from a place they call 

lotus

and did you know

its roots begin in mud

its stem in water

its flower in sun

that lit the fire 

that burned a smell:

warm & wonderful.

Run deep, run wild.

After tears, there's always that gasp of air that tastes like relief, and boy, does it taste fresh. My fondness for crying has always been rooted in an attempt to rest and react not of my own accord. To simply, feel. To know this, in this moment, is real because I...didn't consciously partake in it. But of course that's nonsense because I did choose to engage and I did choose to be empathetic, saddened and perhaps, hurt. I chose to feel and to express it with tears. So I'm unafraid to say I look forward to things that I know will make me want to tremble, and contemplate to what degree my noisy expressions will irritate my company. I enjoy the clumsy desperation of seeking tissues from strangers to dry my face, am enchanted by the first tear that draws a path upon my skin that the others sometimes follow and am delighted when I become so overwhelmed I sound like an animal beneath a butcher's cleaver. I see strength in crying. I see the audacity to feel and be felt by the world that surrounds us. I see a tremendous wonder in becoming a feeling being. I see outreached hands for a perplex world that never held ours once. The world becomes a state of dripping fog that cools the bare bodies lying on beaches, and moistens the dirt to become a worm's paradise, and falls upon our spread tongues. 

How thirsty we are, and how tasty our tears. 

Waiting Room.

The day I found out you were dying
was at the age of young
and mama came home smelling like chlorine
with salt dried in falling lines down her face

Those lines formed a web
that preyed on my fear, they told me
“it won’t be okay”
yet even then you had rock sugar in your pockets

I walked toward you,
paper gown hanging like
weak armed children on monkey bars
and you chuckled and waved me closer

Bounced the ice cream from my hand
and sunk your gums into it
said “I am okay”
and pouted your sagging lips to make me laugh

The second time I found out you were dying
was at the age of yesterday
and I couldn't smell mama
but I smelt rock sugar

She said “I am sick”
with a cold that seeps through
the veins veering toward her heart
“it won’t be okay”

It snowed again today
white as the hair of your head
crispy as the skin of your chest
that cradles a heart so ready for cold

The day I found out you were dying
I realised you’d been living
more than any of us had been living
and dying less than any of us are dying

The day I found out you were dying
I refused to cry
because it will never be okay,
but it will be more.

x

Lusty Lavendar.

This week America is: loving strangers, loving friends, daily alcomohol, purple/magenta/halfshave hair (they call me the mermaid), 10 page papers, Vancouver on saturday, zumba zumba zumba, ISEP scholarship of $5000, rekindling love of earrings, bitten bruises, mama's package of asian goodies, night owl day owl, lack of leisure reading, dayquil/nyquil S.O.S, reminiscing aussie music.