point of singularity

Dreams of tidal waves, and at first I am flying high above them on singed wings. I am exhilarated, I am free and weightless, and then I plunge down into the ocean. All part of the plan; but I am afraid. The waves, blue and green, roll toward me and they are so immense, so powerful, and I know how easy it is to drown.

Dreams of gore and sex. Dreams of faces I will never see again, the murderous heat of Georgia summer, of swimming near smooth round stones in Lake Superior. Almost memory, things that never happened and never will.

And a week ago a heartbeat that sounded to me like the rhythms of war drums. Could there be anything else that will ever come close? Have I ever loved anything until now? Radio silence.. ghosts and snow. - But then, there all along, the shifting architecture of my own body, bloodless and sore.

"Awake, my soul."

I have no mouth and I must scream

A flower made of thin bone, red feathers, blood and meat. Then the dreams last night, a white cat with one blue eye and one green eye, roadkill, splattered across the pavement. Red birds and white cats, and I was the one who shot the bird, I was the one who killed the cat. And I don't know why.

Am I human, or only a monster?

These are tired thoughts. But today I am tired, and I am thirsty, and I am old. Today I am not well.

Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung together once, floating away
in every direction. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel
a trace of eternity. -- Though the living are wrong to believe
in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created.
Angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living
they are moving among, or the dead. 


Rainer Maria Rilke, die erste Elegie.

ultimas palabras

Intrinsic reality is that which lies beneath the illusion. All in one moment I saw the snow drifting down from the sky and the angles of the trees and I knew what god was. And later, when he and I lay beneath the blankets on that winter night, we did not need to speak to know each other. There was no separation. His body was my body and my body was his, and I was also the cold room we lay in, and the snow falling and the sleeping trees outside, I was the universe and the universe was never anything but me.

And so when he said to me a few nights ago, I'm going to save you, I wanted to say to him that he didn't understand. There can be no blasphemy. There is no separation from god. We are god's thoughts.

all the courage you have left

Dreams of worlds that never existed, not for me. I stood on a high dune of sand the color of snow and watched the waves throw themselves at the land. Turquoise shattering, and along the shore an empty black road. The sky was so blue, and the sun was in my eyes as I looked down the road. Then I turned and climbed up a hill to an old abandoned house quietly rotting alone. I let myself in and there was a dead dog on the floor, its fur drifting amongst bones and dried stringy flesh. And I stood in the doorway and watched a sort of reverse time-lapse photography as the maggots appeared and danced and disappeared again. The flesh filled in around the ribs and the fur sprang back onto the skin, and the dog stood up and looked at me warily and its eyes were yellow.

Then I woke up, tangled in the sheets, sweaty and sick and my mouth sour from last night's rum, and I remembered you were gone.

So let the days pass. Give me crisp quiet and November light, pale and somehow cold. Give me your absence and your silence, a book of blank pages. I have enough to fill it all in.

ever is no time at all

My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand?


Cormac McCarthy, The Road.

death and dreaming

Small miracles. Hope hope hope like my heart's pulse, and the World spins faster through the void. I heard physicists may have found a particle that moves faster than the speed of light. It would have to slip into a different dimension as it travels. Like quantum leaps. Maybe I can do that too.

Last night, a satellite fell screaming to Earth, burning through the atmosphere, maybe as he and I were lost in the raw wood skeletons of new houses and moonlight. In the dark the standing water looked like a deep pit opening up, and I stood at the edge of it, trying to see down, but all I could see was sky.

"And I see the future. There's no death, 'cause you and I, we're angels.."

I am beginning again. A moment's hesitation, a silence that's fractured like a clean white bone turning red. And really I shouldn't be here now, but it seems to be the place I always return to. I always think, it's going to be different this time. I'm going to maintain. I'm going to finally make up my mind. I will put all my memories into boxes and follow the winding roads to my new home. The memories will sit quietly in bare empty rooms until I am ready to see them again. I will wash the sheets, make the bed. I will put away new silverware, and hang towels in the bathroom. I will wipe down the kitchen counters and touch the various textures of new curtains at the store.

I think, I will leave everything behind that I do not want to carry with me anymore. And for awhile it will work.

But I know that once the novelty has worn off, the newness, I will see it there beneath, where it always was, because I am the girl I've always been. Rust and steel wrapped in threadbare velvet. And because I can't ever help myself, I will start picking at the edges, pulling threads, unraveling it a little bit at a time, until it's time to begin again.



I cannot capture thoughts like moths between my palms, between my teeth.

And all I want is to slide back down beneath the surface.