Mind Games

I think we were inviting an end from the beginning.
But you know we like stretching and breaking
And curving into one other like white lines, white lies,
White lies we spelled out over and over again with our hands,
sometimes with our mouths because
It is easier to just keep walking
than summon the effort to read a map
At least that's what I am, at least
I think that's what you are
At least I think we are, we are.
Remember that old game of tearing flower petals
Making physical deaths of our own indecisions
I think we could make our legacy the flower we gave, the flower we tore
The number of times we got the flowers wrong the number of times the flowers
Weren't flowers at all but kisses, sometimes a little more before it was enough
And I mean the 'Oh God' the 'Oh yes' the 'Fuck me' the 'Back the Fuck off'
We read words that didn't exist because sometimes lines criss-cross in pages and we're too reckless
To actually find time to use our fingers to trace
What exactly a word was meant to be
Sometimes we've broken into fits of giggles, clutching our stomachs like we were preventing every bit of us from losing absolute control, like there were some things
worth holding in
I think that's how you invite an end:
When you laugh in a way your toes curl and you lose your voice
and you hurt so much inside and you realize the only other time all that can come
it will come with water.
Sometimes I think you can only spin a bottle so many times and choose 'truth' before you
Realize that all it takes for you to break open/even is a bottle
Because the bottle is the only time someone really asked you something you felt your organs needed to feel too
And I think this is about claws
and I think we're good at growing them.
Let's go slam each other against this wall and cry a little bit because

Where else do we go?
Where else
do we go?

Girl Talk

Hey girl.
Listen up.
I'm writing you a love letter,
Not because I think you need reminding of who you are
Or what you need
-I lack the expertise to unravel that part of your being-
But because I have known too many people
Way too often,
Who've walked around as
Voids
Echoes
White noises
Without realizing.

I've lived too little
To know so many people;
Too many people who've been part of a hole.

Hey girl
Someone's been reading you all wrong.
They've taken out their pens and straightened you up against
The table and broken you up to their own design
Some cartography, some sculpting so that you become
Some stray concept of a globe.
Christopher Columbus
Looking for India,
Finding America.

Why would someone flatten someone
That holds fire and lava and life inside and skin it?
It is no longer about maps,
It is about meat.

Hey girl
Someone once told me
- maybe more than once-
Something that was intensely beautiful
Sunlight breaking apart into fingers
And reaching out for a brook
- Intangible comforting intangible.

I have known too many people
Way too often,
Who've walked around as
Voids
Echoes
White noises
And somehow the 'people'
Are always girls
Girls genetically mutated to talk

Talk, girl, talk.
Tell me about this line and that one and
How neither of them define you
Tell me about how your body was softened and smoothened
Never really stabilized
Tell me about that time the anger was a glacier bursting open
At the back of your mouth
But you 'needed' to hold it in
Tell me how you create winds of laughter
Because in recounting a 'history of abuse',
It's easier to begin with, 'ha ha, it's absurd'.

Hey, girl.
We have our history and geography all wrong.
When I saw the first calendars man ever made,
They were lines in the sand, set in stone,
Scratched out to keep track of monthly blood.

Women made the first calendars.
These calendars
were later adapted by prisoners to mark
Imprisonment.

Separate Verses on Everyday Living

Someone throws a word up in the air
And you run behind it and catch it.
Sometimes someone whispers words
That you engrave into the tabletop
Over which you sit and wring your hands and
Think of the incision on the wood
And how much you regret having made it.

Occasionally you wash your face with cold water
And most of the time it is an act you decided you wanted to do
Cold water dousing any semblance of fire
Cold water abetting cold water
Cold water that was cold water in you.

You have this strange collection of flowers
Flower names you learnt out of a book and
Flowers you collected and stored with a passion
That no one ever would ever understand
Because preserving flowers
Amounts to withering away.

Sometimes you pull out words from a conversation
And draw threads from the words
And stitch a blanket for yourself.
Sometimes you shiver despite the blanket.

Occasionally you sit on the window seat
And press your nose against the pane and breathe
Slow, shallow gasps of air
And you watch the colours of the world outside spilling over
Each other
And you think how real your skin feels and how you find assignments that begin with 'Imagine you are a ...'
Hilarious.
You draw a smiley face on the cloud of air you made solid.
By the time you get off the bus
The smile fades.

Once in a while you switch from channel to channel
Swipe your timeline up and down
Open and shut your refrigerator door
Watch porn, finger yourself, and fall asleep.
You look for a reason.
A word.
Sometimes you find it.
Most of the times, you don't.
So you get another word to tattoo in your veins:
Ritual.

Sometimes you sit at an empty bus stop and watch the buses go by
Once in a while, the bus stops
And goes when you shake your head.
It isn't like I will run away, you tell yourself.
It's just the principle of wanting to.

Everyday, you reserve an hour for mourning.
You turn off the lights
Because you know displaying feeling and confronting them isn't the same
And you're trying to muster enough courage for one.
Everyday, you spend an hour crying
Over the things you knew
Over the things you wish you knew
Over all the things you do.