--------- my father

I am trying not to blame him directly but he is the only one I can blame for the fury and the grief I feel. I wish I could connect with him, I wish I could share things with him. I wish we could sit and talk and learn. I wish he understood what he is losing. I wish he understood what he’s making me lose. I wish he understood the rift these people, so far away we will never touch, were wedging between us. I wish it hurt him that I don’t like to talk. I wish he felt the absence of intimacy with me in his life, and I wish it felt like a loss. A loss that he could do something with. I wish he cared to understand the things that are important to me. That he tried to listen. I wish he treated these things seriously, with weight, that he mulled over them thoughtfully – and that he saw my fury as the violent and hurtful thing it is, not something to laugh at. I wish he saw me as powerful. I wish my words had barbs and could sting. I wish my tears affected him, that they melted something away; my tenderness, my womanness. I wish we could touch, somehow. That the softness of my hands mattered more than anything. That my laughter mattered more than anything. I wish he admired me. I wish he understood the future of guilt he is cursing me to. I wish my poetry could make him cry.

Why are we constantly having to write these pleading letters to our fathers, if not on paper then in our hearts and our minds? These desperate and cloying declarations of our own humanity, the humanity of our mothers. As if our words will have any effect at all.

--------- frances

In the dirt field ahead she watches a woman ride her horse in circles, chased by the dust. She thinks of feeding them sugar cubes in the purple morning. Their velvet lips bigger than her hand.

How the clouds there come flowing from fibrous bunches, like a cotton ball attracting together backwards, rather than pulled apart; the birds, robins and chickadees and the sounds of them; the way her hair twists around the red root of a sprig of moss. The melancholy crown of the willow tree.

I am only 30 years in the future, but she still stands watching those horses. There’s a baby soft spot where her dyed red curls split at the back, pink scalp untouched from the sun.

--------- 25 / valentines

The wind is crisp on the ears and I'm thinking of the soup I'll make later and the onion skins that are rustling in my bag. I was told yesterday by a friend of a time his young body was sold for one hundred dollars. Quickly, it becamme another way the earth has been spinning mme faster. I try in vain to hold mmy fingers over the pulse of time, to keep my feet light and dodge the wheel.

to hold open the window.

The sun dips faster than I can catch up and I follow the river of people travelling home to their own.

I try to keep myself armoured, but come to find out that I've always been injected with that regrettable soreness, a swelling bulb in the chest –

that thing which makes my eyes sting.

--------- meeting a girl

She is neurotic and interesting and intelligent; walks and talks with a sort of frenetic energy, like there’s a tightly wound elastic inside; seems both moody and self-possessed at once and mature beyond her years. she’s tall and slim and athletic and moves quickly, has sharp elbows and long, defined hands that I’ve already developed a fixation for. she is the type of beautiful that feels dark and saturated, a little more in focus than the people around her, a bit heavy and cold, like silver. she types in perfect English with capitals, has a polished professional side. her voice is solid, clear and smooth. I see the same swirling, possessing energy that drew me to several other significant people in my life. i see just how attractive it is to me and remember how empty it can make me feel afterwards, too. but despite the consequences it never stops having that pull.

the last time she came over to my house, we went to a cafe to work and then came back to my house, ate pancakes with cottage cheese and raspberries. she stayed in my room and lay on my bed and we talked for hours. eventually we started talking about sex. she told me about a time she left a bad hookup because she was so pent-up, so enthusiastic, that she was mortified after by how vocal she was, not even being on the receiving end, and during this conversation (I can’t remember how), eventually admitted that she was attracted to me, which I obviously reciprocated. even now when I think about this, I can’t help but imagine her being so enthusiastic with me. I felt physically in pain from how much it made me ache beside her. she talked about how she really likes me and likes being around me, and is worried to do something about this attraction, because she doesn’t want things to go badly, I guess. she suggested we could just continue being friends who just happen to be attracted to each other, but the energy in the room is undeniably distracting, and her immediately asking me what I think about when I think about kissing her tells me something different.

I went to her house a few days later, pretending we would get work done. we ended up spending hours talking into the night again, stopping only to eat, but such small amounts as was biologically necessary. I still felt that heavy air between us. I felt how she leans towards me when she laughs. after a while she read a book aloud to me, and I mostly paid attention, but also just let the sound of her voice roll around smoothly in my head, watched the sharp angle of her wrist as she held the pages, felt that buzz in my stomach when I looked at the soft hairs on the side of her neck, the line where it meets her jaw, and imagined putting my mouth there. I want to ask her what she finds attractive about me and answer it, too.

I should also record how I can recognize my patterns being repeated as they plug along. how I feel my body wait expectantly and giddily for contact when it isn’t there. that I crave this sort of tense push-and-pull and the thrill that comes with it; the confirmation when I win, and the longing when I don’t. that for some reason I’m hardwired to an affinity for uncertainty. and even though I can recognize all of these things and look at myself and desperately tell myself to be careful, I know equally that I won’t be, and that whatever happens will happen, and that I’ll be back looking at this page asking myself why I can’t learn from my mistakes.