i just feel inextricably strange tonight. maybe the word is solitary. maybe it’s because the apartment across the hall is empty. maybe its because i feel like i can’t keep up in conversation, and then the words im typing can’t keep up with me. the whole thing – whatever it is, feels very fragile. sometimes when I feel like this, or the other night, when I half climbed half fell out of bed, partially drunk, partially hysterical full of dizzying thoughts, Iisit and watch the Fremont bridge from my apartment, across the city. seeing the diminished frequency of cars as they pass the upper and lower decks calms me, as though the whole city is falling asleep, or is feeling the same, or hopefully, not feeling the same at all. i dont know why this physical structure, with its two red lights blinking in perfect time makes me feel calm, or rights my mind. sometimes i pacify myself with cigarettes, but hate the ash they leave behind, burned out, hollowed out, smelling ugly. there is no music for this, no soundtrack, no epic ballads, just the strange sound of the heater turning itself on because I forgot a window open, as I fight for sleep, covered in quilts and comforters, but still shivering in the tangerine sheets of my bed.

i've been washing my face at night with grapefruit and honey soap hoping that i will wake up fresh faced and smooth. fresh faced, smooth, tender. it's all right, soon enough we will be eating tomatoes and greens that just had their own dirt washed off them, soon enough we will smell like apricots, be smooth as violets, and smoking blueberry tobacco, drinking tea, visiting in the sun, remembering why we study the books we do, remembering what it was like before - and remembering what it's like just to be a person again, and turning our ribs to honeycomb.

chainsmoking weather

sunday morning i'm sleeping past what i should, am awake for only an hour before i feel like i either need to chainsmoke or nap, and both are equally upsetting urges. i like thinking about what is a thousand miles away. i think about the things i want, when i have them, when i don't, and when i'm too malcontent to know the difference. i think about when things are too late, or if they ever are, and also i think that my soundtrack is both songs from before i met you, before i moved, but i can only hear parts of their choruses through the radio static. this small room, that old chair, that big plant, it all makes it feel like these thoughts are ok.

oh oh cheri

i didn't go to class because i didn't want to walk in the rain. today is one of those days where i woke up, lay in bed, moved to lay in the tub, got dressed, and re-dressed, and have been reading and stopping to wonder if today is one of those days where i am not greater than the sum of my parts, or if today is one of those days where maybe i am best being defined or explained by my belongings or what i am wearing - that i am just a green tweed hat and typewriter key earrings - that i am a messy car and cluttered apartment. for some reason, that seems calm and still, for i expect little and have little expected of me...a day that has been reduced to, or at least punctuated by tea stains and tobacco, literary theory and lost spectacles, an old sweater, and shoes falling to pieces.

spring jasmine

nearly a year ago, i had a dream that i have often thought of, but never written down. this dream was both nightmarish, and oracular, and it woke me up, feverish but subdued, at that really early morning time characterized by half-light. i dreamt that i was being shown a book that had pages made of leaves, green and glossy, bound by twine and twigs. in this book were photos of the most bittersweet, elusive, and fantastic memories - photos of he and i laying in his twin bed, near the heater that would spark, photos of my brother, photos of my mother and i when i was young and she was carrying me up the stairs, photos of me laying on my aunt's outstretched legs while grandpa fished for catfish. the oracle, or shaman showing me this book had a deep gravely voice, and i feel sure that it was grandpa. in the photos, above my shoulders were three small captures of light, like dust. but i was told that this was actually three evil spirits which i carry on my shoulders, and that are always present, even in the most simple and sublime of moments, moments like the first time you touched me, or moments like when you first brushed your hand on mine to hold it. and i could sit now and try to describe in some new way how much this dream upset me, but i can't. all i can say is that it did, in one of the most profound ways i have ever known. and though nightmares should elucidate and disappear when you wake up, and put on your shoes, and walk out to the street, this one never has. it feels as confusing in my mind's vision now as it did that morning i woke up, in that bed that wasn't mine and i saw the white sheets with small seaglass blue dots, and the light beginning to tear through the bamboo shades on the window, my hair tangled, my eyes still with sleep in them.

poppies

i like saying i'm from california.
and i was thinking about how it went from home being in lake oswego to not having a home for a few years and freaking out about it to the one day i said "yeah i'm going home for a week" and referred to home as california. it makes it seem like that's how it's always been, and, and it should be, like my parents met and married and split but my family my roots are all still down there, hanging out, excited for me to visit. maybe i like this because it will envelope everything until i was seventeen and push it away, and that's how i'd rather remember things

in the middle of a shrieking laughter, of absolute joy and hysterical delight a sobering thought ran through my head as we were running around and doing what we do - making things with fiber, filling our lungs with smoke and dousing our bloodstreams with alcohol. in the middle of this creative bliss, as we were walking i suddenly thought, "this too shall pass." and though those words are often thrown out in heartbreak or sadness as comfort, i realized that he was right, happiness, like everything, comes in waves, and i thought about it passing. and i thought about holding on to things, and that grasping is the greatest source of disappointment and sadness, because its never really ours, its just a series of events that involve us. people are never really ours. or at least you were never really mine.