30 Aug 2020

Saved Texts

I save the texts I never sent him. I learned to do this when his repeated flat responses, left me crestfallen. Is the disappointment we feel when someone doesn’t match our energy a thing? Or is it a modern invention, as superficial as texting? Were people in the past crushed upon receiving austere replies to their passionate letters? Surely they were.

In a wireless world, where everything is mysteriously floating, unseen, in the air, information saved on clouds, and virtual mail sometimes delivered to Spam folders instead of Inboxes. I long to be anchored; a heavy earpiece in my grip, tethered to a boxy device, curling and uncurling my fingers around the rubbery wire. My voice, my words running on legs of meaning and intention through tangible lines, burrowing into walls, journeying through underground roots, on tree like telephone poles, finally reaching my loved one on the other side.

One of the unsent texts, still living in the dark knotty weave of my cell’s algorithm, is a funny meme I found on Pinterest. I imagined his elusive, sometimes hazel, sometimes green eyes flash with recognition, his backward laugh Ah ah ah ah, when the joke sunk in. But on second thought, I knew it was all in my head, that his response won’t be more than a subdued little scoff

Another aborted text is a photo I took of a sunset, the sky put on its best show, a violent red, tearing the stomach of a royal purple background. I captioned it “look! The world is on fire!” But I was too eager, and I knew his vacuous response will leave me swelling with unmet, and unequaled energy.

Some texts I wrote, then immediately deleted, when I feared I was being too poetic, “you are more with me in your absence.” Or too philosophical, “I feel I’m in the middle of the story; where the fruit is almost ripe, and the wisdom almost won, but you remain in the beginning.” like sandcastles they looked sturdier in my mind, but crumbled when I set out to construct them.

“This relationship isn’t sustaining me.” This text I sent. When we were together I wondered how he remained untouched by the world? How he managed to go through life with barbed wire around his heart? His body the purest white alabaster? While mine a multicolored patchwork, of everyone that built and destroyed me. When he refused to communicate, I convinced myself he was emotionally unavailable When we did speak, our words missed each other, like poorly aimed arrows, I saw them fall dead on the ground. 

Listen to an audio of this memoir piece here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txj5txWW9wI&t=157s























29 Aug 2020

Phil 'Lies' Dead

 

"This isn't how I pictured my funeral! I was a successful writer for god's sake!"

Listen to this flash fiction audio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi8uj-4suVs&t=24s
























25 Aug 2020

15 Aug 2020

the embrace

 

My past is an armor I can’t take off no mater how many times you tell me the war is over – Jessica Katoff

  

The painful embrace

 

You learn the inexplicable paradox of things

The first time you saw ballet and could not fathom how gentleness can be severe

The burn of icy winds lashing your face

The first time you made love, and pain was pleasure

You drop in the dark gaps of language, where words are rigid and letters are fixed, astonished at the vastness of all the grey areas, for which no words suffice

 

Helpless, your thrash and flail under suicidal thoughts, and say “I’m fine.”

Your limitation as a human being becomes at once the dirty black boot that crushes you, and your only solace

The redundancy of language before the incessancy of human emotion is a new, mature kind of failure, because no matter how old or wise you grow, you’ll never be able to find your way through a thick fog

Your smallness in the face of suffering teaches you humility, but humility does not stop the bleeding

Many times you close your eyes and imagine losing yourself completely in a warm enveloping embrace, your whole being dissolving in another, the utter surrendering of your person, the letting go of all past judgments and future expectations

“Maybe this time it will be different… maybe”

Open your eyes, the fall is long and painful, a perfect embrace can – though rarely – last for two minutes, but the bruise will last a decade

You seethe under the theories, and the myriad stories of overcoming. Only you, your innermost private human, the heart inside your heart, where your mind does not dare tread, understands how painful an embrace can be. 



Listen to an audio reading of this poem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQhWy-P5DuU&t=9s








































11 Aug 2020

All Her Reincarnations

Before she chose to revisit the world through me, my daughter was a fourteenth century Chinese Empress..

Flash Fiction All Her Reincarnations





















7 Aug 2020

The Price of Language

 

"How can we teach closeness, when all we've been taught is distance.."

Listen to the audio recording of this piece of memoir The Price of Language

























A Box of Regrets

We gave each other unhealthy coping mechanisms

We gave each other salty bitter egos

We gave each other cynicism, and dark humor

We gave each other trust issues  

We gave each other old perfumed sweaters; we wore on cold lonely nights, then took off and shoved under a pile of clothing, then rummaged back for before bed time,

We gave each other long nights,

We gave each other eloquence,

We gave each other depth, we drowned in our grief

Don’t give myself back to me, we begged, and so we walked into other peoples lives, wearing each others faces, speaking each others words

We gave each other uninhibited planets. Parched, and yearning, we orbited in emptiness

We gave each other codes, words we listened to when nothing was said

We gave each other the tenacity to stare at a starless sky and wish

We gave each other time and space but we never truly forgave

We gave each other torn up dreams yellowed at the edges in the hope that maybe

We gave each other old used up desires rackety and stuck together with glue

The world, when we parted, conspired to remind us everyday, at every turn

And for our final gift

A box full of shadowy regrets, we cherish, and believe we deserve.


Listen to an audio recording of the poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UimsYXx0GwE





  

2 Aug 2020

50/50

I felt it shelter to speak to you - Emily Dickinson 

an audio poem: 50/50