- i am handsome at exactly three angles and deadly from everywhere else. i am writing you from inside a body that used to be yours. which is to say, i am writing as a son
- the time, while pruning a basket of green beans over the sink, you said, out of nowhere, "i'm not a monster. i'm a mother" [...] "you’re not a monster,” i said. but i lied. what i really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be
- the next morning, in the kitchen, i watched as you poured the milk into a glass tall as my head. "drink," you said, your lips pouted with pride. "this is american milk so you're gonna grow a lot. no doubt about it." i drank so much of that cold milk it grew tasteless on my numbed tongue. each morning after that we'd repeat this ritual: the milk poured with a thick white braid, i'd drink it down, gulping, making sure you could see, both of us hoping the whiteness vanishing into me would make me more of a yellow boy. i'm drinking light, i thought. i'm filling myself with light. the milk would erase all the dark inside me with a flood of brightness. "a little more," you said, rapping the counter. "i know it's a lot but it's worth it". i clanked the glass down on the counter, beaming. "see?" you said, arms crossed. "you already look like superman!"
- because gunshots, lies, and oxtail – or whatever you want to call your god – should say yes over and over, in cycles, in spirals, with no other reason but to hear itself exist. because love, at its best, repeats itself.
- days i feel like a human being, while other days i feel more like a sound. i touch the world not as myself but as an echo of who i was. can you hear me yet? can you read me?
- i'm breaking us apart again so that i might carry us somewhere else– where, exactly, i'm not sure
- if you were god you would tell them to stop clapping. you would tell them that the most useful thing one can do with empty hands is hold on. but you're not a god. you're a woman. a mother
- i'm here, right here, beneath you [...] being sorry pays, being sorry even, or especially, when one has no fault, is worth every self-deprecating syllable the mouth allows. because the mouth must eat.
- because i am your son, my apology had become, by then, an extension of myself. it was my hello
- i was seen-i who was taught, by you, to be invisible in order to be safe
- what if the body, at its best, is only a longing for body? the blood racing to the heart only to be sent back out, filling the routes, the once empty channels, the miles it takes to take us toward each other. why did i feel more myself while reaching for him, my hand midair, than i did having touched him
- because the thing about beauty is that it’s only beautiful outside of itself. seen through a mirror, i viewed my body as another, a boy a few feet away, his expression unmoved, daring the skin to remain as it was, as if the sun, setting, was not already elsewhere, was not in ohio
- sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined
- because something in him knew she'd be there.that she was waiting. because that's what mothers do. they wait. they stand still until their children belong to someone else
- i want to insist that you being alive is beautiful enough to be worthy of replication. and so what? so what if all i ever made of my life was more of it?
- tenderness depends on how little the world touches you. to stay tender, the weight of your life cannot lean on your bones
- it's in these moments, next to you, that i envy words for doing what we can never do — how they can tell all of themselves simply by standing still, simply by being
- norway told me a story about a painter who went out during a storm, shearching for the right shade of green, nad never returned (era eu)
- in minutes, i became more of myself. which is to say the monstrous part of me got so large, so familiar, i could want it. i could kiss it
- how come each time my hands hurt me, they become more mine?
- if you find yourself trapped inside a dimming world, remember it was always this dark inside the body. where the heart, like any law, stops only for the living. if you find yourself, then congratulations, your hands are yours to keep
- we try to preserve life, even when we know it has no chance of enduring its body. we feed it, keep it comfortable, bathe it, medicate it, caress it, even sing to it. we tend to these basic functions not because we are brave or selfless but because, like breath, it is the most fundamental act of our species: to sustain the body until time leaves it behind
- because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. to be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted
- and like a word i hold no weight in the world yet still carry my own life, and i throw it ahead of me until what i left behind becomes exactly what i’m running towards—like i’m part of a family.
jul 28 2021 ∞
jan 5 2022 +