the color blue
i am the color blue
muted, baby, slate
i've always been blue, and it feels just right
–––
i can distinctly remember what it felt like being held. in those moments, i would forget everything. my mother would always tell me about how when my baby brother presses his head against her neck, he calls them "neckies". i think she was touch starved since my father and her never interacted much. so when i wouldn't let her hold me anymore, she grew to detest me. i am blue because i was always sullen, always grave, always pining.
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i used to think i was like air, but now i know that i'm like water. during my childhood when my parents worked in hawai‘i, i would spend hours in the water. i'd run into the ocean, thrashed around by blue undercurrents, scraping my knees on the rocks. i think the water lays grace on some people. it's like, when they see the water, they just need to run to it. and i think the waves were like a mother to me since my birth mother hated me. the sea taught me how to grow up; by looking at the shore i learned about constancy and impermanence. and so, when i turned eighteen, i wrote a song for the ocean
i have a vow, a ritual, to always sing it like a prayer. and still, all grown up, i see the water and the lyrics flow out of me.
–––
my throat is blue because i sing the most when i need to. i only dance when i need to, too, and i only write when singing and dancing are not enough to stop me from thinking of the "You"-- whatever or whoever that may be at the time.
–––
in the park by the water, there's a small child--maybe two years old--blonde and cherubic, enveloped in curls. surrounded by families. he's wearing blue. i stop and sit and notice for awhile. this happens often, and if i look for too long, i find that there are things that i wish i didn't notice.
at the same time, a man around twenty years older than me comes up to me while i write. he says "can i just say that i think you're so pretty? you're so pretty. can i get your number and just talk to you? i'll talk to you about anything--just anything." an intensity in his smile. i politely decline. he leaves and as he does, he says to me: "i like your boots." my boots are blue, and my hair is blue, and i'm bluish too.
the clouds encumber the sun. children climb trees. and i write and think of the color blue
god made me obsessive and tender
mother made me frozen and full of terror
i made me veiled and empty
a longing that engenders time
a hardness that i can't shake
immovable and unwilling
–––
i'm swimming and remembering what it's like to feel free, but it leaves me when i'm out of the water
i'd really love to be loved, but i can't love, and i don't know how, and i don't know what the word means
these days, i have to really try to make myself cry
i used to spend hours on the shore
on celibacy
now, without an echo of skin
i wander to lip-lined curvature
like arms and thighs and necks–
when you are untouched for years
you want to be disposed of,
made bruises of, plumes &
honeysuckle, aphrodisiac bliss,
inwards, you run deeper into me
synchronized breathing, exchanging
love, vows, sweat. inside.
inside. inside. imagined.
–––
you take me out of a nightmare
my chest is red-satin
bundled with a zipper
which your phantom hand pulls
down
and in me you see
a reflection
of your own recumbent body
–––
i hear murmurs of things i can't remember
i hear echoes i can't visibly see
i hear antiquated deaths
i can't touch them, no matter how hard i try
to be fucked is to feel a thousand deaths
when i touch me i feel a thousand deaths
you don't know the me who brushes your side and you don't know the thoughts and the patterns and that which plagues me. sickness is easy to fall back into. the familiarity and the me that's always checking and the relief and the longing and the waiting. a substance that saves me every night. a strained relationship with what i am and what is seen
the heart agape and aching upon waking
chasing what is lost in dreams
a stomach that rejects everything
an imagined romance
an unreal image of myself
the other that does not exist
i could only ever be alone
i am meant to be alone
from 2022
to clench my reality and condense it into numbness
to distill it in another sensual intensity
i delegate a fine white grain to pasture
i take four to sleep and dissociatives to get through the days
sedation is not desirable, but it allows me to move to another place
an expected truth in the mornings
i am sifted into banality when i wake
upon me, grey burdened wood
not talking, i used to fill the discomfort
with silences
allay and soak them close to my heart
i only spit and spew on my caution
i cannot sleep and you wake me further
cluster in my neck
hoarding words
hiving my neck
wonderful fragrance of ash
in cold, auras trail off my finger tips
but i am now a human, or rather
too human. my decay apparent
coil in
a rotten and beautiful place
nothing without a blush but fatigue
the path of oil that unsews spirit
a bite on your tender mind
the tide was low, so i could look at the baby crabs in the pools of water. i wonder what other creatures live here
mismatching socks!
a portal, i followed it to its center
my vision is blurred
i look at the birds over a
canyon on the marrows, the falls
i sit on the dirt in between silences
brandishly repeating
brandishly unknowing
washing through lapels
and there are no lines outside of myself
i can finally close my eyes by myself
without anything outside of me
