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😌

riding on the back of motercycle

sure driving is hot and fun. But riding on the back? i've been riding on the back of my moms motercycle a lot these days in japan. If i look dead ahead, i see my own, warped reflection in my moms helmet. I make faces, i look there and in the sideciew mirrors, which she cant see me through, and pull faces, see how im feeling by my face. and if I look anywhere else, the world is whizzing by at a perfect speed of fast enough to always have something new to look at, but slow enough to notice. i love the air that rushes under my geta sandals. I love the green that i can focus on or let blur, i love the changing smells, i love balancing, i love holding on like km riding a horse but straightening out my back, because when you dont have a backpack on a motercycle, your straight-back is a feeling from the heavens. I love how we go somewhere and theres no transition of outside to inside to outside to inside, i feel integrated, i can breathe, i can think. no looking at anything other than what is around me, and feeling what it is like to just react as the me i am. I can hold only short conversations with the driver as we ride, which is relieving. We are not fully cut iff from eachother but we are neverheld by conversation. I have wept in desperation of wanting to want life again in the back of my moms motercycle. i have laughed. i caw back at birds and sing till my mom tells me to shut up, which is most often immedietly. I hold off for a bit, till i feel i really must shout out again. I try to hand people flowers. I raise my arm with a bouquet in my hand, as we ride down the shore-drive, i let the flowers press against my hand and let the wind help me hold them up. I am like lady liberty but so very much alive and driving past you fast. i smile and look deeply into the eyes of strangers as we stop. they are almost always astonished to be seen. i spread my kindness and move on with the wind, spirited 🌬️

@chai

May 24, 2024

🖋

leaving montgomery park

we’re careening— well, that sounds dramatic. not careening— but sliding, holding you and myself in place— because my disposition leads (and has always led) to believing abandon reckless will kill if I let it as close as myself and yourself held only by bicycle rope or kayak rope or moving box rope side beside inside truckbed backseat forgone throats slicked with City of Roses forest gin and Artemis Moons I’m sober and you’re not I’m anxious and you’re not you’re carefree spit-balling about side parts and saying love and love as we pass long-haul truckers— eyesclosed Lyft drivers— that pinkie-promise coworker to fast friend elbow to elbow barefoot to clogs off in the cab shallow river dipping mask off cheek pinch I-tell-everyone-you’re-my-cousin kind of love that no mother could ever that no father could ever that kind of love that door we kicked down and threw into that mustard bonfire of before that old worthless hinge don’t work so won’t bother not ever not now not in this truckbed— I toss my thoughts to traffic fine me $900 for littering lock me up for language you say what a beautiful city my glasses are in my pocket those empty offices stacked apartments and windowbeam glitterblurs fall into the nightvoid I’ve seen beautiful and more unmatched in those words you weave so keep weaving them— I’ll be here listening long after we pull into the driveway. (& if u like it, I linked my poetry newsletter :)

@chickeninshoes

May 14, 2024

✍️

9th grade poetry for school

just something i wrote for an assignment in 9th grade English. also if you recognize the mitski quote hidden in the poem don't tell my school I plagiarized pretty please i. I am to be born anew in ten days.  I can feel it In my skin. It pulses under the flesh Like a river, rushing through my veins. A change is fast approaching and I am not strong enough to withstand it. ii. I am too vulnerable, too fragile to change. I am one to be crushed under a boot, I cannot endure this change that will come in 9 days' time.  I am afraid. Afraid. iii. My mother changed only weeks ago. She is as young as I soon will be. Her children, my siblings, are many. I am one in one thousand and I will be lost in a haze of orange when we change. It will be brilliant, it will be, Fleeting. Our beauty will last only seconds in the eyes of those who look upon us. Mother, I am to be young again.  Mother, were you scared? Were you scared mother? I am scared of the change to come. iv. My hunger grows with each passing day, as does my fear. Some of my siblings have already started to settle. They seek out the places closer to the sky, as if, even in this life before the next, they long to be weightless, held only by the cold wind that I feel on my back.  They do not seem afraid, as I am. They turn their heads to the sky, facing down the wide expanse of blue like the ant faces a hurricane. They do not cower, only waiting for the change they know is coming. They are resilient in ways I am not. I am not, I am not, I am not. Please, I am not them, please, I cannot withstand this. I am afraid, do you hear?  I, who make no sound, am screaming I am afraid of the change to come. v. Today, I reflect. My life, as short as it is, is coming to an end. In five days, I will become someone else. In five days, I am to live a new life in a new body.  Mother, you are dying soon. Soon, my new body will replace yours in the kaleidoscope. Soon, mother, soon. I do not want to leave the ground, I do not want to take flight like I am intended to. Mother, soon, too soon.  vi. I have begun the change.  Soon, mother. Soon. ix. This barrier between me and my new world has begun to crack. I push at the walls of my chrysalis with new arms, new legs. This new body has not seen the outside world but it is unafraid. How? How did something so sensitive become a rock in a river? I had thought, before my new mind settled in my head, that my fear would remain.  Even if my body had changed, my mind would remain. But it has not, and I am just like my siblings. Their resilience which I had only witnessed when I had looked into their dark eyes, and seen the look on their faces, has become mine.  Oh mother, is this how you felt? Was I wrong to ask if you were afraid? You were, weren’t you? Just like me, my mother, like me. And like me you weathered your storm, you were born anew and unafraid. i. I am different. I feel it, in a way unlike any other. My body has changed but my mind as well. Before, I was guided by the will to survive. Before, I was not looking to the skies because there was nothing in them for me to look at, but now, now my weary head turns to the sky as almost second nature. It calls to me, to my newborn wings and my young resolve to conquer it.  I am finally living. Mother, is this what you felt like? Did you live as well? This change, this change, I am alive, for the first time, I live.   Oh, mother, I am not afraid. I will face the skies,         Unafraid.        And the wind will push my frail body   but I will not fall, no,         These new wings,  they will take flight and I will rise, Do you hear? Mother? I will rise, just like you.  I am born anew.

@salmune

May 13, 2024

Top Recs from @chai

⭐

...you might be wrong.

Can't reccomend this enough

@chai

Dec 27, 2023

📲

for phone addicts: gaze at the background

if you cant get yourself to put your phone away quite yet, just get yourself to look at the room behind your phone, or the real world, as a constant practice. its like when the screen used to go black between eisodes of netflix loading. a reality check. it feels good, i promise. foreground the bavkground, even for a moment. be kind to yourself

@chai

May 24, 2024

📲

texting poems instead of arguments

much more effective, much more confusing, much more true

@chai

Jan 22, 2024