May again,
and poems leaf out
from this old typewriter
shading the desk in half-light.
You at a college desk study different poems,
hold them warily by their dry stems-
so many leaves pressed to death
in a heavy book.
When you forget again
to call
it’s poet and parent both
that you deny.
This is what I didn’t know
I knew.
You woke up
on the wrong side
of my life.
For years I counted myself to sleep
on all the ways I might lose you:
death in its many-coloured coat lounged
at the schoolhouse door, delivered
the milk, drove the carpool.
Now I catalogue leaves instead
on a weeping cherry.
It doesn’t really weep,
nor do poets cry, so amazed
they are at the prosody
of pain.
You have a way with words yourself
you never asked for.
Though you disguise them
as best you can
in Gothic misspellings
there they stand in all their new muscle.
You will use them against me perhaps,
but you will use them.
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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.
May 13, 2024
📜
Ocean, don’t be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don’t worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won’t remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother’s shadow falls.
Here’s the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red tripwire.
Don’t worry. Just call it horizon
& you’ll never reach it.
Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not
a lifeboat. Here’s the man
whose arms are wide enough to gather
your leaving. & here the moment,
just after the lights go out, when you can still see
the faint torch between his legs.
How you use it again & again
to find your own hands.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty into.
Don’t be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer. Ocean. Ocean,
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here’s
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here’s a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here’s a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—
& mistake these walls
for skin.
Jul 1, 2024
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I used to be envious of people who had “MySpace friends” or “tumblr friends”. Now I have PI.FYI friends. Thank you capyboppy for your lovely letter and this illustration of a capybara and a mouse with fruit on our heads, it made me weirdly emotional ❤️
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