you again

I came across it tonight. Not just the blog, but all the little body of artifacts of that version of myself. All of these snapshots of a person and the potentiality of a person. I forget most of the time that I'm still both-- the person and the potentiality. The promise and the fallen-short delivery. I too often find myself feeling formed these days. Not complete, really, but not becoming more so. I'm just the person. This is it. Sorry.

I'm not really feeling nostalgic. I'm not trying to remember anything, and I'm only trying to relive in as much as I want that return to consciousness, that renewed awareness that the world is still in front of me and that I am still in front of me and that I need to feel terrified and vulnerable and naive and hopeful because that's who I am when I'm me. Existence precedes essence. Proceed.

I mean, I really do want to return to becoming me, starting from the me I am now. But I guess I'm not being entirely truthful about not wanting to see as I saw four years ago. I miss how passionate and breakable I was, and how even when I as cryptic or just telling my soul to a deserted blog, I was at least honest. In that way, I guess I haven't changed-- it's so much easier for me to be real with the illusion of somebody watching. Were this a diary or some private note tucked away in a dresser drawer or a hidden folder on my computer, it would all be lies or it would all be nothing. Here, in front of you, even though you is presumably no one, I have to see and feel everything. I have to stew in it, to blister rather than compartmentalize.

I wish I could describe what I was feeling like now, or I wish someone could see how ridiculous I look. I feel turned on. I mean, I feel activated-- like someone plugged me in or re-lit me or shook me out some stoic slumber. I'm grinning, not necessarily happy, and crying, not necessarily sad, and my face is flushed full of life. I guess there's a learning curve to feeling, or at least a clumsy process to remembering that I am and must be really, presently here and that I must never arrive.

So, tell you friends! I'm back, world. I'm back, nobody. And I'm on my way.

nothing feels trashier than moving on.
but here i go.

there is some comfort in finding that being without the person you love lives up to every cliche. it is a severing of skin, a loss of self, a void that you will fill one day with words or hobbies or new lips.

but for now i don't want new lips. i want my skin back.

living in finity

THE ACT by William Carlos Williams

There were the roses, in the rain.
Don't cut them, I pleaded.
They won't last, she said.
But they're so beautiful
where they are.
Agh, we were all beautiful once, she said,
and cut them and gave them to me
in my hand.

extra terrestrial

my bank is out of town, and i'm financially opposed to atm charges, so i walked into the corner gas station for a pack of gum and some cash back. when it comes to chewing, my personal favorite is orbitz sweet mint, gum i haven't bought in almost two years because miguel hates it but we can both agree on peppermint. i reach for our true blue packaging to suddenly realize that i'm abandoning the state for good in two days, so its very unlikely i'll have to share this gum with anyone, leaving me completely free to chew sweet mint for the foreseeable future until i find a new love with a palette for something different.

but, for the record, i bought the peppermint. 3 packs of it. and it was delicious.

the burden of context

i want to say
"you rest at the foot of the bed,
and i am pained by the 3 feet between us,"
but how can i want you so simple
in the tempest of academia, feminism,
and the like

i could speak of the borders
constructed by language or culture,
how every word and look that was ever thrust upon has built the divide
that privileges me with the pillow
and damns you to the end with the cracker crumbs and wine stains

or perhaps this rolling blue blanket is really the Atlantic Ocean
and ours is a problem of colonization.
is our love really just conquer and conquest?
have i exoticized you to eroticize you,
your brown and savage masculinity some impulsive euro-bred addiction?

and can you just be far away from me,
or are you lejos de, loin de, vom
?
am i hurting us if i can't need you in every language?

is each touch a confirmation of some oppressive discourse?
can you kiss me without joining some age-old conversation?
can you fuck me?
can YOU fuck me?
can you FUCK me?
can you fuck ME?
and be certain of everything that means?

but then

you look at me, see me
and we're somewhere beyond words and philosophies,
our lips meeting above now and history,
and every thought every one ever constructed
is reduced to: skin.

i hope it isn't all a show

oh, but i hope it is, too.