The Common Room
Poetry | Essays | Photography
The Sunny Days
The insects come and praise what they see,
oh how drunk on the short-lived velvet of her.
She likes their little hymns and lets them hover,
but praise is just sunshine with a tongue;
it stays awhile, then goes off somewhere else.
Nature
We praise the flower standing alone,
call her strong when nobody brings light.
Somewhere beneath the praise, she thirsts.
No living thing was made to earn its tending,
nor beauty meant to function as a ransom.
A Clean Margin
Enough of the half-truths,
and of the missing truth.
Enough of it arriving barefoot,
then three days late to boot,
and with blood on its feet.
The Months Around It
Perhaps that is where the distinction between language and action becomes most useful. Words are not meaningless. They can be extraordinary, and they can cross years, countries and circumstances in ways that very little else can. They can alter the course of a life. They can also describe a relationship more beautifully than the relationship is actually being lived.
What?
Or was it only your throat, speaking a language it hadn’t been given yet?
The Violence of Belonging
Call it what it is — grave robbery, not inheritance. And it should disgust you exactly as much as the Klan does — not because the two have inflicted equal damage on the world, they plainly have not, but because the thing underneath both of them is identical: a belief that a person's worth, loyalty, and right to belong can be settled by looking at their blood. Scale tells you how much harm an idea has managed to do. It doesn't tell you whether the idea is rotten. This one is rotten no matter how small the group holding it is.
I Swear
Truth of companionship.
The Discipline of Leaving
If something doesn’t work, change it. If a place doesn’t work, leave it. If a person consistently brings dishonesty, misery, or disrespect into your life, move on.
Sometimes
the natural world, indifferent and immense;
the sea not needing to know my depths,
the trees seasonally meeting with death,
the creatures innocent of our despair.
The Second Straw
And across the ground
lie all the things
once mistaken
for belonging.
Who Feels It?
Today’s Fire Report
the three least dramatic nouns in this life, quietly holding the roof up while everything else becomes a coordinated collapse.
Night Blight
so deep into the night
the birds forget their names,
the night birds tangled with the bats,
winged things stitched into my hair,
your mouth still near my ear,
Your Silhouette
first, the silhouette.
Then the eternal.
Then the laugh—
startlingly sweet—
then the strange friendship
which had no proper name
and entered everything.
The Apple Of The Eye Is Usually Bruised
And still we lift it to our mouths.
And we call the rot a blessing.
And still, we bite near the bruise
and let the sweetness lie to us.
My Life Without Its Art
I told my love: I cannot stay alive
without my stories fastened to my eyes,
without my stories waking in my hands.
The world extends its help in measured spoons.
I only want my art. I want what’s mine.
Protecting What Is Mine
I guess I really miss being myself. None of it feels like me. It feels like doable, bearable, and helpful. I don’t want to sugar coat it. The worlds changed and it’s not geared toward being a woman, or even human… maybe it never was or will be.
After Us
I’m tired. Yet, I’m still determined. I don’t believe this is our ceiling.
There has to be something better waiting for the ones who come after us.
Love Letter to Earth-Bound Creatives
Do not fear their reaction to you. It is not worth folding yourself into something so small that you fail to exist. Find the other strange ones who are still trying. Then go home, close the door, and return to your works and love.
FREEDOM
Freedom won by turning the mirror
to watch the thing behind me—
to finally walk into its own proportions,
survive its own weather,
wear its impossible shape—
and all without my hands to fix it.