On the last day, the bodies float up into blush and blues. The treetops are orange, the treetops are hot pink, and this was the year that I let winter have at me. 

Two gone from the light of us on dead grass and one gone from the day I promised to relent. We had torn you apart in the woodlot. The trees had just started to budburst and I spat up blood all over my shoes. We laid you to rest in the spring. Winter set down its blades and I said I didn’t ever want to regret. I’m still trying. I relent. 

We laid you to rest and the sky had started to shimmer. 

Three gone from when we were kids and three gone from the days we had been cowboys and never bled. I was sharp around the edges and you never told me anything. Four gone and I don’t remember anymore. Life in quanta. The months fall off. I don’t remember. Light swells around the borders.

This was the year I let winter be. I know less now than I did when I was sixteen but the light is kinder. The fields turn to ice and I’ve been thinking about you again. I kneel at your feet and pick the burrs out of your shoelaces. The beach in the winter and your mouth is red. We sit in my old bedroom and I pretend to look at the posters on the wall. Your car is a shitbox. You teach me to climb trees. Kids again and we jump in the lake. I press stones into your hand and you skip them on the water. Your eyes are blue and you are the reason I had started writing at all. I don’t want to add any more bodies to the pile. 

Coyote tracks circle rabbit tracks in the frozen fields. Circle and then pounce, a spray of red in the snow. Life goes on. Bodies float up and the sky is pink and bashful. 

You go on and dream nothing of me. I stay in the field and wait for it to get dark, but now, I don’t imagine that it will. I am content to remain. I’ve been trying to be less of a pessimist. You go on and blush pink and bashful and I am glad for it. 

One gone from the day the sky had started to shimmer and sometimes it feels like nothing has changed. Winter can be like that. The snow glares in the sun and when I turn away blue spots my vision. We are so much better to each other now. When we were younger I would sleep in your bed and would wake up sad. When we were younger I held your head under my chin and I told you it would be okay. 

I used to love you in a way that it would hurt. You could see it around our fringes. But we get older and love goes on and hurt stops. Love goes on with you. We’re sat in a wood that wants to swallow us and you’re holding my smoke-stained flannel and we are eachothers. We lay with our heads together in the middle of the lake and the sky is the deepest, softest blue I’ve ever seen. The stars are so bright out here. We laid a bad thing to rest and the sky had shimmered and tonight it bursts into a thousand stars. I never realized this before. The stars stay when you’re with me. I could let a lot go but I hold onto you. We get older and we are eachothers. Everything has changed. 
Of course it has. 

Bodies float up and sometimes I am afraid one of them will be yours. Or you’ll walk off the edge of this place, and I know I can’t go with you there. You tell me you will stay and I believe it. 

Five gone and five back and I worry I won’t ever be able to stop hurting you. Five back and you aren’t a stranger at all but the person that reflects in your eyes is so different. This story goes on forever. This is the only one. All others are only versions of it. I wrote you so many letters. You pressed your palm against my bedroom door and I said nothing. The snow goes red. Sometimes it feels like nothing has changed. The first love she had felt so big it beaded at the corners of her mouth and pushed up from underneath her fingernails. She thought it might kill her. The snow goes red.
This story goes on forever and yet I am no longer in it. 

This was the year winter had turned bright. I sat in the snow and the tree lines had glimmered. When I met you I had gone so soft and the days would swell and heave. I had seen you as you were. I see the places on your fingers where skin had split. And all the hope and fear and admiration one could fit into a body. You watch all those before you fall in love. I watch you instead. 

I dream of the lake and dying light on the wood. 

I wait in the field and you turn back to the tree line. One of these days I am going to go with you. One of these days I’ll walk off the edge of this place. Today the bodies float up into blush and blues. Today I remain. Rabbit tracks in the snow, but you leave no mark. 

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1. Smaug the Terrible / dragon and dove

It starts with a Bang, with a 
drop, and then
All the words in my scriptures,
Turn illegible on the page. 
This, this is a mess.

This, and my will is no good.

Slide the letters around with your fingertips,
A perpetually unfinished puzzle, blurred with ink.
But you would need a pen heavier than my heart
To slow down 	                              these hands. 

You would need a Helm and a Spear, 
To let the dove out of my maw.

In the light, you see scales. Of course.
In this light you see a lot of things. 
My Spiral serpent
Coiled on her pile of gold. (enter Dragon)

She, she 
Doesn’t speak
A Wordless Thing,
And only plumes of smoke and flame
Come seeking from this gaping mouth. 

Maybe you don’t even need light. 
To see it.
A bang, a drop, a howl
A black stain on the land,
Like a giant and his giant cigarette,
Stubbed it out on our home,
with her at the center.

Desolation. Desolate. Whatever.
Kids in a sandbox. Gun in the dark. Same difference. 

Exhale, and
The stones of this house glow red
And your poor bare feet blister
You will feel this much Before, 
You see it. 

Does this love last longer,
Snared between teeth?
Things of silver and stars.
Tarnishing and fading, and Burning, soaked in spit
Red stained, under her light, 
Under her dripping jaw.

You can paint Pain, I’ve learnt. (enter Painter)
You just use a lot of red 
And that does the trick.

But,
Wrath and 
Greed and 
Pride (enter Sins)
Is what cold hands crave,
Far more than they know 
Terror (enter Terror, exit Terror), 
And far more voraciously they grip the brush (exit Painter---he had tried, hadn't he)

I wish you knew Terror. I wish you knew Terror as you sat on that mattress and pretended to pray. 
I wish you knew Terror as you sat in my mouth.

                      Everything else did. 

The beasts of this land 
Claw across mountains 			
                                                                   Or bury 


                                                                                   deep 
                                                                                           into the Earth.
The birds flee, high, as high as they can.	 
	
                                                                            Leaving the sky 
                                                                                                                Blue 
                                                                                                                                 behind them.
(exit Birds, exit Beasts)

All Except you, who stayed too long, 
Too close.
To the heat. 
A stupid bird (enter Dove)
In the hands of a greedy child.
Caught in the Teeth of a Hungry dragon.

This, and it’s mother doesn’t want it anymore.
This and another Empathy myth
You never fell for, or pretended to care for, or whatever. 

Scream and spark in the night, there she is. 
There she is, crammed in a gas station, a motel, a house that she hates. 
A house that hates her
The way her tail scratches up the Hardwood

There she is, disrupting the goddamned peace with all her Wrath.

Hello, Wrath!

And Wrath wails and twists your arm behind your back.

Back in the house, back in the room. 
A shot in the dark, barrel Smokin’ 

And Wrath wails and sets your city aflame. 
Wrath sputters and heaves and just Prays to God he doesn’t meet your eyes

And Greed squirms and shakes and 
The Dragon’s big spined tail curls around the tower

Greed grasps and grasps and shoves everything into it’s wet toothless mouth

And Pride,
Pride just sits there with her gun and makes sure you don’t move 
One 
	 Single
		     Damned
				       Inch.
‘Cause this Shotgun’s got two shells in it. 

All Hail The Dragon! All Hail Me! 

A Bang, and a 
		          Drop. (exit Dove) 
Don’t you wish you had a third Idol? 
Because it’s just me and the Sins now.

2. heaven is a no vacancy motel

The concrete of the corridor has buckled, has sagged, in the place I am meant to stand. You smell it in the air now, don’t you? Twist your tongue over on itself, and you will taste it, too. Put your palm up. The other one too. Yeah okay, line the scar up. Blink twice and squint, yeah you can read it here too. Get a crystal ball, we’re palm readers now. We’re cowboys. We’re as good as dead. We’re the light from every single dead star, just cigarette burns in the sky. We’re everything that’s died and snuck away, right under all your noses.

I hate this. All the rooms in this motel are empty and we tear up the place with our guns. Glass under our boots and rats in the rafters. The pool is drained and dry and that’s where we put the things we were meant to love. This place smells like piss and pain and mold. The beds are all made, yeah we make them every morning. We can be good, sometimes. In the lobby there are two confessionals. We tore the siding off the walls and fashioned them ourselves. We said that one day, when there’s only two bullets left, that’s where we’ll go. The bullets never run out though, do they? So instead of a confessional, it’s a closet, and we cram our coats and furs and hope and all the shit we don’t need anymore into them.

Can’t we leave this godforsaken place? You tell me. Come on now, get your shoes on, and we’ll go. No, I thought not. All the freeways drop off into nothingness, and all the planes fell out of the sky. Yeah, where is it you want to go, where do you think is better than here? There’s nowhere that’s better than here. We’ve got no way to get there, anyways.

We used to shoot birds. Back when we were hungry, really hungry. Shot ‘em right out of the sky, and they’d land on the roof. We’d go up there and rip them apart with our hands. Birds don’t fly by anymore, and anyways, we aren’t hungry. Haven’t been for a while. Our eyes are sunken in our faces and our teeth are all black. All the mirrors in this place are broken, but sometimes in the night, I run my fingers over my face and find the scar above my eye, just to make sure.

None of this is all that important.

Right, so there we are, hands clamped tight to the rusting iron railing to the exterior corridor. The only sun there is now, is neon and the glowing end of your cigarette. The sky is blue and empty. I remember the summer it swarmed with flies and gnats and locusts. We boarded up the windows, and for once we were beat, bitter, and awful. Then the heatwave got so bad the bugs dropped like, well, flies. Like the Gods themselves had bowed their heads to smite our opponents. We raised our flag and hollered, we were kings again. Nine minutes later, we were spent and the sky was empty and dark. We were not only kings, but Gods of this land, now.

It’s there in the air now, there’s no mistaking it. Inhale, nice and deep, like you’re in your mom’s garden in the spring. Like you’re trying to see if people can smell the guilt in the polyester of your sweatshirt. You smell fear, don’t you? You smell fear.

Then we’re racing through the halls and I feel bad that we’ve left the place in such a state. We’re screaming and jumping and spinning in glee. When’s the last time we’ve felt glee? When’s the last time we’ve felt anything? Then we are still. You shove a piece of paper into my hand. Hey, look at that letterhead. Sunset Motel, 210-998-4444. I thought we ran outta these. You tell me to write a letter, and I tell you nobody’s gonna read it. What words, what solace could come and cradle the head of a thing in the place it has been sent to die? I write anyway.

The last dream I had you were writing and I was sitting still. The last dream I had, we weren’t here, we were birds, we were angels, we were six years old and wearing plastic water wings in a fifteen-dollar blow-up pool. You were saying words, and they were too good for me. I nodded my head and wrote them down but they mixed and bled on the page.

The letters sit on the formica of the table on the patio. Yours has too many words on it. Didn’t bother with a paperweight, there’s no wind to blow them away. The air is stale and dead. I always thought it’d be more picturesque than this, I always thought it’d be special. Back when we were romantics, when we feared God, when thumped our chests and yelped our war cries. The lawn chairs shudder as we sit.

What now? I look at you, but the gun’s not in your hand. You’re crying. What the hell’s that for? This is it, the big day, and you’re crying? We get to leave now, we get to go. You want to stay like this? It’s too easy being this.

I pick up the gun and it’s cold like I’ve never known before. Okay, you don’t want to do this, that’s fine, I’ll do this. I look at you one last time, raise the gun, and squeeze. You say Wait, but the bullet’s faster than you are. It has never been this quiet before, not in all of time. Not even when the last breath of the beasts rattled in their sunken chests. Now it’s really just me. This should be hard to do, but it’s really not. Cold metal in my mouth, I can taste it now. Fear. The barrel is slick with it. My finger slides at the trigger, and for once, for once I am home. A click and a bang, gunpowder on my hands. And then the world explodes into light.

A moment, please.

*

The letters on the table are all covered with brain, or stardust or whatever they’re supposed to be covered in. There are no bodies. God reaches down with his astrophysical hand and pinches the papers between his forefinger and thumb. He reads the left, and the paper rips up into little silver ribbons, the words peeling off the page and turning into flowers and doves and angels, skirting on up through the sky, like smoke that’s been trapped too long. God turns to the one on the right. Reads it once, then twice. Squints at it. Hey, maybe that’s a ‘d’ and not an ‘a’. It’s not.

What the fuck? This is a poem about nothing.

This is what God never seemed to know about us, about this place.

All of this has always been about nothing.

3. landscape with sea and nothing

Do you feel them now? 
The many winters spent at the beach. The many notes in the dark.
Do you feel it here, the same way the wind did as it barreled through, 
Ripping the sand into mini twisters / Of ice and dirt and soul. 

As we grieved / as we were silent. 
The winter on our faces,
Mourning calls folded into paper crowns. 

Tourists and their striped umbrellas,
Have since forsaken this frozen ground. 
Taken all worldly possessions and 
Fled to warmer places. Fled to better places.
Better places than here.

Not us, though.
We’re patriots, we’re knights, we’re martyrs. We’re too damn stubborn. 
We’re too damn scared.

Red coat on grey white sky / Tempera on gesso panel.
This is the same story it always has been.
These are the same notes you’ve always played. 
The same harp.

I had a dream of you, once,
And you were here / Here, but the sea had stopped,
Frozen solid in it’s waves, cruel and twisted and sharp

All the stars in the sky were gone
Burnt out, or stolen and smothered by this cities’ lights.
Or slowly descended / Turned cold and small / Reincarnated 
As the snowflakes that are
Spinning, searching, flitting, all around us. 

All of this beach is light on nothing
All that we are is light on nothing / And ice on the cliffs.

Your skin, your mouth / So red in this cold
I open my mouth to speak to you, too say your names, 
To Condemn / To bless / whatever.
And all of this winter’s Wrath rushes into my lungs.
Settling deep in my chest cavity

This is the same cold I have always known.

A line, a stitch of warmth down my side. 
That’s where you once stood. 

I had a dream, once,
Where I was with your father, or you, whichever. 
And we stood in front of Wyeth’s
‘Christina’s World’.

It hung in the sky where the moon was meant to be,
Too small and too square for the spot,
But no less bright.

When he spoke to me, his words were your own. 
I had expected this, though.
I cried for Christina, and he turned his back.
He knows these are the wrong kind of tears. 

I wake up. I wake up twice. 
I’m bitter. 

It’s still winter here. Hasn’t it always been? 
I found a deer on the tracks the other day and 
thought about you / the way the snow looked in it’s eyelashes
These are the kind of things I’d say more often,
If I knew even less about you. 

We’re spinning, we’re CD’s in our disc players we’re
Froth at the mouth of teacups. 
We line up all our blades on the shoreline.
We turn on the flash on all of our cameras,
Search for ghosts. 

We’re scared, aren’t we? We’re cold.
We were bad things, once / our eyes were too black in our heads. 
We were good things once, too.
And now?
Now what are we?

We’re just lost. 
Now we’re just lost. 

Visiting Rhode’s Instagram was an unsettling experience overall; products are topped with whipped cream, placed like a cherry atop a cake, and — in the particularly disturbing case of the glazing milk — literally dripping with dairy. Again, ew. On occasion, an impossibly thin model will pose with an untouched donut in one hand, lip gloss in the other. I can’t help but pick up on an upsetting subliminal message: this product is better than food. Eat this lip tint, face cream, whatever. Or worse, be eaten.

At a time when eating disorders are violently proliferating — is 90s heroin-chic thinness really making a comeback? — I can’t help but suspect that skincare’s obsession with food (and becoming food) is a displacement of hunger. I’m certainly not the first one to notice this whole ‘liken the female body and spirit to food’ trend: ‘latte’ or ‘strawberry girl’ makeup, ‘cinnamon cookie butter’ hair, Hot Cocoa Lip Butter Balm, have been on our feeds for a while. Beauty critic Jessica DeFino has coined the term “food face,” referring to “beauty trends inspired by various inanimate and ingestible objects.”

She’s not a fan of donut skin either, as she expresses in her aptly titled essay “Hailey Bieber’s Flesh-Eating Empire.” DeFino debunks the skincare obsession, revealing that looking like a donut has little to do with skin health. If you get down to the science of it all, “the amount of moisture required for that wet-out-of-the-oven look makes the skin overly permeable,” which results in damaged skin. However, my own frustrations with the so-called “food face” center on the juxtaposition between an affinity for becoming food and beauty culture’s other obsession: thinness by diet. Beauty culture doesn’t really want us to eat — unless, I guess, it’s ourselves.

Both explicitly (with the promotional rise of Ozempic) and implicitly (the green juice-pilates-calorie deficit narrative is not as health-forward as you have been led to believe, and is instead, perhaps, glorified disordered eating), thinness is heavily revered in the mainstream.

According to a report published by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the “ballet body” is in, whose “natural and athletic physique” can be accomplished with only liposuction and body contouring, breast augmentation, cryolipolysis, laser skin tightening and injectable fillers. Easy peasy! Ozempic has exploded in popularity too. The Indiana University School of Medicine has marked a 40-fold increase in use of Ozempic and similar drugs from 2017 to 2021.

With the glorification of naturally unattainable ultra-thin bodies on every TV, billboard, and reel, we are unable to escape the enforcement of a desire to be slim. It is no novel statement, then, to suggest that for those unable to get cosmetic surgery, eating disorders are the next option. From 2018 to 2022, health visits for eating disorders doubled for American children aged 17 and younger. It’s worth noting that diet culture is not genderless. Women make up about 90% of those with eating disorders. About 1,000 women die yearly from anorexia.

Diet culture online has flourished, with buzzwords like “calorie deficit,” “keto,” “sugar-free,” and “detox” constantly banging around my head. As I find myself sandwiched between two contrasting opinions on food — one that idolizes food, and one that shuns it — I cannot help but feel frustrated by this irony. However, I suspect my annoyance isn’t just about the contradiction: it’s a result of the fear that one obsession is meant to support the other.

I’m terrified that Rhode’s whipped-cream-topped products are intended to serve as satiation for the hunger that results from sugar-free diets. I wonder if the appeal to Rhode’s products lie in the subliminal offering of salvation from the pain, shame, or simply just the exhaustion that the pressure to diet causes. Maybe the next best thing to eating a donut is being a donut.

Alternatively, is there something appealing about being consumable? With the exhaustion of abiding by beauty trends, I wonder what exactly fuels our drive for perfection.

In her essay “Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny,” RS Benedict raises the notion that the bodies seen in film are becoming more idealistically perfect, yet lack eroticism. Botox injections can quite literally hinder emotional understanding of others. The injections stop muscle reaction which results in difficulty for our brain to process the emotional expressions we see.

Our desire for beauty doesn’t align with a yearning for sexual desirability or love, but instead, for one to be socially consumable. Philosopher Susan Sontag suggests a similar concept where women practice a “sort of self-objectification that isn’t concerned with appealing to men, but rather, with deifying and even identifying with products.” When naturally occurring features are held in distaste by beauty trends, it’s only logical that we search for a solution on Sephora’s website.

In fact, our social palatability is defined by our ability to contribute to consumerism; the pursuit of glazed donut skin is hard proof that we are willing to pay the dollar to conform to whatever appearance of skin is currently prescribed. Rhode promises us digestibility. With our donut faces, we can be consumed, one way or another.

I don’t know. Maybe these are unfair mutations of innocent coincidences, but then again, maybe not. Regardless, I’m still angry. And I’m tired. I’m tired of wondering if my skin is gooey enough. I’m tired of debating whether or not I should eat that donut, tired of the shame that results when I don’t (and when I do). I’m tired of feeling a pressure to line the pockets of Rhode, or Ozempic, or similar just because they promise I won’t feel hungry – for beauty or food — anymore.

And I am hungry. I don’t want to be food, or eaten, or to eat my skincare. I want to eat real, actual food and not think twice about it. How much could any of us accomplish or experience or feel if we weren’t praying we were thin, desperately hoping that a $52 glazing milk would satiate our starvation? Because Rhode’s formulation has zero to negative nutritional value, I promise you, it won’t. The only way to quell that hunger is to eat. Eat the cookies your best friend baked, have dinner with your family. Get on up off the plate. In a world that wants to eat you, I urge you to bite down.

PROLOGUE:

Enter THE PLAYWRIGHT, there she is again, at a desk, at a stage, lingering in the doorway of a Room that does not know her, a room she does not know. There she is, peering out from behind a deep red velvet curtain into the dark of an empty stage, knuckles white as she tries to steady her breathing. Here goes nothing, and nothing goes, again and again. She smiles and smooths down her skirt, tucks her hair behind her ears, and she is ready, ready again / to try. A memory of that last summer up north flashes in her head, and her heart betrays her as it drops. For a moment, she feels as she did then, standing on the cliffs, dripping lake water, staring down at the black, thinking / fearing / hoping, This Could be It. She shakes the thought away—this is a different moment entirely. It doesn’t matter; her time in the wings is up. She gives a big smile to the cast and crew and takes a step back, into the dark, hands clasped. 

LIGHTS UP
	

ACT 1:

Moon’s full, and Halloween night skitters to a stop as ghosts and ghouls and monsters of the night approach their bedtime. The lamplight glows yellow on THE MASKED CHILD, a bulging pillowcase close to her chest, skin sticking to her costume mask. Steps heavy up creaking steps, her hand shakes in the cold as the key pushes into the lock. 
The door swings open on a house that is all wrong, all wrong, nothing like she knew it when she left. Creaky bones gone dark and bad and mean. The wallpaper warps and peels as the hallway stretches out and goes black, a stench like dinner gone bad seeping out from under the kitchen door. The lamplight fades as the door slams shut, and for a moment she thinks her eyes must be closed, the way everything disappears. THE MASKED CHILD calls out, voice small, hoping for her momma, but the house sighs instead, the voice of warped Ol’ Oak hoarse. Under the rubber mask, the little girl’s face twitches in fear. In a home no longer her own, the box TV turns on, static glow like an island in the blackness. The dust in the dead air glows, suspended / her face pressed up close, she holds on. 
Something big and old wakes alongside the house at the television’s white noise, nails scraping the hardwood upstairs. Big eyes flash in the dark, here and there and here again, a snarling mouth of dog teeth. THE MASKED CHILD calls out, voice small as she speaks the thing’s name, she knows it, she does. Animal teeth can hear no pleas. Burst with sparks into violence / bark meaner than bite / cutting into the static song. Little hands shake as the face of the MASKED CHILD warps in terror, but the rubber atop her face is unrelenting, doesn’t falter as the Dog snarls, the latex beast stoic. It’s me, it’s me. The Dog keeps barking, keeps growling, teeth gnashing as it fails to see eyes go wide. 
The dark slats in the mask stay mean, teeth bared with promise of equal violence. The air around the girl goes black and cruel, and she disappears, only a twisted rubber face to remain. The Dog circles, unsure, for once. Eventually, the thing whimpers, slinking away in defeat at the hand of a creature more immovable than he. THE MASKED CHILD shakes, short of breath, back pressed against the static screen. 
The room closes in as the TV shuts off again, rot lingering in the air. THE MASKED CHILD doesn’t bother getting her fingers under the seam where the mask meets her neck, knowing she will face no monsters with more malice than she.
 

ACT 2:

Welcome to Summer’s End, the last night where the kids are still kids. Through the doorway to a yellow-painted bedroom, stuffed with trinkets and toys and books and dreams, enter THE FALSE ANGEL. Of course, she isn’t anything near heaven now, as she stands in front of her bedroom mirror, face bare and wind-whipped, hair still damp–in this moment, she is unmistakably human. The walls in this room reflect her eyes, her skin, her mouth, as she threads the needle, careful as red pushes silver. She thinks she could touch heaven tonight / girls in their bedrooms everywhere drape in pearls and stars and become Other. THE FALSE ANGEL dons her wings instead, delicate white feathers on a wax-coated metal frame. She sews them tight to her back / red through white through red through silver again. The colours in the room blur into each other before going black, as the angel leaves, expecting never to return. 

In the dying light, the evening is golden, and everything is as it should be, one last time. Pieces of the sunset split off, becoming avian. Sunbirds swoop and dip and flit across the faces of all those THE FALSE ANGEL ever loved. The bodies in the meadow grow wings too, becoming masses of golden light. Everything is as it should be, one last time, as these near godly creatures spin and dance. Their faces split wide open as all the light shines out. THE FALSE ANGEL can pretend, can’t she, with her makeshift divinity? In this golden age, nothing can be quite wrong.  
	
But Night always comes. The sun dies on hills of goldenrod as the sky goes dark, faded turquoise striped across the bottom half. Big silver stars cut themselves into the night sky, twirling in the blue as the field goes quiet. It looked so different, so empty now, without all that love crammed between oak trees. A crumpled white body remains, THE FALSE ANGEL, left alone in the grass. They’d all gone now, taken flight and left a place that could no longer hold them. Gone off with the gold, into light, into dust, leaving this world from the fringes of the fabric. But wax wings don’t take you far, so THE FALSE ANGEL is here instead, in a night that will never lift. Her wings are bent, wire poking into ribs, tearing up the blue all around. Angels are wrong for this place, even the false ones. 

She pulls out stitch after stitch, the wings slipping, her face turned up into the sky. THE FALSE ANGEL can plead, can beg, but there’s always another stitch / red through white through red through silver again.

These Desperate Sins of ours never really cut free, do they, angel?


ACT 3:

LIGHTS UP, on a play inside a play. Enter MARY in a miniature theatre, velvet curtains crammed between velvet curtains. She fidgets in the cushioned seat, spotlight trained on her as masked actors enacting masked actors become winged and fanged and birds and beasts in the magic of the theatre. All false creatures of the Midsummer glow at their borders under stage light, they dance on Fir. Feet tight in patent leather shoes, MARY feels so young again, too warm in her dress, a child at the ballet with her parents. 

Swooping and spinning, nylon and satin mix and split, the followspots on two masked dancers in a romantic standoff. Circling, circling, neither character recognizes that the other is their old lover, and they spiral and spin apart and together and back again. Then one, her dress like starlight and masked in silver, crystal droplets spilling down in front of her mouth, halts, body rigid. Under the stage light, her hand is so white it could be made of heaven, shaking as it rises. She pulls the delicate silver veil away. It falls to the floor and shatters, light catching as crystal breaks off / skitters across shiny wood. Under all that sewn starlight, the dancer is sticky with sweat, barefaced, cheeks red from exertion. So horribly human in juxtaposition with all the glamour on the stage, but for a moment, MARY sees her as transcendental. Her lost lover sees it too, pulling away their own porcelain mask to reveal a tear-streaked face, the black paint circling their eyes smudged down sunken cheeks. For a single moment, the static is so loud that MARY flinches. 

Then, like a switch is flicked, the Lovers embrace, costumes tangling and limbs wrapping. Wings and heaven and stardust fall away until they are just One thing, all leotard and sweat and ache. Light, oh, such light, spills out from the lines where they’re pressed up against each other, spills from their faces, fills up the stage, fills up the theatre. 

Nothing will ever be the same / Though, it hasn’t ever been, has it, my darling? 

Eventually, the inner curtain falls, and the pseudo audience gasps and bursts into applause, leaping from their chairs as they bask in the intimacy of the moment. Spotlight still on MARY, she hasn’t moved. Instead, all of the light left over is caught in lines on her wet cheeks / she cries, mouth twisted. Her lips pursed like they’re trying to keep all the sorrow and fear and hope and malice from getting out. The light lingers on her, waits, waits, and MARY’s mouth opens in a gaping sob, before the theatre goes black.
The outer curtain falls. 


THE END (Curtain Call):

The night had gone soft and blurred outside the doors of the theatre, the only moment remaining being this one here, as the curtain rises again. Applause shatters the darkness as the actors return to the stage one last time. The little girl, finally unmasked and unafraid, comes out first, bowing and waving to her mother in the crowd, a big smile on her face. The angel, a young woman, hair frizzed from sweat under the stage lights, beaming as she dips, her first show after recovering from an injury. The Lovers, Mary, winged teenagers, the Dog, they’ve all returned to themselves, their names their own. The crowd thanks them in waves of cheers for what they’d been for the night. The rest of the cast, the crew, and the conductor all receive their dues for playing their parts in painting the scene. 

Finally, shoulders tight, heels clicking on Fir, enter THE PLAYWRIGHT, one last time. When she reaches the middle of the stage, she turns, smiles brightly, dipping modestly in a bow. The sound of the audience fuzzes out in her ears, clapping hands surely numb by now. She stands for a second, waving, as the curtain begins to dip down. It is then that THE PLAYWRIGHT sees her, an old woman, still seated, white hair bright amidst the deep red of cushioned seats and bodies. She’s crying, yes, she must be, her cheeks streaked with silver. For a moment, everything is quiet. And then the woman is gone, lost in the sea of theatregoers. 

The curtain obscures it all, the evening done. THE PLAYWRIGHT lingers, darkness settling around the stage as all falls away. 

Even in all this quiet, she is still THE PLAYWRIGHT, inescapably so. Again, she will be at a desk, at a stage, lingering in the doorway. Again, she will wait in the wings, lake water pooling in her patent leather shoes. She remains. 

Exit THE PLAYWRIGHT, she fades to black. 

Top notes

1. Sitting in the Suntub

Every spring a new album reveals itself to me that defines the aesthetic and existential curation of the season. This year’s album has been “Suntub” by ML Buch. I listen to it mostly at night, laying in my bed with the window cracked open, letting the slightly cruel May air leave me shivering. Sometimes when I do this I feel like I’m floating a foot off the bed. If you listen to anything from this album, I’d recommend “High speed calm air tonight” for that exact activity (lying in bed and floating!). If you’re into viscera, ambient soundscapes, peeling white paint on shutters, the way the vernal air feels before it gets too humid, biological return/transcendence, early spring’s bleached grass, etc, etc, you’ll maybe like this.

I’m unsure if this is objectively a spring album, but also my entire and eternal springtime experience can be summed up by this lyric from “Flames shards goo”:

“And suddenly / All skulls are open / And the rabbits unfreeze / By pillars of mosquitos / Nails pop off / Pores chatter / Here we go / With our temporary bodies”

BONUS: Another spring album I’ve been liking is “The Campfire Headphase” by Boards of Canada (It’s an ambient season, what can I say?). My favourite tracks from this one are “Satellite Anthem Icarus” and “Dayvan Cowboy”.

2. Houses off the Byway

My outdoor activity recommendation for May is exploring abandoned farmland. There’s a fleeting window for this- by the time June hits, the sun bleached houses off rural roads get smothered by weeds, making them both invisible and impossible to get into. Early May is ideal for adventuring- put on a pair of thick-soled boots, gloves, and sit inside the skeleton of an old home. The sun pools in through the rafters and it’s almost like you were meant to be there, like you could call this home. Almost. For me, it’s a good sort of consciousness exercise- understanding a space that lived once before me. Being a part of that strand of life one more time. Things will die, and then they’ll live on again. Not everything is about me. I stand in the kitchen and for a minute, everything is as it was. If that’s too much spiritual gunk for you, alternatively, it’s just a good dose of adrenaline (sometimes the wind will bang a door shut, or an animal will race out). Be safe, of course, and be respectful to the space—you’re only visiting, after all.

Heart notes

1. If I can learn to hold Grief you can learn to Forgive

A big springtime word is relention. Summer passes to autumn gracefully, but to pull away from winter is gruesome. I find myself begging the cold to just relent, hating it as it refuses to retreat.

I get so angry, sometimes, at desolate landscapes. I visited a patch of forest by the bridge, shrinking as housing development tore it down. I stood by the last willow at the line between forest and pseudo desert. I felt a little sick to my stomach, staring at that tree on the edge of all destruction. I was resentful, imagining all that it mourned, what unity it used to have. The tree stood on anyways, stretching tall into the sky, budding, light green anyways. Living through this grief, anyways. I forgive you. Spring comes, and I could relent, too.

2. All Hail

Amidst spring’s blooms, I’ve been trying to Worship more resolutely. Despite the season’s crueller moments, I don’t wish to fail to acknowledge the sheer magnitude of its beauty and wonder. How incredible, that this landscape can come back into colour after months of grey and white. Nothing becomes something, all over again. The potted wax plant in my bedroom gets pink star shaped flowers. I try to give this the Worship that it is owed. I am grateful. Nothing becomes something, all over again. All hail the springtime!

3. Patterns in Pink Petal

I don’t think I really remember the trees being in bloom when I was younger. My earliest memory of the vibrant pinks and whites and yellows that swath the sides of the street was high school. It felt euphoric, at the time, to notice such intense beauty after a long winter. Honestly, it’s a little embarrassing to admit- it happens every year, doesn’t it? I don’t see why I can’t remember it. I’ve been trying harder to, lately—to remember, that is. That I have lived spring, that I will live spring. The trees have bloomed for years and years before me. It’s nice to be part of a repeated history, it’s nice to know what happens next. If spring is any sort of acquiesce to change, it is still, dually, an inevitable stagnation. Everything is going to be different and still, it will all be the same. Nothing will ever be like this ever again, but of course, it always has been. There’s a comfort in this, to me. I am still a part of this, after it all. My shoulders burn pink on the first hot day every year. I look at old pictures of my mum and I can’t help but to see my own face.

I guess my message here is simpler than all that, though: sit outside and look at the pinks of Crabapple trees before their petals fall and are replaced by leaves. But if you don’t, that’s okay too. They’ll be back next year.

Base notes

1. Light on linen: this tender Heart (because it wouldn’t be spring without a poem, after all)

Knees scraped and bleeding / I met you back at the Old House. Late night breeze phasing through landscapes / Like all of this Earth was only really half there. In the darkness everything sang / moon song and cricket. Wind chime singing / the field aglow. Skin pricked, goosebumps / eyes all glassy. Night breeze phasing through us, too / like we were only really half there.

When you grew your wings they were all zeroes and ones / stark white against the blue of night. All the stars came down to hold you / the Sky descended / opened up around us like it was bringing you home. Please don’t leave me here. I am Icarus and these waxen wings won’t let me follow you.

You opened my mouth, put a stone under my swollen tongue. Told me to hold it there / that it’d be okay. Neon pinks and greens exploded under my skin like fireworks / leaving this flesh behind and rejoining the desolate plains. Making the home that was yours, that was mine, alive, alive all over again. And this body was used, was done, but it was all right.

Mourning stirrs by light on my linen dress / thinning under the sun. Fingernails scrape up red on an empty core / Grasping for something that had never been there. I had never had any of this grief nor love at all. Feet cold on linoleum / Can’t I ever bleed? Deliver me / deliver me from this permanent spring.

This tender Heart,

My tender Heart.

1: Overture

An ache, an itch. A bang! A burst of feathers, and all the words in my scriptures fall off the page. That, and an angel, a blind light called Hope, crawling on all fours. A dragon in the mountain, hollow-hearted and hungry. A dead dove in a ghost town. All of that—and something else. Something in-between. Not quite stardust, but not quite beast. Together, it is all flashes in the dark and a story that tells itself, over and over and over again.

Shrapnel in your eyes and the echoes of a gunshot in my ears—I feel Death wake. It’s never been this quiet before. Now it’s really just us, and us alone. And you’re speaking, crying, whichever, but your words float up, lost, with no place to settle. Your words have always been too good for me. The Gun could be a brush, it could be a brush now. (enter Painter, enter Angel)

Remember this moment. 

2: Snake’s Head Mountain 

Snake’s Head rumbles—a faraway sound, at first, creaking like unwanted weight on the first stair. The mountain rears its ugly head and all we can do is get to know Fear. The Heart inside wakes, exhales, and the stones of this house go red; our bare feet burn and blister. We feel the Dragon, long before you hear it, long before I see it. 

The Destroyer bursts from the mountain’s mouth, draped in all the spoils of avarice and Resentment she can muster. She thrashes, flails, roaring herself hoarse, but she does not speak. A Wordless Beast; only plumes of smoke and flame come searching from her gaping mouth. 

Does this love last longer, snared between teeth? All things of silver and stars tarnish and fade. Scarlet-stained instead, under her light, under her dripping maw. I used to paint pain the same way: in shades of red. But Greed, and Pride, and Wrath (enter Sins) is what these cold hands craved, far more voraciously than they could hold the brush. Far more than they recognized Fear. I wish we had felt Fear before, back when we were crammed into rooms we hated. Rooms that hated us, the way our tails scuffed up the hardwood.

So now we meet Wrath. Now, we know Fear, we know Terror. Once the Dragon wakes, no Mother nor God will want this land anymore, nor will they want us. Like a baby bird in the hands of a stupid child. Another empathy myth I thought I was clever to ignore. 

It’s Desolation. It’s Desolate. Gunshot in the Blue. Dragon fire. There’s no difference, really. 

The Dragon slinks away, perhaps in shame, or simply just exhaustion. 
The stage fades to black as the curtains pull closed. 

3: Cigarette Burns / Desolate Landscapes

Art by Tara Khoo

4: Horror Vacui

I poke holes in the sky, in the world all around us, and it stretches out like gauze—fraying, ripping at the edges. This isn’t the way I wanted this painting to be. 
I’m back, crouched outside the windowpane; I’m cruel again. I’m a child again. I keep painting the wrong things. This—and I don’t know anything anymore. I did, once. I was kinder, once. 
I’m back at the easel. Bleared and smudged, we blend into the Negative space on my canvas. Maybe we are the Negative space. This is nothing like a still life. Somewhere, there hangs a painting called Still Life with Game and Dogs. We could be painted like the dogs, but that would be a cliché. I could paint you with your Wings, but then you would look like the swan—head bowed and broken. 
I’d rather we be dogs than dead. Maybe that’s the kind of thought that got us into this mess. 
I could paint you, call it Still Life with Game and Death of All Hope, or something equally dramatic. I saw a dead deer on the tracks and was reminded of you—the way the snow had settled in its lashes. I see the bodies on the beach and am reminded of you, reminded of how I am unlike you.

I keep painting. It still isn’t the way I wanted it to be. The sky keeps stretching, keeps unravelling. 

5: Landscape with Sea and Nothing 

Red on white sky / tempera on gesso panel—this is the same story it has always been. The sea has stopped, waves frozen over, gone sharp / gone cruel. In this place, all the stars have been lost, turned cold and small / descended / reincarnated as the snowflakes that are spinning / searching all around me. I Know Winter now. 

Lately I haven’t slept, just dreamt. In my dreams, I only see you as you were. Awake, you’re too much light for this place, so you fade out against the sky / an image burnt into an old television. I close my eyes and your mouth is red, your skin is red. Your breath fogs up the space between us. I open my mouth to say your names, but instead, all of Winter’s Wrath rushes into my lungs. I close my eyes and put my hands deep into my chest and scrape all the ice out / red under my nails. Outside of this darkness, I could be like you. 

I wake up. I wake up twice. 
It’s still winter here / tempera on gesso panel—hasn’t it always been? I line up all my blades at the shoreline (exit Sins). I scatter all Fear like ashes (exit Fear). 
We were bad things once, our eyes too black for our heads. We were good things once, too. And now? Now, what are we? 


Lost. 
We’re just Lost. 
We keep searching. 

6: Enter Thaw

Art by Maggie Kane and Miya Mastrofini

7: Hierophany in Zeros and Ones

Water running under ice, I am called back to be a part of this divine* machinery. Smoke and Binary, this land knits itself together to be something good, something real. Zeroes and ones, that’s all this is, zeroes and ones. My computer angel—you’ve coded these places before. You’ve coded me before, and it was all the right syntax. The sea behind us falls apart, back into bitstream. 

Look at any picture up close and you’ll see what it’s really meant to say. Put your hands deep into this Earth and grasp until you feel Soul. Put your hands deep into my chest and grasp until you feel Soul. This is right. I am right for you. I Reach high, put my hands up into the sky until I Know all it is that I am meant to. I see lilies when you lean your head back like that. Everything looks like something else if you stare long enough. A strip of light through the gap in your blinds; it’s morning again. This is my Morning. My Light. 

The zeros round out and fit like a ring around the iris of your eye. 
*01101001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 00101110

I step out of this body and back into the light. 
I step out of this deafness. Your wings spread big and white and wide. There is light on it all, light on it all. 
I am everything all over again. 

8: Pocket Shrine (Framed in Dogwood) 

Art by Miya Mastrofini


9: Oak Heart, my Oak Heart

I think often of my Old Oak. It stood Lone and Tall in the sprawling fields off the byway. I’d lie faceup beneath its branches as the sky striped orange and pink, as it faded to blue and then black, pinholded with stars. I’d lie until Dawn woke with the cooing of a Mourning Dove. Her call didn’t sound like grief, then. But I don’t think it’d sound like grief Now, either. 
I could be like that tree, now, I think. I could be a hundred things. It’s been a while since I’ve been home, but it’s good out here. It is home out here, in a way. I planted an acorn out back. I paint for hours. I feel very right. I know everything that I need to and so every painting seems like a line in an old book of scriptures. I am a hundred things.
Sometimes while I paint, you stand with me. Your skin is warm and sticks to mine in the midsummer heat. So often I forget you are there and that it is your hand over mine, it is your eyes who see for me. With me, perhaps. We paint for hours. We phase over each other like layered film strips. I can see us so many times, over and over again. Infinitely. We are infinite. We will be here so many times again. I will be guided by you so many times again—my Hope, my Angel. 
I plant the acorn though I may not see it grow tall. The way I am now, anyways. Your soul is so bright that mine is as well. We could be the tree now—we could be a hundred things. We could be many more. I will be young again. I will be old again, too. I am very happy to be here. 

10: Halcyon Age / Cicada Drone

There’s an old house in the country with my paintings up on the wall. Upstairs, the second door on the left, that’s the room where you sit and stare out the window. At the big sky, at meadows, at all of this Life. The sun lingers above the horizon line, its last rays filtering through lace blinds and becoming patterns on the walls. You watch the oranges and blues and greens and Life that this place seems to throb with. I watch you instead. The heat hangs and clings in wet humidity to the curtains. The ferns in the forest wilt as the summer gets to be too much. The crickets start up and I wonder when you got to be so Old. A tire swing, a noose. Everything seems older, wiser than I. I’m in the room, but you’re out there. We’ve made this all, haven’t we? What laurels are we owed? We must be owed something. I’m in the room, but you’re out there. I’ll be in the room, again, and again, and again. 

The sun dips down and the lace sequences on the wall disappear. 
A whisper, an awful thing, crawling, clawing up my throat. 
I want to know what happens next.

11: Dénouement in Neon

The concrete of the corridor has buckled, sagged, in the place I am meant to stand. For the first time in a long time, I taste something else in the air besides Rust. The empty sky shudders in anticipation, starlight far and cold, blinking awake, watching us. Our own Star is gone, has fallen out of the sky or burnt out— gotten sick and black in our proximity. The only Sun we have now is Neon and the glowing end of your cigarette. 

All the rooms in this motel are empty. The birds and roses on the wallpaper have peeled and stained, their way of fleeing. It’s just us now, in this Godforsaken place. 

Until Fear. When Fear comes, it comes with the name Mourning Dove (enter Fear). 

You were writing, in the last dream I had, and I was sitting still. You were saying words, but they were too good for me. I nodded my head and wrote them down but they mixed and bled on the page. 

I need to get out of this Place. Bird call, salvation, either/or. Both. I meet the Dove called Fear and her Black eye circled in blue. She sits on the windowsill of our room. Ruffles her feathers and blinks at me. I see nothing in her eyes the way I am meant to know it. There is a revolver in the wardrobe and a bitter taste in my mouth. You look to me and I know you’re made of Pity. The Gun’s out of the cupboard, out, burning in the space between us. The metal is too cold and too wrong for your hands, so I hold it instead. 

You say wait, but the bullet’s faster than you are. 

When the bird falls, its feathers settle in patterns we no longer recognize. It’s supposed to look like something, isn’t it? Weren’t we supposed to know something, to understand? It looks like nothing. We know nothing. God must be disappointed.  

But that’s what God never seemed to know about us, about this place. 
All of this has always been about nothing. 
(Exit Painter, Exit Angel)

12: Dragon and Dove

Art by Tara Khoo


We’ll do this all over Again*

Editors: Ashley Yeung, Alloe Mak, and Liam Mason

1: The farm
Before I was anything,
I was twelve years old and knew nothing except the farm I called home
That lived constantly in the swell before the storm.
It’s soul lost and stuck between eras, 
Both peeling and white, but not without horticultural lights groaning awake. 
Every night—
A new sun. False life giver in the dark. Cold candy bitter. 
Fluorescent blue swathing the landscape’s every nook and cranny (because God forbid anyone sleep).

In another version of this the lights could look like the sky or the sea,
But here the blue does not look like anything but itself
No metaphors of Earth can bridge it. 
Lights extraterrestrial in nature— thus home to the
Aliens that visit. 
Spacecraft floodlights hidden, amongst it all.

There’s nothing important here. Nothing at all.
I stay, you visit.
Is there something that you want? Is there anything here that you want?
Do you come to see me?

I cannot imagine a universe that is not infinite
My farm, naked and alone
In the hollow of the mountains.
Visited every night. 
Infinite times, infinite ways.
Again and again and again. 
Iterations,
Reflecting and warping off eachother.
Apple head, fir tree, asleep in the barn,
The bridge, us, and grey vast unknown.
The one where you sit in my bedroom and we’re sixteen forever. 
You know this, you do. 
Extraterrestrial Intelligence or whatever. 
Write them down, fill the books. 
Somewhere in here is what I’m looking for. 

Back at my farm all I have is the 
Cross on the hill that it faces,
Filled with Vegas neon.
And the church at the root,
Made of the same wood your den is (the one with the deer head).
I never go there. 
I never pray.

When you cut a new sun into the quiet of night,
Harsh and all enveloping,
God does not come easy, 
Instead appearing on signs taped to traffic lights in augury,
The rapture is coming.
Repent,
Repent.

Where we are now (pre rapture, before), 
I know you want to see me destroyed
In some way or another. 
Like burst into the stardust,
My blue neon drowns out. 
Or you’re messier,
And knuckle deep into my eye sockets.
I never know which one,
So your visits make my stomach drop. 

I know you want to see me destroyed,
But I still preach you like a Goddamned televangelist.
On glowing tv screens, 
And late night radio broadcasts.
SETI/FBI/CIA messages in Morse code renditions,
Picked up on your alarm radio.
I’m not as smart or brave as I hoped I’d be in this situation. 
You know my name— my real name, and 
It makes me sick.
Descend and wreak havoc in your UFO, 
Say,
Take me to your leader.
But don’t you dare say my name. 
Every night you hide in my rows of crops,
An ink blot on blue. 
I see you from my window, and you see me. 
Of course. 
You never show up on camera the way you’re supposed to. 
I can never sleep when you’re around,
So I drive for hours and hours
Country roads, bridging darkness. 
I never get anywhere.
And the night stretches over farmland,
Carpeting it all into nothingness. 
It is nothing but wind and Void and Alone.
Infinite universes, and in this one only,
My farm and aliens and churches exist. 
And me. 
I am doomed to this. 

I am doomed to this. 

Here is only the instance it is now.

I cannot remember how I was before this.
I cannot remember a single thing. 
I cannot imagine I ever was,
Before this.

2. You, again
I see the same barn in every Southern Ontario field
Kicked in hayloft and bleached boards
Reappearing, reiterating, following me like a hermit crab.
A hundred times I must have seen this barn.
I construct its interior in my head,
Down to every last loose nail and leaning shovel
The hiding space and the light on the hay.
Painting it over and over. Learning it.
Because it drives me crazy not to know it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I refract.
The barn follows me but I am always going too slow or too fast to catch it. 

I know that in Universe C 
You know me and I know you and we phase into each other like it was always meant to be.
Infinite universe theory and the unpleasantness of Universe J where everything is the same but we’re lizard people with ray guns.
Or Universe R where everyone is hurting.
But in Universe C we are happy and known and we have a ranch or something.

It is seven forty seven pm and I cannot breathe because for a split second I recognize my fir tree.
I put my back against the bark, and I know momentarily 
That I have Loved and Died here.
And it all rushes through.
So fast, so fast I can’t catch all of it.
But for a second it is there, and the sheer euphoria of knowing for that instant is enough
My fir tree, my fir tree.
I know you, I know you.

Scene 24:
Okay, put your back against the wall of my room plastered with posters and I’ll sit cross legged on the bed.
I put my chin in my palms and then clasp my hands in my lap. 
I’m indecisive in your presence.
A song that you love (so I love) melts into our skin. 
There is a crick in your smile
That I will get to know so well, but for now is new and exciting.
What do you want to know?
I want to know everything [—-], I want to know everything there is to know.
Cut.

All stairs in this house (dream) lead back to the same place.
Do you remember how we were when we were nothing,
When we were nothing at all?
Put your hands in my face,
Put your hands in my heart.
I can only ever see the kitchen from the doorway (dream)
But it’s filled with gold light and something I need is inside (dream?).

I miss you like I knew you.
This neighborhood is so wholly a maze.
And I cannot recognize the street names anymore.
But someone who was me had walked these halls.
So close, so close you are.
What’s there,
In the middle of the field?
The tree, the dream, the barn.
In another time we were happy.
In another time these things were not dead or unknown.

But now (Universe A, Awake, Seven forty eight)
These things are not meant for me. 


3. Good luck list
Pretend you’re like roadside daylilies that distract from 
The construction vehicles tearing up the country.
Take a breath and hold it. 
Take tweezers and an eyepiece and make yourself as many four leaf clovers as you need.
But the train will keep running. 

What can I tell you about being alive that you don’t already know?
Spine to oak, you want all the answers sung by organ.
You never experience the Epiphany the televangelists promise you will. 
A church with three crosses on the outside, is this God times 3?
Enlightenment, times 3. 

I’d like to imagine I know what I’m doing. 
I’d have a lucky rabbit foot if the thought of it didn’t make me sick.
Keep painting, sometimes the mess is okay. 
Sometimes you have to leave the farm. 

I live in dead homes because I know they breathed once.
Dissect a tree hoping to get inside it, squeezed tight; heart.
Palms to the sun, just in case I knew it before. 
I am still a toddler’s shoe over miniature ant cities.

You look for signs everywhere you go,
Always in the edges of your sight. 
They promise you are doing okay.
You are doing okay. 

Mourning dove call means I’m not nothing yet. 
Sun silent on the almost dead November meadow, 
I give God the benefit of the doubt. 
I give God the benefit of the doubt. 
This is it. 
Good luck list.

Nothing is blue anymore. 
Leaving the farm means you can’t find it anymore.
And maybe the LED’s have burnt out.
Maybe you have stopped visiting.
The aliens are bored of crop rows.
I do not need to know these things anymore. 

Nothing is quiet anymore,
And everything is right because everything Is. 
No charms can save you from what lies. 
And I am here- UFOless. 
Am I doing this right?

The paintings are more abstract the more I look at them,
All there is, is what I know now.
What I am. 

I can meet your eyes and maybe I better understand that,
Not all pain comes from evil.
And not all of you destroys. 
All there is now is all of what I am,
All I am now.
I cannot imagine an existence more beautiful than the one I am in at this second.
Gold light.

Face up to the sun because the warmth saves me now.
Good luck list.

You sit with your face pressed against the car window, but you’re worried about missing the beautiful things on the other side. 
Don’t worry, the man says, you’ll see it on the way back.
There is no way back. You reply, This is a one way trip.
He grimaces. You aren’t supposed to know that yet, you see. 
Backtrack.
Okay. I’ll see the other side on the way back. You smile. You hate making him sad and, 
Sometimes it’s better to not know. 
This trip will be much more fun if you don’t know about the angel quartered and stacked neatly in the trunk.

I am always in danger, even in my dreams.
I dream about beautiful houses and wonderful forests but something is always wrong. 
Your flag will always be a rope or a gag or something else that will kill me. 
I’m worried the axe will slip from your hands when you chop wood and embed itself in my skull.
Bury the hatchet, please, just not in me.
Use it to carve up wood and make something beautiful, at least then it’s worth something. 

But sometimes destruction is beautiful.

All the houses here are dilapidated but that doesn’t mean they are evil.
They will hurt you but their rusted nails and broken glass is not their fault.
Homes are not homes once those kids and their murderous fingers get their hands on them.

Many things live in the body of a dead deer but none will matter more than the fact that you would like its head above your fireplace.
You wear your doe like Hercules’ lion- I love you all the more for it. Deer are delicate creatures and,
And not very difficult to kill.
Not when both barrels of a shotgun are at your disposal.
So maybe you don’t wear it as a cape but more like a metaphorical crown of thorns (or a literal head of antlers. Ha ha.).

We hold the weight of all the things we kill, but I’m worried that maybe it’s only I who feel it. 
You do not feel it, but not enough, and that trigger is too easy to pull, and your hatchet is slammed into my face.
It’s okay though, because what purpose does a face have besides being something to slam into the bricks or your fist or something.
My pain is your pain and my pain is a bloody satisfaction.
Unfortunately, for nobody more than myself. Nobody loves to hurt more than me. 

Things have lived and killed from the beginning of time, 
but that does not excuse you from the fact that you want to wear my face and hands.
Foxes kill because they have families to feed, and cats kill because they know no other way to hold birds. 
Anyways. You are not a cat or fox but a man who wants my bones as a wind chime, and that’s disgusting.
Or maybe it isn’t, because nobody will ever find out and tell you it is disgusting. 
You are careful about these things.

People like to bring up the hypothetical that 
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, will it make a sound?
They seem to forget that everything is alive in a forest and everything is listening. There is a world beyond thrift store books, silly. 
But nothing is alive in your dry bones house and nothing is listening.
So I don’t bother making a sound.

I can’t even remember what’s you anymore and what’s me and what’s the angel and what’s the hunter’s son and who’s the girl who can’t think about her future daughter without crying.
That’s okay.
It’s okay. 

I miss the safety of being a narrator.

Writing about love has consistently been difficult for me, and thus I hardly ever do it. It is not an easy thing for me to understand. Everybody is constantly thinking about love, but opinions on it are without fail, contradictory, diluted, and incomprehensible. It is a very large thing to cram into four letters. As an ex-hater of songs, books, and movies about romance, for a while, the idea of making a meaningful contribution to the mangled mess of media on Love was Sisyphean. But as I grow, I learn more and more about this so often depicted thing. I think I now understand it better, or at least its incredible value. I am less shy when it comes to it.

As follows is a kind-of-essay on Love. 

1: Treasure box

Sometimes I line up all the sea glass and shells and fossil-embedded pebbles I’ve collected and think that at another time, I was kinder. The light refracts and glints off them and I find myself grieving. As a child, I would carefully pick through rocks at the beach for coloured shells, rummage through leaves in search for the perfect acorn, or some other prize. I’d place these items in a zippered pocket and cart them home, finding them a place in my little box of treasures. I would cherish them as I imagine a mother would her child. They would gleam in my eyes and my heart. Sometimes I would hold them tight in my hands and against my lips and let their beauty seep under my skin. 

An alternate opinion would state that this makes younger me a hoarder, and my former time-for-shells doesn’t translate directly to love. Nevertheless, I still sometimes wonder if I had then understood how to love better than I do now. It is easier to do so when all you have to love is your mum and your dad, and the pretty pearlescent shells you collect. Simpler times are inevitably admired in a romantic light— I never shared my treasures with anybody. Perhaps this is the wrong type of love. 

I have been reluctant to give Myself the same way I have these beach trinkets. My love too has been carefully wrapped in tissue and stored in a similar kind of treasure box. I have habitually been careful to conserve it, constantly worried that one day I’ll reach into my box and fingers will sweep over an empty velvet expanse. That my love will be forever lost. This has protected me: I still have many of my old treasures, and they still gleam when the light hits them right. I fear the pain of being empty or devoid of love. So I remain somewhat of a hoarder.

 I am still undecided on whether this is the Right or the Wrong thing to do. 

2: The End of Everything

The kitchen is filled with yellow light and a very-distant-past me touches the varnished wood back of the breakfast table chair. I have just been told that Everything Ends. 

“Even this? It’s not even living.” I feel cheated. Of course I do. I am so young that death is unfathomable. Not something that could touch my world. 

My dad smiles. “Of course. Everything dies eventually, in some way or another.”

I think about the chair in the back of a garbage truck, then sitting in a landfill. I think about the chair when it breaks apart and when so little of it is left that nobody will ever remember it is my chair, and nobody will recognize it, and nobody will even see anything there at all. 

I think about my funeral, and my ashes, and my End. It is not as bad as I had expected.

And so everything ends. For a very long time, I hold this with me. 

3: Big picture

Everybody is talking about love all the time, but sometimes I feel like they’re missing the big picture. There are over 100 million songs written about love. Statistically, 67% of lyrics in every song are- in some way or another- about love. How many of them really mean something? How many of these people have felt actual real love? Maybe I am just a cynic or bitter or something. Who am I to decide what love can or cannot be? I don’t know. 

When it comes to love, we (myself included) treasure our metaphors. Love is (..?). Fill in the blank. 

I appreciate the prolificacy in poetic representation of love; love is a beautiful thing and should be treated as such, but again, sometimes the big picture is lost. You try to understand love through how your boyfriend cuts pomegranates. Or the sun and the moon. Or cannibalism. Ew. I especially dislike that analogy, but I have always been squeamish when it comes to anthropophagy. Sometimes a fruit is just a fruit. I feel like this is the wrong opinion to have as a writer. 

The Greeks had eight words for different kinds of love. The poets would appreciate this. I don’t know if constantly examining the little strands of love is the right idea. We are all so forlorn! Although, it is a lot to have to consider when we look at it all at once. It is easier to feel reflected in one of Love’s facets. 

But again, sometimes we forget about the big picture. 

4: Funeral March

Everybody around me is perpetually mourning. They mourn things that aren’t even dead yet. Sometimes I have dreams where all the dead things from my life are back, all perfect and lined up on my front lawn. I am a little bit of a Mourner myself.

I just want to feel alive again

Oh, please. You are alive. Your blood rushes and your heart thumps and everything sways in the same wind. Why can’t you remember that? 

I miss my family, I miss my home

You are already home.

We kill more things than we notice. We swat flies in the bathroom. We gut and stuff our past selves. Then we cry, then we miss, then we mourn. 

Who gave me the power to Destroy so much? Who gave me the conscience to regret? 

Please stop looking at the ground. Please stop wearing black. You’re missing it all.

I promise to be less of a Mourner.

5:

Interlude: Two heads. My shot at a metaphor

Two-headed lamb is a portent for disaster. Bad luck, bad luck, bad luck. Two-headed calves only come once every 400 million babies. But poems are written about them. This is a plus, even though they’ll last less than a month. Two-headed snakes can live longer. If I was snake head 1 and you were snake head 2, I would go left and you would go right and we would split right down the middle. One heart is not enough. Two-headed rabbits only come post-mortem. In another time this would be called witchcraft, or sin or something. Sometimes there are two-headed cats. Two chins for scratching. Hooray! There was a two-headed partridge once. This is God x2. There was a two-headed albino rat snake and they called it “We”. We had two heads and one heart.

Snake head 1: Is this an analogy for love?

Snake head 2: Are we in love?

Snake head 1: I think I’ll go left now.

Snake head 2: This is a stupid analogy. It’s too obvious. Everybody is hurting all at once. 

Lamb heads one and two say nothing. 

6: Ode to Ouroboros

Whenever I think about Ouroboros I begin to see circles everywhere. Teacup stain, your eye, wreath. Tail in mouth, He is Eternity and Unity. He is Everywhere. I hold my feet in my hands and make a circle too, except I don’t feel eternal, just silly.

Ouroborus is in a constant state of devouring and rebirth, which isn’t too far off from what we do to ourselves. We call it growth. Constantly ending some past version of ourselves and replacing it with the new and improved version. This isn’t bad, of course, but sometimes we Kill things we never should have gotten rid of in the first place. And then we mourn. A heavy hand tends to make too many graves. Don’t take Ouroborus’ methods too literally.

Here is an Alternate Option: 

Find that field again. You know which one I’m talking about. Find at least one other person you love. As many people as you can is best, but One is perfectly okay too. Hold their hands in your hands. Stretch your arms wide. Make a circle. Everything swells.

Maybe this is what Ouroborus was thinking of.

7: Theories and whatnot

In seventh grade science, I learn about The Law of Conservation of Mass. Matter is conserved through change: the same amount of matter exists before and after- none can be created or destroyed. 

At some point, I read that some of the atoms in your body once belonged to Shakespeare. It sounds a little dubious at first, but then it is explained that Earth recycles its atoms. Cool.  

I don’t know it yet, but later these things will all be very important. 

8: You were always the poet

In a letter I wrote to someone I once loved, but never had a chance to send, I say that ‘most of all, I love the way you create and fill me’. At the end of the day, we all just want to feel Whole. We want to wrap our arms around someone and squeeze and squeeze until your skin is their skin and their body is your body and We are One. 

At our eventual End, everyone leaves alone. This scares people more than the actual leaving. This is why people believe in God and heaven. When was the last time you were alone? Like I mean, really, really alone? I feel lonely sometimes, but never alone. If death was known to be a mix of both, a permanent suspension in vast blackness, there’d be mass panic. Nobody can handle the thought of that. 

We love in order to be a part of something. We are not solitary creatures. This is important, so important- to be part of a bigger whole.

You are thinking that there are too many different things to love. I don’t think so. It’ll make sense eventually. 

Keep writing your letters. Send them one day. 

9:

Interlude 2: Take a breather, man!

Go find all the sea glass you collected as a child and line them up on your windowsill. The light shines through them the same way the sun shines in the eyes of the girl you love. How different are they really? Finish your apple. Plant the seeds in the yard. It will grow, and keep growing if you let it. The rabbits curl together in their warren like you in your parents’ bed on stormy nights. 

I just want to go home

You’re home already. Remember.

Your chest rises and falls the same as the tides. Your heart beats like every other animal. Hands, feet, roots, beaks, snail shells and the crinkles around your eyes. Sea floor. Fingernails. Figs and your lips. Four-leaf clover. Your spine. The insides of clam shells. Sand is just kaleidoscope crystals when you look at it up close. Willow tree. Glassy eye. Glitter in the snow. Sun and fingertips. Rabbit heart, your heart.

You’re home already.

Remember.

Remember.

Everything breathes all at once.

10: Zenaida macroura

I no longer think that all things have a Final End. Remember: matter cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. When I bury the dove that hit my window it is dead, but it hasn’t really ended. Maybe next spring something will grow in that spot. 

Everything is in a constant state of growth. Many things are dead now but that does not mean that they are at their Final End.

This is not a complete thought. Chuck the apple core. 

11: Voice, life, bird; this is for you

Hands and tongues and eyes and feet and two heartbeats in perfect sync. We have sewn ourselves so irrevocably tight. This is God x2. This is perfect. This is Ouroboros. This is whole. Put your hands inside my head and I will put mine in yours. Put your face in my face. Pinky swear. Write me letters. I will write you ones that say essentially the same thing. I remember how to be in love, I know how to love. Thank you. Thank you. This is the only way I know how to do this. The Earth opens up and swallows us whole. 

This is still a jumbled mess. That’s okay. Everything is perfect anyway.

12: The Beginning

All things are one. Remember that and you will be okay. You will open your eyes one day and get it. You will open your eyes one day and know how to love. 

Feel it. Hands on the tree trunk. Sea glass that is so uncannily your eyes. Ankle deep in the Earth. I see my shells everywhere. You are alive.  All things are one, you are All things. 

Love beats and breathes in all the seams when we remember that.