oh boy, oh boy, irritation permeates my bloodstream and churns through my being. it’s combating, pulsing, vibrant discomfort, scuffing my aortas in its violent journey from heart to head. I cannot help i️t just as easily as they cannot, as they are children, and I am susceptible to easy irritation. it’s a formula for disaster none that is not unknown to my bloodstream. i am not immune to the poison that comes with the loud, shrill cacophony of people, the banshee of the human condition. bragging, tired men let their mouths hang open to let their boasting complaints flutter out easier, drowning little butterflies overpower all conversation. Meek little housewives tangle their hair into loose buns, propping their hands over their mouths so their husbands do not see the laughter, for chuckling cannot be seen in a man’s butterfly field. Elder “wiser” influences ridicule my path, for if the path I choose is not the path they chose before me, then i️t is not a path worth taking. Knuckles crack and recrack and are forced to recrack once more in a music box of feeble attempt to release unneeded, uncalled for tense frustration. tittering eyes stare at my pencil as i️t scribbles nonsense on a napkin I will later burn on their back porch, rolling i️t up to look like a cigarette because smoking is a more acceptable pastime than acknowledging your emotions.

+++

family is rather difficult to be around.

“When I was young, my father told me that the sea always gives back what she takes. And yet, the ocean did not attend this memorial service, the ocean is not sitting in the pews of our church, the ocean did not hug family members and leave her condolences. The ocean did not bring soft coral for my father, who devoted his life to her and her mystery. My father loved the ocean more than he loved me, but the ocean is not crying over the picture of my father that is surrounded by flowers that were too bright for a sailor like him, but perfect for the father that he was.

It isn’t that my father didn’t love me, quite the opposite, if you ask me. He was a caring, gentle man, with hands worn soft by years of working, his voice rough but calm enough to still waves. If anyone in this life ever talked about my father, they’d only have positive things to say. But, they’d tell you that the ocean was his mistress. He’d steal away in the night to see her, and in the end, she was his demise. Smile, Lily, he’d tell me, I’d give anything to have eyes like yours. The ocean is trapped in them. I had taken pride in them up until his death. After that, I tried to cry out the blue.

I grew up in the ocean’s surface. My father said that I might as well have been Aphrodite, born from her foam. I was an aquatic being, but not as much as my father. The ocean was in him as much as he was in the ocean. He didn’t swim, the ocean carried him. He didn’t float on her surface, she held him. I had never felt as connected to her as he did, but she was home. She was safe.

I had never thought my father to be unhealthy until the night he came home three days later than he said he would, battered with bruises, saltwater dripping from his hair. He’d collapsed on the futon, shaking his head like a dog, sending diamond drops that were cold against the skin on my face. He smiled when I asked what had happened to him. It is simply her way of kissing me, he’d told me. The look in his eyes told me, then, that the ocean had taken a few of his marbles.

He’d always called me Riptide. He told me that I was a dangerous, powerful force of nature, not something to be messed with, to never forget that. It was a promise between the two of us, for me to never forget that I was a force to be reckoned with, and that he would never leave me. There are two things in this life that I am sure of: that you couldn’t be sure of anything, and that the ocean always won.

We lived in a moored boat directly on the ocean’s shores, every window looking out to the blue. Her name was Saudade, she was my grandfather’s pride before he died, and my father shored her in remembrance. When my mother left us in the dark of the night, our house was repossessed because my father couldn't afford it without her. So, he took his futon, a couple of boxes of old sailor trinkets and pictures, and the bag of jacks that he kept by the fire place and moved us into Saudade.

It took three days for us to clean her up before we even began trying to make her a home. Some of my favorite memories were from those times, of my dad pretending to play along with Jimi Hendrix on his broom, of the thumping sound of his boots against the wood floor, of the scratching of his beard as he kissed my cheek. When we rested, we would sit on the futon, eating lukewarm cup noodles and basking in the sun that streamed in through Saudade’s windows. Those were the good times, the times I like to go back and think about. Things were so simple.

There was something beautiful in the way my father was able to make the best out of a situation, no matter how hopeless or tearjerking it seemed to be. He’d simply run his hand through my hair, careful not to get his fingers caught in the ever-present, saltwater caused tangles and smiled in the way that said “thank you for being in my life.” I cherished that smile, for it was mine, like an inside joke or secret. It was the one thing about my father that I didn’t have to share with the ocean.

It’s funny, ironic, almost, in a bittersweet way, to push past the beach towel that hung over the hole in Saudade’s side, serving as door, to walk into my home. There isn’t anything different about her. Sunlight still streams through the sea-facing windows, the futon still folds out as it did before, the bag of jacks still sits on the old weathered crate that we used as a dinner table, but it isn’t the same.

Every day when I came home from school, I would find my father playing Jacks with soft, warm jazz floating in the still afternoon air. He would toss me a smile and I would catch it with the strings of my heart and feel the day’s burdens fall off like water off a bird’s back. The sunlight would light up his hair, his hair was the sunlight, he was the sunlight.

My father had too much love to give, and that was his falling point. He gave his life to me, to his friends, to the ocean. When I was young, my father told me that the sea always gives back what she takes. Funny thing is, the ocean did not seem to give back his love, and the ocean cannot give me back his life.”

x

hope that you enjoy reading this, I enjoyed writing it. i've always had an aversion to the ocean, so I decided to write about it.

poppy. 

beauty 

is an illusion 

to me. 

beauty 

is an allusion 

to you. 

last night, the first man I ever loved tried to kill himself. he didn't jump, but he holds the clouds in his hand every day and I can't help but feel like they hang a little lower today. when I approached him today, he was sweating and jittery and his eyes seemed to be lower on his face. everything was lower today, especially everyone's mood. he's in the hospital as I write this, and I am expected to go about my day as normal. i'm scared for his wellbeing at the moment, because as close as we are, i didn't know that he'd succumbed this far into negativity. i'm walking without him right now, without those hazel eyes, and that smile that puts the sun to shame. 

if anyone cares, I will keep them updated on him. 

x 

poppy. 

i never looked at a person

by their knuckles. 

yours weren't as protruding as the lasts', 

but softer and less blotchy.

they were white as you gripped at my shirt

and cried. 

but then you ran your thumb

over my knuckles. 

and i cried. 

no one had been that gentle

with their knuckles in the past.

Let your shadow rest, young children,

For she scrapes against the concrete

Through puddles,

Over burning asphalt streets

Through windy autumn days.

She sees you when you’re at your best,

When you’re like the sun,

Bent over laughing,

Hands around the ones you love,

Mingling with their shadows.

She knows you at your worst,

When you cannot stop your tears,

When you’ve succumbed to your fears,

And fear overcomes you,

She sits with you.

Your shadow loves you,

She follows you in earnest,

Through all of your adventures,

Scraping against concrete,

Through puddles,

Over burning asphalt streets,

Through windy autumn days.

So let your shadow rest, your children,

Sit in the soft grass,

Sit below the trees shade,

Let her rest.

She works so hard to be with you at all times,

Her ever present form

Is tired,

Almost as tired as you are. 

x

i was going through my documents and i found this fossil. 

poppy. 

She sings about the sea,

But hates water.

She sings about the sun,

But hates being hot.

She sings about the rain,

hates feeling gloomy.

She doesn't sing about him,

Who she loves.

X

Not sure where this came from but it's oddly more lyrical than I'd planned.

Poppy.

insecurity is a thick sense of fear the color of chartreuse running through my veins instead of blood. I'm afraid to speak because I'm scared that it will stream out of my mouth in the form of defensiveness, over nothing. I'm afraid to sit for too long or for not long enough, without people thinking "what's up with her?" The chartreuse shoves its way into my mind, even if it's over fear of sneezing, because I just sneezed a second ago and don't want to draw attention to myself. I think, you're too old for this. Surely, by now you shouldn't feel this way. But, the color, thick and blinding, follows me like fog.

x

I'm dreading a lot of stuff right now.

Poppy.

i've always thought that the world would be nothing without the existence of wildfire hope. 

x 

poppy.