cartagena
is a blur of joy. I feel for my collarbone only twice.
I am adored here. I ask:
am I one of you?
will I be okay?
we buy single menthols, a baguette
we dance across old town in technicolor
the night cradles us and the ocean roars:
I saw the whole thing
seventeen years,
I could not wait for your return.
-----------
denver art museum, a series
sand and stones
slice the bottoms of my feet and I grin, busy. we’re making a home behind the dune, grabbing branches of downed trees and braiding beach grass. milkweed sap sticks between my fingers satisfyingly. stick-unstick, stick-unstick.
we are 9 years old and there is nothing but lake and trees for miles. our beach towels, long discarded, were brought to scare off bobcats. We never see one.
I am always finding places to be safe.
on the way back we search for seagull feathers to make into quills, our suits still wet with waves. I watch the sand collect on my toes as we fill our shirts with wild raspberries. look at this one, it’s the biggest!
we eat every one. we can’t help it.
---------
denver art museum, a series.
V
a couple of years ago, I worked with a patient who died from cancer. She was 21 and from another country.
the plan was for her to go back to her home country once she stabilized, to see everyone again. I needed this plan because, selflessly, I wanted her to see home again. But I also needed this plan because, selfishly, I could not watch her die. I needed her to die somewhere else, because I did not think I could grieve her.
the last time I went to see her, we were told there was no point: she couldn’t talk. but as I spoke she gripped my arm, eyes shut, and muttered, thank you for coming.
blood crusted along her mouth, her gown. I knew her body was full of medication for the pain but I still wanted to scream: how can we let her suffer?
she never went home.
there is something about losing a therapy patient that is hard to explain because nobody else was there. nobody else saw your relationship, nobody else is even allowed to know her name. it is a secret grief.
and so some days I want to talk about her.
I want the world to know how funny she was. how she was quick, witty, and would not take anyone’s shit. Especially not mine.
She went through hell and did it with grace. More than anything else— she wanted to live. She deserved to live.
2024
in universes
I like my face because I have seen it in another person.
My sisters and I are girls together.
The nights we spend are in a campus library. We know what we are.
I meet her at age 11. Being gay is not so scary because I am not alone.
I meet her at age 23. We are coated in sunlight and everyone tells us as much. We drive up the coast with a polaroid camera.
We rent a home and push a stroller down the road. Life smells like honeysuckle.
2025
a letter
(1)
I watch the parking lots. At one point I framed them with some nostalgic value but these days they are simply the security of florescent concrete draped in moonlight, twisted illusions of solitude.
I have never seen nature fall upon something so plain.
Pink clouds line trees and housetops but
many nights it is impossible to see beyond the concrete
I am desperate for something factual.
(2)
I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’m sorry
I tried to fix it with copious amounts of
white cheese pizza as though I could convince you of
undeniable truths long since faded. I’m sorry your hips cracked open that day. I cursed your crutches and prayed flowers would grow like in the fractures of concrete and you
would be healed.
These days I’ve learned that when anorexia plays,
she plays for keeps. Your bones were collateral damage while
my heart beats too fast and too slow. Do you remember
baking cookies on Thursday nights? We ate every one and
I wish at the time someone had whispered,
“This is freedom.”
(3)
I hope Paris is beautiful.
I hope you still run mazes across cement rooftops and make love under shadows because
God knows you deserve that. They say time is the mind’s
creation and I often wonder if we layered our
memories on top of one another they would all
make sense. We would lie on top of parking structures
and feel the cold concrete under our
fingertips so as to know
We are here. This is today and the next day and
this is the moon that shines upon the city
just for us.
2013
Treatment songs: Meal Time
My teeth sink into my inner lip
as the plastic sockets in my knees squeeze tight
into a long treatise on rigidity. I weigh my options delicately and my stomach sings its sickeningly sweet refrain.
You do not deserve,
you do not deserve,
you do not deserve.
One bite and you are nothing.
(It is not nothingness I fear, but futility.
I do not know this yet.)
Marinara bleeds down the side of my flaccid pasta
as the other girls fold into themselves in front of hospital trays.
The air is laden with reality’s sudden burden.
Kathy picks up a cheddar-orange Sun Chip, hand-shaking, eyes watering.
I cut my strawberries into threes:
one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three.
Numbers circumscribe cognition.
I pronounce my contention with the space I no longer occupy.
(It is not help I receive, but illness.
I do not know this yet.)
2013
Two Eggs
Today little sister cracks open
a second egg and mom’s eyes
dart across the kitchen.
“You are not supposed to eat
more than one egg a day
you know that is far
too much cholesterol.”
The first meal I ate at the hospital
was a two-egged omelette
drenched in cheese.
My mother sat across from me
while the nurses and social workers
retaught her how to feed me.
They told her I was not allowed
to hide cheese under my plate,
or pick off the tortilla shell
and avoid the egg yolk.
They told her there were new rules, now
3000 to 5000 calories a day,
every day
no more sugar-free jello
egg whites
and tea
That night we went to the grocery store
and felt the world tilt upside down.
We walked past the low fat,
no cholesterol
sugar-free
until we hit the goldmine:
poppyseed muffins,
ice cream bars
whole milk
full-fat butter.
Foods that would make my heart beat regularly again
and put life back in my eyes.
Today I tell my mother I think it is fine
for little sister to eat two eggs,
cholesterol be damned.
But she looks me in the eye and says
“It’s different for you.”
This is the same phrase she repeats
when I ask her why she does not want us to cook noodles
for Mother’s Day dinner
or why she is not eating sugar
this week.
It is a phrase which means:
because you showed so much control
that you grew out of control
You are hereby exempt
from the dieting culture
It is a phrase which means,
’I am drawing a firm line
between the South Beach diet
the no-carb diet
the no-sugar diet
the Atkins diet
the You Are Inherently Flawed and in Need of Fixing
diet
and illness.’
Because nobody likes to think about the fact
that perhaps we are all playing with fire
that perhaps the American Dream
(and by this I mean weight loss)
is nothing but a smokescreen.
That perhaps shrinking oneself successfully
does not actually move mountains,
paint your soul in bright gold,
or part the seas.
That perhaps making ourselves disappear
won’t fix the real problems
our good intentions will never
pave the path to heaven.
Tomorrow when I wake up
I am going to breathe in the morning air
and thank the universe for poppyseed muffins,
ice cream bars
whole milk
full-fat butter
I am going to change the world
and fry two eggs for breakfast.
2014