I am not held together by much.
I am a loose pocket of change A frayed quilt A leaky faucet A child’s art project - I’m always losing parts of myself in the wind. In a moment of distraction And a little bit of rage I have severed myself. Damaged and leaking, I considered my tear -- Cool and pomegranate red, My palm quickly fills With the stuff of the insides of me. My body begs for fixing Something to stitch up the rips and tears Patch the leaks And make me whole. You, in my moment of wreckage, Salvage me quickly and neatly. As if it was what you were made to do. A second skin, Armor against future blades, I can feel myself healing Under your gentle touch. You, with all your softness and sweetness, And your ability to mold to anything - A silent embrace Of warmth and security - You are reassurance that we will always put ourselves back together. I am not held together by much. I am remade, bandaged over, A collection of replacements and missing parts. But I, like so many other things - Am patch-up-able. - P dearly beloved, here we gather
(though we are neither here, nor have we gathered) to mourn one so greatly missed - the streets of new york. sprawling tongue of the american dream, empty vessel for the ambitions of youth, orchestra of the unnamed and forgotten -- she has fallen. cavern of glowing reds, greens, and golds, soft hum of bodega lights in the mist of a rainy evening, and infinite noises of infinite lives led loud, we have lost something we once all had in common. great vibrating beasts, churning heat and warmth into our small island world, these veins of life have slowed to a halt. traffic signals now dictate into the ether, pickle bucket drums want for percussion, and stoops long to be lingered upon by friends and passers by. they served their purpose well, these streets - upon them we pinned our dreams, our rages, our fleeting grasps at anonymity, or worse, fame, and they took them all in - made them part of this great project of noise and light and life. with noses pressed against windows, makeshift signs in empty stores, we beasts eagerly await our return to our natural habitat. indeed, we may say they did their job too well - for if the streets of new york had been anything less than the streets of new york - perhaps they’d be here with us still. - P “Looks like when they made this fella, they forgot to put in the quit.” That’s what the gunslinging, ballad-singing Buster Scruggs says of the outlaw who will be the death of him, in the movie that I was just watching. A high compliment for sure, no pun intended. They definitely remembered to put the quit in me, and there’s definitely something to be written about all the times I’ve quit—middle school soccer, intermural softball, two-thirds of the way up the side of Peak One (you’ll notice that these are mostly athletic examples). But I’m more interested in the times that I wanted to quit and didn’t. Again, one year later, two-thirds up the side of Peak One. In the Regenstein library at two in the morning, staring at a document red with questions and corrections, wondering how I could ever have thought myself smart or qualified enough. Or staring down the glowing end of a joint at the height of a respiratory pandemic, wondering if I should prioritize my lungs or my mind. But quit also isn’t quite that. Quit derives from the Old French quite, quitte, meaning “free, clear, entire, at liberty; discharged; unmarried," from Medieval Latin quitus, quittus, from Latin quietus, "free.” You can quit a place, quit a job, quit a lifestyle. (Our writing prompt today was just the word “quit,” which means that I’m leaning on the crutch of etymology a little.) But I like the association of the word quit with freedom. It makes me think of being acquitted, of being declared not guilty. Quit also shares an etymological lineage with quiet. If they forgot to put in the quit, they forgot to put in the quiet, the stillness that is needed for the compass to point north. - K to the ways in which I am mad.
to the compulsive lists I make to the lies I tell myself to my bloody nailbeds and delicious, dreadful habits -- you hold me together like fraying red thread. to the glasses i’ve broken in rage and in distraction (and the broken glass i’ve cradled like wounded birds) -- to the lovers I’ve forgotten, the love I have not yet learned the love I chase down glasses and into snowstorms - you are creating me in your absence. my little self-destructions, tiny fires in my mind held too close under outstretched palms - you warm me. you, like the burning coals in the belly of the steam ship churn me out to the reckless and heaving sea. oh, small army of careless thoughts, rogue wanderings of the mind straying into blackened wilderness, take me with you into the darkened depths. show me rotting tree stumps, corpses, drowning girls that do not want to be saved - show me what it means to get lost in the woods. I would follow you anywhere. -P They’re never the same. No matter how many you go to, even if you see the same performances again and again, the way some people rack up Phish shows like notches on a bedpost, no two concerts feel the same. Maybe you’re crunched between your friends, all of you covered in beer and glitter and each other’s sweat, bumping and grinding and chanting along to the lyrics, and you wonder if this is the first time you’ve ever felt young. Maybe you’re in a vast ballroom, spinning in a churning Charybdis of a mosh pit, stirred by the singer’s non-microphone hand like a cauldron bewitched by a warlock. At first you keep an eye out for your boyfriend’s green checkered shirt, clutching its sleeve a couple times before you’re forced apart by other people’s bodies, until eventually you give yourself up to the roiling incantation. Or maybe you’re ten or eleven, in a cavernous concert hall that will one day seem quaint, listening to a violin concerto and forcing tears out of your eyes because you feel like you should be crying, this makes you feel things that are far too big for your little body. But hard as you try, you cannot evict them through your eyes; instead, you are drawn out of your rapture by your filling bladder and make the pilgrimage that every faithful concertgoer must perform, to the cold and noxious bathroom.
- K so why not here?
with its inside-out sun and haunted birds and hole to the heavens? you’ve got to be somewhere for the end of the world, and people sleep in the park here. they swim in oceans and buy groceries and pick up coffee on their way to work. why not share in panic with these people? you’ve got to be somewhere for the end of the world, and you can’t go home, and home doesn’t exist, and home is here - next week. exactly the same. and if it is the end of the world, (as it almost always is), what else is there to do, but soak in a sun that is too bright, too close? and if you’ve got to be somewhere, then why not here -- when here is a bed of your own, a city that will turn on its lights, cook dinner, play music, as the ship goes down? -P Dear Prospect Park,
I feel like it’s every girl’s dream to fall in love in New York City, but it was never mine. I’d already fallen in love, with Chicago and with a boy in it, and that city, with its crystalline lake and warm, open smiles, held so much romance for me that I thought New York could never measure up. And, in my defense, I wasn’t wrong. I still don’t like the putrid smell, the closeness of your body to others’ bodies at all times, the lack of fresh air and clean sky—in most places, anyway, but not with you. I first met you after a long, strange day in the Brooklyn Public Library Central Branch, where I was diligently applying for jobs and fretting about my future. It was a rainy weekday, and the library was full of people who need somewhere to be in the middle of a weekday out of the rain—myself included. But after I had worked myself into enough of a frenzy about my future, my passions, my path, my goals, my dreams, that I decided I needed a walk. So I shouldered my always-too-stuffed backpack and walked across the weird crisscrossing streets of Grand Army Plaza and straight into you. You were lovely that day. You weren’t expecting to see anyone—your leaves were drooping with late summer rain, your paths were empty, your bushes bare of flowers. But you were such a sight for sore eyes. My gait, already quickened to match New Yorkers’ prized strut, slowed once I passed the serpentine vases flanking your entrance. You welcomed me into your arms, made me feel like I was the only person who’d ever known you before. It was raining harder by now, and during this whole day you and I never saw a single other soul. You led me down your winding paths, past a boulder that looked like a bear and a hollowed-out tree trunk that looked like the grim reaper. I opened my polka-dotted umbrella and lit the joint I had hopefully ferreted away among my pens. As we relaxed in each other’s company, I fell more and more in love with you. Then you really took my breath away. You led me to a little green sign that read The Vale of Cashmere. I blinked, wondering how high I really was. Then I looked beyond the sign and down into a lovely little valley, framed by dripping willows and sycamores, filled with gentle birdsong, lush with life. I thought of the secret garden, the Happy Valley, Terabithia. I was wondering how to get there when you guided me to a stone stairway, littered at the edges with fallen leaves and sweetgum balls. I walked down the staircase and found myself next to a little pond. Somehow manipulating joint, lighter, umbrella, and phone (to capture photos that I know will never do you justice) I walked with you around the pond. I looked at the birds, at the trees, at the moss gathering between the worn red bricks with the word “Catskill” stamped on them. When the rain lightened up, I sat on the bench that was to become ours and closed my umbrella. I breathed in the scent of wet earth. You took me in your arms and told me you’d be there for me when I needed you, and I haven’t stopped needing you since. When I finally ascended the stone stairway, I cast a glance over my shoulder and told you that I’d be back. Even now, when you are so very far away, I miss you and know that I’ll be back. I hope that you’re doing all right in this crisis, even while I know you aren’t even aware of it. You have the cardinals and the mourning doves and the blue jays—you belong to them so much more than you ever could to me. Still, I hope that you’ll be glad to see me when I do come back to you, when I breathe in your hot sunshine and damp earth (and maybe a little weed) and feel, somehow, miraculously, at home. Yours always, Kaeli I have lingered on the peaches
high and listening to lou reed, I find myself in front of the peaches. the peaches find themselves in front of me. we observe each other - curious of softness, gentleness, has the world bruised you badly? pink thing, unripe still shall we wait, patiently, to be softened by time? I reach, lustful, yet uncertain - there are things beneath the skin we cannot know. the peaches and I, we make guesses of one another - and trust, hopeful, that only softness and sweetness awaits. - P We gather here to say our goodbyes to a dear friend, a stalwart companion, a gentleman and a scholar whose absence will be felt most keenly. Banter with Strangers passed away after a short battle with coronavirus at the beginning of last month. Banter enjoyed passing the time in many places, from the elevator where you and your coworker would share a groan about the weather to the bar with the bartender who asked if you saw the game. A lifelong animal lover, Banter would linger over dogs playing in the park, stroking their noses and kissing their ears as their owners exclaimed over their animals’ antics. Everywhere Banter went, a smile was sure to follow. Banter leaves behind loving friends and family—Crushes on Strangers, Shared Laughter, and Collective Effervescence. They can attest to Banter’s optimism, kindness, and sense of humor. We will always remember Banter fondly, and hope that we may meet again on the other side.
Amen - K |
journal entriessome poems, some prose, some in-between Archives
October 2020
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