May 16
Maybe you’ll be the last ~ wouldn’t that be something.
May 20
What an interesting experiment, trying to be friends with you ~ what society requires: a degree of availability, a repository for secrets ~ an endless stream of dispatches are precarious yet observance of constraints made by characters ~ we need protection from ourselves as well as others ~ to explore possible points of entry: a doorway, a sill made of hard wood or stone, a page is a field of updates, a relationship mapped ~ in mimicking a sympathetic resonance an empty platform should be easy ~ to navigate I count connections as kills of war, a jaw’s heart clenched and shook, concluding: we are not suitable partners ~ but I generally prefer avoidance, recording, a diary as a place of reckoning, reconciliation, wherever you find yourself ~ I’ve made mistakes but sometimes I fear you’ll uncover them first.
May 27
The first time I heard, faces, the computer fan running on our own measured frequencies ~ high-pitched in the periphery, wind-driven ~ then their voices became murmurs, blurred in the dim of an apartment’s long hall ~ if we could train ourselves to ignore footsteps on wood, laughter passed through a curtain, their register equal to falling ~ glass, in depression strangely comforting, lacking control, laid blameless, sharp ~ the way an air conditioner erases other noises, letting us forget ~ expectant yet in surprise a disappointment laden ~ the first time I heard ~ we can’t live here anymore.
May 29
Then an organ played holding ~ the same low, a note ~ a drone sustained for a time, as when tuning, or an organ aborted, as a thing crushed out ~ to worry a heart erratically, wrung ~ what means by which to run as a carriage, a rib cage houses ~ a hollow, I hope you’re not leaving softer than hammered ~ are those strings or a motor ~ what favor, perception, because of me ~ what we expect of instruments versus machines, composition or a mechanical humming ~ unlike other animals, who are sometimes silent, which is enviable ~ a small metal, a rubber, or leather is mute ~ or a buzz, if laced ~ I couldn’t remember ~ spinning
{marginalia} batting lessons
there are many ways to swing a bat / upon entering
a stance shift inward / to allow greater freedom
as a shoulder closes / hips turned hands, rolling
hands held near the body to leverage the letters
and heart, weighted / the sweet spot when hitting
held a certain / appeal, to break a game wide, wanting
to hurt or to make the sound open the stride bringing
me home, often against my will / the ever increasing
tendency to run / let me sinkerball before it / drops
before it fully / toward a safer territory slightly
knees bend waist / when part of it becomes the middle
eyes simultaneously or a square, read: spin / and
speed / try caring and see if anything / connects
if missing acknowledge such objects will never intersect:
keep my head down, stay inside and barely say a word
{marginalia} the definition of pressure, 1
the first time I heard, we can’t live here
anymore a column of liquid / I was trying to be
friends with you / subrogation of pleasantries
wrapped in ice / where force is expressly forbidden
a reliance on empathy, a toothache a mistake
parsed into pieces, re-imagining possible outcomes
across arbitrary sections of fluid words turned
like blades / nowhere to go but through / if I
didn’t feel distress / didn’t give a fuck
machine begging / for what no one else would say