Author: shaina65

No longer sisyphean,
this battle has reached
plateau.
On this precipice I see far,
I see wide,
I see futures framed
in gold light
as the sun comes up to say,
“it’s time to keep moving.”
Thirty years of winter
thaw like permafrost,
revealing all that was trapped
many forevers ago.
Clarity white like snow,
truth blue like glaciers,
and I in tiny dinghy
overwhelmed by the absolute
magnitude of it all.
I didn’t know the years
would pass so slowly,
ten feeling like twenty.
It’s always one more year
’til I’m healed.
Trying to make sense of it all
is like playing God,
categorizing storms as if
counting to five
could save a life.
I decide to stay.
Someone’s going to have to
pull all these bodies
out of the water,
after all.

January heatwave,
blessed fires that bring
sacred heat.
June monsoons
bring a gray
more ominous than before.
Oh Mother Earth,
I beg you to explain
why you took away birdsong from us?

Great waves come to claim
the children who never had time
to learn how to swim.
On the shoreline,
the shells have dissolved
leaving in their wake
bits of plastic and polyester.
Hubris alone is responsible
for these altered winds.

How the enemy is always
just over the next hill
and never within us.
Oh, Patrons of electric bikes
and oat milk,
deliver us from evil
and please grant us sainthood
with a metal straw!
To be good is to be fucked.

To be alive is to live
with knowledge that
each breath you buy comes
at the expense of an other’s.
We’ve been blowing up mountains
for millennia,
but the demolition crew has yet
to break foundation
for another world.

Oh, green capital! Oh, colonial kings!
Make us into history.
Dull the colors of spring
and then autumn,
spray us with fire retardant snow
so we may make angels
under the peaceful rumble
of warplanes.
Convince us we can live forever.

We self-soothe
through the end of the world,
touching soft things,
transfixed.

you oscillate on me,
and i surrender
wholly.
my structural integrity tested,
a beam upon which you
find balance.
to hold weight
without collapsing,
we intertwine
limbs & fingers.
a lattice created,
purely unique in form.
no swell-crest cycle manifests,
but a dance begins
to be written.

a three-legged stool,
with all three legs broken,
sits in the trash heap now.
to refuse: to crumple up
and abandon that which is
not worth the price of
recovering spare parts
from salvage lots or
thrift bins
scattered with old hearts
rusted a dull orange that can
kill, disease covered nails
lying buried at the bottom
of the pile
of bodies beyond count.
I find pride in my ability
to track numbers though,
first days
then months
then years,
like only watching videotapes
on rewind and in silence.
I wish never to be touched again
if to be touched by love
that deep
means inevitable separation,
blood split into cells and water,
cells further split into organelles,
then atomized into space
and stuff;
and where you and you
and I lie apart
is in the space
in the silence
in the decomposing bits
the earth only can
make sense of.

Like summer fruit in December,
this thing rots too fast. The catch
of breath as foot finds ice where
hard ground should be and slides,
momentarily reoriented to mortality.
“I could have died,” crosses mind
daily, so how can anything blossom
during the overwintering? I continue
to musify, attributing every thought
to an other. Heartbreak is good for
the writing career, so I wring wrists
over tomorrow’s catch. The oceans
have been depleted; rumors of more
fish disproven with evidence that
the sea has dried up completely.
Silver iodide seeds clouds over
Sierras so straights can recreate
holiday proposals and whatnot.
Take dog and car and kids and go,
just go, wistful interruption-clips to
streams-of-unconscious say. My
longing for companionship gets in
the way of companionship. Yet in the
dark sits my secret, unspoken:
heavy void beckons.
I know what Ben Gibbard didn’t:
you won’t follow me there. Nights
like these, what better way to go
at it than alone?

We bray like donkeys at the funeral,
relief sounding like grief
all five stages completed
before you passed.
It’s not like you had a soul to begin with.
The din of apologetic murmurs
reverberates in my head
to mimic the acoustics of the old church.
The thirsty pray for some kind of respite:
Oh God
Oh God
Oh God
Why
Why
Why.
Those who have already drunk know better
than to ask such ignorant questions.
There is no reason for evil,
it merely exists.
There is no reason for hate,
it simply spreads
in formations that mutate
to the point of no return.
Tiki torches or orange flags,
we need neither to commemorate the death
of a man whose heart was so cracked
as a child,
he spent his life breaking others’.

Fear grabbed my tongue
and said Leave when I meant Stay.
The psychological battle
between who I was,
who I am, and who I want to be
is a riveting spectacle,
and most can’t look away.
I perform pirouettes
at the edge of a building during a storm,
laughing at jokes
only I understand.
I am the hueless shell
of something sucked dry;
I am bloodless and thin-skinned.
I am a pity.
And you left because you heard,
like rain on the roof of a parked car,
the drumming of an oncoming flood.
You, with your self-preservation instincts;
me, with a broken lust that beckons
with crooked fingers.
Us, something off with the rhythm.
Us, as we existed in my mind before
I broke the silence.
Crouching, now, is the only way
I can face you,
this deference my way of protection
from the absolute power you hold
to destroy me.
There is no respect here.
What marauded for years as desire
I now understand
was merely an attempt to stay dry.

Concept: endurance as faith
as a lifeline
that never ends,
an anchor that goes straight down
through mantle to core.
Endurance like love,
like the 500 yard free,
like learning to ‘fly
and quitting at seventeen
but then picking back up, stronger now.
Like a lust forgotten and reawakened
by those Timberlands I fell for
in a past life.
I want to keep going.
I want to stop
spinning analogies in my head
while I build strength
to handle the real thing.
I don’t want dreams anymore,
don’t want to zone out
and pretend we’re together
when we’re not.
I want the hotness of your skin
and the wetness of your glands
all up on me like we’re running
a race that has no finish line.
I want your hands in my mouth
and your tongue and your cum.
I hear giving up is the easy way out,
but I’ve never been good
at surrender.
More than just a long game,
this requires no strategy.
It’s playing in the waves
knowing we can walk straight in
and never stop,
not when our feet leave the sand
nor when we become submerged.
They told me endure, and I said
always,
because I carry the world on my back,
and if I put it down to embrace you
then everything I thought I knew
could be wrong.

September 29, 2024

I keep trying:
I cut myself fruit
and never eat it.
The ego death following
an unanswered text,
as Narcissus looks
into the water and
sees no reflection;
so I, too, ask the Self
daily if it exists,
and I discover
not one but many
fractured shadows
vying for the limelight
or at least to be let out
on a walk
on a leash
on a sunny day.
If I’m no more than animal
in your eyes,
dolled up in cheetah print
and red lipstick,
grotesquely bound and heeled;
if I’m neither mother
nor whore,
but some perfect combination
of both behind your eyelids,
then what’s the point
of eating enough
to keep me strong enough
to get out of bed?

I’ve been singing again,
since we met

Too early, the other birds cry,
go back to sleep;
but I’ve been up all night waiting
for you to come home

Sitting by the sea, I fall madly in love
with you,
in love as only a mad person could

thank you
thank you
thank you

I cannot stop repeating.
A vow: I will make time for you
I vow: I will make worlds for you.

“I love you” swings thick like
[silence]
between us
between the irregular beats of our
disregulated bodies

don’t come close just yet.
watch me dance.