We Dance Among The Stars.

we dance among the stars.

lithium is the third to last element expelled before a star goes supernova and can be found in all of us. somewhere a star exploded and its elements, the molecules that make it up, rushed out into the great gaping abyss until they were put to use making us. someone once told me that all matter has existed since the beginning of everything, not just time because time is something we constructed, but everything. i think it was in my seventh grade science classroom and now i can remember it, first hour with coffee and bleary eyes even that young and hearing someone say: you have been a part of something before you were something and you will be a part of something after you’ve been something matter can never be created or destroyed it simply is. how it felt to know that the parts do not add up to a whole even if the whole cannot remember where all of its parts have been. i think it was comforting, the idea that everything i was was something before me and after me there would continue to be something of me that was once a part of me and the subsequent conversation later when i said sorry to a chair after bumping into it and my mother said what are you afraid of hurting its feelings? it’s not alive and i said it is alive because we’re all made of molecules and the molecules that make up that chair could’ve been part of someone i bet you were a chair once how would you feel if someone ran into you and didn’t say sorry? and she just laughed at me and said kid sometimes i wonder about you and ruffled my hair so i just laughed too and didn’t tell her that i thought it was beautiful, that the chair could be alive and still not because it was made of molecules and people and dust, lithium, real stardust or what could’ve been, only it didn’t know it.

don't lie to me if you're putting the dog to sleep

i know what you're doing. you think that you can protect me from the tragedy, the inevitable spiral i will go through until i hit the ground and sit there clawing at it, ripping up the flowers from last year's graves. the only thing we are capable of giving is death, i remember saying to you, and now i am killing the lilies you planted to make it look less like the entire yard was dying. in my head this happens in an instant but when i look outside the flowers already dead, from thirst and heat. it's the middle of summer, no rain for weeks and nothing can grow without water even if there is a body decomposing underneath the earth. we cannot afford to water the plants we have grown. what did you say? about how there is beauty in the destruction of things. now i remember why you love me. the car engine starts and you are trying to talk me out of going by not talking at all so i am talking for you: and i call out don't leave yet i know what you're doing. i can see you carrying her out to the car and this isn't the reaction you wanted, you were hoping to be quiet but now you have to take me along. now that i've seen the blankets and the unwashed sheets there's no going back. not for all the flowers in the world. don't you dare lie to me and say that's not what you were doing. i know you better than that. i have to persuade you that closure is better than a lie, a hook slipping into place when you clasp that chain around my neck i know that i am difficult at the best of times and dangerous at worst but if i am to bear the weight of this one more time let me see the tragedy unfold and let me watch it with my own eyes. there will be a peace in knowing there was nothing we could do. you sigh and shut the car door behind me. i cradle her head in my lap and on the way back we buy more flowers for the garden. we can't be sure that these will live either but anything is better than nothing. you won't look at me and i tell you it's not your fault. i had to know and i'm sorry that you thought this could go any other way. besides, how did you think you could hide it from me? i would've known when you brought home the body. at least this way we can bury the guilt together.

for sharp-edged women, made of thorns, points and needles:

you have been broken, beaten and abused to become who you are.

your eyes are tired from always searching, never daring to stop looking for where the next attack will come from. you sleep with one eye open.

scars are your badges, medals of honour you wear to remind yourself not that you let someone do that to you but that you survived. there is no greater challenge than this-

to live in a world of softened, loving people and to be what you have made yourself. a creature of hard edges, claws, teeth biting and words cutting like knives.

you are difficult to love, and maybe, you do not want to be loved.

it is enough to stand on your own two feet in the shelter you have created, safe in the knowledge that no one and no thing can hurt you unless you let it.

and you won’t let it.

no one comes close enough to even touch your points and if they do once, they never do again. you are wild and free and self contained all in one; you are your cage, your door, and the key to open it.

if someone looked close enough they could see brambles weaving through your hair, claws like knives instead of fingernails, razors hidden behind your throat and the iron that runs through your body instead of bone.

you are fire and ice, clawing your way from underneath the dirt and falling from the skies.

everything you have, you have had to fight for, and everything you have you deserve.

you make and remake the world in your own image, shaping your daughters to be strong, hard, guarded and full of wit- something you wish someone had done for you.

no one told you that the world would break you, your heart and bones and mind, and no one ever warned you of the dangers of pretty green-eyed girls and dark haired boys who slit their wrists in the name of love. you have lost friends and love that way, and once, almost, yourself.

and you wish someone had told you that edges are not something to be scared of, that you could stand on a precipice and not fall off. brambles guard the castle holding everything you love (and when you love, you love fiercely, the sun chasing the moon and dying to give it breath) and needles are what you sew yourself back together with.

for the women who are strong- you understand.

omnipotence doesn't mean you have the power to act

isn’t it awful to be the narrator of a story and know not only the good but all of the terrible things that people are going to have to suffer through? to think that maybe you could save them only to know that tragedy must run its course. the winds will always blow. the wolves will keep on howling. the witches will brew the future and tell which path to choose. the world will turn and turn and turn you with it until you’re dizzy, stumbling down into the forest into the deep, deep woods. there must always be blood and someone will have to pay. you know whose blood will whet the monsters’ appetites and you know exactly whose future those witches were brewing when they said tragedy and you know which moon those wolves were howling at and you know that the only things left will be the winds. you know what will be taken and given and given up, what wishes and dreams and hopes and fears are riding inside our heads. you know. but you’re not telling.

love her. love her. love her.

there was one time i tracked orange paint all over the room in the shape of a star.

i was painting (of course you know that) and trying to cover up the words on the outside of a lid and i painted it red first, because i thought blood covers everything

except it wouldn’t cover this and i couldn’t understand why the paint wouldn’t cover up the stupid white letters that didn’t mean anything for god’s sake who wants to read ‘SALSA’ on the top of a universe in a bottle?

so i painted the top orange instead and that covered up the words easy and i don’t know how i managed it but i got orange paint all over my foot (or at least that’s what i told my roommate) because really i was waiting for the paint to dry and i wanted to feel like i could’ve been something special.

there went an orange star i put on my foot, out of spite because everyone always said don’t get paint on you dear

and it just kept growing and growing and growing along the bottom of my foot because i had to even out this side and stretch out that point so it looked proportionate but that made the other side look too small until i had a star stretching from my heel to the ball of my foot and all the way around

i let it dry and walked around with it for an hour or two until i had to wash it off and down the bathtub

the paint gathered all around the drain and left a ring of orange that won’t go away no matter how much i scrub and i didn’t mean to tell you all this its just that i cried when i had to wipe it away

i know it’s silly but it felt daring and special and wild and it was just a stupid star that didn’t even look pretty

besides i hate the colour orange when i’m sad because it looks too happy like it’s bloody smiling at me and saying i should be happy too and i just can’t

but i didn’t hate that star because it meant something to me and it reminded me that i could be special if i tried (it reminded me of blue ink and a bathroom sink) only less existential and contemplative.

anyway i’m only telling you this because i thought someone should know just in case the water comes back up stained like a northeastern sunset drifting below the horizon or the inky black night receding to leave a morning star in its wake.

holland and magic shell

[laying still underneath the trees i think]

this is not bad. quiet can be good. i smell like lake water and chocolate, ice cream melting into my tongue. i have done nothing of importance today and it has been alright; i could call it happy even. this is a change from what im used to, this sudden quiet drop into happiness. shockingly cold i slide into it without warning, the way i stutter and take that final step over the dune and plunge into the clear water expecting to take another step. that last gasping breath, pulled out of me sharp and the way it feels being submerged, that lovely under.