Love Her. Love Her. Love Her.

love her. love her. love her.

you are waiting in between- 
ans Meer 
to the sea.

i learned how to speak seven languages by the time i was young. they were not what i thought they should be.

in each one, the word for world had no other meaning.

der Welt, mein Herz is a terrible terrible place.

is this why we flee? на море to the ocean, to the sea?

when i said language, i did not mean русская or deutsch or română; i meant a different sort of words.

how to show fear and regret and to speak angrily, with no remorse. 
crying long hours, how you say, like the rainstorm.

there is no native language for grief because we are all fluent speakers. 
there is a grammar for happiness that must be learned.

when i was smaller then, not of body but mind, i asked how you knew it was really the sea. 
how it was not simply the red overwhelming everything else you saw.

i do not think i was really asking about the sea.

even now i do not know if the sea is what i mean when i say it is what we are all seeking.

weltsmurz we are all world weary. 
perhaps the sea is red because everything else is blue.

and the question still remains- if i say happiness in one language will you understand the meaning in another?

please understand i mean no harm.

für mein love, my love, my love, the sea my love, my dragoste my love, to see my love my love my love, is red.

in a place between words we cannot communicate and somehow we are all waiting in between.

little teeth, we talk in small manners to avoid saying what we mean.

what we can bear to say. there are quite a few things we cannot bear.

this world being one of them.

спасибо, there is a way to reach the ocean from here. 
is there an ocean everywhere around us.

in my mind the sea is red and my mind the sea. a language of neural patterns, waves, timing and frequency. 
i cannot seem to rid myself of the sea and the sea cannot rid myself of me.

from speaking in a manner of many words i have only learned this: 
the word for world is weary of being used in such a small manner.

speak now if you can see the ocean.

a small body rests am Meer, too tired to think the consequence. this is where we are heading.

either way the sea is still red beneath our feet, and in this language everything has another meaning.

and yet… you loved him? -ray bradbury, “the utterly perfect murder”

even after this you loved. it took a long time. did you ever realise, in the beginning, what it meant? that no one came to your before-the-sun-rose almost morning cold glass window, painted blue with longing all alone did you know then? did you know then, maybe when you wanted to die. maybe that was a long time before you ever even thought of love. or did you know before the terrible, unutterable betrayal. did you know and so you left. and even after all this time. you held it inside of you, that inalterable past, without ever knowing why. held it in the hollow in your chest, the gap between your collarbone and the line of your ribs pressing against your skin. could you feel it when you held the edges. every morning after that you could see phantom bruises that love in the way boys love boys when they are young, you said, and evil but innocent, and evil. how did you fit such emotion inside of your mouth to swallow the pain. how did it come out in words like those. when did you stop using question marks to say why because you knew you weren’t getting an answer. did he ever call you after all those years, after all those years did you ever call him? and still you knew you loved him without ever caring when or how or why. all of that, inside of you, years and years and years- how could you stand to hold it and how, upon taking a train, bound into the past you thought could not have ever been returned to, years locked up inside your chest those bones old lives and leaving and broken windows how did you learn to let it go.

together we stand (united we fall)

apparently Hitler wasn’t dead and there are things we do not talk about.

the Holodomor. the Armenian genocide.

(to name only two out of hundreds.)

things that happened halfway across the world, never to us, we didn’t know them so it didn’t happen. we know now.

we know about cut down trees and men. how in every language the word for hatred is spelled like a knife in your back, sliced across your throat, buried in the heart you do not have.

hatred is the killing of something not your own.

hatred like a eleven letter word for the opposite of hope, indifference. for this you cannot stand.

around the world there is more than one thing we share, but it boils down to this:

we are the word for emptiness and conscience. we being the only word that matters.

requirements for magic

the faeries said you had to give up something to be with them.

the wolves said you had to have teeth and claws and a howl like cold air on a moonless night.

the dragons said that fire comes from within and that you needed to have a spark.

the vampires said you had to die.

the warlocks said you had to know sorrow for immortal years and the devil in your blood.

the witches said you needed magic, strong and dark and earthy.

the winds said you had to have hollow bones, a body that could be lifted.

the woods said you had to know how to grow without knowing which way was up and to fight for every inch you gained.

the ocean said you were already a part of it, salt and water and blood. you just didn’t know how.

the cliffs said you had to be made of edges if you wanted people to impale themselves on you.

the mountains said even they started out as little as you. maybe you could be strong one day.

the desert said you had to know thirst before you understood how to love the rain.

the rain said it would wash away everything if you let it.

the storm said you had to be wild and raging for its magic to work. you had to be angry.

the night said you do not how to be a creature of the dark, magic and manic nights. you could not be one of us if you tried.

the day did not say anything. it simply rose and let you learn in the light.

you gave up your sadness to their faeries and learned how to dance.

you showed the wolves your teeth and told them about the blood on your hands. they taught you how to scream and bring down the moon.

you took a drop from the sun (or rather you lit a match) and gained a coat of scales made of burns and grey cold ashes.

you died. there was no coming back until they pulled you from 6 feet under. you died but you were not allowed to leave and that is how it goes.

you told the warlocks that they could keep their devil because you had your own. yours just was your sorrow and your blood.

you brought the witches a tree and laughed when they didn’t understand. they gave you magic and in return you buried the sapling.

you undid the chains that bound you and let yourself go free. nothing could tell you where to go except the winds, and even they would not bother.

the woods were dark and lovely. so were you, even in the light, but you always knew which way was up. that’s where the trees go.

you were the ocean, salt and water and blood. there was no changing that.

you sharpened your knifes on the rocky cliff-face and jumped to prove your point. the edges broke. you did not.

you told the mountains how tiring it must be to be made of stone. they agreed and wished to feel something at all.

you knew how to love the rain long before you knew what it was like to thirst for water and thought maybe the desert wasn’t dry at all. it just didn’t have enough to love.

you let it. the rain poured down and you were clean.

you became wild and raging and fierce like a storm, left alone to run its course. when you were angry, you were a hurricane and even the magic feared the collateral damage.

you learned how to be the night and understood why it was so dark. you could be it if you tried. you could be magic.

the day said you are.

the eat-your-feelings cafe

i eat past hungry to make up for the lonely. i eat for the empty chairs around me. this hungry swallows me whole. mouth turned inside out becomes a hole, becomes a table. table sits in front of empty chairs besides me. i am hungry. i am starving for anything more than nothing, something to feed this loneliness. empty mouth has hollow teeth. bite sharp in your own wicked. crave me to create me: inhale me whole.

emigrant in a body

i’m not from here you see or i am but that’s not what i meant in life we are all passing through onto some other kind of life. i just meant that i didn’t live here i’m just a visitor in this body, these bones a cathedral the tourists come to take pictures in. stained glass with too many metaphors and the windows are dirty from people looking in, smudged and blurry as they pass by. i pass by and the pavement thuds heavy beneath my feet, visited by a ghost or two on the way the face on the subway poster says ‘in case of emergency’ but it’s always an emergency. somehow you can’t be lost if you don’t know where you’re going sleep in one bed, get up, leave walk the streets without meaning. we don’t belong anywhere. we don’t belong. we don’t belong anywhere but here. i am leaving to pass on from this place and i hope you come with me too.