That Strip Of Smoke Coloured Sky Up There Is The Heaven Of These People. -Jacob Riisand The Heaven Of

That strip of smoke coloured sky up there is the heaven of these people. -Jacob Riis and the heaven of these people is the heaven of those people from a different skyline. we look at the same gods with different eyes. that smoke-coloured, bare strip of sometimes light is beautiful when it is the only thing to look up to. when they dream, they dream of a sky painted like the sunset they know and the sunset they don’t, red-orange-blue with a grey haze on the horizon. when these people think of heaven they do not dream. they are tired. instead: heaven is the moment between breaths. heaven is the uninterrupted night of sleep. heaven is eight hours instead of twelve. heaven is all hands unhurt, all eyes not blind, a body on this earth that can contain their souls. heaven is their souls unbound in the closest thing they know to joy. joy is the little kindness, the way the light shines down. heaven is the light. that sky up there is not a strip it is the whole sky, it is the might of all the heavens all these heavenly bodies resting on the earth weighed down by all the dirt and fear they are the light trapped between the lines, they are looking at a different sky and seeing the same gods. they are learning heaven with their eyes open.

the only truth

that matters i am still breathing no matter how. to be here is a testimony in itself. yes, i’ve answered what you asked no, i did not lie in a single word. bearing myself open, this rib cage cracked in three places and my chest pulled apart from the scrutiny, a fist sized muscle beating itself like i do. to the point where it doesn’t know anything other than to keep going, keep going, your mind gives out long before your body will ever, keep going, keep going, until it hurts more to stop than it does to keep going. once there, you know the truth. the only truth that matters: say it. in words or broken letters. pictures. paintings. fists or cracking voices. the truth is- life is a terrible, awful thing and we are all trying to find the best way to live it. stop pretending it doesn’t terrify you.

the right truth

in specific contexts, i am a different person now then i am then. alice: i can’t go back. yes, exactly what i mean. for every question there is a different answer depending on whether or not i trust you. or the setting of the situation. take these, examples,

SITUATION ONE. i am at a party. it’s a friend’s party. i was late. listen, i didn’t want to come. they can’t know that, so what do i tell them?

answer: make up some elaborate hilarious story about the cat and the driving and putting on clothes in the wrong order and not how you sat in the closet for two minutes rocking and how you took four pills for anxiety before coming. if they laugh, they won’t notice the way you slip your eyes closed too often to be real.

SITUATION TWO. i’m with my family and they ask me who i’ve decided to love (have i decided to love? do i know what that is?) can i tell them the truth of it or do i have to hold my hands palm in to my chest, don’t let the lines tell them what they want to know?

answer: you can say a little. tell them you’re in love but you’re not sure of it, don’t tell them who or what or how many because really would they want to think about you and love with their closed door minds? they can hardly think of you as it is.

SITUATION THREE. i’m seeing another therapist. oh god, what do i say. what do i tell them?

answer: the part of you that you can stand to bear on your mind. the truth that seems right under the circumstance.

for every question if you told me when and where and how i would have another answer because who i am depends on who i’m with. that may not be right, but it is true, and i’m never the same person twice. but is anyone? and that’s the kicker to this sad sorry punchline joke. nobody’s right. even if it’s all true.

speaker for the dead

i will not write your obituary.

i will not grow flowers from the mouth of someone who refused to look for what was beautiful, i will not make that beautiful.

there is no surrender, no good fight, believe me when i say that i have spoken for the dead and they say:

nothing, when you die i will say nothing because that is what is waiting, i will not write you an obituary because you will be dead. and i, the one speaking, would be putting words into the air about you, without you, and no defences against them because i will be angry. if you choose that-

i will not be a speaker for the dead to let you live in a memory.

i will hold you through this unbearable life and do what i can to make it bearable. i will not be angry if you ask me if you just ask me for anything other than an obituary. you can call me if you are lonely.

and if the world becomes too much to bear, you are not Atlas. let it fall from your shaking shoulders. and i will write the way the world ends, i will write you the way it feels to be free i will write you in another life a thousand alternate times in which you are you but not and still you this crippled fool, a light opera and i will write you anything if only you are alive to hear it.

and i ask the same of you; in the case that my mouth becomes a birthing ground for the bodies of small violence, roots to wind their way around my tongue and teeth for the trees to swallow me swallowing the empty earth whole, come no mourners and no words. let the decay speak for itself.

do not talk at my funeral. do not read these words at all.

an all-nighter with planet mercury

four planets in retrograde
and we sit under the full moon to lament
our crazy revolutions. 
mercury, the rare bastard, hides in the shadow of the light,
nothing like the rest of them. a day that lasts hours and a smallness inside your bones, never knowing how to sleep because the night never seems as long. they don’t know what it means to be made of availability, the closest and the remainders of what is left. we both have hands full with drops of this monthly blood, a body’s rejected life shimmering down the side, fingers curved tenderly but still silver slips its way through the cracks.
leaking out to leave empty palms and the moon shines silver too, the stars, who are we to raise our hands and say that we belong in this night with a longing buried deep to leave? too tired to think about what it means. mid-night mercury turned to say unguarded in a hollow voice: i just feel so small, in comparison. so close, and quiet, and less. i feel like i am nothing. (not nothing. never nothing.) underneath such long nights guiding us to oblivion we cannot be nothing on the horizon. i know, mercury sighs, face half-hidden in the blinding light. and still i am so much more and so much less than what i want to be. i can’t find a way to stop myself from spilling out of my hands.

bitter kisses

i eat lemons alone, no company because afterwards everything tastes sweeter. every breath is now sugar, an aftertaste of acid burning tissue.

does everything on your skin feel soft after it’s been burned?

another lemon, mint, and the air tastes cold. metal between my hands is warming; i am freezing to death.

suck on the pulp and kiss everyone good bye. i leave a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth. i leave a bitter sweetness on their tongue.