Mental diagnosis felt like an act. A script I shouldn’t have played into. Some do. Some need to. Those whose function cannot find place. Like mine at the time. But I was passing through—turbulent heartbreaks, growing pains, clashes with Hims—and mistook role for reality. I overthought my relation to it, that joy and suffering, and tied it to a being beyond. I regret that now. Or at least can see it as it was: seeking, clenching, grasping. Am I nothing more than a need to reach? Maybe. I’m human. Some childlike essence that shows in contours when ignoring and blurring details of pores. Take off my glasses and focus on the obscure. The fuzz. That uncertainty between me and it. Subject in/to object. Still disoriented in space, lost along the way, I may trip a few times too many, but that’s okay. Because it’s only and not me at all.
Tag: heartbreak
Question
Doesn’t the dismissal of emotion stem from emotion? Is there a neutral non-emotive state?
heart of glass
A teary night. Heartbroken morning. Put on some tea and sat. Forced myself out the apartment. Biked to the studio. On my way, I noticed a smashed vase in the gutter. Like broken bubbles. The sun hit those curves and even the sharp edges reflected softness into my eyes. It was just a brief glimpse. Thought about stopping to take a photo, to capture the feeling—shattered. With puffy eyes that glistened like all those pieces. But I was late, so I sped past and thought I’d return later. I practiced. Got coffee with some others. Listened to them. We spoke in and out the night before. Removed myself from it. That thisness. And then, as I smiled and waved goodbye, I decided to bike back to that glossy mess and take a photograph, but by the time I returned, it had been swept away. Only one shard remained.
oops
turned a man
into a tangent
may be
maybe too soon to understand
maybe each used other as a means to our own misguidance
maybe we weren’t ready for It
maybe I like to clean up just to make a mess
impossible to see before a turn
to name the before
could have sworn we felt without words
maybe we’ll recollect these scattered selves,
restrengthen the illusion
becoming ends in and of ourselves.
find that place there’s nowhere else to go,
for now just keep going and going
maybe I think what may be too much.
certainly we’ll never know.
⇠
never been left with tact
carried on a continuum of
“she’s beautiful, but…”
missed the point
trying to hold a line
Deforestation
“
Nothing in all the world is quite so lonely as a lover who wants to love but loses his beloved in a jungle the two of them helped one another create, plant by tree by vine. Nothing in all the world is so pathetic as a lover who thinks he wants to stand but always finds himself lying down, thinks he wants to speak but constantly falls silent. Nothing in all the world is so helpless as a lover lost in a jungle he has helped to make and cannot find even the edge of.
There is no escaping, either for the lover or for his beloved, when the vines have closed off the sun, when the trees have closed off the wind, when the plants have grown into a thick wall that no foot was ever meant to penetrate. Escape is never a possibility, anyway. The only possibility is demolition — either the jungle or themselves. They must choose. No one else can choose for them, and they cannot escape the choice. It is their choice. They will live with it forever.”
-Burton Raffel
Lovers Losing Lovers
( )
Sometimes old Spotify playlists do it. Replay stories, queue my mind through a loop. We had a time, I wish we could stay in. Shuffle. Breathe in the cold black space with the glistening edges. Shuffle. Every little lie in this world comes from dividing. Say you’re my lover. Say you’re my homie. Tilt my chin back, slit my throat, take a bath in my blood, get to know me. Shuffle. En tus ojos me desvelo y tus labios me buscan en la oscuridad como relaciones de la noche. Shuffle. These songs make me want to reach for you. Pause. Strangers’ smiles remind me: I used to push and pull, but I can be still. Self-induced lovelessness doesn’t last forever. Neither do rings on fingers or ink on paper. We can recreate how we relate. The simplicity of a daily choice. You’ve got it for one day, man. I used to search for the letters of his name, wait for his footsteps, buy time with food and wine, come and go as he pleased, but now we’re free from that parentheses.
Lost
“
It is far easier to talk about loss than it is to talk about love. It is easier to articulate the pain of love’s absence than to describe its presence and meaning in our lives.”
-bell hooks
All About Love
your name here
the letters of
your name
write my spine
the first
and
the last
not
the first
or
the last
laid together
side by side
spell it to me
one more time
as if I don’t
memorize your lines
curves and shapes
bend til they break
ericaavey.com 