three poems (or something like that)

I’m trying to make 2023 about getting back into writing, particularly getting back into short story writing. So I’ll be using this space that nobody really follows to post things I’m working on. Generally, I don’t write poetry (because I don’t think I am actually good at poetry) but I usually like writing prose-poetry-type things as a gateway to short story ideas I’m working on or trying to wrap my head around. The ability to like move words around or focus more on the specific scenes associated with a stanza helps me get a more concrete picture of the types of stories I ultimately want to tell.Anyway here are three things I’ve worked on over the last like 5+ years.

One: everything i cannot speak

• During Christmas, you go with me to visit my grandmothers gravesite.

• Drunk, near midnight, I talk about her in my studio apartment and if you catch me crying, you never bring it up. I wish she could have met you like I met your grandmother. I think she would love you the way I do, see the way you lean into me for support, how you bring a bottle of water to me without asking, how you take up space not out of presumption but with conviction: I will be here until you kick me out, for you, because of you.

• Four days earlier, I tell you:”I feel so ashamed. So fucked up knowing everyone in my family but me adopted a dog that worked out.” I tell you: “I had a dog, she was mine and now she’s gone. I think about her all the time, sometimes hoping I’ll run into her, fearing that when I do she won’t remember me.”I don’t tell you:I keep her dog tag with me. A thing I pocketed when she got a new one years ago. Each time it spills out I think of throwing it away but there it is: this last and final reminder of something I loved so much, a thing I loved selflessly, wholly, who loved me too without compromise.

Some other things

• 2 years ago you bring me a homemade cookie cake. We eat & drink wearing masks on the hottest day of the summer.

• I hold you while you’re crying. We drive up on spring break to see your dog before she goes. Now I play, In Hell and loudly weep.

• We watch Gilmore girls in the morning. Drinking coffee; sharing kolaches.

• In summer we lay in an above-ground pool talking about d&d.

• In winter we play Final Fantasy together. You change your character all the time. Never settle for what you have, always wanting something new; some new journey or way of being.

• In spring we go to a friend’s wedding. I get drunk and think about marrying you, even though I said I never want to be married.

• You make me dinner after a hard work week: fried macaroni and cheese bites, Brussels sprouts, pulled pork sandwiches. It’s been so long since someone did something so sweet just for me. 

When you leave what will I keep of yours?

• An old little shop of horrors t-shirt

• A ceramic mug a coworker says looks like an artistic thing. I drink too much coffee out of it and wash it out each day, afraid of growing mold inside.

• A pink computer mouse

• two Gundams: one made on a weekend, the other over two weeks.

• An encyclopedic knowledge of Gilmore girls & Survivor

• An aching pain that will not go away, no matter how long it’s been or how far from me you go.

Two: A Short Message, Incomplete.

A short messageJust to tell youthat all the bugs are dying,and that I’ll [ ]After you’ve gone.

Sometimes everything isempty:Fresh white.Full of regret. I’ve made a [ ]of things.

Strip the bed.Toss the sheetsdotted with blood.Scrub the floors until they are Bright and shining.Clean your closet.Dust your blinds.

Keep your head above water.Reme—

Three: You are your own gentle thing

First, there is the soundknife to skin:Quick, clean &A yelp.A slight

step back.Finger to mouth.

You were cutting the onionsand wandered off againthinking about some past encounterwhere you said more than youwanted.Or too little.If only you could get it right.

Run it under water.Dress it with a bandaid.Across the room, he askswhat’s wrong

1. The planet is warming and we can’t stop it. Our last days will live out in the sweltering heat of a dying planet, grasping for understanding, and guidance from a cruel and unanswering God, too brittle to survive, to conscious to skin off into the night.

2. All the bugs are dying. Some we never knew existed. Disappearing from the forests before we learn their name. Instead, we feel the absence of their tiny forms in too-cold mornings and rising prices on grains. Ecological collapse. Or how your thoughts were interesting, they just wanted to let you know.

3. Your partner’s cousin said suicide is for cowards. Your mother said the same.

4. Everyone you know has a dog.

Nothing. Say it again.Clearer this time.No blood spilled, just a nickof skin.Carry on:Medium heat.Oil sizzling.3-4 minutes: just softtranslucent & fragrantnot burning.