keep going
I loved you even when you were ugly
Every single one of you
You above the moldy basement with the cluttered floors despite my OCD
You singing in the grundy dark bar despite my sobriety
You 3,000 miles away
You living illegally next to my apartments washer and dryer
You calling me crazy
You who cheated and called it polyamory
I gave all of myself to you
I washed your dirty boxers
I blended your smoothies
I asked my doctor sister to diagnose your scaly skin
I scaled the arch in Washington Square park, five tears in my hip labrum later, maybe then I will be your dancer
I loved you when you were angry and your lip puckered
Or when your frustration melted to Miles
I loved you when you couldn’t say the thing
Even my father
I continued to come up with creative alternatives for every fossil that fueled our fade
Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl plays on the speaker of this cafe
Two days after he didn’t fight my break up
After canceling the reservation upstate
His clothes bagged in the lobby waiting to be picked up
Five days after my dad not soberly but not surprisingly told my sister that I survived my hemorrhage because of him and would have died if it were left up to my mother
Every time I think I break a pattern
Another alleyway, dead end
Ali is in the way
This might not work out was mouthed too late erupting the world’s quietest earthquake
The skin on the palm of my hand cracked your face
I don’t know if I’ll ever feel okay
In relationship
Especially when her words, you can be hard to love, are your mother’s blessing
Some of his last words, this man whom I called a partner even in my memoir
I don’t think you love too much, you love deeply and it’s beautiful. Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.
Felt like a yearbook signing
Words of encouragement appropriate from an elder
A distant pat on the back as if he was a witness and not the co-creator
It wasn’t a choice to choose how, but it was a choice to be your home
Every time each one couldn’t meet a need
I asked how I could be better
Like solar, or wind, or the heat energy of the earth’s core
It’s boiling at times to be geothermal, renewable
And isn’t that remarkable
I was the love I was looking for
No one can fulfill what my parents couldn’t
And I’m exhausted from the push and pull mule
Don’t want to drag another down the twisting energy of leftover’s neediness
Pining over the past and people who picked up from the kicking donkey to fulfill their dreams
The thing with family is their family
History to wash under the sea
A comment that has nothing to do with me
Cosmic comic, the stage is what I seek
Not another backseat
Each generation is tasked with how to be better
Coming out has little to do with categories on the census
Ever since I was a kid I’ve dreamed of expressing myself in public
Gave graduation speeches on sidewalks to no one
Sang behind trees
Every musician I’ve dated was hiding behind my own dream
It took some 15 break-ups to commit to what I started in the closet on the pink carpet
Songs scribbled on post it notes in an easter box shaped like an egg and filled with confetti
There is nothing scarier than the tornado of my mother’s panic that I can’t fix
Except this
And no one can rescue me
Though cheesy like a yearbook signing
Your words, keep going
(And when that doesn’t work
Visit the Oracle
An 80 year old Jewish Ear Nose and Throat doctor whose diagnosis was:
You’re complicated, cognitively cool and complete, have you not gotten use to yourself yet. I have, in just 15 minutes. If we have 9 lives, you got 8 left. Use it, there’s a reason you’re still here. See ya kid.)
Photo: self portrait in Bedstuy