Goodbye

To those who have wandered across this writing and left kind messages or taken my words and felt anything from them, thank you and goodbye.

I am moving my blog to another site and will not be posting here anymore.

Peace.

burning.

questions that shouldn’t be asked, 

answers that shouldn’t be known;

i release you.

this

i know 

is

peace.

before we become birangona

my mothers and my sisters

grew their hair long

for when the soldiers came 

they could tie their braids

thick as ropes

and hang from the banyan trees.

07.23.14

(an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 women were systematically raped during the bangladesh liberation war by the pakistani army in 1971)

I want to know about the spaces between our bodies
when we stand next to each other--
the air that mixes with breath and glances,
the tensions that carry over from
your side to my arm
where it clutches my chest tighter,
shifting and growing in distance.


Is there a distillery for that content? Can we
bottle it up, pour it around ourselves when we need some room,
scoop it back up when we're done?
I found a pocket of the stuff where our hands met the other day,
and where my ribcage 
didn't fit quite perfectly into yours when we embraced,
our bones lying on top of each other, creating little channels for the substance to
funnel through.
Should I have tried to save it,
or slid each curve into place?
Does it feel warm to the touch, charged by light and temperaments,
or is it an incalculable negative space?

I read a chapter of your book,
made some notes in the margins,
left strands of my hair to mark the pages
where I appeared.

I sip the words like holy water,
drunkenly compose letters
on scraps of paper I keep hidden under my bed
in a box labeled "revisit"
--and I do, over, and over, and often.

Sometimes I pick up my pen and
set it down again,
suddenly lost in a conversation,
a spilled coffee,
the smell of burnt cloves
on your fingers and your mouth.

I know how it ends,
still torn over wanting to be a recurring character and not just a
filler scene.
Tonight,
I'll content myself with being a memorable subplot
written into a salty-sweet dream.

Maybe I dream too hard, and why I wake up exhausted

In the nighttime I slip out
of my skin
to go dancing with other skeletons,
my bones a lovely pearl,
our fire opalescent.
We dance on rooftops and in parking lots,
under silver moons,
like visions
rattling and rolling--
it's almost obscene.
Darling,
come dance with me.

Bring your left feet
and we'll find you a right pair
with ivory inlay and
jazz in the marrow.
Join our congregation,
this is our nightly sole-prayer to
soothe the flames that consume our souls during the day.
We clatter-clatter and
heal the cracks--you'll see.
Come and dance with me, darling,
on the balance beam of a dream.
Before the sun seals us up again,
before we break wide open.

I stumble through a spiderweb,

memories sticky and spun beautifully.

What can I do when

every thought is of you

and what could have been?
 

I make my rounds down the hours and up again,
a quarter past ten we stopped by the woods, talked about the future,

at one-thirty we shared a meal,

at six we shared your bed,
spoke in tongues

with our clothes on and our souls half-dressed as we grasped at flesh,

my novice hands spinning a tapestry imminently shred.

Time has slowed,

it loops in geometric angles

around my head.

I've learned to tiptoe,

tread lightly around the edge in search of escape.

We were a work of art, dear,
spun with a skein that emptied too abruptly,
but why ruin a precious, temporal thing?
Now, I let our web collect dewdrops and shimmer like silver threads in the morning sun;
then one day it will be gone,

it's memory a perfect imprint in the corner of my smile,
remembered
between my fingers and my touch.

let whatever love comes your way heal you. it may not be how you want it or as much as you need. but even a little bit can be a salve. is honey. is healing. so take it. accept it graciously. let it settle in your heart and flow through your being. until all of you is touched by it. and you are better for it.

drowning

i can still taste your tongue,

an ocean warmed by the sun,

crashing lips that kiss the shore
over
and

over
in waves that knock the back of my knees

so that i fall forward and

am pulled out to sea.

your mouth tastes like drowning.

salty, wounded, and so sweet.



-3.23.14

seasons

we took root in the winter sun,

pretended we'd survive until autumn.

summer was a sweet dream of sweat-sticky backs and syrupy tongues.

today is the first day of spring.

last week was our ending.



-03.20.2014

The Nightingale and The Starling

I turned into a bird
so I could sing you my songs,
but when you sang back
I couldn't understand a thing.

You were a nightingale,

and I, a starling.

Ceremonials (ii)

You were all-consuming
and I chose to feed you,
a hunger I did not understand,
a fire I could not bend.

I filled my night hours
with smoke and coals,
fragments of your voice in my mouth,
every word deep in my chest,
every exhale a reluctant release.

I put my embers into a fountain pen
and wrote you love poems.

You should feel honored.
You had me spinning out on dreams.

But these pages have curled right up, my darling;
we've run all out of air.

There are ashes everywhere.

The Nightingale

A nightingale
alighted in my hand,
slipped through my ribs
and built a nest there.
I fed it honey and laughter;
he sang me to sleep and filled my dreams
with treetops and twilight skies.

Last night he brushed my cheek with a wingtip
when he took flight.
I held my hand there
as I bid him goodbye.



-03.15.14

Ceremonials (i)

I walked into a fire pit,
it melted my hard edges.

I shimmered golden,
pulsed like a supernova,
died like a star and was
reborn,
pulsating, pulsating.

I danced, a flame-child
closer to your blaze,
let it touch me, ooh baby
you couldn't burn me.

I walked into the fire pit
and it melted my hard edges,

thawed my heart,
at last.

In my country

In my country,
there is a wilderness that
moans
under the fog
as it settles
in the valley
between intimacy
and
soft thighs.