CONFESSIONS part two
collections of poems and prose, spring 2025
(On my birthday) The sky was blue, but then there was thunder. I stared into my pupils until I convinced myself there were sparks of light buried somewhere unreachable.
of my chest becoming hollowed by scars / my bones decaying into a formidable shape / my flesh rendered impenetrable by light / seen only between nonexistence and dawn / an abstract concept for which I get out of bed in the morning and fall asleep at night / wishing for the imagined truth / a clumsy return of selves / not exactly a colliding but more so a completion / I’ve learned it requires a mythic naivete to observe what is not there and wishing it into existence / transcending the body for something larger that cannot be contained / bones breaking between barriers of wishful thinking / amidst this bodily homesickness / before I’m called back to my graceless dancing / wearing this uncomfortable skinsuit / I am left only with the wishes / a half-finished self / held by the blue-purple of the sky titling into oblivion
REMNANTS OF THE APOCALYPSE
I
Could the apocalypse that does not merely swallow it all
but yields brighter inventions by its cosmic renewal
ever be challenged by our steady breathing in the dark.
Could we emerge on the other side of these recurrent ruins,
as sharp as daybreak,
exhausted by such wonder.
How many hands does it take to feel touched,
not merely the body but also what we may call soul.
(We long to hold it in our collective palms
but fear to wound or worse, to love.)
Besides, what is kept in the dark becomes endangered
even if the soft, dull light never reaches it.
When does life feel long enough to be remembered
not by our many lovers, but the non-space where
the evasive grit of day can be found
if we keep looking very intently into their pupils.
How dawn is no longer brutal.
Sleep no longer to absolve.
Sunrise folds us over, and we will not feel heavy with grief.
II
Because trying to stretch my finite self into an indeterminate future, claustrophobically anchored in the immobility of now, obliterates me whole.
The house I grew up in may remain intact, at least in memory. Lying awake, I sometimes sense its weight on my forehead. There is nothing left to do but remember.
III
The body eases in the dull morning light. It no longer resists the incomprehensible. It never remembers the ways to capture light. We are always trying to communicate the incommunicable, to reach someone in places we cannot go, to seek proximity that transcends hunger or mere survival.
EPHEMERAL SACREDNESS
This, our half-awakened faces in the dark, held in time like a prayer
Its sacredness is beyond ephemerality
Remembering your touch before its ruin
Finding meaning without our bodies’ constant colliding, existing even when untouched
Measuring the worth of each other’s presence by the time it takes to bear the absence
and through longing bared our evanescence
Longing to long, to long to want but never to have, remaining restless in this wanting.