Spring Rains

Arrive in the desert to find heavy rain clouds draped across the mountain ranges. Thirty-two years of landing in this valley, each step feels more precious now than the last. How many more times will you discover this place, before it is taken from you yet again?

There's a reason I cling so the people I love, to the trinkets I own and the homes beneath my feet. Time and time again, that which I desperately wanted to take for granted was taken from me instead. I lost you over and over, until I started throwing everything away before I ran the risk of losing it. I left you in the doorway, don't think I don't remember, don't think the look on your face isn't etched inside my skin, you didn't know I was all quicksand and bushfire and all you'd be left with were wounds. 

A car sits in the driveway, awaiting further instructions. Everything you own is drawing nearer to itself. You are gathering up your belongings, for what? 

Are you leaving,
or are you the one being left behind?

Check In

You cling to the ticket like a lifeline, teeth clenched, hissing, you've saved me before so you better save me again. It's a one-way ticket, you scrub it of symbolism. Is this our last hurrah, America. Is this our last cross-country embrace, two thousand miles of farewells before the earth scorches my feet once and for all? Generations have come before you, seen worse, seen better, endured. Who are you to waste what you've been given.

Who are you to demand the city on a hill, then not get buried when it tumbles to the ground?

I pick a window seat. Pack a bag light with content, heavy with fear. Brace yourself for what you might find around the bend. 

Stomach-dropping

You venture into old waters, try them on for size, find it harder to float, find the rocks at the bottom to cut the soles of your feet in a way you swear they didn't use to. Everything is rip tide, everything is a tumble to the bottom, you try to catch your breath in the in-betweens but they are too short, too full of silt, your lungs contract in rebellion. 

Do you remember that Christmas in Los Angeles, the way the ocean seemed to lead to forever? It felt like the only truth I'd ever need, then, but now I think it wasn't even me on that beach. I think I was a caterpillar, painting large eyes on my back, putting up fronts I had no business pretending, and I'm only now in the chrysalis, breaking down my every part into goo before I can make myself real again. 

I didn't mean to show you these broken bits, these wrong turns. I didn't know I wouldn't be allowed to be remain a camouflaged caterpillar forever. I fear winter will come before I break out of this cocoon. 

I fear winter will take us all
before our time.

Varje Måne Trasig

The Universe rages, strips you of meaning, of understanding. You try to remember how to hold on to hope, to hold on to art, but it's been to many days without to now suddenly be with. The grooves of the wagon wheels' incessant treading have become canyons, depths the sun never reaches and you don't know how to climb your way out. Is all your life just going to be a question of whether or not I want to make it to the end of that day?

I loved you once and thought maybe that meant all the other questions had been answered. 

There's nothing special about that,
I learned.

Showers

The weather teeters, barreling from freezing rain to steam to sunshine and back, there's no point in keeping up. Dress for all the weathers and hope for the best. You haven't done laundry in weeks anyway, so what is wear. A woman sits on the floor and reads her trite poetry and you think, I can do better than that, but can and do are not the same. Instead you spend hours looking at real estate listings, like dreaming precludes you from having to make decisions at all. 

Are you done living other people's lives, yet?

Are you done being available where they need a buttress?

It's so little life we are giving, so few minutes, such frail cargo. May lies on the horizon like a lifeline, like a promise that maybe you'll feel an itcha again and want to set out. You know no other ways to live a life. 

You're trying to figure out if it's too late
to learn.

For Show

The day is drizzly, a chill runs through your apartment, no sunlight makes its way all the way into your nooks, you are not mad. Little flutters of ideas, of stories, make their way through your synapses, all you ever wanted was to tell a story and it's there, somewhere, but you are only almost able to grab it, it slips through your fingers. You draw up maps for a summer on the road and wonder how you can feel so lost when you haven't even left yet. 

Wherever you go,
there you are. 

You know that's the problem

You just don't know the solution. 

Is Your Land

It is not time, you hear yourself think. This is not how we go. Thirty years in this soil cannot be lifted from my roots with an airplane ticket. Those around you scramble to jump ship and you wonder what stubborn nerve it is that always keeps you in these fires for so long. 

It occurs to me that I am looking for a fire hose.