just like i did when i was in second grade, when we used to live in that apartment overlooking a busy street, i sit by my window and watch the cars go by. then i look at pictures from years ago. in one, i look like a boy but i am winking a flirty wink. in another, my mom sits in the background, she seems calm but i know how young she is and how she wants to break free. yet she is smiling her smile for me and seeing it makes me want to make her smile like that again. i still wear the tomboy clothes i used to wear - the cargo pants, the long-sleeved retro shirt and a man's cap. i just bough the cap a couple of weeks ago, only to fund out that i had borrowed the same one from some guest some twenty years ago.
i read the notes my mom has jotted behind the photos. and i wish i could use language like she does. she gives people a voice they never had, she makes them come alive. her narrative is just too strong, it is too funny. and sometimes, when she becomes the voice of my half-blind now dead cat, it is sad.
and then i wish i was a more exciting kid. so the years of her youth that she gave me would be worth it. i start watching the cars again, hoping that she will call me to the dinner table. anytime now.

rainy day in new york city

a day to think of friends. a day to sit by the bar at a diner and talk to the old lady sitting next to me. a day to have thoughts that reach deep down only to let them go one by one. and read about vishnu, keeper of the universe, keeper of the sun:

" I am what you taste in water, I am what you see in air. I am the breath in every flower, I am the life in every creature. I am all living things, I am creation itself. Look at me and see in my body the whole universe."

-from the death of vishnu

should we go outside, when you go away?

strange smells
of cigarettes smoking of wood burning of cucumbers melons
sounds
of me calling

i say the things i always say, my eyes always burn
and the knot in my stomach, for some reason,
does not come loose.

i have so many questions
that i will not ask
i am on my island and i know the answers will never come.

so my heart beats to the beat
my life floats
but still i wish, the spirals i draw
could reach you somehow.

true. 

i liked this dailyom message i got a few days ago

from Giants in the Earth

There were the walls, for example, of which he himself was especially proud, and which Store-Hans never tired of admiring. He had begun work on these walls immediately after he had returned from the trip east to the Hallings' with the potatoes. The lime had been mixed according to directions, and spread over the walls- three coats of it, no less; now the sod hut shone so brightly inside that it dazzled the eyes... Before the snow came, Beret thought it delightful to have such walls; but after there was nothing but whiteness outside- pure whiteness as far as the eye could see and the thought could reach- she regretted that he had touched them. Her eyes were blinded wherever she looked, either outdoors or indoors; the black-brown earthen floor was the only object on which she could rest them comfortably; and so she always looked down now, as she sat in the house.

- O.E. Rolvaag

i am sending smoke signals. can you see them? can you read them?

i am making a paper snowflake out of my life. as i cut the little pieces off, i am not sure how my flake will to turn out. every dash i make i have some hope that it will be striking once the paper is opened. i go this way and that way and with every turn the scissor takes i know the shape will be there to stay. and after every cut i make i open the paper. sometimes a seemingly boring cut turns out so intricate on the other end. the cuts that are elaborate, that wave in and out, are mostly disastrous. but sometimes they are not. then i am soo happy that i ever made them. soon the paper will have too many cuts. and i will not be there to open it. somebody else will look at it and decide if it is beautiful.

you can make them, too.

your heart is an empty room

Burn it down till the embers smoke on the ground
And start new when your heart is an empty room
With walls of the deepest blue

-dcftc

complete silence on my mind. thoughts feelings falling like snow, melting away as they touch my body. with all the clocks stopped, my heart is keeping time.

years have gone by. i have grown, my cells have multiplied, but i have given them away so i can stay constant. so i can come back and find the same me, the bare me, that doesn't change. it hurts to give but i don't want to unlearn how to do it. i am afraid that i will and i will start swelling up with feelings i can't unpart from, with thoughts that pile up and stink like rubbish, like old thoughts do. i don't want to grow cold, distant, i don't want to grow old and burst when one day some sunshine leaks in from the blinds that keep my house dark and dreary. i want to be alive, i want to close my eyes and take a leap and fall fall fall until i wake up and find that i am still there, even if nobody else is next to me. i want to be alive, even if it means i have to cry, even if i have to lose. for losing is living and i don't want to be afraid.