1.

When I write it is not me. it is not the person who feels ashamed by what they couldn’t fix. It isn’t the one who wakes at night and wonders what soft she’s crushing. The body that tears at pillows and hopes the lifeless creature under her arm isn’t her part time.

2.

What I write is not me. it isn’t the thing that holds me tight, taught into rope attached to a small stuffed animal on the other end of an administrators chew toy. It’s not the way water buckles under the tongue and waits for a taste bud to find it so that when we meet speech might smell right. It wasn’t me who steals photographs after sarcasm under political slogan desperate to find tv where tv should be tv.

3.

Where I write is not the place I live. It isn’t a rooftop or skyline or rug box or rocking. It isn’t the spot where I almost died, next to the bed, with all the pads. It isn’t somewhere I can go and listen. It isn’t even the show.

4.

How I write is not a feeling I can letter. One after another? That’s how pizza works. Stretching rolling oil and pin. Then fridge then out, then flat then round, then into the oven with cheese and sauce between slicing its delicate garlic. I need to follow this recipe. I need to know the predictions. This is the opposite of how I describe.

5.

Why I write isn’t the only way I why.  Sometimes I why but always indirectly. The breath is a print of the lung, the breath is an edition of the heartbeat, the breath is the signature of flavor interactions. The mouth is the impression of how I try to talk, to kiss, to give, in. The lip is the structured outside, the movement to touch, the thing that is covered.

sept 7, 2020