how to disappear completely

What the heat has to teach my body - its broken water mains and stagnant pools - with enough heat you could dry up either of these. With fire.

Thanks to a recent lack of air conditioning, I've begun to come to terms with my sweat. I would rhapsodize about why sweat is beautiful; how it's one out of thousands of ways the oceans we contain manifests itself, how we sweat in the midst of pain, of joyfulness, of lust,

but I'm mostly interested in its application to problems. When we say we have to "work out" a problem, we usually mean we're going to think it through. Perhaps some solutions literally require working out - work that is evident only as it appears in beads on the upper lip or forehead.

With this thought in mind, I enjoin myself and others to begin again the hardest work. (I don't have to tell you what it is because you know.)

A humble offering of our water and salt to the fire of recognition, maybe the god of us water-creatures will notice and take pity.

disappointment

I'm not a starfish, I just wish I was.

bedtime stories

I can't bring myself to go to bed. Some nasty realization is waiting for me there. Sea monsters. Bed bugs. America. When my parents divorced my Dad made my sister and I a tape of himself reading bedtime stories. It's the saddest and most beautiful thing ever. I miss being read to - by anybody.

I'm so tired of taking care of myself. I can't endure my own sanity any longer, and sensitivity. I don't know how any half-sensitive person can withstand living in this society. I need to be touched. I need to be inspired. All you fucking zombies out there depress the hell out of me.

the glooms

Something bad happened last night. I don't want to talk about it so please don't ask. Instead, cast me as the star of your own imaginary movie. The starfish that is - for everyone's internal movie is an underwater one. Split me in two, heart and all. In the second scene I'll grow it back, for mine is the power of regeneration.

hearts in garlic

Some say blood,
some rust, but none
are as red as me.

I discovered recently I have a fear of the ocean - especially at night. Its abysmal, incalculable depth. The ocean feels hungry to me even on calm days. Some absurd fish I am. Like the tides want to uncover me, consume me and leave the bones. I think I equate death with the ocean. Not death the way I like to think of it/experience it, but soul-less death. Dispersed into thousands of disconnected particles instead of remaining a whole, sentient being.

Or maybe it's the vastness of the ocean that bothers me. My ignorance seeing itself in the reflection of the expansive. I had a dream once I was submerged in it. Below me was darkness and above me light. I struggled upward until I broke the surface and it was at that moment when I woke. I felt calm after that dream, as if in it I had been protected. I wish I could feel that way again.