somewhere else

“somewhere else”

everyday i wake up anxious,
somewhere else.
my wild idea of
vagabonding
palpitating, breathing.
i left my home
i left my job
breton said that was the first step
to surrealism after all
i just somehow didn’t think
it’d hurt this much.
i told my little sister
‘yeah the problem with sleep
is that you always wake up’
i’ve floated in oceans
this summer
looking back at the shore,
dangerous
remembering how many times
i sent the words
ached and soaking
to the universe-
‘i just want to
fucking drown.’
there is a ring in brooklyn
that was supposed to be
mine
pictures in frames
love notes, sharpie on
brown paper bag
hearts shaped and
promised
4EVER
i swear i did
i swear i
once did.
everyday i wake up
anxious
somewhere else
pushing my way back
into some mist of
memory
i once belonged to.
these days have seen
my love
contorted, cracked,
under and over-used
i thought i said
i was steering this thing
this time-
i thought i said.
i remember
the promise i made
on the bus through
the tunnel
filled with traffic
i would find
my name
i would remember
the way it
sounds.

one of the happiest stretch
of days i had was
waking up and falling asleep
in a tree.
every night walking to
my platform amongst
the leaves feeling
so
comfortably
small
in the space between
the earth and the curve
of the stars.
every morning
living in the layers
i remember stanley said
weaving his wild braid
i listened through
the thickness to
simplicity
what am i trying
to say?
i would become a
tree but i
can’t forget
how to move.
etch me into
the birdsong
i promise i will
make this my
truest note-
my name.
my heart.

what am i always trying to say?
i’m always trying to find
something to say
why can’t i just say it?
discarded blank pages
on the sidewalk
make me sad
i want to stoop low
and fill them
like it seems
i can’t be filled
by anything.
someone said
michelangelo said
lord, grant that i may always
desire more than i
can accomplish-
why am i always
icarus?
at least i had wings.
once.
this summer
has been the sound of
wings crashing
into sea
did they even
make a sound?
or did
daedalus’ eyes
absorb everything
after the fall-
hide the sound
of the sea
inside every shell
so he could never
hear it again,
the irreparable
calm.

i like picking up
the shells
i like noticing
what’s different
i like comparing
what my presence
has done.
if you could be
somewhere else
right now
where
would you be?
and if you finally had
the choice to go
would you?
the winged maybe
want to crawl
while the coiled wish
they could fly
or is that just
us?
human awareness
always wishing
for some other life?
someone told me
there are only two
choices,
no and
fuck yes.
but what do you do
with all the damn
gray?
all the damn
moments.
there is no such
thing as
duration,
she wrote
with the shells
on the beach.
everything is
always
changing.
maybe icarus has
a fin now
maybe it’s better to
force some
resolutions
when there
are none.

islands.
each moment stands like an island circling light like a beacon in the darkness- it can’t be compared to anything else, it just is. even lost in the wild sea, know that- a few more breaths, strokes- the light will fill you, find you again. be witness to what it is you feel. the grace in almost drowning and then- finding another island. life is like that. light-filled islands in the dark, wild sea. shifting, eroding, flooding, so you can’t quite stay, but god.. so beautiful while you do.

i erased myself
from social media.
i am turning into a
fish then
back into a wolf
again
maybe
how do you hashtag
metamorphosis
how do you take
a photo that isn’t
shaking
how do you watch
them watch your
fur to feather to
scale
watch you rip
your life apart
without slinking
away
bipedal motion
doesn’t
do it for me
anymore.
i’m done pretending
my shadow
doesn’t have
four legs.

the great forest upanishad says
“she changed herself into the forms of various animals.”

and
my father can’t quite
look at me anymore
it makes him too sad.
my mother’s questioning-
her love, another thing
too big for me to hold so
i hold nothing
except train tickets and fire tongs
a string in the woods while
folded blind
limbs of trees
so many weeds
earth.
it’s not dirt
when it makes something
grow
can i say the same
for me?
i climb up to the roof
wishing there was another
height to scale, a ladder,
a cloud to reach-
the man from the museum
calls to me from the street
tells me- you can’t do that,
you have to get down
but not before asking-
how did you even get up there?

i have never needed
ordinary means.

on the 4th of july
my dad shoots fireworks while
undercovers watch.
across from the museum
in the headlights of a car
i spray paint
wearing electric
bunny ears
my brother tells me
he sees people taking
pictures with it now
it says
EVERY DAY IS A GIFT
LIVE FREE
and they believe me.
i want to believe me too.

but i don’t know
what will happen
to my words.
when i die
i tell everyone i can
to turn me to ash and
send me up in a firework.
i wonder if they will
remember.
i wonder where i’d like to go
if i had the chance.

the chance.

you know
shedding skin is so much more
elegant when you’re a goddamn
snake.

god damned him to slither,
so be it
i’ll take the knowledge
any day.
maybe the earth could help me
peel away some false sense
instead of brushing up against
any heart that writhes
like mine
till we burn like kindling
i thought we saw sparks
in the woods that night
how can it only be
my imagination?
you were there!
weren’t you?
and you and you too
i leaned my head
against your chest
like you were the
trunk of a tree
but everything gets unsteady
if you climb high enough
and i’m perched on
spindly branches
swaying in the breeze.

the chance..

can i just howl
instead of trying to be
fucking brilliant?
i worry about this ever being
good enough to be a
one woman show,
a vetruvian sketch in
constant motion-
can i just show you the
claw marks, the cracked
pieces, like a child-
see? see?
look at what i did.
i thought it was an accident
but it’s not.
what the fuck
is my poetic license?
who the fuck
is audrey dimola?
when i was little i
made my mother promise to
keep me alive
with vitamins and
pills, i
couldn’t bear the
thought of being
somewhere else
stuck in dirt
looking up.

i am always terrified of forgetting
i can move.

bobby kennedy quoted
aeschylus from memory
when MLK died.
‘even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart
until in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom through the awful grace of god.’

ma says
in the new world there’s no place
for illusions.
everything is going to get
shaken down
to truth.

maybe it won’t hurt when
i am no longer my
girl-self
to watch them
letting me go
piling my things
in corners
clawing up against
islands
listening to the
shells
tell them i said
leave no trace
of me
leave no trace
of me

but this.