September 17, 2021

My neighbor at my childhood home was a mechanic. He and I used to race on Ripsticks up our long shared driveway in the afternoons after school. Whenever I saw the light on and the garage door open to his shop, however, I’d throw my bookbag down and book it over to watch him tinker with a metal conglomeration in the hood of a car. I was truly in it to rifle through the tall, red, Craftsman toolbox he had. Wrenches’ sizes in those large cases were and are still fascinating to me.

Teach me to look in your eyes:

close or wide set. Cold sweat.

A duet. Now do it: all I feel

is tension: the peripheral view:

gravity: veiled exhales: my abdominal

cavity. I used to: avert my eyes

when someone noticed me. Now

it’s long skirts: printed shirts: watch me

be an extrovert: never inert: a subtle flirt:

the hurt: of this aloneness. Eyes pass:

through concrete glass: only if you

can meet them: desperate and desirous.

Inside us: a searching for something:

A trembling that I couldn’t identify. A glance around the room—Kira across from me, Emma to my left, my professor of two years to my right. A reading I had done at least three times before. A comment that I knew made sense. And yet, I’m trembling. It may have started while my hand was raised. Look at her shoes, and hers and hers. You can see their backpacks, look at that pen. They can see you. Are they noticing you like you’re noticing them? Ah, she’s talking about my point, that’s great. I went to write down something she had said, but I couldn’t.

When I left in June, the last item I tucked away in the car was a tomato seedling--one of the near hundred that had sprung out of the earth unprompted during the weeks before. We hadn’t sown new seeds, yet they sprouted, ready to try again after last year’s failed harvest.

Squatting in the soil with my 13-year-old, we plucked them from the old plant bed, taking caution to not tear the roots that would anchor them where they now belonged in the garden.

Everything takes time. whether it be a short amount or the entirety of your existence. and now we enter a space where no matter how much practice we give ourselves we still feel unprepared.

I came back to Charlottesville in June, after having been away since March of 2019. The year at home awakened a long sentient being: my “true” self. Now I’m in my last year at this institution and I couldn’t feel more terrified even though I’ve wanted to leave since I’ve arrived.

I am quite fond of living on a stage. Curating my thoughts for consumption, I love seeing myself in the reactions of others.

But now the awkward interaction with a barista, the stress of an upcoming exam, the slow-motion neon lights in a crowded bar are mine alone, no longer processed and packaged stories to liven someone else’s day.

“When You Were Young” streams quietly on the radio as I find a table. No one knows how this song makes me nostalgic for Texas heat.

If you’re gone, who do I tell? How do I live with just myself?

The longer I looked at my instagram, it became less of a museum, and more of a mausoleum. A distraught young girl haunting the hallways.

Is there truly a way to hide oneself when writing?

I sometimes feel shame while writing. Certainly, not all forms of writing make me ashamed or awkward. Most of the time fiction does not; neither does purely academic writing. What is left, then? Perhaps the combination of the two—when I wish to compose an affective piece but can only write in an abstract and impersonal way.

It is not only to follow or imitate

the tradition of our elders of yesterday

these hands

like those that came before us

reach the pure ether

where gods live

where I live

catching every fruitful tear

as if the answer to me

as if I’ll find the We

within those fragile beads

crashing into adorned fingers

the fingers trace our memories            

recalling

the index

the middle

Four years ago, almost to the (very rainy) day, I walked down the Lawn with my mom. I remember peeking through every open door, turning away before I could make awkward eye contact with any of the occupants.

July 25th, 2021

I feel like I am floating after this untethering. Like a balloon headed for the clouds, in that dually melancholy and pleasing way. After this life change, I was expecting my reality to crash around me. This not-quite painful floating sensation has taken me off guard. Losing love is a funny thing.

Losing love is a funny thing.

A little girl holds my heart with both hands

runs through veins, arteries, jumping cell to cell hopscotch

she loves big stuffed panda bears and drawing

big pink hearts with thick markers all over my teeth

she stays inside on rainy days, when her tiny ears catch the sound

of big bass outside voices she curls up in the hidden

chasms of my lungs but on occasion she will

climb up out my ribs to peak her head

through my eyes and she will love to trace her fingers