Diary 42

04.03.24

I

The other evening you described being choked the way someone might talk about what they ate for breakfast.

I understand. In candlelight you can hide behind mercy, shadows stretched taut over claw-streaked throat.

Inversely, I’ve found fury regenerates as you’re squinting in the spotlight, waiting on cues from the winged, holy one

Because telling God what you ate for breakfast is petty. In the arena, pure blood mustangs will settle your scores.

Where pain coils itself around a center, I will plant lily of the valley, geranium, fern—how you get there depends on

Grit. I understand. In fact, there’s a man looking through my windows at night. I’ve caught him numerous times.

Feral as all hell I try to scream leave me the fuck alone, but words are defunct in this setting. I’m dead meat. I’m toast.

Most nights I dream I’m in an overcrowded shower, ruthlessly elbowing strangers’ naked bodies to wash my own, never feeling clean.

II

Here heaven has many names. I call mine the tall prairie grass where I lay my sweat-glazed body and roll a spliff.

Because after the dredging there are no tyrants, no one hunted, or owned—carved by the blade separating predators from prey.

Only lovers control time, languidly draped across velvet sofas pouring wine into each other’s mouths, unbridled

Bodies bathing in moss-drenched swimming holes; my cold silver chain grazing your neck as I kiss down

Dead tissue changing color. Sincerity over weaponized beauty knowing the former can’t rot.

Only when the prairie winds stir the cicadas into singing a solemn, unified hymn

Do I notice the edges have been glossed over.

04.11.24

“Until I see everything clearly, I want to hunt myself down, struggle with myself. Who, feeling armed against her own self, be that with the vainest of words, would not do her very best if only to hit the void bang in the middle.”
-Claude Cahun, “Disavowals”

Work is done work is undone, words are written, erased, reworded then erased again. & what to do, show a part of it only?

04.13.24

-Celebrated my birthday at The Getty. Stormed all day, just how I like it.
-Dinner at Checker Hall, an old masonic lodge where we sheltered from the rain & indulged in whipped feta, chicken schnitzel, zabuton steak frites, & spicy garlic-glazed sweet potatoes.
-Nightcap at Gold Line, a dark, narrow bar where everyone’s pressed up against each other. Crushed on a tattooed asian babe spinning records in her bra, sipping a glass of wine.

04.14.24

Richard Brautigan, “Deer Tracks.”

Beautiful, sobbing, high-geared fucking
and then to lie silently like deer tracks
in the freshly-fallen snow beside the one
you love. That’s all.