Preliminary design idea for James’s new tattoo. I left the pencil sketch marks because this isn’t meant to be a finished product, just a test. Also because I’m too lazy for erasers or clean-up today. Mainly that.
The air is blunt when I need sharp and
it rolls around in my mouth too thick and
it fills up my throat and I can’t swallow and
my lungs don’t believe me when I say
yes this is air we can breathe it
we can
but this isn’t air; it is heat and
water and worry and
we can’t breathe it.
we can’t
and the heat isn’t heat
(really, it’s not.
you have to be here to know)
and how funny that a country so hot
can do nothing to keep you warm
Because I know you’re all dying for an excerpt from mine. I’m not really sure what’s going on, except there’s a girl whose father died, and there’s an old man who tells her not to read a book she found in his library (but of course she does anyway), and there are vines that grow up out of the book after she falls asleep and destroy her house and take over her neighbourhood. So, yeah. This is one of my favourite paragraphs, even though it’s about the dad’s death:
The day he was killed was sunny, with the tiniest hint of a breeze. The conditions were perfect for a walk. It was warm, but not too warm. Autumn. He’d gotten Emily off to school, walked her to the bus stop, and was on his way home when he must’ve remembered something at the store he needed to get. Or maybe he decided it was too nice of a day to stay inside. Whatever it was, he did not go straight home. He kept walking, past their house, past their street, past their neighbourhood. The place where he was hit was a relatively quiet street. He’d been crossing when a car zipped around the corner, knocked him down under the tires and ran him over. It was a teenage boy on his way to school who’d just found out his girlfriend had kissed another guy at a party the night before; who was texting her that very moment to ask her why she’d done it, why she didn’t love him anymore; who looked up to see a man crossing the street and, in a panic, hit the gas instead of the brake. And like that, Emily’s father was dead.
This all just started happening by accident. What started out as a pretty cliched piece of shit trying to be a short story is starting to stretch itself out into a novel with some OK scenes here and there, a couple of which I can probably use in some real writing later. (!!!)
You might say I wear my heart on my sleeve, but really, I go further than that. I smear it all over my face and jam it into my fingers and stuff it in my teeth. My stretched, stuffed heart has lose threads, too. I weave them into every word, twisted tightly around each letter, these heart strings of mine. You might say I’m too sincere. Everything is real in my life; everything is potent and important. You might say I’m too sensitive. But I mean the things I say and I feel the world, I feel the world.
I can’t even begin to tell you what happened with this one. First I’m sitting on the floor, happily working on some shitty watercolour paintings. You know, experimenting with brushstrokes and stuff. I was painting blue and purple tree branches. Then the next thing I know the acrylics are out and I’m mixing greens while my scissors are off frantically cutting up newspapers. An hour or so later, there’s this weirdly too-bright thing. OK.
Every once in a while I wake up in the morning and decide drawing is a good idea.
my thoughts
on the soles
of my feet,
I walk out
into the sun,
each step a
reinforcement,
a guide.
my feelings are
slipped on
over my toes
the very tips
not because they are quiet
not because they are shy
but because that way they
govern how high
I can reach,
how tall
I can stand.
———————————————
I didn’t know it, but
The things you took away
the ways you emptied me
I didn’t know it, but
you were simply clearing space
clearing me
and now I have room for
something new.
