Desire. & listening. & wet. Where’s the fire?

& listening is all we can do. & writing down the ear. Earrings. How dangle feel like rain, how cold owns its own wet. I feel the cold as I sit in front of a space heater, as I robe myself in blankets. Sweat into wet. So many ways to swim, to paddle, to oxygenate. I want to say, I understand the way blood pools like autumn ringlets, how wet only wants to spread.

Desire. Wanting. Lack. It’s what I know. This need to fill what you call empty, like a name. What do I want to fill with? Might as well be water. Feels like wet. Folding a river. Re-imagining wet. That slides down the other side of myself. It slides. Yes. What stays? We listen for it.

Sara confuses votive with vote, says both contain fire. But I though both contained choice. Same? Maybe. Opera night. An open. A translation. & if my voice could voice like that, I’d sing my own lyrics. My voice, my hands. Here. Hear.       

Crosses & hatches. Lines & ties. How to build anything. I stitch myself into. White spined. Combat boots. Still, I sigh, when I drink too much water. When my laces drench through. These upside down arches. When we know that having these hands that cup, that hold isn’t good, isn’t enough. When so much else slips over.

I tell her, that’s why you’re so sad, to think you should always be happy, always be finished, always be what you want. Does she believe me? Sara says it doesn’t matter either way. That to get out of drowning you have to breathe, & that’s how you drown as well. You open, you flood. 

My grandmother told me today, don’t follow in my footsteps, I’m not a good person. When I asked what she meant, she said, it doesn’t matter. How can it not. Matter. & how can I forget? A week of confessions, yesterday, my grandfather’s birthday. Yes, she should confess, she did, after all, tell me years ago I was going to hell. Be sweet, she tells me now, be the good girl.

I’ve always known birthdays are days of confession. Luckily, I know, thankfully, it isn’t Friday. Though, Friday implies distinction between the week & the end. The Mondays. For her, it is all the same. I wonder if she would forgive me for writing this, if she would understand that I don’t & but I’m trying to learn how to. If she knows we need forgiveness. A bad day, she says, it’s a bad day again. Cholera-like. I know, honey, I do. I wish us through this acid ring, this blue bowl of loops.  

Tomorrow’s my mother’s birthday. Like mountains in the horizon still. When the clouds descend, you wonder where the mountains disappear to, what is washed away in the moist wave. & you know instinctively, that so much is. Washed away. Not cleaned, never truly cleansed but soaked through, buried & then—cycled through, forgiven or resurrected or suicided in the retelling. 

If I had a daughter, I’d teach her the small things (how to pull wings off a butterfly, how to create a glass paperweight). The larger things (learning to wear high heels, remembering to cross your legs while wearing a skirt, love) hurt more when you fall from them. I’d at least tell her that, after the first time she fell. Stand ready with pink bandaids & Neosporin, perhaps some wine. There is an hour when you know what to say, but in that hour you face alone air, your daughter outside playing. & when she returns, you love her too much to say it aloud, to tell her your truths. So you don’t, & you know, later, she won’t understand your silence. Simply can’t. & then, you know, you’ve protected her, given her all you can.