tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20244708244121513642024-03-13T15:55:39.308-04:00words like foam on the wavespictures from a disappearing mermaid, songs from the pirate queen.Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comBlogger191125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-7493801289395762642022-07-30T16:36:00.002-04:002022-07-30T16:36:29.747-04:00luminous red novae<div style="text-align: left;">Dearth and burning famine milled these<br />teeth I grind, the dough I work. As sure as<br />certainty brings ruin</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />(and γνῶθι σεαυτόν, I know myself as well as you). </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Hand-carved and scolded, limitless in orbit<br /> but frozen here in place, an edged weapon<br />ill-tempered, waiting for my life to begin. <br /> <br />Come taste what lies beneath my skin,<br />slick sharp. Watch unwarranted embers<br />scorch my tongue--pale coral devoré,</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />the acidic yearning to run, the way my<br />wingspan burns in reds and golds, how<br />mica shreds me, grass-edge wounds me,<br />heartbreak in foaming<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">cherry syrup, kakigori gore spilling from the<br />side of my scowling mouth into silver rings.<br />Ice slips into my throat, damp and paper<br />petals falling from my hands, dull against<br />the wind. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />I snarl and show my teeth, I tear at the seams </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />where my face is settling into lines I cannot<br />understand. I am sinking, caught in soot,<br />soft as feathers that stain me ever deeper</div><div style="text-align: left;">dusk, dust. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Always the shade against dark</div><div style="text-align: left;">skies you cannot touch, still trying to solve<br />this groundless, grievous fault, I wonder, </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />is it such strain for you? the reach? to reach</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />the light of new stars, the reflection of the<br />slivered moon as hot and copper as blood,<br />as salt as ocean and tears. As terrible as<br />time, as silent. As luminous as the oil-slick<br />that gilds each dying bird, as sultry-sweet as<br />the memory of your hand. <br />--</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-65112354515183908212021-08-05T17:00:00.000-04:002021-08-05T17:00:18.696-04:00barycenter<p>I dream of your thirst for flushed cheeks<br />and ragged breathing. I whisper these summons<br />into my own tangled hair, silver locks strung with keys,<br />as if in the words I struggle to keep<br />from their quicksilver tumble from my lips,<br />in the way I keep my mouth from seeking</p><p>a descent, where damned river sinks into this jaded sand, <br />a song I sing to the tune of October and November and on and on, <br />as if black apples eaten under cypress trees<br />and those long-memoried lists of love were no dream; <br />as if at my demand he will always reach for me, once more</p><p>oh beloved, at least once more.</p><p>I play at accompaniment, draw him close <br />to drive him--augment it with roses and char,<br />with thyme and burning sugar--each song a pale-moon reflection<br />of how I require one hand at my throat in challenge,<br />how inexorable in his love,<br />how he raises my face to his own, so coolly</p><p>calculating my every shuddering gasp, how I live <br />and die for every maddening kiss. These draw us but<br />the truth is, cold is a game we both can weave so clean<br />until mouths meet skin, always sweet, a sigh and a smile,<br />sometimes sharp teeth and ruin,</p><p>pretense and authority. He knows this fire, too, <br />disguises white-hot and trembling in a pale scrim<br />playing at snow-sheets and shade-trees, my sunrise.<br />Silk-glass spun, splinters left in my skin and so-sure hand <br />on me shaking all imperceptible<br />to any but the pulse I've swallowed, shuddering,</p><p>he knows every cataract, cascade, and riptide</p><p>running through my veins will be an undoing, <br />and still it comes singing, still I come singing, <br />still it comes in fog and rhyme and unmarked depths <br />to catch us, even aware, bright paper lanterns all alight,<br />a burning in renunciation of those ashes we already knew. </p>Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-5906339616452750192021-07-07T10:29:00.000-04:002021-07-07T10:29:08.152-04:00No Harm<p> </p>Tanabata, tired hands folding waxed paper into<div>wishes to knot around hollow limbs, foil-bright</div><div>cranes under howling hoods. <br />
<br />
I am still plating fiddleheads in July, through</div><div>heat advisory heavy weather sunscreen salt and</div><div>not one breath without the thought of you. <br />
<br />
Sweat more than tears rolling down my arms as</div><div>I lift them to the sky, longing to reach that cool</div><div>river of stars that separates us still. I am caught</div><div>in canes of red berries, <br />
<br />
I cannot be submerged. But I can weave, warp</div><div>and weft, words and winding, each thread a</div><div>fragile song whose whispered notes barely bend</div><div>a single leaf on the slender bamboo of your time. <br />
<br />
I love in shards of glass reflecting, in the blood</div><div>that falls, in the way it cuts, unthinking:</div><div>lacking in filter, with total disregard for consequence</div><div>or the curses that ring in my wake. Śīla,</div><div>
<br />paper knives and silk, stars and every anxious</div><div>breath pulling me deeper, sky and sea. Śīla. </div><div>A stone in my shoe and a weight on my heart.</div><div>Śīla. A ragged inhale. Śīla, śīla, śīla.</div><div>
<br /></div>Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-62050651966552050692021-06-22T14:16:00.005-04:002021-06-22T14:16:48.830-04:00Anemone<p>Even in love, permafrost. Cellared autumn against incipient winter, scarlet glass,<br />a blaze of coral against velvet night. Exhale your prayers, visible breath,<br />take off your gloves. Settle here in the earth next to me and taste the chill.<br />How deep my roots here and still reaching for your hands, my refuge in rosemary.</p><p>I want them sunk to the wrist at the harvest moon<br />and seeking, I want them tangled in my hair to unearth me, turning my face <br />to the heat that lights my skin. Season-agnostic I tend the shape of you, held close,<br />awaiting convergence. There is always space for you in my garden bed. </p><p>Some flowers need the cold to bloom; you are the only warmth I need.<br />I have no heart for any other--let me be your shelter when you seek the sea,<br />where the currents catch their breath at your every whispered word. Lay me<br />more than six feet down, what's left of me lit against the ocean floor,<br /><br />burning wires wound tight in my marionette limbs, tethered where weeping<br />Tethys rages still. Sing me from the deep, call me from the catacombs <br />where dawn never breaks, see me tattooed in night skies and hung with pearls.<br />I am only foliage, dark under the veiled moon, bright petals on the verge. </p><p>I dream of you while I sleep through summer, lost in salt water. I will wait for you,<br />tend my garden thalassic, where the stars are always sharp enough to cut us free.</p>Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-62936781513254986582021-06-17T18:29:00.000-04:002021-06-17T18:29:32.043-04:00marrow<p>Summer is like this, stifling: last winter's yuzu still sticky on my hands<br />and every hovering firefly flash a whisper, just a brief flicker of heat lightning.<br />A cygnet, a signal, a falling-star ache, whip-sharp burn of want,</p><p>A wave--it isn't the rain you asked for, falling from my hair in sparks and drops,<br />a smile in shudders and notes and the rose-petal bruises that blossom in my skin, singing<br />in molasses candy, a bed of brown sugar in the snow falling from the AC vents.</p><p>The sun so bright it burns in every direction, obscuring my way home,<br />the shadows so long I can't see a difference in the distance and the depth,<br />desire sweeter than antifreeze and just as thick on my tongue.<br /><br /></p><p><br /><br /><br /></p>Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-90212991986326396432021-04-17T22:18:00.002-04:002021-04-17T22:20:22.981-04:00Cold in my hands, <p>in this dream, I hold a carven silver pomegranate. Scarlet juice runs down my arms, garnet seeds scatter, I am bound in a ring of peony petals, palest blush matching my cheek. </p><p>I bear white gauze into the summer starlight, I tattoo myself in woad. My fingertips are stained the color of your eyes when they have gone dark with desire, and I can paint on the mossy stones each shuddering breath that burns beneath my skin, reddening the pale. </p><p>I taste toasted coconut and desert air, dry and scented with cactus blossom, I come clothed in spider-silk and pearls to the sun. I am blooming, blushing too. This year is marked in pinks. In magenta shading to deep violet. </p><p>At the pollen-bright center my body lies, an invitation writ in gold for a kiss--oh! Just one kiss, to begin! I write all my longings in a shaky hand, posted to the wandering bee. </p>Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-12684193451340112912021-04-10T15:41:00.004-04:002021-04-10T15:41:50.175-04:00Doradilla<p>Do you know the resurrection plant? The false rose of Jericho found tightly wrapped<br />into a ball that looks like string? They sell them at the side of El Camino Real<br />next to the corn dolls that look like blank bisque pottery, like my tía in stage makeup<br />and the lime-green ribbons for folklórico at the bright sunset of each month, skirts whirling, <br />eternally crowned with the huge white silk dahlias she loved</p><p>as big around your palm that dwarfed the saucers at the cafe I used to haunt. My sun<br />still rose and set on you, and the afterimage of that dizzying light tasted like the slow <br />burn of your smile, discretion darker than a summer midnight, sweeter than cafecito <br />pouring thick into a paper cup on a counter along the busy Miami streets where<br />we have never walked together. Not yet.</p><p>I do not talk about the drums echoing wildly through the brilliant desert night,<br />some days I cannot speak at all--but how long can one false rose stay curled<br />so tightly in on itself that it could be mistaken for something long dead? <br />Even in a city of sand and glass, the rain can roll in, thirst can be quenched,<br />time retrieved from drought's grasping hand.<br /><br />I rise again and again from my own ashes at your whispered invocation,<br />the walls I built around my heart spun from moonlight and flax that shiver at a touch,<br />the green radiating outward, relieving the strain, relaxing each limb.<br /><br />And Abuelita said: <i>I chose this name because I wanted you to heal,<br />like tatarabuela, I wanted you to touch the wretched stones that <br />rise in each of us and set them to rest the way your eyes dissolved my<br />aching bones in joy when you laughed at your own birth.</i></p><p>I've always preferred marigolds and the Moon, so I never bought one,<br />never brought any of them home to rest while<br />I gently pour water into a hard-baked terracotta dish so I could watch<br />it unfurl and bless us with so many beginnings.</p>Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-65155182273178396572021-03-27T01:28:00.002-04:002021-03-28T18:00:51.832-04:00kshanti<p>I want to taste the end of days on your skin, I want<br />to watch your eyes when my breath catches. Tell me<br />what you see, through the blush? Light descending,<br />time running out, the thread unwinding? This isn't<br /><i>safe</i>, it never can be. Stone sparks against water,</p><p>a mystery whose price runs high. Always on the edge <br />of a conflagration. Still, I want to breathe it in, I <br />want to drive those fires into my skin where I fall.<br />What is the feeling in my kintsugi heart that is not<br />quite emptiness, the desire to press my face </p><p>against your back as you drift off, the tangible<br />knowledge of the aching distance we put between<br />our physical selves? It's no accident we're like this.<br />Śūnyatā whispers to me just out of reach, pale and</p><p>shaking in my hands, my renunciation of desires<br />forever shredded by this want, this strange and<br />telescopic love. As if no moment has passed, and<br />yet as if the end of the world has come and gone.<br /><br />The resin I used to repair the cracks raises welts<br />on others' skin. The metal you burnished into my<br />wounds is all that remains. Mushin--the breaks<br />are our history. I will not forget, will not taste<br />the antidote in this life. I'd have you no other way.</p><p><br /></p>Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-57872837693734965162021-03-02T21:21:00.000-05:002021-03-02T21:21:14.550-05:00消えないで <p>my heart is a jackal in the desert night, makes a sound<br />somewhere between a sob and a peal of laughter,<br />is fencing the stars, slender silver stabbing against <br />a backdrop strewn wild and white. I dream the clouds are<br />swelling over the cliffside, the salt air in my mouth,<br />I know this. this dream where your face is imprinted<br />with lines from my pillow. where I place my finger</p><p>and trace in blood returning. bread rising in the kitchen,<br />my pulse is a muffled drum, the same as the breath<br />dragged from the deepest part of my lungs;</p><p>clouds dark against the sunrise,<br />deep blue streaked with gold and orange and violet<br />dim in the memory of your hair, the new light reflecting.<br />and I smell tangerines, I smell jasmine, I smell clove<br />rising from my own skin. water wants to run, water wants<br />to fill up your slant-smiling mouth and overflow in words<br />I salt away.</p>Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-42587329071565343312019-02-17T13:51:00.000-05:002019-02-17T13:54:31.137-05:00KannonIn the beginning, I woke up every day without my teeth clenched<br />
<div>
on this scream that would shatter the sky. </div>
<div>
I still wonder if I can ever return</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
to that quiet land. Amida Butsu, pure land, where no earth is barren, no life or love wasted. Lost, </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
sighing wind, pulled recklessly from my shallows. In shadow. I am not her. Only the tears are the same.</div>
Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-21154036933205722042018-07-03T00:00:00.000-04:002018-07-03T00:00:00.300-04:00ῠ̔φαίνω, wæf, ऊर्णवाभि<br />
there is a tangle<br />
of threads that must be teased out<br />
to weave my way home<br />
<br />
<br />
--<br />
huphaínō, wæf, ūrṇavābhi: weave, woven, weaver (Greek, Old English, Sanskrit)<div>
<a href="https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/on-weaving-and-sewing-as-metaphors-for-ancient-greek-verbal-arts/" target="_blank">On weaving and sewing as metaphors for ancient Greek verbal arts - Gregory Nagy</a></div>
Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-68450491881912278522018-04-04T15:41:00.001-04:002018-04-04T15:41:45.342-04:00boke-ajiplanted, I rot<br />
germinated, then wasted away<br />
here at the end are "wet," "torn," "soiled,"<br />
no words to conjure true magic<br />
<br />
I have no arm to raise<br />
no sword to brandish<br />
three times<br />
and fade away<br />
<br />
(once) I cannot<br />
(twice) I cannot<br />
(thrice like a charm) I cannot<br />
<br />
lay me in the lakebed and bury me in mud and amber beads<br />
close my eyes with pearls, peel back my fingernails<br />
dress me with wheat-holed coins and discarded fish scales<br />
press me into the clay and let me breathe green lake-water<br />
<br />
I wish I was anything but thisGrace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-9141925575720252672016-04-30T03:39:00.002-04:002016-04-30T03:39:26.032-04:00remote updateA carpet of stars<br />
caught on blue velvet, each grain<br />
faintly glimmering:<br />
impatient, I'm rushing past,<br />
waiting for life to begin.<br />
--<br />
<br />
I miss the darkness;<br />
the skies outside the city,<br />
the scent of the wind.<br />
--<br />
<br />
<br />Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-78187899174475341792016-01-12T08:53:00.001-05:002016-01-12T08:55:14.617-05:00ThesmophoriaIt is not right that I cannot pull the ghosts<br />
and wreckage of all that pain out of your hand,<br />
clenched half-closed around a cigarette,<br />
while your lips firm with the idea that I will turn my back.<br />
<br />
I cannot say: here is my heart, full of teeth<br />
and bent nails, bound to destroy, bound to reform--<br />
I cannot speak without the rust of tears betraying me.<br />
<br />
Give me your hand and let me draw out the cobwebs,<br />
put your palm over my chest full of forge-coals and discarded ore,<br />
touch me and be assured that I know of sorrow,<br />
know of its threads that come loose and tangle,<br />
knot around the tongue.<br />
<br />
I cannot say: the stars in their bloody orbits know<br />
that I am unable to walk away from your wounds<br />
with healing held behind my sharp teeth,<br />
ever needing to press my mouth to the cut,<br />
<br />
to whisper black ink and snip loose threads,<br />
prayers rising in smoke. I cannot tell you<br />
I can hear your refusal to acknowledge that pain.<br />
<br />
You grit your teeth and go on, you turn<br />
your face aside from the only words I have to give.<br />
We are not twins, but mirrored. I do not fear any end<br />
but uselessness.<br />
<br />
<br />Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-38396326309336748162015-11-27T17:28:00.001-05:002015-11-27T17:32:33.788-05:00AnankeThese are the flaws that make it mine:<br />
a slanted stitch, a hole, a miscount, a wavering hem<br />
that flows from side to side instead of marching steadily on.<br />
<br />
The hands that make these things are as contrary, each<br />
slow shift, each clicking needle a testament to shallow<br />
waters. Each wrist flick, each knuckle crack, a metronome.<br />
<br />
Contradiction in every cell. Wide palms and narrow fingers,<br />
spread aslant to pull a thread, to snip or coax just a little farther on.<br />
I cannot weave any longer, but I can cull. Press a finger into the<br />
<br />
hollow of this wristbone, press your lips against the pulse that beats<br />
there, grey wings thrashing against a black iron cage, grey wool winding<br />
around ebony needles, grey pinstripes on silk like dark waters.<br />
<br />
Slipped stitches, dropped skeins, slow and steady will make no<br />
imperfect thing. Speed alone will kill, rushing headlong into the end.<br />
<br />
Knot it tight and move on.<br />
<br />Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-23961388959235712942015-10-09T13:54:00.000-04:002015-10-09T13:56:05.768-04:00wheat and cherries and the world's turningif you missed me, here is what is happening lately:<br />
<br />
"In the tundra, yellow grasses waving goodbye to the warm seasons. Marya Ivanova, grandfather's Masha, Mashenka, trudges over camouflaged hills in winter boots, fur wrapped inside, close tied with leather straps. She is heading to the cool slate forest, stamping down gold seedheads and silver tassels. Masha, Mashenka, Marya Ivanova is walking in autumn to the end of the world."<br />
<br />
ded maroz and snegurochka are sneaking in through autumn skies to haunt my dreams and press out of me a harvest of words. it's proserpine and the descent of inanna, godfather death and love like salt, kore and the gears that shift the world. see you on the other side.Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-68183484262698358112015-09-26T01:33:00.001-04:002015-09-26T01:33:48.157-04:00Labyrinth Sometimes, you sit on the floor of the shower and breathe steam until you can cry. Sometimes you breathe steam so you can go back to breathing air. Sometimes, you chew your nails to rags and avoid looking at the razor hanging on the wall.<br />
<br />
You can sleep for twenty hours a day. You can sleep for twenty minutes. You can feel the panic-rat scuttling around the corners of your mind, digging in with its surprisingly adorable claws until the chest pains begin.<br />
<br />
You go for days, weeks, months at a time, in recovery, feeling strong and capable and positive about where you are headed in life; feeling the old power rising in you whenever you say no. Whenever you say yes. Whenever you say what you really want instead of temporizing, hedging because you are worried about what the inquiring person will think.<br />
<br />
And it's okay, when you make it through these days, even if you wake up the next unable to breathe or think or see, even if you did it to yourself, trying to re-educate your brain on the subject of abuse. It's going to be okay. Some days, it is not okay. And that is fine, too.<br />
<br />
But in every minute and every breath, there is the possibility of fear rising in you. Irrational and rough and blood-warm, or acid, or colder than you've ever felt before. At any given moment, you are vulnerable to surprise, to the wrong word, to a stray thought or idea. You fear being brittle, or too inflexible, too pliable. Too broken.<br />
<br />
You are not broken. You are going to be okay. Even on the days you are overwhelmed by all this feeling? We get through. One breath at a time. One step. One word.<br />
<br />
Every part of you is a victory. You have breathed steam and air, you have given tears and thought and time. You have eaten, you have hydrated and rested. You have not cut. You maybe cut only a little. You thought very seriously about hurting yourself and decided against it? You win. It is okay to make mistakes, and you will. Because progress is not a straight line, or a race, or a contest.<br />
<br />
Every time you think, "It could have been me," you can also remember: You are still here. You are important. You are alive and you matter and you will, eventually, leave all this behind for whatever you want of normality.<br />
<br />
Leaving things behind is not bad, or heartless, or cruel. It can be necessary to breathe steam instead of smoke, more oxygen than nitrogen. Leaving things behind can be a necessity. You can still remember with love, but you do not have to carry them with you.<br />
<br />
I am not a role model, I am only stubborn. I sit on the floor of the shower and cry, and I have to remember to breathe, and I think, "it could have been me."<br />
<br />
But it wasn't. And I do not think I will ever allow it to be.<br />
<br />
<br />Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-87262532412838707192015-09-19T00:01:00.000-04:002015-09-19T00:01:34.207-04:00pour encourager les autreswhen the razor skips over thin skin<br />
and blood wells up,<br />
falling on the shower floor like rain,<br />
<br />
you never notice.<br />
<br />
like whiskey in a parched throat,<br />
the pulse and burn<br />
of ink pooled on your stomach,<br />
black and spangled with light,<br />
<br />
scarlet footprints on dark carpet,<br />
a stubbed toe, cracked nail weeping<br />
<br />
camouflaged tears.<br />
the stain is still there, hidden,<br />
<br />
until one day it disappears,<br />
that secret piece of you,<br />
and you never notice at all.Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-46762272680537323902015-06-25T02:36:00.000-04:002015-06-25T02:36:36.956-04:00Level 32 RangerThis might be the weirdest birthday I've ever had. There are things that have happened over the years that, written down, seem like the fiction I work so hard to create. But this is the year that things are truly strange. There is not much that I can say about it, here. There are too many words unsaid.<br />
<br />
I have left abusive relationships, I have clawed my way back to the surface. I have looked into a night sky that seemed endless and unforgiving, searching for a single star.<br />
<br />
I have written and I have not written, I have left too many things unfinished. I have lost companions and lovers and friends and a home. I have left a place that never suited me and retreated to take asylum in a place where it rains, even storms, and where fireflies hang in the dim summer nights.<br />
<br />
I am feeling my way back into my own skin. The damage is legendary. But I can still tread water.<br />
<br />
I do not know where I am going, or how I will manage to move on. I do not know, anymore, what I want from life, other than to put one word in front of another, one foot in front of the other, and go on. I want to write down the books in my head, not because I feel that the stories should be free of me, but because I want there to be more to life than dead pages cluttering up my brain.<br />
<br />
When you come here to see an empty page, celebrate for me. Because when I have written every word down in ink like blood, when I have emptied both barrels at the page, hit my target, and moved on? I will be free.<br />
<br />
I want to persist like Octavia. I want to breathe again.<br />
<br />
I want to live.<br />
<br />
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<br />Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-62136363046479722482015-05-21T15:00:00.000-04:002015-05-28T04:58:12.957-04:00besotted5/21/15:<br />
I dream of a soft blanket wrapped around me, the snow falling on your city lighter than breath. I'm writing at a window, my window, wherever that will be, with my legs curled under me and my headphones on. There's hot chocolate on the stove (there's liqueur to mix in it) and the window is cracked just enough to feel the ice in the air, just enough for the smoke from my cigarette to slip out in spiraling clouds to join the blue light of dawn.<br />
<br />
I dream of walking to work in the winter, of coffee shops encased in ice and the steam that unfurls from the cup in ghostly flags. It is the silence of a movie's opening credits and who knows, yet, where this story will go? It is the thrill of uncertainty that keeps me balanced, standing tall. Seated, wrapped in dreams and blankets, sweater swallowing me whole and my teacup balanced on my knee. A breath of foreshadowed winter that can touch me, even here.<br />
<br />
5/27/15:<br />
I do not find it hard to imagine what other people want from me. I behave in a certain way in certain situations. I do not slip, in general. In specific, where you find me, it is different. I am on <i>terra firma</i> only when I know what is expected of me. At any other moment I might slip into the diction and hauteur of someone else's expectations, and disappoint.<br />
<br />
I can argue, I can demand. I can sit demurely on the floor, knees canted to the side and skirt tucked around my thighs while I smoke a cigarette in the sunset. I can laugh and flirt and do many things without thinking about them, but I cannot, somehow, intuit what you want. There is some kind of block in play.<br />
<br />
Do not give me leave to decide for myself what you want. Do not leave me without an operating manual for our conversations unless you want to see me gasp like a sea-creature hauled upward. Choking, inelegant, on the sudden lack of pressure. I will write these thoughts (maybe), but put on the spot I can no longer speak. Will I ever be able to say what I mean? I cannot ask you, not out loud. I could ask you with my fingers, trailing along your sides. I could ask with my eyes, silently fixed on yours. Tactile, assertive, never yielding, never mute. Except somehow, now, I am.<br />
<br />
Perhaps I am caught in the web of your expectations no less than anyone else's. Perhaps I will find a voice in the spaces that exist without thought. It hasn't happened yet.<br />
<br />
--<br />
to be continued.Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-70781647106449803852015-05-19T15:38:00.001-04:002015-05-19T15:45:38.952-04:00ohanano nine-tailed fox, not now. only <i>washi</i> dissolving in ink and tears and rain. your lips are gone and the light that rang in your eyes like the nine thousand names of god has dashed against the rocks and shattered into nine times nine thousand indifferent fireflies.<br />
<br />
that name was a silver bullet on a full-moon night, piercing cold, meant to wound until I folded out of your way like the paper crane, I whispered, I warned you, that simple fold that may be my true form. I cannot bar you from harm when I have no more stars to light my way. I used to know where I was going from here.<br />
<br />
you are not who you were. I cannot be who I am. I will remember who I was, someday, and I will braid my hair into a coat. a chain. a noose, a sail. I will no longer look into the night sky, hoping for a way home. I have learned the futility of loss, the frailty to mourn, but I never regret. just give me time to stitch this up and regain my balance, to stop bleeding out on someone else's floor.<br />
<br />Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-46397070476804472362015-05-15T15:51:00.000-04:002015-05-15T15:51:33.089-04:00Fin de siècleI wake in the day, blinking in the sun<br />
dandelion-fuzzy, curls fizzing out of my head,<br />
the blood falling from my face like milk-glass--<br />
ecclesia non sitit sanguinem.<br />
<br />
But I blush out of habit and out of reach,<br />
the sucking sound of your lamprey mouth<br />
so many miles away, your voice shimmering through<br />
my dark waters. Your direct gaze.<br />
<br />
Reaction in my skin puts out tendrils, a vine<br />
and a catalyst, opals poised to burn, acid<br />
in the acrid night, full moon smiling on the auto-da-fé<br />
of my heart, staked down and set alight<br />
<br />
without hesitation. A shiver in the wake of your smile.<br />
A note vibrating in the darkness before the dawn. A knife that<br />
sinks in, remote. I cannot repent. I cannot forget. I cannot relent.Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-44181684461750496962015-04-15T18:34:00.000-04:002015-04-15T18:34:34.456-04:00SepsisWhere is the worry? Is it in the second-day stubble of my shaved legs? Or is it in the swell of my breath, pooled in my lungs like the tide and pushed out with a sob? The things I never noticed until your absence from my body? I do not know. Today is grey, the kind of grey I love. It is about to rain.<br /><br />I have slept too long, wrapped in blankets and piled with cats, purring somnolent on my chest and hip. They reach out to each other in their sleep the way I imagine reaching out to you. <br /><br />I will not dress today. I will write or I will smoke on the porch in a nightgown. I will drink cafe au lait with almond extract, and I will eat dreams. <br /><br />The cats do not miss me. They have curled down in the warm puddle of blanket I have left and they are sleeping again. <br /><br />I cannot focus on any one thing, your hair swept to the side and ending in a wave, my beloved ocean in shades of wheat and gold. Your eyes, blue and green, cobalt universes. Your lips and wry smile, the defense against any endearments I might muster in an array of hope, pleading. <br /><br />I tell you I love you and I cannot see if it sinks in to the hilt. If it touches you at all. At all.<br /><br />I light candles against the day. I wake at night and breathe the damp darkness I have been dreaming. I hear music, I want to sing, but the words are no longer there. Salt on my tongue washed away with too-sweet coffee and heavy smoke. I cannot see myself without you, and I try. <br /><br />I live. I breathe. I exist. But your context is missing, your definition and style. I can touch and be touched and I will enjoy it, I will arch against another, and another, and however many others, and whisper in other languages the words they need to hear. The words I need to say. What meaning does it have, when I am not beside you?<br /><br />Here is a game I have been playing: Who is the secret center of this dance? I reach out and manipulate because it pleases me to do so, in the moment. Because it fills my emptiness. Because I cannot touch you, because I cannot see my love sink into you, to the hilt. I wish I could be ashamed of my cruelty. I have nothing left, not even a conscience. You have all the best parts of me, still. <br /><br />All that is left to me is sin.Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-13851055462530740412015-04-08T19:58:00.000-04:002015-04-08T19:58:13.355-04:00awake<i>You are a shrine to dangerous things</i>, he says, while I press<br />
my nails into his neck. And I am. I breathe smoke into the<br />
night sky and wait for the clouds to roll in.<br />
<br />
Kali, dancing, pauses between steps, and I run, heart aching<br />
through lightning strikes and coming down hard on every<br />
roll of thunder. Singing bowls chime the dawn of my day.<br />
<br />
<i>Tear it apart</i>, he pleads. <i>Crack it open and pull out the shreds</i><br />
<i>and shards of every evening spent beneath your feet. Tease out </i><br />
<i>the splinters and do not worry, do not mind the ragged breaths.</i><br />
<br />
I will do as I please. I will dance, singing, while I belt on bones<br />
and crown myself with lilies and ashes. Howl hymns to me, taste<br />
chicory and burnt sugar on your tongue and bow down.<br />
<br />
I am lovely in this light, a dangerous thing you have discovered,<br />
a monster and a lake, a god and a sea in which you may drown.<br />
Dive, drink deep. Be afraid.<br />
<br />
For I am a shrine, sacred to those who creep into my arms, to the tears<br />
and exhaustion of love. Hallowed by sound and sharp scent and the burn<br />
of needled flesh. I am a temple and a wave.<br />
<br />
I will draw you in and be damned.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2024470824412151364.post-43305884954763121672015-04-04T16:21:00.000-04:002015-04-04T16:21:37.293-04:00gilt-edgedthe key grinds in the lock, the tumblers turn<div>
and I am mute with need, my shaking hands filled with </div>
<div>
cast-off shards of iron and agate, glass sticking into skin,</div>
<div>
blood welling from the edges and you sink deep. somewhere,</div>
<div>
I left my resistance out to dry.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I will pull my ribcage apart and let you eat, replace my red-running</div>
<div>
muscle with silver wires, that wretched heart with a canary</div>
<div>
stained with iodine, leave me packed stiff with gauze </div>
<div>
and settling in for the winter, racked with longing</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
and marveling at the chill.</div>
<div>
it's supposed to be spring and still I run through gasping cold,</div>
<div>
ash-brown trunks blushing green, maple buds burning </div>
<div>
against the sky like the embers of every lonely cigarette</div>
<div>
that has flared between my lips at night. at dawn. at civil twilight.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
you have coiled between my thighs to hold the ashtray and </div>
<div>
even wordless, my hollows and edges limned electric,</div>
<div>
there is no difference between the summoning</div>
<div>
and the invitation.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Grace O'Malleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16420504323506157621noreply@blogger.com