today's horoscope

three words:
sensory deprivation tank

you hear this horoscope from across the room and come at me like a magnet.  you tell me about what it is like to float as if you were the one who had float.ed.  as if the friend you describe shared the same brain as you, the same feet, the same twitch of the nose.  the same: senses.

but what would it be like?

it wouldn't.
be.
like anything.

you say it is the stripping down to your very soul.  you say it is where you find out who you really are.  you say it is where you discover things about yourself you didn't know.  about yourself.  wide eyed.  electric.  so so excited.  to visit the place you yourself have never been.  you are bursting with your nothingness.  your letting it all go.  your eyes just grew a deeper shade of blue and your lips pulled up at the corners.  just enough.  (i saw it then.  i glimpsed your core)

i say it sounds. . .amazingly. . .difficult.  all my fingers twitching just thinking about it.  but maybe i am talking about the nothingness that surrounds us even now.


these are the things i would have missed tonight.

this story would not have found a voice.

your ears would not have perked.

you may have stayed, lost.  slinking around the edges of the crowd instead of parting the see
to be yourself.

with me and him and her.

if only for a moment

take it

we used to believe that the earth was the center of the universe.  

and so it is with the heart.  

i gave you mine to share but you put it into a box.  the box went under your bed.  your bed was cold like wax and smelled like hay.  still i went on.  beating

still i told the story of myself.  

ran along dirt roads past horses.  pumped my fists.  went bowling and made the first move.  discovered cilantro and decided a little tiny bit can still be too much, too much.

still i gave another little piece.

ran along trails all covered in roots.  jumped off a bridge after you.  climbed to the top of a billboard clutching flowers.  held your feet in a soundless ocean.

remember the box and the bed and the fish made of glass.  remember the box and break another little piece.

i know you got it: and it makes me feel (good).

the things we say aloud

last night, there you were again.

in a parking lot with a jump ramp in the middle of a busy city.  how do you get in that way?  (you don't.) you find the secret entrance around the corner.  look for your car, it is hidden but i know it is there.  i drive you to it. . .just a little farther. . .i can make it from here, you say, so i still never see it.  i wonder what you are driving these days but don't ask.  we both step out of my car awkwardly (only i am the one that is awkward).   you give me a sympathetic hug.  a no expectations hug.  but i am not relieved, really.  i'm not anything.

i wake groggy.  try to figure out all that has been left unsaid and all that has been shown.

so loud.

solid soup

Carter said  thank you today.  Said thank you for the soup, that was good.  Thank you for the Nyquil.  I said it is because I love you.  So so much!  This is true, but there was something in the thanking that I didn’t know I needed to hear.  So nice, so home.  I realize he is watching me in the up and down.  Phone call after phone call.  Pause the show, stir the soup.  Sit down, stand up.  My ripples don’t rock his boat.  My movements don’t disturb him.  He sits still, like a rock.  He takes it in.  He puts away the dishes and comes to the door to say goodbye.  He is here, in the knowing.  He will be here when I return.  He is: solid.  

out.side

so, karen and i were just talking today about how sometimes you just can't find that balance in the world. about how you reach that 'wtf' moment where you wonder when it's going to just stop being so crazy.  and then this happened when i was leaving shelter and two of our young ladies were outside smoking a cigarette and finishing their outside chore. . .

fancy red car cruises by shelter

girl: 'did you see that mexican slow down and try to pick me up just now?  really, dude?  outside of shelter?  what an idiot.  he doesn't even remember that last time i robbed him of $500 dollars.'

me: raised eyebrows, sucking in my breath, bending over in a long sigh (sometimes you just don't have words)

girl: 'what? i'm not going to suck anyone's dick for $20 bucks.  so i stuck a knife to his balls and robbed him of his rent money'

long pause

me: 'on that note. .  .'

girl laughing and tossing her cigarette: 'goodnight mel!'

ho.ly shit.  

and the crazy thing is that this wasn't the most awful thing i heard tonight.  in passing, like just another story.  harm reduction.  teachable moment.  holder of stories.  

sometimes you just take one to the gut and drive yourself away

all the voices

tonight all the voices sound the same and the need is great.  greater than we have to offer.  greater, each night, like a snowball.  not just the metaphor, but an actual snowball.  picture it: tiny speck rolling across the lawn.  picking up more and more and more of itself until it is too big to lift.  until this is the space it anchors to and becomes something else.  a man.

is that what shelter is?   the gathering up of self.  the picking up of other people, other energies, other stories and traumas and urgent struggle for basic need?  is it the rolling until you can't roll one more inch? is this the spot where you get stuck, where you become?


but back to the voices and the way they roll into each other.  mel, mel, mel, melmelmelmelmelmel.  give me a bed upstairs.  move me to the top of the list.  i'm not like the others.  move me.  move me.  move.  me.

everything is blocked.  is overflowing.  is only going to get: more stuck.

Your Head in Your Hands

you talk at me through long strands of black hair.  your bangs, long.  hands, long.  arms, long.  fingers: impossibly long.  everything about you is long and lean and delicate.

yet, you are: so strong.  you are the very definition of reed (which is ironic since that is where you long to be, buried in books and discourse)

look at you, long black reed.  look at you bending over yourself, talking to me through your hands, talking into your knees.  talking about the one who says mean things just to tear you down.  look at you popping back up and pulling your slender fingers through the curtain of your hair to peek back out at me. i'm still here.  i'm still listening and nodding and asking you more questions.

i am still.  sharing the space.

learning about slave-to-owner.  learning about all you want validated.  learning about all that you think that you are.  you say that was me at 14, finding words that i didn't know existed that described exactly what i had been feeling for so long: gender dysphoria; slave; trans.


i am still here.  trying to find words i didn't know existed to sum up my own way.  of being.