"I'm not saying you can change a shape without forever altering the inside. I'm saying the opposite. I'm  saying that in some cases the inside persists long after it doesn't."

Cascando by Samuel Beckett

1

why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed

is it not better abort than be barren

the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives

2

saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words

terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending

I and all the others that will love you
if they love you

3

unless they love you

Diagnosis by Cynthia Cruz

Awkward, and almost always the idiot
Savant, mutant, retard, I

Travel my own effervescent weather,
In my underwater

Vessel, my sweet
Mars, and soundless

Daydream, magical sweep of Rimbaudian
Reverie. Always

Clumsy, and guileless, mind-
Blind, and deathly shy,

Winning every spelling bee,
Every math contest,

Done before the rest, finishing
First in science test.

Hiding the quarterly honor-roll awards
I won beneath the bed.

The shame of being
Seen consumes me.

And I fight it back,
A landowner warding off

Leagues of feral thieves,
With fire, handheld torch, burning back

The onslaught. In grade school,
Listening to the same Blondie song in my bedroom, over

And over for hours, days,
For years. No friends

But the one: silent, and sitting
In my head. Running laps around

The house for five, ten, fifteen
Miles, counting

Calories of everything put
Into my mouth—desperate to ward the onslaught

Off. Until I am nothing
But a body.

Burn the body down
And, with it, out goes the pilot

Blue light of the mind.
Everyone said

I was pretty back then.
Maybe, way back then,

Before I began.

To Read: Ross Gay/Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

 "he put gently into the earth

some plants which, most likely,

some of them, in all likelihood,

continue to grow, continue

to do what such plants do, like house

and feed small and necessary creatures,

like being pleasant to touch and smell,

like converting sunlight

into food, like making it easier

for us to breathe."

Evening, I wander lakeside
Heavy with the tomb of sorrow

Dropped deep inside me.

Ephemera, and trauma.

I thought I could stop
The incessant hum

By moving from city
To city,

By starving clean
The body.

The miraculous leveling out
Of meaning.

Obsessive archiving and collecting
As a means to stop the hum and drone

Of memory, the diamond-white
Rush of doom.

"How do I feel about my botched suicide
Now."

Hannah Sanghee Park #thesame-different

"What's heavier/ than an unused heart, fat with its never-/seen potential? You who stilled a lover./ You who lives all your life with a cover."

"So heart do right by me."

Karen Solie #theroadinisnotthesameroadout

"It seems you can live your whole life with a creature/ and only know it one way."

"Often I don't recognize what I'd rather not do until I've agreed to do it.

"Then I know what I want and what I want makes me weak."

"Sometimes when I've thought I've hurt you,/ you haven't even noticed I'm around. I admire that./ It's something one might work towards one's whole life."

"The fat of its heart has been spent on winter."