starlight-nocte

[starlight-nocte]

at my latest ortho appointment,

I learned that

the manner in which I walk

developed in order to alleviate

pain.

I tell the doctor

that, in the past, it’s been suggested that

I have hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

without looking up

from the x-rays of my left knee,

she says, “That sounds about

right.” but to tell you the truth:

the first doctor I saw

for a joint injury, the morning after

I dislocated my (left) kneecap,

diagnosed me right away,

scribbling

the name of the condition

in his notes without actually

telling me… I only

found out after an unrelated

hospital visit–

almost a decade later.

& tonight, my knee buckled beneath me

while I was in the shower

& I caught myself on a grab bar

installed for someone much older

than me.

my breath rattled in my lungs.

I am 26 years old.

I am not supposed to have

a pain-reducing gait,

a bad knee that aches when

it rains.

It was never supposed to be this way.

tonight, 10 years after the first

dislocation/sublux/sprain/strain/

miscellaneous pain,

I still don’t feel any better.

— hEDS / Y—- Sports Medicine

[starlight-nocte]

you confided in another librarian

that the reason you felt so ill &

the reason you carried a hiking backpack

on your narrow shoulders

bulging with its contents—

was because you had recently run away

from home. you had no choice.

as you told her,

you were in a

domestic violence situation

& isn’t it weird that we call

domestic violence a situation

and not a culmination? a result?

a consequence?

you walked here in the heat.

and I wonder at how people like you

(like us)

find a library and decide that

this is the safest place we can be.

when you fainted,

we got you a fan, an ice pack,

a bottle of apple juice.

we let you lay on the floor by the computers

until you felt better.

and what is that if not good

customer service?

what is that if not

our solemn duty as members

of the same species? the same likeness?

I still don’t know your name,

and you don’t know mine,

but in this moment we are one with the

big wide world.

& inside it, we keep going.

going, going.

until we reach some place

better, kinder.

if there’s such a thing as

sanctuary,

I imagine it to be quite like

a library.

— Ode to the Patron Who Donated Blood Before Walking to the Library

[starlight-nocte]

Today would have been

Your birthday

So I suppose it’s time

For the poem

I write every year.

I wish I could give you flowers.

& also that I was not

700 miles away from where

We buried you.

But the truth is that

Life goes on,

& not always for the better.

If you were alive now,

Things might be the same.

You would be emailing me

Letters of doom and

damnation,

Never allowing me to simply exist

As I am, without conditions.

There were always conditions.

I miss the emails.

& I never thought I could.

But I miss any sign of you,

Alive, if not well.

I don’t know if heaven is real, Dad

But if it is,

I hope you found it.

— Untitled

[starlight-nocte]

do you know

that the world behind

the skin of my forehead

is war

torn?

there are bodies here,

strewn across the grass of my cortices.

each one holds a rifle—

the kind with the blade protruding

from the end of the barrel.

the walls of my skull

are covered in its absurdity,

in hieroglyphics that have no meaning

or translation. this land

is split down the middle,

two lobes of gooey flesh

that know only how to hurt,

how to ache, never how to

clean up afterwards.

— There Are Bodies Here.

[starlight-nocte]

It is almost noon

On a brisk Wednesday in February.

& I will be 26 in 4 days.

When he was tortured,

Mathew Shepard was only 21.

When she was stabbed to death,

Brianna Ghey was just barely 16.

& when my father screamed at me

For dating a trans man

Until the early hours of the morning

On a school night,

I was almost 17.

I was going to tell you the first time

He told me I was going to burn

In hell,

But it happened so many times that

I can’t remember anymore.

That type of thing—the condemnation

Of a parent,

It stays with you.

It sinks into your bones

Until it becomes part of the fabric

Of what makes you

You.

To be honest,

I never thought I would live

To be in my late-twenties.

To be fair,

I never thought I would make it to the

3rd grade,

But that’s another story.

& yeah most of that was my

Mental illness,

My habitual suicidality.

But would you believe me if I said

That being depressed wasn’t everything?

It’s something, certainly,

But there’s always been this underlying fear

That people want to hurt me.

& the problem is that I’m not

Exactly wrong.

Sam Nordquist’s body

Was found last week.

He was only 24 when he died,

Raped & beaten & viciously abused

For an entire month,

If not longer.

& why do I live when he did not?

What is so special about me that

I get all the luck?

Sam deserved to live.

That’s really all there is to it.

Sam deserved to live.

— Sam Deserved To Live.

[starlight-nocte]

I hear nothing

but my breath

tonight—

& isn’t

suicide

really just

another kind of

silence?

— Inhale / Exhale

[starlight-nocte]

do you know

how when the sun hits

something metal

& you’re looking right at it,

you can still see it when you look away?

when you close your eyes?

that is what this is like, today.

you have been gone

for three years, two months.

& still, when I close my eyes,

I can see you, I can see you.

your skin is still a ruddy red,

& your beard is more white than anything

else.

& you are smoking a cigarette,

twisted black tendrils of serpentine smoke

unfurling in the sky.

even when I’m not looking back,

your image still follows.

keep following, dad.

this is the one way you can

stay with me.

— Afterimage

[starlight-nocte]

anxiety

plays a sonata

along the xylophone of

my ribcage

& I keep wondering

when this will be over—

how long before I’m no longer

afraid of men who remind me of my

father?

how long before I can just

exist

without the memory of him

haunting me?

I just want to feel better,

but I still get the nightmares.

the smell of marijuana and nicotine

still throw me back into

the recesses of my

adolescence

where I am prey on the dinner plate

of a predator who knows my every

twitch & twinge.

I don’t want to be scared anymore.

I just want to be okay.

— untitled

[starlight-nocte]

to the ribbon of

scar tissue

threading its way

across my naked chest,

I say:

thank you

for making me more complete

by taking away

that which was never meant to be.

I touch the firmament of my healed skin

& it feels like if Michelangelo

had let Adam touch God

because what, after all, is more godly

than the act of creation?

— 10

[starlight-nocte]

i wish

i was

b e t t e r

— truthfully

[starlight-nocte]

I imagine

myself dying

& it feels

like some sort of

grace.

is this what is

left

of me?

— what stays

[starlight-nocte]

i wish you were

here

— forgotten / v

[starlight-nocte]

I think you are 26 today. 

I know it’s your birthday. 

Isn’t it strange, the things that stay? 

You were once mine & 

I was yours 

And the sky above us was white as alabaster 

But now there is seven hundred miles 

Between us

& so much silence 

I can almost hear it. 

You were my best friend, once upon a time,

But what did i know?

I was a kid. You were a kid. 

& people grow up, grow apart.

Memories are all that we have 

& even then, they are so dissolvable. 

I am sinking in them, 

In them, you are nine years old

& your hair is like corn husk

& you are smearing the light 

From a dead firefly 

Across my skin. In them,

I go to your house after a car accident 

That almost killed me 

And my sister and my father

& i don’t even tell you it happened.

-- Birthday Blues

[starlight-nocte]

I care so much

that it 

almost

feels violent.

& does that make sense

to you? 

or am I just crazy? 

I don’t have the proper words 

to explain this manner of wanting.

I want to swallow the world 

& all the planets too,

but I’m afraid I’d still be 

hungry.

— Amplitude

[starlight-nocte]

"Help me--

I'm drowning

in myself

& I've

forgotten

how to swim."

-- What Would You Say If You Could Say Anything?

[starlight-nocte]

time is passing

too fast.

i can’t hold

on—

— untitled.

[starlight-nocte]

On Tuesday,

I wake up

Wishing

I hadn’t.

I entered this world

On a Tuesday, you know.

How fitting it would be to leave it

On one too.

What, after all,

Is making me stay?

— flickering out