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Krystyna (21.04.2025)

Your Philodendron is still in the basement. It will find its way back up to the sunlight in your guest bedroom, but not before its leaves have been cleaned of the dust that worried you. I'll also take care of your garden while you're gone. Take a break and sleep this off, and sleep well.

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Scheherazade (15.04.2025)

more like a prologue for collected stories’ beginnings before prolonging introductions for tales of longing: more lounging and seduction, and more, even grinning is adored and scrounged around for. (pages flipping)

more like nine hundred and ninety six nights before some storied conclusion undermining mine or yours, but keeping track of these nightly readings by numbers on consecutive pages. (they pay much attention to the plot)

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Magnolia (04.04.2025)

in '82 or '85 or when she said he left, (she says she can't remember when) her mother planted the magnolia. i point to leafless blooms from her room and packed her bags as she refused, as she panicked and spoke in tongues and said her nos (we know she knows, her daughter planted a white magnolia before her new bunker after it bloomed.) and in the end this is what comes. the magnolia petals opened in winds and flew through the opened windows where her mother left, where she leaves.

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Dog Balls II (04.04.2025)

opa’s lifting his leg for the work again, tongue out and panting and he barks his laugh when asking for my excuses and the Snackchen he seems to scent.

i’m a little late, i’m yawning and flushed and lifting my leg for the work to keep my mouth shut but couldn’t help smiling back as he cocks his head as if to know.

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Dog Balls I (26.03.2025)

up to twelve a day between the post holes and gravel and clay and drying soapstone. opa’s whistling and buzzing while digging, said our chest hair will grow like the weeds but slurred in german, his vodka breakfast and banana peels in beaten wheelbarrows while raking the piles to cleanse the stones. we dug along tight lines to porcelain shards and this is the work of dogs, he says again, dog ball licking work for the end of the day, for feierabend lays, for firing the day’s clay. he married young and had her fifty annums and she misses homemade polish sausage (though she’s still at home) but he’s a poet with promise, a buzzed saying translated when he offers his help and tubes of pain killer salves that coat his back and hands. months since we last spoke, kicked stones to smaller piles like prison gangs singing that the walls are falling down to ground. he’s taken to liking me, adopted as a son and smiles when i tell him it’s not his job to dig here, to rest his back, then studies my thesis on a phone screen while i dig. dirt on the screen, the mud in our veins, this charming old man’s polish barking as he tells me i lifted my leg for the work.

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Tides (19.03.2025)

“What will be will be.”

This is the repeated advice from so many people in my life. It rolls like waves in and out of the everyday. But there are charts for this. There are calculations and timesheets made by people more clever than me and I need only look them up for knowing when to stow my oars and wait. I could also read advice in numbers for when to push out of harbors. Despite this, I can’t plan for the weather. I know this. But today there are clear skies overhead. I have seen the storms on the water and know the waves there are worth avoiding, but in poor weather you push on through. So while what will happen will happen, wouldn’t it make sense to at least plan for this uncertainty? Why do I choose to live in the present day and bob along and watch the waters roll past?

I haven’t been one to wait in harbor. I now find myself far from the sea. If I wished I could walk along this river to its mouth along the Atlantic. I could hop a barge and stow away and putter past my old homes along the Mosel and Rhein. I couldn’t plan how long this trip would take. But wherever I’m going I’m comforted that at least the tide has its timetable.

I know I will eventually return to the sea where, everyday and finally, the tides are starting to turn.

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Portraits (23.02.2025)

I remember your face in different ways. I remember studying you as we sat on the couch in Liebling and you described your family to me. Your mother and the relationship with her mother, the relationship between your grandmother and her late husband, and your relationship with your grandfather as he started forgetting everything. Your last good memory with him while watching a game show and while he didn’t recognize you he spoke coherently. I remember you were comfortable and we laughed while reading pulp novels about bakers. I remember seeing you and picturing an easy life.

Then I recognized you. I remember the hill and sitting in the sun, the light filtering through your hair, and I remember the mark on your nose and your grin and a tooth that looks very real and the way your eyes glowed as you spoke. Again about your mother and the relationship with her mother, the relationship between your grandmother and her late husband, and your relationship with him after he moved on. Your final moment at the funeral and the playground photos with your family and the overeating and the crumbled cake your grandmother needed to bake. You brought a camera and I wanted your photograph, I could have taken the photograph, but I did not need to.

I remember seeing you again and again it felt new. Then I remember laying next to you and the grip of eye contact I hold with so few, when they roll back and when they roll over, when I hold you after, when we break apart and I catch something else there. I looked into you and thought I saw either a sadness or happiness sifting through, but I see many things worth holding onto. I think you know I would have liked to stay there with you. A photograph did not preserve these fleeting moments but memory can be photographic too.

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Das Große Rasenstück (46) Vines (13.03.2025)

ironic, isn't it, sitting on the wall opposite from the aged roots of a transplantation? the sofa there rooted dreamy escapisms from which the vine has seen eight suns after crossing nations for phototropism.

or is it? if this vine was cut and propagated and grew new leaves along the shaded paths, can adventitious roots brand as adventurous? while that corner was a root or origin of growth, cuttings found new light in a café’s stained glass.

the house of leaves has grown past many boundaries, spreading past windowsills and cafés to vineyards and city skylines, along bus routes and rivers that border the roman ruins. this vine is wholly divergent and growing roots.

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Chemo (10.03.2025)

garage doors closed a minute ago, the engine still clicking as bolts contract back to their source of heat like arms wrapped around cold torsos.

she left the windows open because she has a habit of forgetting her keys in the car but remains seated and belted in, gasping for air. her eyes are swollen and bagged, her hips are torn and weak, her back is arched and aching, her kidneys scarred, sleeping.

a gas canister sits wrapped in a trash bag near the driver's side, but the vapors wafted out and stained the walls. the sweet film coats her throat, singes her nose, waking her and reducing thoughts to meditative baselines. she could sit there nude or toweled, laid back and breathing benzene vapors, saps of eucalyptus on hot rocks in a sauna.

she can't feel the cold of the room, closing her eyes, her body melts through her clothes and the leather seats to rest on slatted cedar. for a moment she bathes in the oils and steam, allowing her tears to dry and mix with humidity. her sense of smell has left but for brief moments. she can't say why, hormones have been depleted, black bags dripped to bloodstreams after radiation clinics and shifts. there aren't many perks to her job, her cancer hiding from everyone, hiding to her benefit.

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Ten (10.03.2025)

he did it himself with wood stain and polyurethane. wintering, the floorboards were cold when sockless. splintering, showroom living room, socked slipping and sliding and gleeful and reserved and derealized. toe stubbing kitchen tiles raised above floorboards for eating peas and late writing for library contests, for santa claus and his escapades and cargo planes because red-nosed reindeer broke their legs on ice when landing. and that story won me fifty dollars.

those cold mornings by the window past lime sheer curtains where fogs rolled through a yet unfenced front yard, tulips poking through, their netherland sleeping after we spent the winters flying around. and then i remember nothing, i forget everything, but i remember reading fantasies about levitation and wondered if my letter would come at eleven because i too levitated from the blankets at night and felt myself leave the heavy weight of limbs.

the upper bunk and the duvet and the black cat who refused to stomach stresses and dry kibble, and she lay there next to me when i flew above blankets that were too thin for the colder nights and she was there when i remember, i remember, it hurts in waves when i remember this feeling, when i feel the fogs lifting from that old house and when i should have been sleeping. but how could i have known my letter would not arrive?

the lower bunk was occupied by two, he was always strange. i used to toss my cat to him when she convulsed from the unstomached anxieties and dry kibble, her rump balding after obsessive licking to keep herself clean. we were so organized, so ordered, and yet this dirt seemed to cling to us, so unclean. i realize now he was crying before sleeping and i tossed the cat to him for her hairballs.

mornings kicking him deeper into the mattress, swinging from the upper bunk and i regret this, though he says it made him stronger. i was weak. we used to watch taped films from the bunk bed and sometimes he sat with me on a higher level and my cat looked just like kiki’s on a broomstick and the letter would never come but we still flew. we dreamed of fighter jets, flights through skies. even then i knew. i knew. i knew. i knew. i knew.

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No Homo (I know?) (07.03.2025)

i text a friend i love him. he says, "that, men cannot do." he still managed to write it back as he knew i could write it too.

we write these words for other hurts. (we rarely read the truth)

i told this friend i love him, he says, "that was something new." he managed to stop smoking again, as he knew i stopped smoking too.

we do not tell these words to ourselves. (we only speak the truth)

i told my friend what we never hear he says, "that is what i need" he says, "it's crazy living here" and he knows i would never leave.

he now tells these words to other people. (they rarely hear the truth)

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Random-Access Memory Mechanikerpullover (04.03.2025)

knitting circles compliment my sweater, warmed to learn who wore it before. (a perfect fit but he still left her, a coupé exited garage doors.)

they knew him well and watched him leave, they asked our answers, plans, dreams. (built to build motors and machines to escape mothers and preteens.)

his grandson's hands pull over his Pullover, fibers snag calluses like that mechanic's. (hay fields and handlebars looked over, motorbike rides as mother panics.)

widows see him, they seem pleased? chests in stitches for exits weaved. (yarns knit before a life bereaved, spool ends a daughter grieved.)

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A Very Personal Note / white noise and binary

This blog was an experiment in anonymity. It began when I was half the age I am now, when I felt helpless and needed some way to process what was happening around me. I resorted to trivializing events with coded vocabulary and rhymes that read like static. Much of what I wrote was meant to be difficult to understand and intended as something only I could decode. This maintained some semblance of safety while allowing myself the freedom to express how I really felt.

For those who have followed me for years, and especially for those who have known me in my personal life, I want you to know that I have changed so much. I know there aren’t many of you left who still read these posts, but know that I am proud of where I am today.

Life improves. I have pushed through difficult years and have made many difficult decisions. Some of these led to incredible failures, but many of these were changes for the better. I am approaching my 30th year this month. When I began writing here I never would have expected this to be the most difficult decade of my life. It has taken me an excruciatingly long time to get here but I believe that I am exactly where I need to be and with each day I am more hopeful for what my future holds. I wish the teenage version of me could hear that. He certainly would have expected more of me, but he also had incredibly high expectations and as I look back, I think he would forgive me for not living up to all of them. If I could meet him I would point out all of my mistakes. I would warn him. And though I think he would be surprised by and appreciative of my honesty, he would still be furious.

“How could you let this happen? How could you be so stupid? I would never, not in a million years. You and I are not the same person!”

But I became what I am today and I am learning to live with it. I am still going through one of the most difficult times of my life. But I work hard when I have something to work for. I always wanted to be the guy with “the Right Stuff” and now I know that this isn’t unattainable. There are so many things I still need to do, but I have lived an incredible, if complicated, life so far and understand that I need to keep living it. I am proud of where I am today and even more excited for the future.

/

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Random-Access Memory Bouquets / Tulpensonntag (02.03.2025)

I used to snap stems then carefully slice stalks to improve the pulls of transpiration, even adding sugar to water so doomed blooms could live just a little longer. I loved keeping these flowers around as long as I could, but even when it was clear that they were ready to die I would deny them of this. I tied the bouquets with string. They often hung upside-down to dry from hooks in the wall, where the slightest touch would break them. Their petals often fell to the floor. When the colors faded and they no longer complimented the white walls, I still felt some need to archive the old growth. This required pressing what remained into books, later displaying them in picture frames like dead reminders of life. These days I remind myself that death itself is beautiful. I have learned to let what was once living die with grace.

This Tulpensonntag’s cold snap is warmer than my last and warmer than even a few before that. But there were many wonderful days during these colder seasons when light shone through the grey skies. I remain forever thankful for the growth that happened; I will always remember when soils nurtured me through hard-learned lessons in botany. Now I see new growth in wintered bulbs and frostbitten leaves of grass. I remain so thankful for both the cold and the warmth -- lessons that taught me to anticipate a brighter spring.

/

I’m rushing to the bus. My breath drifts over relatives’ unmarked graves in a walled off churchyard that the modern elders marked for development. There the daffodils sprout green shoots through frostbitten, wilted grasses blanketing nameless people at rest. They ignore Karneval calls and empty vases’ expectations and grow with organic schedules. I have learned to not time these things, life will find its way and I have to let life happen at its own pace. But I am running late.

The town feels alive today, more colorful than usual. As I rush to the bus stop I see a man walking towards me, his face hidden behind a mask. I want to but can't stop and speak with him to compliment this comedy. Mr. Lion likely knows me, but I remain silent and continue walking. As he is anonymous, I think he will understand.

He wears a light jacket. He will not be walking far. His corduroy pants buff shoes that shine bright for someone who must be wandering through retirement. His measured pace suggests he has all the time in the world, but the balding mane betrays an underlying understanding of his own limits.

Before I can say anything in greeting, gathering my voice after breathlessly jogging on to the bus stop, I hear his own voice hesitate behind a snarled face of plastic fangs and painted whiskers.

He roars.

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Random-Access Memory Maps for Two (25.02.2025)

the definitions of new words. in my teens i learned many codes and used to communicate with two during road trips by tapping the dash. he’d laugh and tap back, or hide his ears after squawking fuel levels for touchdowns. i always had the map and i would pass it back, a rand mcnally road atlas. tapping out letters and numbers to find squares for landings and monuments to craters of a moon and desert escapades for geology. you guarded five in capsules, flying guilty in abandon. we spoke semaphore, we spoke pig latin, we spoke morse, but whispered in backward alphabets. (zyxwvu) (tsrq) (ponmlkj) (ihgfedcba) code helped map libraries, sorting returns. i guarded reports and saved the moon from ending up trashed, a mapped waste of space. but i believe in crater charts and definitions of new worlds.

in my teens i learned many codes and used to communicate with two during road trips by tapping the dash. he’d laugh and tap back, or hide his ears after squawking fuel levels for touchdowns. i always had the map and i would pass it back, a rand mcnally road atlas. tapping out letters and numbers to find squares for landings and monuments to craters of a moon and desert escapades for geology. you guarded five in capsules, flying guilty in abandon. we spoke semaphore, we spoke pig latin, we spoke morse, but whispered in backward alphabets. (zyxwvu) (tsrq) (ponmlkj) (ihgfedcba) code helped map libraries, sorting returns. i guarded reports and saved the moon from ending up trashed, a mapped waste of space. but i believe in crater charts and definitions of new worlds.

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Random-Access Memory Wahllokal (23.02.2025)

I found a new favorite word printed in arial on an unceremonious sheet of A4 paper and quickly said it to myself ten times.

“Wahllokal. Wahllokal. Wahllokal. Wallokall. Wahlloka. Walloka. Walokka. Waloka. Walaka. Walokall.”

I walk in and come face to face with a quiet room. Three old men sit behind a table like an assembly line to process me — overkill for the quiet old town. The furniture is pushed to the far end but for six evenly spaced school desks walled off as voting stations, all empty save for a seated old woman struggling to blow her nose before blowing a different kind of snot onto her ballot sheet.

When I first walked in I was surprised by the raised eyebrows over three pairs of tired, retired eyes. I don’t know if it's because of the stupid smirk I didn’t yet wipe off my face before handing over a wrinkled Wahlbenachrichtigung or the fact that I wasted another 6,3 seconds of the volunteers’ time by reaching for my id card. Whatever the reason, I have yet to grow accustomed to the iconic German stare. Today I think it’s worse than usual because they know we aren’t voting for the same parties.

I smile at them, walk to a corner and lean over a desk to cross off two circles, then exit within two minutes.

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Random-Access Memory Dust / Dark (28.12.2024, 22.02.2025)

I do not hold any superstitions and my beliefs are few and ever fewer, but I do believe that I am constantly disintegrating. I like the idea that we all return to dust. There's a common trope from physics classes and teenager social media boards alike that every one of our atoms is built from stardust. While there is some truth to our celestiality, the thought of returning to this dust was always too distant to matter. Maybe that sounds a bit dark, but I don't fear the dark.

Today I feel no different than the contents of yesterday’s vacuum cleaner bag unceremoniously emptied out into the trash. If that dust was once part of me, discarded while I am alive, then what is the point of keeping my remains in a jar on the mantel? If I end up in a vacuum cleaner bag or in a jar on a dusty shelf, I don't really care. I have more important things to worry about. But I'll admit to hoping someone might plant me under a tree somewhere, someday. When I die and disintegrate it would be nice to grow again under sunlight, feeding off its warmth for a few more years. Until then I'll try to think in terms of the present, to vacuum the dust away, hold onto what still remains, and focus on living a brighter life.

/

I don't fear the dark, but tonight the home of my grandmother manages to frighten me in ways that I haven’t felt since visits from my early childhood. The light always danced strangely, the dust in the air catching beams through the shutters from the street lamp outside. As a kid I would run blindly from the odd twinkling stars to my bed and finally breathe once I hid my toes and chin under covers.

Odd things happen in this house, more often at night. Tonight the grandfather clock I repaired months ago and left still and silent on a dusted shelf suddenly started ticking of its own accord. My body’s hair stands on end. I do not feel alone. I recognized its sound without seeing it, I spent enough time tinkering and fidgeting with its brass screws and gears and springs to know. I still peek around the doorframe. Its radium hands twitch of their own volition and glow faintly in the dark.

Something made the springs release their tension. The house's draft couldn’t do that, the dog wouldn’t have any reason to go out of his way to bump past it, and the dust hasn't collected long enough to do anything to its mechanism, right? As a child the flashes of light in the hallway would make me sprint to bed, tripping over the rugs wrinkled from earlier passes of a vacuum cleaner. The clock's gears run up then slow their tempo, echoing clicks sounding loud then dozing off as the hands finally hold position. I remind myself that I don't fear the dark then walk off to bed.