[on heartbreak]
PASS ME THE GOOD WINE
Pass me the good wine The server said it’s called Phoenix. I watch the sun shift inside the glass, the way the sky travels across the water, how it folds its fire, softly, into everything.
Pass me the good wine I think of Montreal, how we shared more than just a drink, courage arriving like a second breath. I feel braver coming back to New York when you know I left with nothing but fear.
Pass me the good wine The one beside you, beside me. Like a Phoenix dusting off its ashes; born again but never the same courage bursts in violet from my veins; I am learning how to rise.
Pass me the good wine The one bold enough to spill. I want to feel the sun between my teeth Beneath my tongue, throat, and lungs. A burn I continue to ignore at twenty-six; I watch you watch me catch on fire.
Pass me the good wine The wine that calls out like birds at dawn, its feathers stretching across the glass, its wings flaming the air between us. Between us, the wine named Phoenix calls to me one last time.
[on breaking away from familial conditioning]
OLD MONEY
She comes from Old Money or so they would tell her. From the mouths of housewives across generations, they shaped the insides of her ears with mothballs, stuffing their vices and voices, begging to be freed.
For most of her adolescence, she dreamt of those stories, craving the kind of wealth just beyond her reach.
In her family, Old Money belonged to the patriarchy the men controlled their wives and their businesses the same with guilt and shame, so that the Old Money bled through their first son’s veins.
She became engaged to New Money, so I found out. In my early twenties, it was clear then as it is now: what beholds us, smothers us, is a courtship between kind men and mad money kind money and madmen. A relentless, caustic fuss.
Birthed in a garden of larvae, a resilient blend of opportunity and forgotten strength.
I pray to be pious with No Money one day. Let its currency slip through my fingers, like threadbare balls of moths in decay.
[on friendship]
FOR SOME REASON, YOU REMIND ME OF BROOKLYN
Always the loudest in a crowded room and the quickest to leave I won’t take it personally, I’m just wondering how you are
You moved to Brooklyn the way a lighter clings to paper Instinctively at first, then, dissolving into a trail of dust
Do you remember the joints we used to smoke on the shore at midnight? When the sound of waves coated our laughter with salt Do you remember our conversations about galaxies and their light? When we were lost in our translations, discourse dissolved through molt
Do you remember telling me to write something down? When I felt unlike myself, the way some seashells must feel unfavored Forced to ebb and flow so that others may hear poetry Through their skeletons, scraping out whatever is left to savor
When you wanted to be someone new, you chose to accompany silence Even in this aphotic space, I can see your light across the water Past the Atlantic Highlands, you talked about leaving in defiance To smoke another joint, with strangers, to write a story only you could author
Always the loudest in a crowded room and the quickest to leave I won’t take it personally, I’m just wondering how you are