nightsick

by myself I walk down by the river because I am by myself most of the time. The days begin early and they are mazes of wavering in and out. I shut out the sound of my mother's voice for the first time since high school because it sounds like early snows and drainage ditches and warm obligation and that twists in the place of my absent organs. I call my best friend and she sounds like the mountains and freshly brewed tea and honestly it makes me cold and upset but I don't want them to know.

I need to be assured that if I became an antique set of china they would collect me. I found my car keys in a side pocket and I shrugged and then wanted to cry. I always knew I'd be homesick but I didn't know I would ever be so ill that I do nothing but get crushes on TV characters and lie in bed willing myself not to dream. It doesn't work, but it's close because even though it's different time zones, when we sleep, we dream of night.

the prisons are the same

It would help if I were feeling less blah to write these things. I am in florence and the city is beautiful but I feel physically sick, tired because I have traveled a long way and ill because of some impossible obligation to love where I am and what I am doing at every minute. I haven't felt free in a while and I don't feel free right now. If anything further trapped - in a place that is not my own in a room that is not my own with rules and the inability to speak, navigate or cook for myself. I think I am supposed to feel like a child - taken care of, occasionally grumpy, filled with wonder. But instead I feel like a inmate on privileges for good behavior, taking walks and then returning to my bed to sleep the aches off.

anno nuovo

I usually write to resolve in the beginning of january because it is grounding and it gets me excited. It would be easier if I were feeling less cold, if the floors were carpeted and if I had spent a long enough time in Maryland to feel bored and constrained by it. Instead though, I have come a long way to be in Italy, and while I am here I should resolve to do some things, so

for the semester:
learn to be alone.
find a coffee shop to sit inside.
spend time by the river.
go hiking a lot.
find a frisbee game.
make a lot of art and generally have ideas.
go hiking a lot.
explore the city and learn it.
go dancing.
travel.

for the year:

learn to be alone. let your wounds heal. collaborate. make large things. love the things you make. write more, and better. be a prompter pen pal. draw more, and better. read more. get a tattoo. do not shrivel in your den.

speaking and touching

When we are young and do not know the language of bodies we must tease out things with our tongues, curling around words like they are objects in a vacuum. We spit as many as we can and in all the wrong places. Sitting next to someone on a grassy hill with on a cool evening you say “I heard somewhere that when you are close to someone your heartbeats will synchronize.” So instead of aligning the curves of your naked bodies and tussling down the hill you lie on your sides and face each other. There is at least six inches of space and it is dark but you look at your faces and your hands lie right next to each other and you try to listen to your own uneven heart.
Most people get past this tranquil method of touching-not-touching. Most people get older and they stop running into doorframes and open cabinets because they stop getting taller. They settle into their size and weight and sometimes hairstyles and they know how to move, to shuffle down a pew without stepping on people's toes and how to twitch to music so someone else will notice. When you grow up you hit a point where it is no longer acceptable to lie still, happy and tingling but pretending as though nothing is wrong, as the person next to you grazes their fingers along the sides of your arm. You have to wake up in the morning and say “nothing happened” when in your mind everything did. You have to kiss them, or not, you have to touch their cheeks and at the airport you have to say goodbye like you mean or wave like you don't. Things have to be decided and they must be either unspoken or discussed at length and there is no inbetween. There is no “I like you but I don't want to.” There is only I like you I like you I love you I don't love you anymore. At some point you understand it is just your lips, it is only your legs, you are just toes and fingers and there's no point in not using them. You don't speak in words because words mean everything. You speak in bodies because you understand they mean nothing and at this point, nothing is all you want and nothing is what is safe and your words are too specific so nothing is what you get.

its the same thing every time

Not all my friends are fucked up and heartbroken and anxiety ridden but some of the them are and it's getting to be winter again in spite of the warm sun on the porch and the early morning light. Someone left a voodoo doll on the back side of my house and my parents are kind of creeped out but left it there. I've been told my home looks haunted before, and I'm sure I've thought it, and sometimes I sit on a stool by counter and look around as though I've never been there and I see what they mean I guess. We've got strange things and they are lined up on the wall. I've felt haunted for a while now but this has always just felt like home.
When I come back the weather is nice even if it is raining because even then, the storms are familiar. Late-August thunder or chilly November sheets. I'm not required to be here anymore and so anything the sky opens up with is a blessing and not a curse. Being alone is a pleasure and a privilege and drawing a comic in my room is because I want to and not because I have no where to go.

when teachers cry

Everyone needs a gentler life. Your daughter has an eating disorder and now she picks at her food and pretends that you can't see her hips poking out the front of her jeans that don't fit. Your husband lives in California, which is at least $100 for every hour that it takes to reach him. I want to visit North Carolina to be nearer to the student that you cried and told all of this to, but I can't because it is too expensive and too close to Thanksgiving. She is worried about you, and unnerved because to us you are and adult and have it all figured out. We are prolonged adolescents, but seeing our mothers cry gives some of us panic attacks and others headaches. I don't know what to do for you - I've made stupid decisions before but never like this. I want to sit down in the dusty light of a meetinghouse on Sunday morning and hold you up to it, bathe you in it, warm you there. But it is quickly November, and today is another grey sky. In Italian class, I tell my professor in broken pieces that I want to grow up to be a revolutionary, an artist and a farmer. But I will gladly settle for getting through the winter.

you are a boring reflection

It's grey and when I wake up it is dark outside. I think on how the pantry is short on sunlight. There are corners in my bedroom that are always dark no matter how many lights I turn on; I lose things in them like socks and things that prevent me from getting damp in the rain. It feels like an incoming hurricane but I know it is quieter than that, and sweeter. There is no promised rain just a dark drizzle. This is what the world will feel like once we learn to control and conquer its unpredictability. I feel like a stagnant pond - static and souring without change.
Kissing you was like kissing a clouded mirror. It was vague and unsettling, passionless and ultimately forgiving. You echo me in a way that I do not enjoy, but have to admire. And you are sweet, very sweet, and kind. And in moments of unending dark drizzle you do not bring me shopping bags full of sunlight, but instead a book and for yourself a cup of tea. There is nothing radical about that, but comforting all the same. The day I learn to accept your words but refuse you my nights will be another one entirely.