for my friends

love and maps

i can count the sparse scattered freckles
on my arms like stars, or like dots on a map,
colored pushpins over cities we can connect
with a pencil line or twine. we loop around each
opaquely and solidly placed pin amidst paper earth tones,
orange, blue, yellow, green, red just like
our rough chapped palms grasping at strings,
plus two big cans and some small hearts
who whisper hello, goodbye.

we were strewn about like birdseed
countries, continents wide; seagulls snatched us up
and flew us away over bodies of water,
though none as vast as our ocean eyes, airplane skies;
just catch the wind and we'll sail the sunrise.
but the world turns my head and time zones make it spin
so maybe i'll just write to you instead:
pen scratching, thumbs tapping, keys clacking.
we can build this world on words, our alphabet maps
out this place where all the you’s and me’s still spell out us,
lettered across the clouds, the land, the sea.

don’t let go of the string; i won’t let go of your hands.

you are whatever a moon has always meant

pablo neruda is coming close to tying with e.e. cummings as my favorite poet of all time, because this is one of the most beautiful things i have ever read, especially in spanish (there's just something about reading the original rather than the translation, and i'm lucky to be able read it this way!):

Soneto XVII

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.
Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.
Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

(i love when poems hit that place where your head can't quite grasp what it's trying to say, but your heart just gets it.)

the heart not to lose it

there are always moments like these, after talking to my friends, when i miss them and notre dame so much that my heart lurches and i have to catch my breath. sometimes i scowl at the injustice of it all, how the powers that be gave us those four years to love and treasure and then ripped it away without a second thought. it's like london all over again, but a thousand times worse. all i can do is think about how even though we weren't perfect, or even happy with each other all the time, we stuck together through it all. we were a unit, each of us parts of a whole. on nights like these i yearn for nights we took for granted: sweaty, singing, laughing, dancing; conversations in the dark when we were supposed to be sleeping; not caring when the clock ticked to 3am, then 4, even 5.

in moments like these, at my most selfish, i wish i could have any of those nights back, relive their ordinary glory now that i know how much it actually meant in the long run. at my most selfish, i feel like i'm turning into those people i can't stand, who pine over the past until it's long overdue. but at my most selfish, i can't help but feel justified, because damn we had it good enough to care so much that it's over now.

i love and miss my besties so much.

so this is the new year

so everybody put your best suit or dress on

let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once

lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn

as thirty dialogues bleed into one

i wish the world was flat like the old days

then i could travel just by folding a map

no more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways

there'd be no distance that could hold us back.