Portraits for Sails

Obviously, I associate the act of writing with anyone I’ve written about, so just holding a pen is a great way for me to inundate myself with painful/fond/weird/scary memories that both pleasantly feed my nostalgia and wreak havoc on my conscience. Writing the “old-fashioned way” is fantastically effective, not only in reminding me how much I love ink on paper, but also in reminding me of the myriad mistakes and little successes in my love life. This piece is mostly a reflection on that. It might also be some sort of apology; I’m not quite sure yet. Don’t listen to me. Just throw rocks.

(Below is the process by which this piece came to be; it’s the first one I’ve written on paper in a couple months so I thought I’d include scans because NO ONE CARES. Note how consistent I am with my scratching out of words)

Portraits for Sails

A river called Endless
  flows between your fingertips

It speaks in muddy banks, it tells of how you float;
       our eyes connected by a common wall,
  separated by a distance greater than any canvas--

Paint that reaction,
  trace that incision like carving through rocks

Line up your legs for a trim;
  take off a foot or both;

Just paddle around in circles

Breathe in the water,
  choke on the shallow end because
   you're a shark fin away from a bad tide;
    a rip curl from a good night's rest--

You're a dream,
  a monument sleeping through its own demolition,
      you're such an imperfect sculpture,
          a pretty faulted picture,
    an underwater pastoral scene on back of a
       dead man's grayscale milk carton--

Call this an ode to all
  the sunken parts of me that were 
 submerged in the deluge of yesterday's debts--
   stalled near the moment of impact
       but
   shipwrecks usually end up here so
     those time pieces aren't very important

That frantic inkling on the back of
  your paper neck is not much for a warning;
    your perforated, tearalong spine rhymes with Denial--
       like a frayed frame for a decayed painting

It speaks in muddied patterns,
  turbid waters in the eyes of a guilty midshipman
      and
   oh, do I have a tale for you, Undertow

It's an upstream story about a failed waterfall;
     it's not an anecdote--

It's a canoe ride spent
  recounting the many ways I've drowned;
    remembering the lungs that gave in
       (she never painted me gills)

I've seen countless drawings--
  some wore themselves into the shore,
   left the Ocean wondering just where this
     aptly named Hurricane came from

She built herself up on her way back out to sea

She waved goodbye with her hundred faces
        and taught me to swim

I taught myself to sink;
  my head taught me to sit;
    my heart taught my head to wait;
     the weight taught my heart to hear;
          I'm still learning--

A castaway student stuck between continents

Drifting from the surge,
  rippling retreat;
 kissing that flood and naming it--
     A Swell to Call Home

And to think,
  it all started in the ebbing of her hands

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