the trouble as far as i can tell is that couples seem to believe these useless aphorisms about being in love. some kind of real life two halves of a heart, you complete me nonsense. i see so many men and women melt into one another–people who used to have their own brain and mouth and limbs. they go everywhere together, they do everything together, they are so rarely apart that perhaps they forget what it is like to stand without some other body at their side, back, front, wherever. and it’s not charming or a measure of their happiness. more often than not their camaraderie is forced, their faces turned toward one another, speeding toward each other in tunnel vision, toward a collision into one ugly boring roped off scene that closes down the tunnel and the passage of others completely. it’s a developing co-dependence, a shift from desire to necessity that never ceases to make me sad, and frankly a little angry.

i’ll be honest, part of my resistance to couples is that i’ve lost many friends that way. people who stop being able to balance friendships with their partners unless it means the friend always taking the back seat. and that’s some selfish bullshit. in the long scheme of life, the people who have sustained you most and best are your friends. good luck finding everything you need with one person, amazing or douche-y though they may be.

part of my resistance is also how fucking inconsiderate couples are. so readily they believe the myth of their unity that they seem to assume that everyone else has as well. an invitation to one person is not also an invitation to their partner. if you are in a gift exchange, it’s person to person, not couple to couple. if you are having a dinner party, the couple doesn’t sit on top of one another, only requiring one chair, one plate, one serving of ham. likewise, at a potluck, a couple uses up double the resources. ergo ipso facto hereto therefore, they should contribute double the resources. it’s not rocket science; it’s math, and fairness.

as bridget jones so deftly reminds us before becoming part of a couple herself, couples often seem to feel pity or sadness for single people. admittedly, as a single person, i’ve felt those things for myself. but here’s a twist, something fresh to consider. maybe what keeps me from entering into a relationship is not something terribly lacking or wrong with me. maybe it’s that i don’t want to be like them, maybe like you. maybe i feel pity or sadness about who these people have become, which is mostly a testament to the parts of themselves they’ve lost. maybe i am tired of seeing bright effervescent people become dull and staid. maybe i am guarding myself against what seems to be the inevitable dissolve of my personality into a puddle. maybe i prefer marble cake over one that’s been stirred too much and is now that homogenous muddy color. maybe, this couple nonsense is just another elaborate guise to keep people from finding out who they are and what they actually want. and maybe, just maybe, our lives would be so different if they were filled with actual people and not these fused but diminishing entities.

there’s a difference, between these stories. i have no emotional register for the first and second but lack–lack of my mother’s hands under my stomach, lack of my body’s buoyancy. but at some point between 8 and 10 i learned to fight back, to resist the will of water although it’s unclear if this reaction is about trying to survive, not wanting to die, or even having something to live for. i mean, it’s unclear if this is about fear or something else, some other kind of feeling because avoiding death isn’t really the same as seeking life, not at all.

lately i cannot breathe. i don’t mean this to say my asthma is particularly bad, but in the metaphorical sense (forgive me, reader, for i am a cliche) that i cannot think or focus or see. everything is blurry around me and eerily, terribly calm. i am 8 again and i can see the surface, but my body doesn’t understand how to reach it, or why one would even try. i am just suspended in time and space without any tether to the ground or contact with the surface.

“in sum, mood is neither anchor nor plot.” L. Berlant

there is a white page with a list of titles at the top. i have been looking at it for the past 72 hours. the number of characters has stayed exactly the same. i am just the same as i was when i entered this program three years ago. i am still cocky when i should be wary, and fleeing when i should fight, and fighting when it matters least. i am still scared of my own failure, and confident in my ability to fail better than anyone has ever failed before. i am still cruelest to myself, and crueler than i should be to others. graduate school has not made me better, or smarter just more of all the terrible things i was before.

“in sum, mood is neither anchor nor plot.” L. Berlant.

i gave up at teaching. i did. i didn’t trust my instincts, and i didn’t take enough time to make it right, to make it matter. these things show to students, and more rapidly than any other group of people, students know when you have failed them. it is not that today is everything, or that teaching is everything, but lately it is what i had, and it was humbling to realize i didn’t have it at all. that in this, too, i fell short of reasonable expectations. if i can’t think and i can’t teach, than i have nothing and i don’t belong here. i am just a body taking up space, suspended between the ground and the surface, with no will to reach up or root, just the acute awareness of lack and how quiet things are in this world.

she doesn’t
love you. she does not
love you. she-

perhaps it’s this fleetingness that keeps me awake lately. the sense that nothing is quite settled, and everything is slipping away rapidly around me, like the last days of summer. perhaps it’s this impermanence that taught my body to keep everything, to hold heavy and strong against the earth, fearing that i too might pass, unnoticed.

A Ritual to Read to Each Other, William Stafford

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider–
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe–
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

have a kitchen dance party

make jam at midnight, when it’s finally cooled down outside

spend the day napping and jerking off

read a good book straight through

try a new recipe

flirt with the fed ex man like you’re in a harlequin

take a week off from facebook

wash your sheets and line dry them

listen to whatever you want, all day long

watch gilmore girls for hours, because you can

make your favorite dish. share it with yourself.

try on the clothes that make you feel pretty. prance accordingly.

wear your swim cover up as a nightgown

indulge your organizing neuroses

take a long shower

make your hair do funny things

write

remember that many people enjoy your company. being with yourself is no punishment.

big.
hair.

ryan adams in my speaker
let it ride
let it ride easy

the road curves
driving
to infinity

nineteen and dating a handsome boy whose skin glows after he leaves the gym and his body is /cut/ before i started using the word cut to describe such manicured beauty. his hair is dark, almost black, and it falls over his face when he leans down into me and says “baby, we have time.” so we do and the taking is full and fast and he barely moves to lift me up against his warm body which smells always like tide. i am so light with him. so light he is careless and i don’t remember the first time we had sex, the first time i ever had sex, because i got so tired of his asking that i just accepted and though i like it now i can’t remember, can’t remember when or what i lost, if anything.

fourteen, walking down a street in palestine, the year before i move back to the states. it’s valentine’s day, and though i’ve spent most of the night dancing with someone else, it’s rami who walks me home in the dark. holds my hand, kisses my cheek when i get to my door. can you imagine? 14 and so flustered by the chastest of kisses. he is sweet and jubilant and thinks we’ll be together forever. i can’t tell him how i’m leaving. how could i? he’ll know eventually and the shine of being so loved will tarnish as surely as the silver tea pot that travels across oceans twice, but never gets used.

i have stolen
your girl
who wasn’t
being loved

and whom
you were probably
saving
as backup

forgive me
she is delicious
so sweet
and so warm

/Mad Girl’s Love Song/ by Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)