digital jesus:

master sifter with his sieve

an augury

the causation of

dry mouth

like a mausoleum

an infrastructure

a certain fragile fiber of the foil

gold in the round circumnavigates the sun                   not down here

the seeds that permeated never planted

the distance long became the distance high

the rain that fell didn’t fall for growth

but out of fear                                    now it freezes

and the cold cuts clearer

I collect you

I said

as the building where we stood                                    burned

February

It took me 3 hours to get out of the shower today. The barrage from above and the drain guzzling from below were enough. The warmth encompassed and the slightly too-chlorined Nashville water beaded and broke into streams mirroring veins that pulsed beneath my skin.

The midday sun froze over the scene. A student found dead in their car on the 5^th floor parking garage next to the basketball stadium. The same garage I climbed to the top of to watch the sun melt into hills. But today was different. Today it stopped in its tracts like in Joshua but the rays this time didn’t showcase victory but instead a defeat. My space of glory was someone else’s place of knee-buckling sorrow.

A hospital suite of secrets, of screws and bolts and affairs and moving-ons. The keeping out was what got me. Thursday fell once more to 5 years of hiding and I wasn’t let in again despite my knocking.

These spaces were everything.

They were too much.

But this water hitting and hitting. The consistency of streaming, not screaming for life or love. It’s realer to me today. This is the only space I want to feel today.

red piercing circumnavigation

recollection                                                                                                                        repetition

                                                one in the same

one backward

drenched in ghost silk

a floral pattern of childhood

                                                                                                                        the other the nerves

                                                                                                            the stretch or known as the

                                                                                                                        coming into

                                    the night of sirens

haunts                                                                                                                       

the sweetest darkness                                                                                   

causes the retranslation                                                                       

hypothesis                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                        continues

                                                                                                                        the sound

                                                                                                            plagues the inky filter

                                                                                                            catches you up in the round

           

                        the machinery circumnavigates

the latter feeds the former through the frosted fluorescent spots in winter blackness

                                                                                                           

Hillsboro Road

A fire truck pounding like a steam engine through the rain on a narrow city street

No breaths or wavering

But the movement sends shudders and makes gutters

Of water pulsing into rivers following the flashing truck

Like it’s also rushing to aid

Or save

Like the water from a rock when struck

Or a side when speared

In a similar way,

Dark eyelashes splayed against a fair face in white morning light

Show the same complexity

The same unwavering of pursued

goodness like the rushing truck

But in unending softness

For the unnamed broken

For me

grace

It’ll stop you in your tracks

then

The causation equals likely to

Dry mouth

Like a mausoleum

Containing frozen words that bite

Metallic but quickly dissolve to dust

As the interior folds in on itself

The space

Getting smaller and smaller

due to articles

objects

an infrastructure

of a certain fragile fiber of the foil

The master sifter with his sieve

Collects the almost implosive particles

Trying to hide and disguise and

Tell of the reverse that’s already been won

I can be a part of you for only a little while.

It’s strange what goodbyes do to you.

It may seem like a word or two, perhaps a hug. But the difficult part is that they involve people. Humans. And whenever those are involved.. whew.. things get messy quick.

I’ve been in this place now for approximately 3 months and 15 days. Just enough time to become a familiar face, to get past the awkwardness to those deep-bellied laughs, to fall in love..

I have those feelings of anticipation to be home, of course, but currently they’re pretty swallowed up by fear of what will happen once I get there. Change is definitely a scary thing. I think I’ve forgotten my place back home. I know where I fit here, even if I don’t like it, at least I know.

Leaving can’t be easy in any way, I’ve decided. Even for me, who’s felt so uncomfortable in this place and has had a homecoming countdown on her phone since the first day.  It’s like having one foot in two places.
Actually, it might be like not having feet at all.
Not like you have to use your feet to jump from one place to a different one, but instead, your feet don’t go to either place. There’s no feet because there’s no movement. You’re just sitting, stagnant. You’re left with a lot of second-guessing. How good was home again? Who’s waiting for me there? Maybe I don’t fit in either location. Maybe I’m still searching for where I’m supposed to be in and all these others still aren’t them.

Even worse, what sort of goodbye am I going to give to these people who now have a part of me, and I of them? How do you sum up over 3 months of laughs and conversations and thankfulness to these humans in a moment? I only have a moment before the cab takes me away. Just one. And how do I begin?

Months ago, at one of my first visits to the stream that became a savior for me during this season, I wrote while standing on the banks watching the water move continuously onward. The words I wrote were, “There’s nothing I can give to this, I can only be apart of its life for a little while.” I was talking about the water rushing over the rocks, the leaves as little boats on their hurried mission. It was all so perfect without me. So utterly perfect, and I had nothing to do with it. I couldn’t even bother it severely. It would continue whether I liked it or not. Perhaps now, even though I have impacted these sweet ones some, they will continue. I can only be apart of them for a time, but ultimately, they’re going to continue in the way they will go, and so will I. We only got to have one another for a season, and for that season, I am thankful.

There’s so much more to say here, and I’m afraid these words I’ve left don’t make much sense and are especially disorderly. But they’re the one’s I have. I needed to get them out of the way so I could go back to my studying.

gaping

with eyes blinded and arms out in front of myself to try and sense the way toe tapping puddles elbow scrapes ancient words that have fallen from above to this lightless below me feeling anxious feeling just the right size to push through past the hounds baying in the distance to this voice right in front of me speaking sounds of honey that cause question and keep on walking blindfolded into the pebbles on boulders on inverted mountains that grow wider and deeper each day mirrors the gaping holes between these bones.