it's a lowness matinee, the buzz breaks in the middle to catch breath, the sun throwing spring in handfuls. it's our season of surprise burning so we'll have to relearn us again. the sun presses us to make our bodies apparent but come on, bodies are over, can't we wisp beyond perception already? can't we retain sensation while passing through walls, while transferring us to condensation on the outside of walls then sliding down, while being drunk right up by something thirsty and carried into the woods. beloveds, we could become the piss of the forest already. we could sink in, stinking. no one would dare forget.
i study the color of yesterday's burn
and then i do a bruise survey to try to remember what days are. there's the little galaxy healing from center, blanking through yellow expanding outward. circle circle. i check my fastenings. i keep my feet under me while the tide throws my knots around. all balance tires, everything rolls. circle circle. i am too warm to feel so much and too cool to say what i mean. i've given myself ten minutes to come down like a stack of blocks, to feel my hard edges clack, chipping paint, colliding. once i've made me the lowest and most still, i do something. not stacking. not exactly building. i get one block up on its edge and then the others get up, get curious about new forms.
Author: JJ Rowan
14
thickness overtakes, sinks low to sit on the earth. the sky has tipped over, still full of our fingers and so we too tip, we're woozy weather trust-falling into rearrangement. the moon keeps perception separate while we needle around the point of us upended. everything about this figuring is sharp. the day has fallen, too, it gets away from us, breaks for where the forest thickens. even the shore can't seem to right itself so we beg horizon, drink anything our mouths can find. something has to balance us on our booming, right? we'll swear off adorning -- adoring, even! desperation makes the weird bead off us until we stick straight up. a shame.
i put myself deep in the water
and clutch my new life of disorientation. everything about me is a circle, i'm sure of it. i suck a circle candy to its goo state, fashion the warm sugar so it will harden tears. there's no crying under the water (or only crying? i am still learning what's true here). it's just me and the sea for some years and i haven't thought about my knots, i do not even know if they are knots down here, or up here, or in the vast middle. i haven't solved direction yet and i hope i never do.
13
the night brings in the clouds so thick they mark the sky empty. even the moon needs a perception break. we leave our fingers in the sky but pace backward three times. the ground is thick with needle thaw, it's not what's falling, it's what fell and took on piling. it is equal parts squish and crunch. it's early still for submerging but we clear the treeline and leave the shore to get to gasping. once you get your lungs in you'll be fine, waterbaby. body becomes a letter to salt, no funny business just a lot to say. the sea, it cares for you, it carries you. it's full sun now, everything but shine has cleared out. a burning shape matches a wearing shape. these are the instructions we follow for an overdue collective weeping: feel warmth down to the root, and then feel everything that comes after that.
i swap tears around a wet circle
and the circle tears back my dry leaf matter, my sticks bound with tree goo, records the spring depth of my basin, candies my nettle, unlocks all my fairy house doors, and tunes the last of my melting. the circle finds my knots. i am weeping weeping weeping. circle sees my knots. i am weeping weeping weeping. circle knows knot interruption. i am weeping weeping walking. the knots do bleed a little on contact. i am weeping open working at it, circle teases me out of me. i am walking wet-eyes. it's not about untying it's about taking the time. it's about knowing the clear open night comes next, the overholy blanket to hold us all.
12
is there life after the moon? does there have to be? some of us raised expecting we'd all fuck off into the sky. why wouldn't every church open at the top, a proper hatch for the thick work of ascending. even gravity can't save you from gawd, they say. this time the animals stay behind, they say, then splish-splash, we got you. we'll push you under but we won't let your lungs fill. yes, even you can be a wife, the letters are already written, we keep adding them to your body to school you in burden. we trade you caring for carrying. we poison your wine with more wine, hold a verse to your lips. there's nothing here to let the moonlight in, what makes you think you could drink it? what has you braiding dandelions when the instruction was to pluck them clear from the root?
i am fastened into the speaking circle, squirming
in sound's basin where everyone is fawning ecstasy toward a candy heaven in an ill-finished basement. the room has no windows and two doors, one locked and one that leads further in. i'm old enough to already have my knots and young enough there are knots still to come. through one door, knots. through the other and you've got to lift your hands, you've got to let the tune come out of you, even if you don't mean it. this circle is not a circle but you contribute to its roundness, interrupt a few of tying's hours. somewhere, the future is curious, it wants you to know you'll nick your first small vessel and the surface tension of the single big bead of blood will let you take your time, and in the morning your body has made new colors, a whole miniature system connecting you to orbit.
11
did you see that splashdown? yeah, the moon fucks, and we shouldn't be shy about it. no one can really spell a proper romp. text tries, speech gets too thick. working around gravity is and isn't a dance. you cannot improvise grace in someone's else's lung capacity. you cannot bottom every wife. you can attempt to sort your animal sounds by cord vibration but their performative rolling will always tell the whole truth of you. there at the moon's origin you really let it growl, you eye your luck. the trick to your sobriety is you only drink roundness, you do this one day at a time. the bed is woven dandelion in a tree root frame ejected into space when the spring bulbs blew.
i aim to get my heart as dirty as possible
so i begin with clean hands. have you ever had the tide trace you? have you considered how knots can be ornamental? have you taken tight loops to adorn you? a spiral is a way to get the light around a delicate shape. i thought this was a room but it is a landscape, it fills and empties uninterrupted. somewhere, my early curiosity remains intact, i just have to grow a little taller to pull it to the front of me. oh, breathing is a circle. a knot is also a circle. the dark is part of a circle. i hope this clears things up.
10
it's vocalization time, the moon wants to talk. no, the moon wants to know how speech occurs. the wives try to improvise a dance but too many cast themselves lungs and then the performance is only air, no cord vibration. someone will have to show whisper's bottom split, and all of sound can follow this. we try animal sounds to warm us up and sound rolls feral, we're all better for it. play makes us so our specificity doesn't weight so much. speech's origin is clear when we're all rolling around, scratching our way between trees with our loam eyes low. we've left the garden beds that grew us: some of us, unmothered, get planted. if we're lucky.
i am going to follow my beet heart's heartbeat
by warning you it will stain your fingers. these knots are not for decoration. in the water, everything tightens so that when we empty out on the shore the whole of holding can spiral open. i might slip a knot enough to shimmer, this is the most delicate work. in childhood i'd go to shapes to get my knots tight when i felt the temperature of the air change. the room would become very small with interruption. there is no report of this and now i've aged out. i get filed over and over by the news cycle and then i have to do the breathing. on the inhale i locate the knots with my fingers and on the exhale i demonstrate particular safety by doing nothing at all. you are a knot and i am a knot, we are in the dark where nothing happens.
9
oh our wife, the moon. there are vocals on the horizon again stringing transition with understanding. it's a glowing voice at cycle's every turn. how could you never be moved by a song? honey unrolls itself from hive, enough for everyone. we slice into knowing each other, we do this with our eyes open. love's fast train doesn't choo, it coos, it is made of so many cars. everything about loving the moon is so specific and everything about being loved by the moon takes a little gravity off the top. everyone knows the words, mouths them into the mouth of another. there is always space for this kind of saying. throw speaking's salt over the shoulder for heart's superstitious knots to let the tangle keep happening. the air between here and there stays sharp, we keep an edge on it.
i tend me as i go in to my knees
having set a solid shelter on the shore. i am always at the water again, even when i've forgotten. the moon's arms are so long! so long i am wading out and out, becoming a spiral from a line. i swim so hard i see stars, still fastened to the moon by gentleness while i work my limbs. i am reshaping, i do this by letting hands change the temperature of my skin. i am moonwived only by atmosphere, no document exists to say so. it's a vibe marriage and we keep its margins filthy: low belly bruise to prove us, angular blood flow, the pitches hands weed out. i've been pulled before but not like this. the dark makes a point of me.
8
moon marries stillness, we have a long discussion on the gravity of union. space, as we understand it, is made only of moving. we miss the point entirely. the cake is a ball of honey, it doesn't slice but it bleeds. the light trains the eye into softer specificity and the moonwives continue to glow. of course anyone who marries the moon is wife, wives of all genders losing gravity for love. of course the moon takes many lovers. this is the soft mouth of space fluttering toward you, these are winter's prettiest points blinking at the edge of a stone fruit pit. everything tastes quiet in space. the air stays gently salted. the heart is always waiting on its knots but there is nothing left to destroy them.
i do not intend to marry again
but you can call me moonwife if you want to, my whole body tips for a celestial event. i line my mouth with stars. usual love wasn't for me and swallowing buttons did not fasten me. i like my mouth when a letter reshapes it, i do this from a vial. i can be a wife under these conditions, unbound in moving water, putting the blood on tumble. it's that soft belly day of the week again, my angle is true. i do not believe in vows but my hands are empty and my voice is changing, i cap the sharps and turn toward the world.
7
moon moves us. yes, we still move, still can be moved. there is still time to miss each other. still time to come back. still time to tend the land. still time to light and be lit. still time to drink honey off each others eyelids. still time to wax poetic. still buzz. still bloom. the proof of us is stripes our fingers make wound together. summer mouths even where the winter claws. rendered sprouting. mouth's a soft fruit. even softer than that. the charm of salt words, say it just so and everything tastes brighter. say it quiet, waiting. there is the weight of the heart shifting into the work. there is still time to say so. there is still time to cinch the knots of us into what we know to be good and we know will destroy us.
i am not prepared for the slick work of wartime
but i will move your whole body with my whole body if it comes to that. i will swallow the wind around you. i do not need you to love me in the usual ways, do not button me to your chest. when i say us i mean sprawling. when i say each other i have liquefied the number two. our ankle shapes change in the water and our moving changes the water itself. don't you see? the sand goes first and then my hands. the winter wasn't done with us. i say all your names into the full light, wanting to be seen in my devotion. this is what the present moment weighs. what did you say when you heard the world was ending?
6
in the space that moves the moon around we're moving, too. we miss each other a lot, the moon and us. we just can't land the same. everyone gets confused by the light. some say the bees are still with us, we snap our fingers waxward, check every bloom for striped proof. it's so early to say so but the seeds will render it summer again, fill our mouths with tomato charm. salt tongue is getting bolder while a quiet moment notes another split: it stings to shift the weight into good news, what made way. the knots come along. kiss them tight then tighter, it's slick work this. the heart slips on it.
i am going in the direction i'm going
having stopped trying to find you in the usual ways. nothing was usual about slipping the button, counting on liquid. i drag the future by its ankles to see the shape it makes in the sand. my fingers are long and i don't tire easily. winter is a name i might give you, but it isn't your true name. it isn't the ridge of knowing i balanced my weight on where the way had gone vertical. i didn't think it would be like this, pretty little absence. i didn't know it would be like this, the future leaning in with a soft-open mouth.
5
it's busy in the space around the moon so attachment wanes. it's a waning-only cycle, the buzz just goes & goes. we try to learn waxing from the candles we light but are confused by what fire decreases. we wax our fingers. it doesn't help, but it feels nice. our attention goes to the tides, how their comings are also goings, how some circles roll out along a slope and you have to really watch to know where the cycle closes. that place the wax left raw meets salt. it's a grownup feeling to like the sting. it's never too late to be rocked, even if you're rocking alone. soon learning goes and sleep comes in tidesound, the sand works around the knots, even the inside ones. ease is knowing the tide will keep coming to kiss your toes for a while. a buzz drains out your ear where heart beep meets long rolling.
i am granular here at the shore
or i aspire to be
and that helps me unbutton myself into the water. the future licks my ankles before disappearing my feet. if it's winter i can't feel or see them at all, and then i know i could be walking anywhere. desire has a ridge to it, a place to hook your finger. hold on, it's a long walk and you've got to drag the dirt around. you've got to carve what you need to say somewhere. there's a glint of metal a few inches down, something used to manufacture being here. my hands still think they're carrying water. it isn't winter.
4
the moon goes reluctantly into business, it's a hard world. there's a huddle in all the places where the light was lost. it's bad, it fails us, it fails the moon, but the future is an unknown slice in the current so eye to the shore. for now, all bathrooms lock only from the outside, we are embedded with wrongness while drawing yet more beautiful circles. we count on us. we number what hurts us, it's a cubby system, and when everything's stored we locate our sweetness, pour it into the collective center. it's grownup Halloween, let's swap soothings, everyone's candy center. let's go to the collective fairgrounds, we've already designed them with our tongues and all that's left is to spit. the knot in me stays a knot, doesn't undo and doesn't do anything else. i can only play ease in someone else's band. i cramp like a cymbal but no sound. the walk out is counting to other people's fives, the only time this keeps is hearttime.
i am precisely in my quick undoing
and it makes me know the tilt of planetary center better. the future bends down a branch sometimes, heavy fruit for fast acting. something's always going to drip so disappear your fingers where the flesh is dissolving. you'll get to the ridge of the pit, hungry or not. gawd made the peach in making desire, this is reaching's lesson. you can be as tender as you want to be, claw out the dirt from your crooks. you can be as tender as you want to be, that map doesn't need folding. you can tender your resignation from the machine to mind your mettle. some whirring never goes. sometimes i set you down so my hands are free, i use them to keep my face steady while i'm weeping. you can be as tender as you want to be.
3
attaching to the moon is serious business. an idea gets even closer, it's bad, it will hurt when it fails. even the moon cannot predict the future (but is good at guessing). the bathroom floor is sticky with little circles, they remind me i'm full of numbers and the numbers have to move around, numbers swap candy for pain, this goes horribly wrong. am i just a box with portals inside? am i going somewhere or is the going already in me? the fine thread of my knowing has knots i might never solve, and the holiday is standing over me smiling about how well i can be easy. no one's told me what they will do next and then their muscle memory cramps me along. i suddenly do wish to be hollow but i can't even find the moonlight from inside this machine, and anyway i still have to walk shaking into the midday, to yank the day's heart to the front of its chest to get the car to go.
i am lighter than i was, with a precise and heavy center
whose lightness is a damage reassessment that won't mean much in the empty future. the future is holey, things fall out of it, and you can yell about this anytime you like. gawd tries my arms again, it's this game we play now. it doesn't matter how hungry i am when i become the machine: i am not the machine. i mine for softness, it is my inner claw game. where my softness goes is wherever you are, nothing mechanical about it. where my softness lands i can't point out on a map. when i'm soft with you the secret swells. what i thought would happen is i would pick you up off the timeline's sucking whir, just enough light left for the both of us, but no one wins at the game of arms.
2
the moon body takes attachment seriously so gets closer to the bad idea. something seems to stick but doesn't, little big crying in the bathroom again. there are too many circles to count, then all these numbers have to go somewhere. inside the numbers it isn't warm. inside reason is pretend-warm. the tests are inconclusive (everyone says everything is fine and it doesn't mean anything, this being fine, this twin passage cleared sick sweet, bleeding candy no one thought to mention). it's going to be christmas, i guess, i'll borrow a smile to waste on you, unqueer this button-up with how i fill it out. i've never wished to be hollow -- once, maybe, or twice -- but have you ever curved under the moonlight where it cuts through your shitty apartment's back window? have you softened your heart enough to pour it out its cup?
i am tasked with precision but let the light pour off me
and get that holiness yowling. gawd is my hungry arms wielding a favor, pushing try at my everything is fine. it doesn't matter how many times i float here, nothing about it is machine. when i said your name it was a miles decoder and when i said your name we invented locomotion and when i wrote your name in secret it was because i knew you so quickly, having known you in the upside down version of looking out the timeline's window at the reverse moon sucking the light out of me from a moving car. what i knew would happen tilts me, shakes me for crumbs. i hope i know you wherever it is i'm going.
1
a body attached to the moon making circles around a bad idea, someone else's sticky gift in waistband, big little offering. four and a half turns to get home, precious warm. out of the car in one motion, two if winter, two to five if nerve pain. house shuffle walk with a reason inside it. forty-two-then-three leaning on testing, silent scream under the x-ray while candy goes in, no one warned oversweet has a color and when you mix it with your blood it swirls wrong. christmas small talk plus tone shift, there is no code for queer and no code for borrowing, they'll just call you hollowed. no code for being blessed by the moonlight then quick up the stairs, an already-set scene every time. the heart is a circle cupped warm. methodical wiping, every precise thing plus softness.
i am not a hopeful person but i lay down
and hope my own arms around me, a holiness the church could never. if gawd looked down now they would see i'm hungry, see me keep trying, depress the plunger then hold the question. it doesn't matter how many times i haven't met you we talk all the time. when you were born i was three-thousand miles away and when you were born i was on a train in the wrong direction and when you were born i came right away, i knew you so soon. i've spent my patient hours on my back. what i knew would happen didn't happen. what i knew about hope stayed. i will never know you. i am sticky with hope, it never goes.