The Things We Learn On Our Mothers’ Laps

Her fingers moving fast & brutal as if mapping blue edges of the unseen sky.

This is what it means to really want something. Her open mouth an iris ringed

with desperation deeper than shame. You’ll forsake everything if only to be real—

— Natalie Wee, from “Mirror,” Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines

the things we learn right before midnight

what’s keeping you from sleeping?

nothing. i’m just not ready to hit the sack.

why’s that?

you really want to know?

yep.

okay. but i don’t want you to think i’m crazy or leave this bed running, alright?

i wouldn’t do that.

right. okay. hmm. so, 24 years ago, on the eve of my birth, my mom decided to deliver her child in a graveyard. the city’s farthest most forgotten graveyard. she’s an artist, though; a lover of contrasts & a chaser of the dark.

oh

july 21st, lost in the depths of a summer night amid traces of grief, sorrow & dried petals, my mum gave birth to a baby she’d almost immediately hold between her arms. i don’t remember this of course, but i’ve been told she murmured:

‘hey, little one. i need you to think of death as your friend. a mutual. an ally. a confident.’

from that day on - my entire life, basically- i’ve never slept before midnight.

i stay still by the side of my bed, patiently waiting for my oldest friend to come sit by my side.

once he shows up, we tell each other how life treated us that day in our own sides of the realm.   we then hold hands & together, we end the life of yet another day.

- @skinthepoet

Photo by Byron Johnson 

Reading list for my travels through Italy: - War of the Foxes by Richard Siken - Life On Mars by Tracy K Smith (rereading it <3) - The New Testament by Jericho Brown - A Season In Hell by Arthur Rimbaud any suggestions?!!!

scientists fear

with a hand on the window frame, you looked out at the night sky. & turning your head toward me, you said there was this theory about the universe being ever e   x      p        a           n             d                i                  n                     g.

that every star, planet, galaxy & blackhole currently alive, is endlessly drifting apart from it all.

as though in their hovering for distance, in their majestic swaying through stellar matter, every atom of the universe claimed independence from our shared existence.  

that same night our last the spellbinding vibes in your beauty & that rant over the cosmos, walked me into a laberynth of oblivion; cause what i forgot to tell you & what you didn’t seem to know, was that there is another theory out there: an antithesis on the dynamics of the universe.

scientists suspect the universe will eventually stop its expansion to begin its c o n t r a c t i o n. exactly as the ball vertically thrown to reach the sky, that at a certain height surrenders to gravity & starts its way down.

scientists fear that every star & planet & galaxy & blackhole will shrink into a single spot in place & time.   a sort of big bang in reverse. outside going in.

boom

which is to say: you fled away from me to smash piece by piece the things we had built. i guess in some shape or form we mimicked the universe by drifting away from each other; by sitting on opposite edges of this galaxy; dodging our own asteroids; breathing distant stardust & riding comets that might never cross paths.  

imagine, just imagine that these scientists’ fear comes true   & all we know to exist begins to compress; will the universe then bring us back to where we were?

a massive clash. gallactic friction.

cosmos to cosmos, blackhole to blackhole, planet to planet, & lips to lips.

hey, this might just be the universe reminding us that       we are destined to collide.

- @skinthepoet