- David Wojnarowicz, from 'Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration'
“I wish you’d find the exit out of my head.”
— Virginia Woolf, Letter to Vita Sackville-West,’ November 22, 1933
Old poem about a stalker that has been in my draft for 2 years
Outside my window, the dead leaves are falling from some tree whose name I never cared to find out
Because
I can’t get you out of my head…
In the kitchen, i’m disdainfully wiping wet dishes with a washcloth with kpop music blares in my ears
But i don’t change or skip the track
Because
I can’t get you out of my head…
It’s 5 something in the evening and the oil in the frying pan splatters and catches my finger while I’m cooking
I suck on it seductively instead of rushing to get a bandaid
Because
I can’t get you out of my head…
My cat’s meowing up a storm because he just came home so i go to feed him
But i don’t kiss him or pick him up
Because
I can’t get you out of my head…
My dating apps are buzzing with notifications of new matches
I ignore them
Because
I can’t get you out of my head…
I searched up your name on Facebook last night
Because
I can’t get you out of my head…
I saved all your pictures
Because
I can’t get you out of my head
I went to the place you work at
And stood outside in a mask and my hoodie for hours till you came out
Because i can’t get you out of my head
I’m hiding in your closet tonight
Because i can’t get you out of my head
I’m jumping out when you least expect it
Wielding my German knife
That i stole from my sister’s collection
While you lay bleeding on the floor, begging me to stop this madness
Is it my fault…
Because i can’t get you out of my head?
I go to your drawer
Pull out your gun and put it to my head
I guess i’m finally getting you out of my head
Home is where the heart is
If I indeed do turn out to have a heart condition, this also means that this home of yours - our love nest - has been slated for demolition and is no longer fit for residency,
So move out quick before open-heart surgery bulldozes it to the ground and rebuilds it as a completely different structure that bears no resemblance to the place you used to call home,
Or better yet, go back to your family home where you have little roommates living with you too - the freehold whose windows you keep escaping from because the front door has been permanently locked by local authorities to prevent your escape from that loveless prison you were coaxed into,
Or at least go back to take your things, bid your fellow residents audieu, pay off all your due taxes, and exit cordially through the front door, for once - instead of always sneaking out windows like a damned coward.
If so, I wish you all the best in finding a completely new place to live in and please don’t trash the hypothetical new place with empty beer bottles/ shishas and then vanish to crash someplace else without even paying rent. Your new landlady deserves better tennants,
And please don’t move into some “friend’s” house to sleep on her couch and freeload everything without paying a single cent before going AWOL to find another crib,
But most importantly…please promise you will keep at least a piece of rubble from the ruins of your old home to remember me by…
And wear it on a bracelet around your wrist so it always dangles near the sleeves of your favourite sweatshirts for everyone to see…
For that it is my heart you wear on your sleeve.
The oil rig worker and the ocean
He tried to test her waters
To see what treasures she had buried in her depths
For him to extract and exploit
But she was too deep for him to stand in
So he dove into her
And in doing so, he knew her
For all that she was and could be
And with that, they both fell in love
Insanity War
I am a soldier
Who has been to war countless times
Stationed in the battlefield of my mind
The war between the constant desire to die and the instinctual need to live on
A war from which I never came home the same
All my comrades have disappeared
Reduced to ghosts haunting the memories I love (or hate) the most
We closed our eyes, held hands, and went through the explosions and gunshots together
Yet, I opened my eyes and they had been blown clean out of my grasp
Gone…
Their corpses nowhere to be found till today
The only ones remaining holding reduced to severed limbs
There but at the same time, not really there…
After the war, I returned home
To reality
With vacant eyes that have seen things nobody should see
And a constant longing for a body next to mine
Or a hand to hold…
To get through the terrible nights being woken up from night terrors
And dull days spent staring into space - at something out of this world but not visible to the naked eye
And just like war veterans, they commemorate us
With candles and flowers on empty work desks or lockers
After we have died
At our own hands
From Aliyah Curry’s chapbook, The Angels Have Always Been Black, available at https://bottlecap.press/products/the-angels-have-always-been-black-by-aliyah-curry
neckkiss