fishtailing.

rides a bike.

a friend of mine.

the more i wonder.

she is sad lately, and.

Night Life

I thought it was you but I couldn't tell.
It's so hard, working with people, you want them all
To like you and be happy, but they get in the way
Of their own predilections, it's like a stone

Blocking the mouth of a cave. And when you say, come on let's
be individuals reveling in our separateness, yet twined
Together at the top by our hair, like branches, then it's OK
To go down into the garden at night and smoke cigarettes,

Except that nothing cares about the obstacles, the gravity
You had to overcome to reach this admittedly unimpressive
Stage in the chain of delusions leading to your freedom,
Or is that just one more delusion? Yet I like the way

Your hair is cropped, it's important, the husky fragrance
Breaking out of your voice, when I've talked too long
On the phone, addressing the traffic over my balcony
Again, launched far out over the thin ice once it begins to smile.

J. Ashbery.

pas si simple.

somewhere in her weak heart.

THE LACE

1

Being human: term for a flickering possession,
existence of a happiness still undemonstrated:
is it inhuman, that a pair of eyes
turned into this small densely woven piece of lace?
Do you want them back?

You, long since vanished, and finally blind-
is all your human joy here inside this thing
where your huge feelings went, as between
stem and bark, miniaturized?

Through a tear in fate, a tiny interstice,
you absented your soul from its own time;
and it is so present here in this light
section of lace, it makes me smile at "usefulness."

2

And if someday all we have done
and all that has happened to us
seems so inferior and strange,
as though there'd been no point
in taking the trouble to outgrow our first pair of shoes
just to come to this-...Shouldn't this
strip of yellowed lace, this tightly meshed
flowery border of lace suffice
to keep us here? Look: this at least got done.

A life was ignored in the process, who knows.
A delight was there, was going to be sacrificed,
and finally at any cost
there would exist this thing, not easier than life
yet finished and so lovely, as though it weren't too soon
to smile and soar.

Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Franz Wright

elbows on the window sill.

mirror shots.

sophie van der perre.

without sentimentality or moralizing.

the great love of my life.

charis wilson.

most of us need the eggs.

"I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member."

scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings.

vivian maier.

the victors belong to the spoils.

this makes up for all the times my name was missing from the rack of personalized key chains and toothbrushes.

we were a strange bunch of kids.

sometimes i miss books the same way i miss people.