how-the-light

[how-the-light]

“And I think this is how I would most like to imagine romance, friends, or should I say lovers. In praise of all my body can and cannot do, I wish to figure out how it can best sing with all of yours for a moment in a room where the walls sweat. I wish to lock eyes across a dance floor from you while something our mothers sang in the kitchen plays over the speakers. I want us to find each other among the forest of writhing and make a deal.

Okay, lover. It is just us now. The only way out is through.”

— Hanif Abdurraqib, “On Marathons and Tunnels,” in A Little Devil in America

[how-the-light]

Shyama Golden (Sri Lankan-American, 1983) - Intertwined (2020)

[how-the-light]

I think of my father,

Two thirds of the way through his life,

In his own words. I see his face now,

Hair like a field in November and eyes

Like siding blown pale by ocean 

Gusts. He wants to be alone

But he used to live outside his body

He used to glow and color himself in

And the rest of the world too. 

His anger, once a fault line, 

Now a chasm, he spits 

Lightning that winds around 

Your ankles and drags you down

But you don’t scream 

Because a part of you hopes

He is waiting at the bottom.

[how-the-light]

it could mean something, it could mean everything

Keep reading

[how-the-light]

Happiness fits funny, like

Bathwater that makes your forehead sweat 

Even as it holds you

Still, even as it makes you feel 

Good and safe and warm, it 

Still makes you squirm

And wish you could wash yourself clean. But 

You know there’s nowhere 

You’d feel any cleaner. 

[how-the-light]

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012)

[how-the-light]

“My unhappiness / was like a steak knife, my hunger thrummed like a dishwasher in the dark.”

— — Phoebe Stuckes, from “​I used to be thin,” The One Girl Gremlin

[how-the-light]

Fire walk with me, Holly Warburton (new store)

[how-the-light]

Memories | Fikri Amanda Abubakar

[how-the-light]

The silence and the wreckage of all the leaving stains my skin, tucked into the crevices between ever breath, and when you kiss me then roll over, the bruises scream.

I want you tangled in my hair like sea spray, caught between my palms like a firefly, feeling you twitch.

and yet I hate our bodies when they feel like lifeboats,

so I suppose I want you living.

[how-the-light]

[how-the-light]

[how-the-light]

You touch me into remembrance into stone,

into the folds of your grey matter

you etch me, kiss away dust and fingerprints that linger like thorns,

tell me you’d know the curve of my spine with your eyes closed, seeing with your hands the way a snake smells with its tongue.

free write 6/16: synesthesia

[how-the-light]

I’m afraid you’ll pull too hard, and I’ll unravel in your hands

That I’ll smudge under thumb like oil pastels

Or move under the microscope like a photon, uncertain and dancing away.

See, every rain before you came ate away at my skin, and I fear I’ve forgotten how not to erode.

But for you, I wish to become myself.

free write 6/10: sharp lines

[how-the-light]

My quietest laugh, your small smile Our hands, they don’t touch the whole while But I imagine yours feel Soft and warm on the wheel And someday you’ll hold mine for miles

first date: 2 (b.m.s)

[how-the-light]

Chewing Trident and Ray Bans sitting low, you tell me I can always

take a piece without asking

[first date 1 (b.m.s)]

[how-the-light]

You aren’t trying to excavate anything when your grandmother takes the slices of watermelon out of the bowl and puts them in a plastic bag, saying

Look here, I’m putting the watermelon in a plastic bag.

just like your mother has done and said, time and time again, knowing you’ll grow hungry and slip into the kitchen, squinting at the time on the stove and wondering where the watermelon went, trying to step lightly.

and now there are fossils on your grandmother’s face and in her daughter’s hands, where there once was only sand, falling through your fingers

and you can imagine your mother, a child, unclasping the refrigerator and screaming at an empty bowl or maybe going back to sleep.

free write #2: watermelon