Into me.

Intimate.

Gazes,

effortless,

precise

incisions,

excavate

my confessions.

 

Don’t tell

on me, how soft I am.

 

Heal me,

my teacher,

my Virgil, goddamn.

Been waiting,

troubled by maps

upside down.

Was never good

with directions, direction

rulers, rules,

orders, order.

“supposed tos”—

nebulous,

loose on the hips,

tight on the chest.

 

Your focus,

a spotlight,

I squirm but surrender,

transfixed,

seen.

 

In so quick,

then out.

 

You can’t just go,

truncate,

interrupt

mid-pull.

We were just beginning,

talking universe,

and gridlessness,

art and assholes,

and brand new ways . . .

 

Next time,

by the sea,

with hot drinks and no clocks.

 

—Bernadette Malavarca

The ginger looked better an hour ago

before I tore it up and swished it in the soy abyss

with my chopstick

the fiscally regrettable

rice grains lay like little dead bugs

now a rock in my gut

but I can’t look up

not yet.

 

Tonight is six months into our tenth year,

evening three thousand four hundred and sixty-seven

nearly ninety-two thousand hours

of fried eggs, snow-ins, final papers, indie films, shows at the Bowery,

hangovers, autumn fires, drives north for no reason, apartment keys, IKEA dates, baby kittens, friends’ weddings, Christmases, recessions,

dying dads in December, dead engines in February,

wartime and reality television,

of making the bed, cleaning our hair from the sink, saving quarters for laundry, peeing with the door open,

of love notes in your work bag,

engraved watches under pillows and puzzle boxes holding rings,

of our figures changing shapes,

of learning our bodies in detail,

avid readers of brail

taking turns in the dark,

of countless rotations of the clock hands in arguments,

our merging and splitting,

secrets and confessions,

of ice outs and cop-outs,

“I shouldn’t have said thats” and “who the fuck is shes,”

of jolting jabs catapulting me out the door

and your green watery gazes

pulling me back.

 

Across from me you sit tonight,

confident arm sprawled over the empty chair,

rain beads on the window behind you,

eyes affixed on a white board of specials,

our deafening silence filled with stranger chatter.

Coughing on heart splinters, I stare at your neckline,

perfect.

 

—Bernadette Malavarca

Howling and reluctant,

I tumbled

from a tired woman

into the world—

like a bead of blood

into a water jar—

and dissipated.

 

Love and art

whisk the liquid—

I nearly congeal

but never return to

a pure drop.

 

Was deep, hot red,

then thin, cool pink,

translucent,

all the while,

evaporating.

 

—Bernadette Malavarca

This blog will be a curation of musings, my writings, and turn-ons to other media in the conversations of words, music, and healing arts. Stay tuned, and thanks for coming to see me.

Cheers,

Bern