red rooms, eclipses, liminality
For now, just images, just scraps.
An eclipse; crickets confused by one p.m. dusk. My pesky shadow self, the side of me who feels they are too much and not enough. Too much of the wrong things, not enough of the right things.
A red room that once felt like home. An old lover who still feels like home. But I have been eclipsed by someone who has more of the right things and less of the wrong.
A house that once felt like home, away; deja, baby, I’ve been here before, I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor.
A reminder that one of the worst weekends of my life was fourteen years ago. And how far I’ve come.
And how far I have not.
Old familiar songs, old familiar faces, old familiar flames. How I miss smoking. How I sit where I can smell the smoke from other people’s cigarettes, sit in the smoke from backyard fire pits and tiki torches.
Torches used for friendly gatherings, not hate marches.
Hate marches; how powerless I feel.
Old familiar anxiety, and tears.
The death of a family friend. I burned CDs of his favorite music for the funeral.
And I am growing life. Turns out it’s a boy-child, not a girl-child. Still welcome, wanted, loved. What was unwelcome was the condescension from an acquaintance on Facebook, explaining to me how gender works.
As though I have not spent the past twenty years trying to figure out my own gender.
Sadnesses and frustrations. Mercury retrograde. Plans cancelled.
Thinking of Joe Strummer, what he would say about all this.
A drive down to Chicago on a 91-degree and high-humidity day, for a show; remembering 12 years ago, driving down to Chicago on a humid-hot day, for a Joe Strummer tribute show.
And of course, the friend whose memory haunts everything.
And how J. said his girlfriend asks him why he never writes about her, and he told her if I write about you, that means it’s over.
How I once wrote: when your current lover comes to you and says: how come you never write about me in your zine?, say: because I can’t ever write about relationships ‘til they’re over. don’t say: that means I’ll never be able to write about you, because you know - the fact that they asked that question means it will be over sooner rather than later.
Things I have Googled recently: how to get rid of blossom-end rot on tomatoes. how to kill powdery mildew on pumpkin leaves. how to get rid of pantry moths.
How pregnancy makes me feel liminal, transitory. I am becoming a portal. The baby is here with me but not yet here in the world.
And how August is such a strange time, not quite summer not quite autumn. Liminal, transitory. Beautiful in its own way but with an ache in it; the ache of becoming.
An ache, an eclipse of the red rooms of my heart. My heart is out of season.
And that old flame, again:
though I should moan for others,
still I love you more than reason.
As though reason matters to the heart; as though the heart isn’t just a metaphor for something liminal and transitory.