Europe Poetry and Film

I am back! I have had such a busy, productive summer back in the states. Since leaving Europe, it has been a strange, difficult transition to my life in America. I was living in Santa Monica for the summer, working remote, and writing my thesis... soaking in the sun and pretty beaches and hikes and good coffee and pretty neighborhoods with long hanging trees. Visiting home in Arizona pretty often, I relished in the taste of homemade Mexican food and my grandma's stories of childhood and lots of tanning and long morning chats with my parents. All in all, leaving Europe was a bittersweet page-turn to my much more stable, permanent life reviving in the states. I am finally back in NYC and plan on being here for the foreseeable future. It feels good to plant roots in the city that feels most like home to me, right now, and to daze into the future ahead. I am trying not to future-trip, but enjoy the stability of the stagnant, yet busy time in my life. I am very very happy to be back in New York.

Since arriving here and unpacking boxes and boxes from storage, flipping through film photos from the months past and emptying out files on my computer, I have found so many snippets of poems, short stories, and lots of film photos from my time abroad that I want to encapsulate on a post. I definitely have hopes to put them all in a small chapbook in the near future -- so keep an eye out -- but for now, I want to give a taste of them here. Enjoy.

I would marry Paris if I could

But I feel like she’d divorce me

Just her 4th or 5th wife

She’s only in it for the high

But two cigarette packs and a croissant later

I’m tossed into the Seine

My hopeless devotion keeps me floating down

As the twinkles from above make me want get on one knee

Large hot cappuccino in the other hand

Begging her to let me stay

To keep the vintage ring from our sentimental thrift shop in le marais

Around her skinny little finger

I’d marry Paris in an irregular heart beat

But she’d never stay

Too many others wanting her brazen lust and idyllic architecture

I’m merely a passerby

But Paris will always be the lover I wish I could’ve kept mine

Yellow dress

I delicately picked up the scattered stones

Smooth from the impact of your throw

Again and again the erosion began

What once was jagged and sharp

Became smooth and soft and round

I gently bent down and cradled them in my hands

A little trail I followed, carefully placed by you

Only to feel trapped as I reached the end

Where the cliff ran down

And the water screamed

My name

Caught in the back of your throat

A bloody sore that hurts so good

That is what I am to you

A pain that you cannot sew shut

A hurt that runs freely in your veins

A vice aimed to kill, a slow suffering by your own will

My pale yellow slip dress soaked up the sun

As the shadows of my toned, tan thighs

Danced in the autumn leaves

You could see the crevice of my side

And my eyes pleaded

Soft stones in my hands

You on my hips

My skin burned like a wildfire

And spread throughout, a fiery red

That caught on your cheeks in small, shy patches

I had never seen a boy so smitten

Yet you dealt me roughly like a misbehaving card deck

My luck had never been good, and your strategy far too predictable

The shadows danced in between my dress

The sun eavesdropped through the branches

Your hands played under my silk, a choreographed dance

That you had done so well before

A standing ovation I would’ve given

If my legs stood a chance

I yearned for this lust in my dreams the night before

But awoke before I came, and neither did the love

Now you were solid, a pearly silhouette on my berry stained lips

Yet I knew that you would run and hide

Once the moon arrived

The tide would pull you back

And I would be alone with the stars and the sky

And the night would swallow me with no apology or remorse

Alone and lonely; solitude greeted me like an older sister

“la flâneur” they whispered to me in a minor key

That my ears found so hauntingly sweet

I knew I would wander back to you, retracing my light steps

With my pretty shadow twirling right behind

You will take me in your arms, freckles stamping on my skin

As you trace your love back down stomach

And whisk it away with forehead smile

I forcefully skipped the stones in the river by the cottage

The yellow boards of the house matched my dress

The lace reflected the design on the window boards

The smooth stones elegantly danced on the water

As I knew you would be back, then swallowed again

The sun and the moon, my dear old friends

The South-side Dock

I named a rock beside me

Then forgot his name

As I tripped over my untied, muddy shoelace

My face and his were introduced brutally

Like a forceful, messy first kiss in the middle school cafeteria

I spit out

SHIT No response.

DAMN YOU! Not a stir.

FUUU

Silence engulfed.

I sat carefully beside him, blood dripping like paint on my blue, frail hands,

Giving it the dirty side eye, the green of mine touching the sun for added effect

My eyelashes calling out dirty names to the one who cast my downfall

As the lush, yet snowy mountain before me grew,

The sun dipped below, a temporary farewell

Blowing a fatal kiss that rattled the current of the deep sapphire, sparkling lake

A slow, treacherous pull it gave as it grabbed the rock by its whole

And swallowed it away

I never even got his name.

Playing with Mother

My lazy swollen feet had walked down nearly two flights of uneven cobblestone

To the boardwalk, where the coast turned in like my belly doing sit ups on a purple, worn-out yoga mat

And the colorful houses were all on pretty display like God’s personal Christmas Spectacular!

Its January 14th now, and the sun had been teasing me all day, taunting with its departure that would be for fortnights

Don’t make me squint at you!

Daring me to come out for duel.

Instead, I got a drink at the local bar, a mere 30 steps away

Where the sun realized my cowardice and dipped away and the moon came out to play

Hide and seek as I pirouetted between and around her shadows of large balconies and willow trees, the bees sleepily soundly with their queen

I was met with the moon’s earnest reflection in the dreamy liquid at my feet

Stretching into years and centuries far after (and before) me.

I threw my best poke (it was hide and seek TAG, after all)

And the glimmering darkness swallowed me whole!

How was I suppose to know the lake was playing too?

Seem rather unfair to me that it was silent until it could sweep me (but the moon and the lake are always tugging and pulling and teasing each other, so I really should have known).

I swam, a little unevenly to the small wooden dock, pulled myself up with the help of the rounded waves

Who’s side are you on!

And grinned while looking up

Closing one eye, the other as wide as the horizon in front of me,

I looked up, stared at the moon with a sly, shivering grin

Placing my thumb over it completely,

“Tag, you’re it!”

And the night closed in.